The more we learn, the less we know.
This past week, conventional wisdom was once again turned on its head with the publication of a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde and her colleagues showing that girls are just as good as boys in math. But, as you’ll read on, you’ll learn researchers have known this for years. Why this continues to be “news” or the conventional wisdom is beyond me.
Though girls take just as many advanced high school math courses today as boys, and women earn 48 percent of all mathematics bachelor’s degrees, the stereotype persists that girls struggle with math, says researcher Hyde. Not only do many parents and teachers believe this, but scholars also use it to explain the dearth of female mathematicians, engineers and physicists at the highest levels.
“There just aren’t gender differences anymore in math performance, though.”
The study’s researchers tallied math scores from state exams now mandated annually under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), along with detailed statistics on test takers, including gender, grade level and ethnicity, in 10 states.
Using data from more than 7 million students, they then calculated the effect size, a method for determining the degree of difference between girls’ and boys’ average math scores in standardized units.
The effect sizes they found were basically zero, indicating that average scores of girls and boys were the same.
“Boys did a teeny bit better in some states, and girls did a teeny bit better in others,” noted Hyde. “But when you average them all, you essentially get no difference.”
No Difference at Highest Mathematical Levels
Some critics argue, however, that even when average performance is equal, gender discrepancies may still exist at the highest levels of mathematical ability.
To see if this was true, the researchers searched for those differences in a second part of the study. For example, they compared the variability in boys’ and girls’ math scores, the idea being that if more boys fell into the top scoring percentiles than girls, the variance in their scores would be greater.
Again, the effort uncovered little difference, as did a comparison of how well boys and girls did on questions requiring complex problem solving. What the researchers did find, though, was a disturbing lack of questions that tested this ability. In fact, they found none whatsoever on the state assessments for NCLB, requiring them to turn to another data source for this part of the study.
What this suggests, says Hyde, is that if teachers are gearing instruction toward these assessments, the performance of both boys and girls in complex problem solving may drop in the future, leaving them ill-prepared for careers in math, science and engineering.
“This skill can be taught in the classroom,” she says, “but we need to motivate teachers to do so by including those items on the tests.”
SAT Scores May Be Biased Toward Boys
The study’s final piece was a review of the granddaddy of all high school math tests, the SAT. The fact that boys score better on it than girls has been widely publicized, contributing to the public’s notion that boys truly are better at math. But Hyde and her co-authors think there’s another explanation: sampling artifact.
For one thing, because it’s administered only to college-bound seniors, the SAT is hardly a random sample of all students. What’s more, greater numbers of girls take the test now than boys, because more girls are going to college.
“So you’re dipping farther down into the distribution of female talent, which brings down the average score,” says Hyde. “That may be the explanation for (the results), rather than girls aren’t as good as math.”
Cultural Belief is Everything
Cultural beliefs that suggest boys are better at math than girls are “incredibly influential,” Hyde said, making it critical to question them. “Because if your mom or your teacher thinks you can’t do math, that can have a big impact on your math self concept.”
Still, will all of this be enough to finally shift this long-held attitude? Hyde can’t say, but she remains determined to do so.
“Stereotypes are very, very resistant to change,” she says, “but as a scientist I have to challenge them with data.”
The study was published in the July 25 issue of Science.
How Did We Get It So Wrong?
The real question left hanging in my mind is how can science get it so wrong for so long? How can an entire generation or two of children grow up thinking that because you’re a girl, you’ll never be very good at math even if you try?
Well, the fact is that that researchers have known that girls perform as well as (or outperform) boys in math for years (see, for example, Kenney-Benson et al., 2006):
Moreover, despite stereotypical expectations to the contrary, girls also receive equal or higher grades than do boys in stereotypically masculine subject areas, such as math and science (e.g., American College Testing Program, 1997; Jacobs, 1991; Pomerantz et al., 2002; for reviews, see American Association of University Women, 1999; Dwyer & Johnson, 1997; Kimball, 1989). Hence, in terms of grades, girls outperform boys in both stereotypically feminine and masculine areas.
So for as long as the “conventional wisdom” has likely existed, psychological research has also shown it to be largely incorrect and wrong.
Where the problem typically occurs is in testing:
A somewhat different picture emerges when the performance of girls and boys on achievement tests is examined. As is the case for grades, girls outperform their male counterparts on achievement tests in stereotypically feminine subject areas (e.g., U.S. Department of Education, 2000, 2003b; for reviews, see American Association of University Women, 1999; Entwisle et al., 1997). However, boys perform better than girls on achievement tests in the stereotypically masculine areas of math and science, although boys have recently lost their edge over girls on achievement tests in math, on which the two often obtain similar scores (e.g., U.S. Department of Education, 2000, 2003b; for reviews, see American Association of University Women, 1999; Hyde et al., 1990). Thus, although girls outperform boys on achievement tests in stereotypically feminine areas, they do not do so in stereotypically masculine areas.
So in grades — where schoolwork is done, day-in and day-out — girls rule. But when it comes to achievement tests, like the SAT, girls fall behind.
What this points out to me is obvious — the SAT and tests like it are gender biased. The fact that the test publishers know this and still do not correct for it is, well, odd. Perhaps it’s hubris thinking their tests couldn’t possibly be biased in this manner, or perhaps it’s a more difficult nut to crack than a simple score adjustment.
But whatever the case, let’s put this myth to rest for good — boys and girls are equal in math and have the same or similar potential to achieve in mathematics.
References:
Kenney-Benson, G.A., Pomerantz, E.M., Ryan, A.M., Patrick, H. (2006). Sex differences in math performance: The role of children’s approach to schoolwork. Developmental Psychology, 42(1), 11-26.
Hyde, J. et al. (2008). Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance. Science, 321(5888), 494 – 495.
Sources: Press release and PsycINFO
12 comments
Apparently, you haven’t discovered the difference between sex differences in means and sex differences in variances. Male ability in math skill is, like many other ability and personality variables, more variable than for females. This means that, at the extreme upper and lower tails of the distribution, there will be over-representation by males accounting for, among other things, larger proportions of males in high-end math-related programs and occupations.
I won’t bother with the many citations over the years that have established this fact. A simple Google search would suffice. I received my Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 1987 and this was well-known even then. I continue to look forward to the day when “cargo-cult” social “scientists” (usually of the clinical variety) will shelve their political agenda long enough to understand some statistics (I’m a card-carrying social liberal, by the way).
Pardon…I neglected to add that even small differences in variance ratios will result in relatively large differences in the absolute number of males and females in the extreme ends of the distribution.
An acquaintance is a brilliant young woman who has worked as a Dental Assistant for several years. She believes she would be a great dentist but thinks she can not handle the math in school. Where can she study to move her past the myth of her not being able to do math. Is there a special tutor-er to teach her the correct learning methods effective for her? Help. I worry we have another person who will not meet her potential. Thank you, Terri
I always thought it was weird since, as a male, I’m horrible at math and have met females that are better than me at it. Especially the female math teachers.
Last night I was explaining to my 9 year old daughter that in the 1970’s, girls had no current female role models. I was Martha Washington on Halloween! This is relevent to the math conversation this morning.
I think that the birth control pill, more than anything else, is responsible for women’s success in a career. The fact that there are few women who equal Einstein or Curie in professional intellect has more to do with the fact that women have, over the ages, had to take care of their children rather than pursue a career.
Men have had the luxury of concentrating on their career but women, if they had the rare gift of a wealthy family to give them independence, still had children to watch over instead of nurturing their career and intellect in a public way. Children take up an alarming amount of time and emotional energy!
My daughter is just as good as her brother in math and he is better than average with his verbal skills, in spite of being dyslexic.
I believe that nature vs. nurture is absolutely at work. My mom told me that she noticed that teachers would promote boys’ participation in class during math even though she was just as capable in solving problems.
Perhaps the people who had control of publishing the data were men? thank goodness my husband, an engineer believes in his daughter and is able to help her at home when her teachers fail; not much help for the rest of the young women in America.
Which by the way, leads to another important question about math in America; with the NCLB as the focus in schools now, will the information gained about the difference in teaching early math to European children be tossed?
U.S. children are taught to understand math by rote instead of theory while European children are taught theory and are much better until U.S. kids go to University and there, they are taught theory. Complex v. simple; NCLB v. European? I can’t see this as positive. Anymore than the idiocy that thought to teach children how to read without phonics! Which by the way, in the UK, dyslexia is much lower and they have phonics programs available on the net for kids; I have used them in the US for my son because there is nothing like that here.
Can you believe that we were already dumbed down’ and now w/ Bush’s NCLB, we are even dumber?
I am still not voting for Obama, I find that a man who can laugh at himself (McCain)is often more intelligent and all encompassing in thought than a man who is constantly telling people not to throw stones.
@William… We just report on the research, we don’t always have all the studies in front of us in order to conduct in-depth statistical analyses.
From the title to the last sentence of the article, you clearly left the impression that there are no important differences in mathematical aptitude between females and males and that “cultural” forces and “stereotypes” were the only important factors worthy of consideration. This is extremely mis-leading in that, as I said, it ignores the well- documented differences in variability. I wouldn’t call this “just reporting” as it appears to be clearly motivated by a non-scientific, political agenda.
Problem number one: The NCLB test scores cannot be considered gospel. Too many teachers, due to political, community and administrative pressure, cheated on the tests. With all the known scandals (and we can only guess at the unknown scandals) involving these tests, who in their right intellectual mind, use these as the basis of a study? I don’t have any problem with the results BUT you can’t determine this from those tests.
Two thoughts on this issue.
First, with respect to gender bias in tests, most of the bruhaha seems to be about differences in the average performance or variance. If either of these statistics really do bias a test, we can apply whatever correction is needed to render test scores equally predictive of criterial performance.
What we really have to worry about is differential validity. If a test, in some sense, is more informative or accurate concerning, say, girls’ abilities than boys’, then the test really is biased and no amount of fiddling with the scores will remove that bias.
Second, all, or almost all of the studies cited in this article are cross-sectional, and I’d bet that none of them go past the age of 21. (There are probably some uncited studies out there of the 70+ crowd.) But most folks, actually start putting their talents to good use after they get out of college. What we really need to know is how different populations fare at mathematical tasks that they encounter in real life and work in adulthood.