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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)

#41

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#42

Post by dekhn »

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.

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.

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

#43

Post by TimPC »

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.

No interest in money is an extreme position to take. Small differences in interest can lead to big differences in outcome. There is also some time lag with this data, studies have shown boys doing worse academically over time (relative to girls) so the age group in 2015 is largely in school, university, or just entering the workforce. Women in their 20's already outperform men in their 20's in earnings and we don't yet know if that trend is going to carry on into later years given new ability gaps. It hasn't carried on historically due to a wide variety of reasons including the adverse affects of maternity leave on careers but we haven't seen an academic gap of this magnitude between the genders either before so that may be changing. It's also worth noting that a lot of top earning careers are looking at a slice of top performers academically, and the distribution of academic performance for males tends to be higher variance so even with a lower average we may see similar numbers of top performers in both genders.

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

#44

Post by paxys »

This has historically been true in India, but mostly because only smarter, more upper-class girls (so those actually interested in education) were allowed to study beyond the primary school level. Boys need a college degree no matter the circumstance, and thus drag the average down.

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

#45

Post by sriku »

From a personal perspective (Indian here), it feels odd that this would make news. I've been a fairly good "performer" at high school and have always had a hard time getting the better of my girl classmates. The acad stuff just seemed too easy for them. They'd remember and recall things so well and that would make me curse under my breath. Their language and general maturity was also much better that I could hope for at that point.

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

#46

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#47

Post by ihsw »

pixel_tracing wrote: post #33

This title seems click baity we should be asking the question as to why our system allows one gender to outperform the other. Not blanket statements of correlation == causation. Something is clearly wrong with our system which is resulting in one gender receiving more support. The distribution curve should mostly be equal, yes we are different gender wise. But for large majority of people our brains function mostly t…

There is no system allowing one gender to outperform the other.

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

#48

Post by aklemm »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #29
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.

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.

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

#49

Post by cphajduk »

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.

I'd like to point out that the workplace values are different from academics values.

The top performers in my college class, struggled to get internships within my internship-mandatory program.

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