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Mathematical abilities and gender issues

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Mathematical abilities are said to differ by gender. Males are supposedly more skilled in mathematical fields than females. There are two areas in which it is said there are differences:

  1. the average male is more skilled than the average female, and
  2. mathematical abilities are much more varied among males meaning they are more likely to be highly intelligent than females.

The second statement is much more controversial.

Differences in the numbers of women and men going into mathematics based careers like engineering are large. As these careers would be expected to attract those with mathematical abilities significantly above the average, the variation in skill (standard deviation) within a particular gender is more relevant than the average. Therefore, comparing averages is probably not very helpful when discussing the numbers of females in mathematics based careers and the standard deviation among males should be compared to the standard deviation among females.

There are many theories of what may be causing these difference between the genders on mathematical ability. Some argue that this difference is caused by the environment, such as gender biased education (at the home or in the classroom) or other societal effects, while some other researchers argue that it is the characteristics of the genders that cause this ability gap. These are only a few of the possible reasons. Others argue that we cannot ignore the possibility that it is partly genetic.

Evidence regarding the average abilities of the genders

Results of intelligence tests, such as the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT), provide evidence to the first statement. 12th grade males who took the DAT scored almost nine-tenths of a standard deviation higher on mechanical reasoning than females (Lupkowski, 1992). More recent work has found gender differences to be small when comparing the averages of the two genders. For example, among students taking the ACT, sex differences in the average results of each gender were small. In 2004, boys scored 1.1 points on average higher than girls, a difference of less than a quarter of a standard deviation(ACT, 2004). Even on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) boys scored 34 points higher than girls on a scale of 200-800, about a third of a standard deviation. (College Board, 2005). For younger students, in 2005 38% of 4th grade boys and 34% of 4th grade girls were at proficient or advanced levels in mathematics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress as did 31% of 8th grade boys and 28% of 8th grade girls (NAEP, 2005).

Evidence regarding a greater variation male abilities

Mathematics is said to be a highly IQ intensive field. See Sex and intelligence for evidence that males may be more likely to be highly intelligent than females.

Theories to explain the differences

Characteristics

Characteristic differences are one of the theories said to be the reason for greater mathematical performances among male students. Males are said to have high self-esteem, while females are not as confident. When studying mathematics at a young age, males believe that they do well, when the truth is that their abilities do not differ much from females (Leonard, 1995). This level of confidence, motivation, and interest in the mathematical field eventually results in mathematical ability gaps (Manning, 1998). However, the same argument would predict a similar phenomenon in other areas, such as English, where gender differences in performance are not in fact observed.

Biased education

There are many people who believe that biased education is the reason of the mathematical ability differences. As an example of biased education, a woman who scored the same as a man on a test was given worse grades than the man. The professor who taught her believed that women did not belong in his field (Isaacson, 1990). There are also examples of biased education where although girls offer ideas as much as boys, boys are called upon more frequently. Leder (1990) comments that, “Acknowledgement, praise, encouragement, and corrective feedback are given slightly more frequently to men than to women”. Females also tend to put less effort into mathematics than linguistics because they are tied up with stereotypical statements saying that they will not succeed in the mathematics field. The stereotypical thought that men make better mathematicians, scientists, or engineers, are still engraved in women’s minds, discouraging women from studying mathematics.

IQ distribution

Though males and females have the same average IQs, males have higher standard deviations, so they are more likely to be found at the extreme ends of the IQ distribution (i.e there are more mentally retarded males then females, and there are more males with extremely high IQs then females.) Because maths is one of the most IQ intensive fields of study it is possible that part of the heavy weighting towards males in mathematics is due to the higher levels of variation of their IQs. This was the argument of Larry Summers during the recent controversy at Harvard.

This argument however has its critics. It is said that it can only explain a part of the enormous variance between male and female achievement. Though more male IQ scores than female scores are indeed found at the extreme ends of the bell curve, it is said that this phenomena does not occur to a statistically great enough extent to explain the levels of male control of the field.

But then again, it is pointed out that any difference in the magnitude of the standard deviation, no matter how small, will have its effect magnified greatly as we seek out smaller and smaller groups of 'the most intelligent'. For example, if the most intelligent 10% of the population contains 75% males, then the most intelligent 1% of the population will contain 93.7% males, the most intelligent 0.1% of the population will contain 98.4% males, and so on to arbitrarily high ratios of males-to-females. This means that it's important to determine how small the group of mathematicians is compared to the general population before being able to accurately evaluate the effect of any difference in standard deviation.

In addition, women have been established to have better study habits, so one would expect this to balance out the IQ distribution difference to some degree.

References

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2005/2005-college-bound-seniors.pdf

  • National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2005). The nation’s report card mathematics.

Retrieved October 19, 2005, from http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_mathematics_2005/s0018.asp

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