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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)

#191

Post by endisneigh »

esja wrote: post #177
endisneigh wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes I would agree that boys have trouble with this, as that's what the featured article effectively states. however, saying that the methods themselves somehow are predisposed to benefit women is one that I'd like to see research on.

How can they not benefit women? The article is about the relative performance of men and women, and this factor reduces the performance of men.

You're stating that there exists teaching methods that somehow benefit women, and not men as a function of their gender. That's an extraordinary claim and requires evidence. You can't assert your claim is true and look at the article to justify the original claim that you're asserting to begin with.

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

#192

Post by agumonkey »

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.

Psychology.

Few years ago at a meeting (carbon emission reduction association) it was asked for the people in the room to send proposals / ideas on a google forms. After 5 minute the guy in charge of the meeting started to cough saying 'ok we found a few things we could do but we have a problem because there is not a single lady in the list'.

We were all newcomers, all unknown to each others, the tone was as chill as any meetup I've attended (no male dominated topic, no a-priori tribes or groups to scare new people from joining). My only idea so far is that women and men have different instincts on how to come forward with their ideas/desires.

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

#193

Post by Robotbeat »

MattGaiser wrote: post #55
dekhn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many subfields of biology, women have achieved numerical parity at all levels (IE, there are roughly 50% women in entry and leadership positions). It seems like some highly quantitative fields which have traditionally been male-dominated (CS, physics) may very well be practicing some sort of entry discrimination. It's unclear what the full set of contributing factors are.

You also can’t have mathematical equality with some fields dominated by women, like nursing. If every field is 50% or better in women, you need a heck of a lot more women.

Unless you just have a lot of incarcerated and jobless men.

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

#194

Post by dekhn »

visarga wrote: post #154
dekhn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to imply that at all, although it does seem like the first reasonable target: all job categories, except for ones that require people to be a specific gender for some reason, should have participation roughly proportional to the proportion of that gender (or other attribute) in society. I'm not certain that's the right goal, but what I said above was working a model where 50% women participation seemed…

Where is the free will of individuals factored in? I mean, if people in group A don't want to do job B, should we force them to reach parity? I think it's better to ensure equal opportunities and let people decide.

that is one of the reasons I said my approach was a good start.

It's unclear, in a truly equal opportunity society, what the gender preference breakdowns for specific job roles would be. A simple first order approximation is "no preference".

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

#195

Post by guerrilla »

ganzuul wrote: post #107

Bypass paywall: https://archive.is/E6NWK I kinda suspect not a lot of people are reading TFA since no one has noticed it's paywalled.

To be fair, it wasn't paywalled for me. But you're right, nobody is addressing the explanations given in the article and instead making up their own.

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

#196

Post by throwaway3699 »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #153
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.

Top tier jobs need to use top tier statistics. The top 10% of male test-takers and top 6% of female test-takers score at least 700 on the math SAT. Over twice as many boys as girls get 800 on the math SAT. The ratio gets even higher beyond that. This is despite the systemic bias in the school system against boys.

Isn't this the standard bimodal distribution we expect? Boys make up the majority of CEOs but they also make up the vast majority of criminals. Median girls are smarter than median boys, but the distribution is less wide on a population level.

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

#197

Post by waterheater »

hcurtiss wrote: post #162

I realize that this isn't terribly PC, but isn't it possible that testosterone is negatively correlated with attention span and compliance and positively correlated with risk taking? You certainly see it in other species. Without any value judgment at all, I would expect this would manifest in different outcomes in academic settings versus competitive markets. That is, it seems likely to me that some of this is due t…

PC or not, academic literature supports your views.

http://psych2.phil.uni-erlangen.de/~oschult/humanlab/publica...

"Thus, high levels of testosterone are associated with willingness to incur greater risk in both sexes."

In my experience, this view has loose ties to ADHD, specifically regarding the hunter-farmer hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis

Doesn't say it in the article, but Hartmann's main book on ADHD discusses how he tested an African tribe for ADHD. 100% of those tested were "positive" for ADHD.

I believe we're looking at evolutionary aftereffects of generations of family-based societies where men hunt and women run the family.

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

#198

Post by hu3 »

f430 wrote: post #20

lower testosterone is beneficial - less sexual ruminations - emotional intelligence and organization - cooperation over leadership - retains better short and long term memories - female adult role model is more likely to be available and present Unfortunately HN is dominated by testosterone driven gender so its impossible to have any sort of civilized discussions about this.

I tend to agree that females can be better. But in different ways and there's a caveat. Here goes my n=1.

I have the privilege to work with a female developer and she's amazing. By far the most productive among our team of devs in terms of feature output.

Her concentration is unmatched as if she was on adderall all day but she doesn't take any drug.

However her peak in terms of technical excellence is not as high as some of the male developers. Her code is good but not the best. And that's fine.

Once during lunch I asked if she knew any other female dev so we could bring to the team. She smiled and promptly replied: "No way I'm working with other girls. They are too chatty, dishonest and tend to pull the carpet from under you. I say that because I'm a girl and I would rather work with guys."

Needless to say I was not expecting that response.

One thing I noticed is she can multitask much better than us male developers on the team. My context switching cost is quite high to the point I get annoyed when I have too much on my plate while her limit for juggling simultaneous tasks seems to be much higher.

I guess what I wanted to say is that, from my experience, both females and males often excel in different things. And I'd wager that's related to hormones like my parent wrote.

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

#199

Post by jimbokun »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #175
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…

> I'd assume most school administrators are women. At least in the United States, this isn’t at all true. A disproportionate number of administrators (especially when adjusted for the normal male/female teacher breakdown) are male. There have also been many studies that show that teachers call on boys more, praised them more (they acknowledge girls, praise boys), and talk with them more. So your assumptions are compl…

Teachers grade boys more harshly than girls:

https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...

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

#200

Post by dmayle »

> “IT’S all to do with their brains and bodies and chemicals,” says Sir Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a posh English boarding school. “There’s a mentality that it’s not cool for them to perform, that it’s not cool to be smart,” suggests Ivan Yip, principal of the Bronx Leadership Academy in New York.

Which is it? Their brains/bodies/chemicals? Or the social pressure?

Testosterone doesn't really kick in until high school, and the article (at least the part outside of the paywall) seems to suggest the problem exists in adolescents, not young children, so that would suggest that it's the former not the latter.

The next question is... what has changed in the last 30 years? The answer to that is most likely going to be social, and not chemical, unless you mean less lead in the air. Maybe the answer is more complicated.

Finally, what has changed in the last 30 years that might be linked to both? Well, easier access to pornography could be a factor. It's a social change that lines up with male adolescence that could be related.

In any case, the 'answer' is to try to combat the change, and wait for statisticians and scientists to study the problem to understand the root causes.

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