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Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

economist.com

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Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#181

Post by BurningFrog »

endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

> Either women have no interest in money

This is close, but too strong. You only need women to have less interest in money than men to cause a difference.

A likely cause of such a difference is that men with high income and prestigious careers are very popular as romantic partners for women.

To spell it out, women in high paying jobs get a lot of money. Men in high paying jobs get a lot of money and improved romantic success.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#182

Post by qu4ku »

endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

They choose not optimal collage majors is one of the answers: http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students...

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#183

Post by dominotw »

throwaway53086 wrote: post #31

Anyone with young boys and girls will notice that girls are much more likely to obey rules and instructions. A lot of doing well in school is about following rules and instructions, and it seems pretty natural that girls will do better. Also, most teachers are women. I haven't checked, but I'd assume most school administrators are women. It seems natural that they'd construct a system that's more suited for females t…

Do you think it has anything to do with girls having better handwriting.

I couldn't improve my handwriting for the life of me when i was in school and got really poor grades from teachers not being able to read what i was writing.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#184

Post by hc-taway »

1_player wrote: post #133
endisneigh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this take a few times and I don't really buy it. How exactly is school setup in a way that's more suitable for women compared to men? Everything you've stated (following rules and instructions, etc.) also applies in the workplace, so if you were correct you would the same sort of discrepancy in the workforce.

Perhaps, presuming OP's assumption that women have an easier time to follow the rules and there are more women in education than men is correct, that school has a lot of rules and not enough freedom. I have no real opinion on it, just that my memory of school was a really strict place compared to real life and work. There are plenty of plan B options, alternatives, ways to think outside the box in real life, but not…

> As if I had left a traumatic situation, I vividly remember enjoying a lot finally having time for myself after work the first few years after I dropped out of high school. I had to put real effort 8 hours a day, then nothing else was expected of me.

Same. I slacked a lot in high school (in hindsight, I'd have gone actually-nuts otherwise) but it was still by far the hardest consistent work I've ever done, largely due to the sheer amount of time it took and the constant, overlapping, usually-very-short ("due tomorrow") deadlines. College was a vacation. Work is easy.

High school did little to prepare me for "how the real world works" (always the excuse for deadlines and requirements and such in school) but did harm me psychologically in ways that took more than a decade to get over—and I wasn't even bullied or anything like that, it was mostly just the strict schedule, extreme lack of freedom (asking to go to the bathroom, stuff like that), and crazy workload.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#186

Post by missedthecue »

La1n wrote: post #27
0xy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because women naturally list towards jobs that pay less, and under conditions that pay less (part time, contract work, etc). How many deep sea welders are women? Less than 0.1%. How many oil rig workers are women? Less than 1%. Good deep sea welders earn over $300k.

>Because women naturally list towards jobs that pay less, Couldn't one then also argue that jobs women list towards get paid less? E.g. instead of asking why women gravitate to those jobs that are paid less, ask why the jobs women gravitate towards are paid less.

The fact that daycare workers (a job dominated 97% by females) earn $35k a year while carpenters, welders, and electricians (jobs dominated 98% by males) earn $80k is not a fact that I think is attributable to bigoted sexism.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#187

Post by aklemm »

aklemm wrote: post #48
spaniard89277 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Babies. Really, being a mother is what skews most stats about women on money issues. There has been policymaking about this in a bunch of european countries, and if they are released from financial constrains (handouts, public housing, whatever) they seem to double down on it. Let's face it, working, for most people, is something you do out of necessity. Why do we really expect women to have a similar behaviou…

Having babies and raising them fully--especially doing it well--is not avoiding work.

Some replies might be missing the point that it may well be reasonable to pay people raising children. OP implies it's a handout. I would argue it's an unpaid service to society and those of you relying on a crop of well-educated non-criminals to be your employees and peers are freeloading.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#188

Post by danbolt »

endisneigh wrote: post #72
marklubi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a fourth explanation... The vast majority of teachers are female, so maybe their teaching methods are favorable to girls

I suppose this is possible - how exactly do you think teaching methods are more favorable to girls compared to boys?

This is just my gumption, but I don’t think kids are blind to gender growing up. I’m curious if the attentiveness of boys would change if they had more frequent male teachers in earlier grades.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#189

Post by ThrustVectoring »

endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

Tournament theory - top tier jobs (particularly executive ones) are a competition where rank-ordering contestants is relatively easy, but quantifying performance is hard. So one solution is to give the winner a big prize, the losers a smaller consolation prize, and if you ignore risk-aversion this is as economically efficient in terms of incentives as paying for piece-work.

The problem is that people are risk adverse, and have varying levels of commitment towards continuing to winning the tournament. This variation has a gender skew, too, which IMO does a lot to explain much of gender disparity in multiple fields. FWIW I count software development in here, as tournament theory explains both developer wages, the number of unqualified applicants, and the gender disparity.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#190

Post by 908B64B197 »

endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

A lot of literature seems to focus around the gap being mostly that girls

- Behave better (lower energy and "disruptive behavior" in school)

- Are better at following instructions

These two traits, while rewarded in the school system, are not really relevant at the top tier of jobs. There's no instructions to follow when you are building the next Google: nobody did it before you.

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