Are Boys Better Than Girls At Maths?
Think back to your school days and conjure up an image of the archetypal maths-whizz: striding ahead of the rest of the class, solving problems with ease, clearly destined to be a mathematician, physicist or engineer later in life.
Chances are that person was not female, and considering how few women occupy the top spots in maths-based professions, your memory is probably accurate.
Explaining this disparity between men and women has been the source of considerable controversy. Former President of Harvard, Larry Summers, argued that one reason men do better in maths-related fields is because they have a superior innate ability. Summers, of course, was forced to resign in 2006 after his public endorsement of this view caused a furore.
On the other side of the debate are figures like Elizabeth Spelke, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, who argues that the differences at the top levels of maths and science are rooted in social factors.
Boys are better than girls at maths - aren't they?
Whichever side you lean towards, the widespread assumption has been that there is a difference in mathematical achievement that needs explaining. Research has shown that both parents and teachers commonly hold this belief. Indeed research on thousands of SAT scores published in the 1990s backed this up: for complex problem-solving males had a significant advantage over females in the general population, especially at the high end of the distribution.
For critics, though, the problem with results of this kind is that beliefs can feed straight back into performance. If you believe the stereotype that, as a woman, you're bad at maths, guess what, it will lower your performance. When that belief is widespread amongst women - such as is true in the case of maths - it will lower performance.
Confirming this theory, studies show that when women are reminded of the stereotype, they actually do perform worse in maths tests. So we end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is exactly the kind of social factor to which Elizabeth Spelke is referring. And if Spelke is right then when social conditions change, so should the difference between men and women on mathematical reasoning ability. Could it be that women have been hamstrung by a self-limiting belief?
To find out let's fast-forward a decade or two. Women are now no longer encumbered with the same restricting stereotypes they once were. Certainly all is not rosy in the garden of gender equality, but major strides forward have been made.
Just as in other aspects of society, these strides can be seen in mathematics. At school girls now study calculus alongside boys and later go on to earn almost half of all undergraduate degrees in mathematics in the US. Still, this data is circumstantial - what we need to know is how young boys and girls are doing right now at school - young boys and girls who are not exposed to the same extreme gender stereotypes as previous generations about who is good at maths.
New data
In a new study published recently in Science, Professor Janet Hyde and colleagues may have spotted the first signs of change. They used data from around 7 million US children in 10 US states from grade 2 through to grade 11, routinely gathered as part of a national assessment exercise. They wanted to find out if boys are still performing better than girls at maths.
What they found was that in marked contrast to earlier research, there was little or no difference in maths performance between girls and boys in all of the 10 states. In some states girls performed fractionally better, on average, than boys, and in other states this trend was reversed.
"There just aren't gender differences anymore in math performance," says Professor Hyde. "So parents and teachers need to revise their thoughts about this." This result brings an impressive weight of numbers to bear on this question and helps challenge the widespread belief that boys are more gifted than girls at maths - whether as a result of nature or nurture.
Perhaps, though, girls are now doing better at maths because of a greater gender equality in society - discovering a talent previous generations were told they didn't have. Yet not everyone is convinced that we will see women rise to positions of eminence in the currently male-dominated worlds of mathematics, engineering and physics.
High achievers
Many have argued that men's and women's abilities in maths may well be comparable on average, but that the specific individuals who go on to become great mathematicians, physicists and engineers are rarely average. The argument has been that these talented individuals who lie at the extreme end of the bell-curve distribution of mathematical ability are more often men. It's this extra talent at the extreme high end of ability that is thought to account for the fact that men dominate in fields that require advanced maths skills.
Professor Hyde's study also addresses this question, and once again her data questions the assumption. She sliced and diced her sample of students down to focus just on performance on the most difficult types of problems. If the prediction was right that the best boys can outperform the best girls, then this difference should emerge in their data. Again, though, the differences between boys and girls, even on the hardest questions, were small.
This study won't end the debate, though, because as Professor Hyde points out, even the hardest questions on this test are still not complex enough to stretch the most talented students and really uncover whether a gender difference exists at the extreme end of the distribution. Other studies continue to find that at the more gifted end, boys outperform girls in maths.
Challenging stereotypes
Mathematical ability might be yet another difference that turned out to have less to do with nature, and more to do with nurture.1 In a recent survey of the literature on sex differences in maths and science, Diane Halpern, a past-president of the American Psychological Association, and colleagues found that success in maths and science careers was predicted by a complex web of factors. These included biological constraints, the cultural context and educational policies. While biology is in the mix, it's far from king of the hill.
Although Hyde's study could have identified the vanguard of change in challenging stereotypes, we won't see the evidence before our eyes until women begin to believe in their ability. Who knows, perhaps in a few generations we'll see just as many female theoretical physicists as male. Unfortunately, as Professor Hyde points out: "Stereotypes are very, very resistant to change, but as a scientist I have to challenge them with data."
Notes
1. On 78% of psychological variables the differences between men and women are either small or zero. The three main areas of difference identified by Professor Hyde in previous reviews of the literature are sexuality, aggression and motor performance.
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You write: Former President of Harvard Larry Summers argued that men do better in maths-related fields because they have a superior innate ability. Summers, of course, was forced to resign in 2006 when his public endorsement of this view caused a furore.
I studied the Summers incident and it appears that your description is misleading. As a Wikipedia article sums it up, he merely "suggested one such possible reason could be men's higher variance in relevant innate abilities or innate preference."
If forced resignation based on that incident was expected, that says more about the current political sentiments in the U.S. than it does about the science.
Hrvoje, thanks - I've adjusted the emphasis.
I think the outstansing of boys at the end of the distribution could be due to the higher variance in the male distribution. I mean, I was told in class that there are more boys in the two ends of the distribution, in the high end and also the low end. Could this explain the better performance of boys in the most complex and difficult problems, at least partly?
I am surprised how many people get offended by this. I'm not an expert in human psychology, but is it such a shock to find out that men and women's brains may be different? It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
That's not to say that women do not excel in other fields. Women can be brilliant scientists regardless of their disadvantages in math, because sometimes we just have to work harder at certain things, just like women are better at other skills.
That's also not to say that the studies were perfect. I have not read them, but they could be flawed. Not sure until I read the studies.
Regarding Larry Summers, I think there is an important point to be made. From what I understand, (and please correct me if I'm wrong), he made these comments *** at a Harvard College graduation ceremony***
What kind of a forum is that to bring up such a subject? It was completely inappropriate. There was no reason whatsoever to bring up an inate disadvantage that girls may have in math. On a day when young women were supposed to be celebrating the beginning of their careers.
I completely agree with Harvard's decision.
It's funny how these urban myths spring out of nowhere, even in this age of the Internet when they can be discredited within seconds. No it wasn't at the graduation ceremony, it was a closed economics conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research. A transcript of the speech appeared later, you can check it out. If you're like me, you may struggle to find anything controversial. Apparently, the most "nauseating" part was this:
So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something.
Apparently, this is just another way of saying "women are inferior to men"?!?
For a great debate, check out Pinker vs Spelke: The Science of Gender and Science at Harvard, sparked by the incident.
Well then I apologize. As I mentioned before, (and I'm saying this as a female scientist)!! I see nothing offensive about saying that studies show women have different inate abilities in men.
However, I wish I could read a transcript (does anyone have one)? because I have heard that he was generally confrontational and did not ever bother to meniton other research which showed that women scored high when not in a room with other men.
I think all things must be taken into consideration, Hrvoje, and there is such a thing as subtle digs at women and African Americans which are, in my opinion, worthy of termination.
Until I read actual transcripts of his words, I probably can't judge for myself. I'm not questioning the research, but I am questioning Summers' judgements.
I've linked to the transcript from the Harvard's website in my post - you probably missed it:
http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html
I've also linked to the Harvard debate (it has slides, transcripts, audio, video: but I guess it still can't beat being there).
It's just that this reminds me of the political reaction to E. O. Wilson's regarding his theory of sociobiology. So far, I have not seen any justification of "furor" against this particular speech.
Thank you for passing that along!
I'll have to give it a better look tomorrow. But first of all I am having trouble judging the speech, as I've never seen so many confusing, run on sentences in my life. That makes it difficult to read.
Additionally, I think it was overly lofty for him to get into any other comparison about Jews, overweight people, etc. While I understand why it's relevant, the topic is new enough that it really needed to be narrowed down to bite size, not broadened to an all encompassing debate.
I certainly don't see anything terribly offensive, but again I did not read the whole thing and I do not know anything else about his past mishaps, if any.
Thank you again ;)
I would prefer that the blog be titled "Boys are Not Better than Girls at Maths." Or at least "Are Girls Better than Boys at Maths?" The present title is kind of leading. I'm sure girls are equal to boys in maths, from personal experience. From a girl who is good in maths!
@Jeremy: You say you adjusted the emphasis, but I haven't noticed any change in text?
One fact that the author in this study brushes over is that in absolute numbers there are much more male high achievers than there are female.
You must be a high achiever to get a job in math related fields. Hence males are over represented in those fields.
This couldn't be more wrong. Did you actually read the paper?
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/summers-vindica.html
Jahed, thanks for the link which is very welcome.
But no thanks for your tone, which isn't.
I guess you didn't get as far as reading the paragraph that says:
"This study won't end the debate, though, because as Professor Hyde points out, even the hardest questions on this test are still not complex enough to stretch the most talented students and really uncover whether a gender difference exists at the extreme end of the distribution. Other studies continue to find that at the more gifted end, boys outperform girls in maths."
Jake, this paragraph addresses your point as well.
Hrvoje, I added the phrase 'one reason' before 'men do better in maths-related...'
maya857 said...
"I think all things must be taken into consideration, Hrvoje, and there is such a thing as subtle digs at women and African Americans which are, in my opinion, worthy of termination."
Sorry, I had to laugh - that's a beautiful slip for a discussion on people being taken out of context. :-)
This was a very good read, but I'm with Jill on the title. I believe part of the reason why we have stereotypes is what questions are asked or what examples are given.
Last semester I had a statistics professor whose examples were almost always fictitious studies with men and women in which "men scored higher". Higher in what? I thought, idiocy? Sexism? I know that's mean, but our class was almost 70% women and I couldn't believe he would say that.