Why are men better at math ?

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T

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So , I'm looking at the PISA results and its kinda crazy how differentiated the results between men and women are :

Regarding Math

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On the other hand women are much better than man at Reading

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And on Science is variable

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There's an report trying to explain this results http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-gender-eng.pdf . They bring a interesting point that in some top performance countries , girls perform on par with boys which suggest that there is no innate difference. But this doesnt happen everywhere.

To add to the strangeness women have better performances at school than men. They also study more . So why does this happen ? What differentiates the cognitive skill ?


On average across OECD countries, the score-point difference in mathematics performance between high-achieving girls and boys is 19 score points. However, when comparing boys and girls who reported similar levels of self-confidence in mathematics and of anxiety towards mathematics, the gender gap in performance disappears.
PISA reveals that girls tend to do better when they are required to work on mathematical or scientific problems that are more similar to those that are routinely encountered in school. But when required to “think like scientists”, girls underperform considerably compared to boys. For example, girls tend to underachieve compared to boys when they are asked to formulate situations mathematically. On average across OECD countries, boys outperform girls in this skill by around 16 PISA score points – the equivalent of nearly five months of school. Boys also outperform girls – by 15 score points – in the ability to apply their knowledge of science to a given situation, to describe or interpret phenomena scientifically and predict changes. This gender difference in the ability to think like a scientist may be related to students’ self-confidence. When students are more self-confident, they give themselves the freedom to fail, to engage in the trial-and-error processes that are fundamental to acquiring knowledge in mathematics and science
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Gaf explain me. No better place on the web than Gaf to explain me women behavior.
 
Probably partially due to gender roles, they have a big influence over people.

A lot of girls probably grow up being told they should prioritize things other than education.
 
Because of the power of socially enforced gender roles.

Also, because periods make it difficult to solve anything beyond the simplest quadratic equations.
 
The only possible argument, with no data to back it up from me, is that math based STEM courses are very man-focused and tend to keep women away as they are led in school and in culture to believe that say engineering is a man's game. Which is bullshit.
 
I think there shouldn't be any logical reason for this, so im willing to guess it's a cultural thing in which girls at a young age have been discouraged from engaging math for several generations.
 
Men being told that they have to be good at math in to be a real man and take care of their family and blah blah blah. It's a social thing.
 
When I was younger, I was told that females were usually smarter in math. I believed it because when I was taking the advanced math courses, the majority of the class were girls.
 
Societal norms weigh heavy. There are excellent programs that promote STEM to females which is a good idea. There are great books like Kiss My Math that make it cool for girls too. As the father of a bright 8 yr old daughter I make sure to not fall into those traps.
 
Gender roles. Girls are told they are bad at math from the beginning.

In WWII, women were very important as "computers", women are also very much a part of physics and chemistry.
 
Couldn't it just be that men's brains are better at some things than women's brains and women's brains are better at some things than men's brains?
 
Arthr2ShdsJcksn said:
Because of the power of socially enforced gender roles.

Also, because periods make it difficult to solve anything beyond the simplest quadratic equations.
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Except girls get constant validation at school and the curriculum is being changed in ways that favour them too.
 
Slovenia and Finland have a hell of a reading gap between the sexes. That's almost more interesting than the discrepancy in math. Boys suck ass at reading, apparently.
 
They aren't if we are talking about innate capacity. Some of it is the lingering stereotype that math is for boys/girls aren't good at math. Some of if is the way girls are brought up. Girls tend to give up or seek help on things they find challenging quicker than boys do. There are plenty of papers and books offering theories on why that is.
 
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I hate math. I hate reading.

Women for the most part love reading too much into things.

Men love an immediate answer?


Science????
 
To add to the strangeness women have better performances at school than men. They also study more . So why does this happen ? What differentiates the cognitive skill ?
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Setting aside any innate factors, part of this is likely to be due to women being over-represented in K-12 education positions, which will skew learning towards girl's preferences.
 
There's no innate difference, but mathematics is usually thematically based towards men. Usually that would be seen as a subject for men to learn to go forward into STEM roles. Women were discouraged from this path due to these gender roles.
 
SomedayTheFire said:
There's no innate difference, but mathematics is usually thematically based towards men. Usually that would be seen as a subject for men to learn to go forward into STEM roles. Women were discouraged from this path due to these gender roles.
Click to expand...

When I did a paper in college for engineering sexism, I recall finding that indeed in many STEM roles there's a huge gap, except for biology or pharmaceuticals where women actually dominated the industry.
 
Probably innate gender differences that have been calcified and entrenched via gender roles and expectations, as well as unintended consequences of inequality or those gender roles (women teachers doing a better job educating girls, or the structure of math lessons being more male-focused, being two proposed examples).
 
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