Gender gap in math (and reading)

Science News and The Economist are reporting on a study published in Science by Guiso et al. that shows a correlation between ratings of a country’s gender equality and the size of the mathematics testing gap between male and female students. Countries with more gender equality exhibit a smaller gap. (Hat tips to Women in Science and to Skepchick for the links.)

My first reaction: well, duh. In places where it’s less likely for a girl to be laughed right out of the math classroom, girls tend to do better in their math classes. The only thing surprising about this is that someone thought it was worth doing a study to prove it.

On second glance, things get a bit more complicated. As with any social science study, interpreting the data is a tricky task. I’m going to start out by assuming for simplicity’s sake that the testing data and gender equality rankings are reliable, because the details of that are really more than I can cover here. I do want to talk about ways to interpret the data and implications for policy decisions.

Those of us who are equity-minded and sensitive to issues of political correctness want studies of this sort to show that girls and boys are equally capable of performing well in different types of tasks. We’re particularly aware of discrimination in STEM fields and eager to show that women are just as capable as men of succeeding there. Naturally, the likely way to approach this study is to note that in a country with a higher Gender Gap Index (GGI) the difference between girls’ and boys’ math scores basically tends to zero, while the difference is large in favor of boys in a country with a low GGI. Therefore women and men are equal, QED, let’s go home.

Wait, let’s not — because the reading scores matter too. Read more

June 8, 2008 · Written by
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