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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)

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grades aren’t great at measuring real learning, but it’s the best we have.

Not really. I'd argue that standardized tests are much better than grades. Particularly for any grade level below university. At university level, the grades are more accurate (but still flawed) because the grade is typically 70-80% test and quiz based. My experience in the US with grades for middle school and high school is that it's 85-90% non-examination based-- Meaning it's essentially a measure for how well you…

Then you have a population training for the test and you end up with people that are overfit for the standardized test and underfit for reality.

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

#202

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.

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…

I'm mostly with you on this, but there's a larger percentage of guys than you think. If you worked in corporate America long enough, especially in tech, you've encountered lots of guys that clearly enjoy being at work more than home.

People are complicated. I had a comment along the same lines as yours, but now that I talk about it, I'm not sure what I'd do. It's a total tossup. Moot point because I don't feel like I can leave the workforce, but it's not so clear.

I do think you brought up a good point though. It's kind of a forbidden dark point, but still one worth considering. What if it really is better to have less money, and not have to deal with any of this work stuff?

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this explains why women are capable of following these rules and men are not. Are you saying men are biologically predisposed to not follow such simple rules?

I was answering your question about why this difference exists. I don't know about the reason, but if I had to guess I'd say it's not biology, but culture/upbringing. I think girls are culturally expected to follow rules, and boys encouraged to break them.

I'd suspect it's biological, since boys in (almost?) all human societies are more prone to challenging authority. It's the same story in elephants, chimps and wolves too. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case in all species of social mammals.

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

#204
post #12
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.

Hard to live up to the expectation of being a good mother and spending months on an oil rig at the same time.

You're being disingenuous and you know it. Most women don't take the high risk jobs. They never have, they're not evolved for it. This isn't sexist to point this out, this is just how things are.

Why do people here struggle to understand concept of gender roles that have been in place (and have worked) for hundreds of thousands of years? This isn't the "patriarchy" boogeyman, this is how societies started and thrived.

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

#205
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top tier jobs are subjective. Women have less interest in engineering.

This shouldn't be a controversial take. It is Occam's razor after all. We know that before the tech industry became popular and a way to make good money, women displayed little to no interest in being associated with programming "nerds" which were predominantly men to the extent that men over-represented the group of socially outcast nerds. This was mostly an American phenomenon, and other countries did not share thi…

> women displayed little to no interest in being associated with programming "nerds" which were predominantly men to the extent that men over-represented the group of socially outcast nerds

When did this change? I either missed it or this was always an exaggeration in media.

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

#206

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…

Thanks. I don't have any education in this arena, but I know for certain why we geld male riding horses. It radically changes their disposition.

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

#207

Throwaway because this is one of the data points you are required to ignore in polite society. Girls receive better grades until you blind the teachers. Teachers are biased in favor of girls, maybe because their behavior is better. The effect of biased grading is enormous and a huge disadvantage to our boys. > Gender-biased grading accounts for 21 percent of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school. [1]…

Doesn’t that mean that 79% of the difference is not due to bias? So boys would still be behind girls even if the bias didn’t exist. Or am I misunderstanding this?

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grades aren’t great at measuring real learning, but it’s the best we have.

Not really. I'd argue that standardized tests are much better than grades. Particularly for any grade level below university. At university level, the grades are more accurate (but still flawed) because the grade is typically 70-80% test and quiz based. My experience in the US with grades for middle school and high school is that it's 85-90% non-examination based-- Meaning it's essentially a measure for how well you…

Except if people actually prepare for the standardized tests in some way or another as is usually the case ...

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Your point is still valid though, I find university test scores more "accurate" too, whatever that means for learning.

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

#209

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 also criticize boys more often, and boys' grades tend to increase when submitted work is anonymized.

Boys and girls experience different gendered teaching practices, but the net result is girls being given higher grades than boys on average.

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

#210
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, what? I gave an example of a teaching method which creates difficulties for boys relative to girls. You agreed boys have trouble with it. What is left to discuss?
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