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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)

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know for a fact either, but would guess the reason is a childhood of girls telling each other nasty things would make them weary of harsh language even when directed at the self. With that part unmentioned, the GP seems to assign dubious priorities to human motivations.

> With that part unmentioned, the GP seems to assign dubious priorities to human motivations. Really? The only motivating factor assumed in the GP looks to be that women want to be successful in their careers. Is that a dubious claim?

No... Priority. Not claim.

I'm saying that I think the downvotes comes from something GP didn't say rather than something they did say.

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

#412
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, why is this a data point we are required to ignore? There's been a lot of discourse about bias lately, so I feel like this is a data point people will welcome hearing. Thanks for sharing it.

Because if you don't characterize women as an oppressed people in every possible instance then you're sexist. The truth is that women benefit a great deal from the general goodwill that society grants them. From legal sentencing, to taking your kids to the park, to mentorship opportunities, to simply crossing the road. The list goes on, but western society generally goes out of its way to accommodate the needs of wom…

> Because if you don't characterize women as an oppressed people in every possible instance then you're sexist.

Do people really say this? I've seen mens rights issues being raised carefully in the last few years, and I've never seen any backlash when done right. Like when you see articles written about women abusing men, or mens rights regarding children. Even women write about these issues. Feels like it's being accepted, just not being taken seriously enough yet. Maybe it's different in northern europe, but I haven't seen any backlash from international/US websites either.

I think part of the problem is that men are afraid of defending these issues. In part because of projection about how others will react. Either if it's from womens right activists going against it, or other macho men saying men shouldn't care about child custody or equality for male in women-dominated workspaces and such.

And there ARE also mens rights activist who are just using the issue to fight against womens rights, through whataboutisms and such. But don't let arguments against those people deter you from talking about reasonable mens rights issues.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How your skin color is relevant?

The point is that status is low and working conditions poor and you're not respected - see the lack of American STEM grad students who realize they are basically pawns of the profs and administration who just listen to the lawyers and undergrads who pay the bills (outside of top research institutions)

But foreigners can be white too (Europe, Russia, Asia) with all the implications, so the OP’s skin color is not relevant here.

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tables 1-6 show you the actual results on the page labeled 40 (PDF page 42) and the page prior shows actual numbers. In blinded effects, boys overperform in math and underperform in literacy. In non-blinded effects, boys underperform everywhere.

I wonder how this plays with the experiments that found that that girls tended to score much closer to boys on math tests when primed with the idea that they would do better and worse when primed with the idea that they would do worse.

This is called stereotype threat and there is clear publication bias in the literature. It's not replicating well in pre registered trials: https://replicationindex.com/tag/stereotype-threat-and-women...

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

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think attitudes changed a lot in the late 90s/early 00s.

The Internet suddenly became a big thing, PCs massively growing in popularity, and the image of gaming was changing, becoming a less nerdy pastime with the arrival of the Playstation.

Not really sure if it encouraged a more diverse set of youngsters to develop a serious interest in computing though, as by then we'd already got to the point where 'learning to use a computer' now meant Word+Excel rather than BASIC or LOGO

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

#416

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.

Women have different incentives. Having a career is not really necessary and the reasons to have one are different. Us men need to compete with each other to be the best providers. Women just need to pick one of us, and then their goal is to retain that man in their lives. Having a career does not factor much into that. Especially having a high stress career would maybe even hurt such goals. Some men and some women get so caught up spinning the hamster wheel, that they loose track of why they are spinning the wheel in the first place. But most of us in general are aware of the reasons.

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

#418
post #264

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]…

Serious question, why is this a data point we are required to ignore? There's been a lot of discourse about bias lately, so I feel like this is a data point people will welcome hearing. Thanks for sharing it.

How to put this factually...

Discourse about bias usually makes strong distinctions between groups that are known have relative positions of power in their society (because this discourse is mostly held in Western culture, that usually boils down to "white heterosexual christian-adjacent men") and minority/disenfranchised groups (women, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, LGBT people, etc).

Progressive groups are perceived to get extremely testy when it's suggested that minority groups might benefit from / majority groups might suffer from systemic effects in some ways.

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

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that status is low and working conditions poor and you're not respected - see the lack of American STEM grad students who realize they are basically pawns of the profs and administration who just listen to the lawyers and undergrads who pay the bills (outside of top research institutions)

But foreigners can be white too (Europe, Russia, Asia) with all the implications, so the OP’s skin color is not relevant here.

Stop being so pedantic about this and take it from an American perspective. The amount of grad students in my school's department from Europe is very low, and the amount of American grad students is also very low. That's what he's trying to get at here.

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed entirely. The goals of our factory system education are not in the best interest of the individuals participating. We home school largely for that reason...I want my children, both our boy and girls, to have individual creative thought, to explore the world, to rough-house, and to not just be a "good citizen" of society. Good citizens rarely make the world a better place. I want them to challenge, think, be in…

Careful though. Go too far in the opposite direction from “rule following good citizen” and you get conspiracy believers, YouTube Do-Your-Researchers, and Anti-Maskers. There needs to be a middle ground.

I very much doubt those two concepts are related.
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