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Girls worse at math? No way, new analysis shows

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-02 16:26

GIFTED AND AVERAGE

She said no one disputes that at the average level, girls perform as well as boys mathematically.

But at the top levels, disparities persist and some experts have said this is do to the "greater male variability" theory -- the idea that males in general are more likely to score both extremely high and extremely poorly on tests than girls are.

Mertz said the analysis shows this is not true. "It's not that everywhere in the world there are fewer girls than boys in the top 1 percent," she said.

If there were a biological reason for the differences, this would have to hold everywhere, she said. But it does not.

"Analysis of data from 15-year-old students participating in the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment likewise indicated that as many, if not more girls than boys scored above the 99th percentile in Iceland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom," Mertz and Hyde wrote.

Several different international tests show the same pattern, including the International Math Olympics, Mertz said.

"If girls don't have equal educational opportunities or if they know if they learn the material there won't be jobs available to them, why bother, they seek something else," she said.

This is changing, slowly, in the United States, they pointed out.

"For example, only 14 percent of the U.S. doctoral degrees in the biological sciences went to women in 1970, whereas this figure had risen to 49 percent by 2006," they wrote.

"The percentages in mathematics and statistics were 8 percent in 1970 and 32 percent in 2006."

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