Thursday, January 07, 2010

Study on math gender gap

A SciAm podcast says:
Else-Quest notes that there is some association between the status of women in each country and their ability to do mathematics.

“The percentage of women in parliament was moderately associated with the size of the gender gap in math such that in countries where there were fewer women in parliament males tended to do better in math than girls by a larger extent than in countries in which there was better representation by women in parliament.”

That connection would seem to imply that achievement levels are not innate and fixed.
I don't know anything about this research, and it is not online, but the conclusion does not follow. This supposed correlation has nothing to do with whether achievement is innate.

Maybe the girls are innately smarter in some countries, and as a result they do better on tests and get elected to political office more.

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