It Doesn’t Add Up

Much attention has been given to the gap in performance between boys and girls in mathematics skills. In a new study published in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematical and computer science at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and Janet Mertz, a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, examine this gender gap and test several popular explanations. Their cross-cultural analysis seems to rule out several causal candidates, including coeducational schools, low standards of living, and innate variability among boys — a proposal made famous in a 2005 speech by Lawrence H. Summers, who was Harvard University’s president at the time. “We have pretty clear data debunking the greater male variability hypothesis,” Mertz says.
What, then, is the cause of the gender gap? Like the gap itself, the cause varies, the authors conclude. Mertz and Kane, who are married, don’t rule out the existence of very small biological difference, but, by comparing test scores across cultures, they indict local social factors as the likely primary culprit. Gender gaps vary from place to place, showing that cultural factors swamp biological ones.
Read more….

Photo on this page is from Jimmiehomeschoolmom on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.