No, I think what this means is that due to the "boy crisis," boys are now just as bad at math as girls.

/snark

I'm conflicted about this.

I mean, I'm female and I'm damn good at math - at least, the math I've taken. But I'm not going to be taking any higher math. I stopped at precalculus and have no desire to take any more. The same goes for science. I took exactly what I was required to, and then stopped, and was happy.

It's not that I think I can't do it. I'm sure I could if I wanted to. It's that, while I'm capable of doing math and science, I just don't enjoy it. It does nothing for me. Give me literature and art and music any day. Those are things I enjoy.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy that this study exists, although I can already foresee people trying to disprove it. But there's already a pervasive bias against people in the humanities. Math isn't the only place to be smart.

If girls are just as good at math and spatial skills (and thus it isn't genetic gender difference) doesn't it highlight that the bigger problem is how much worse boys are at verbal skills (whether a result of society or genetics)?

Anyway, echoing katemoore, I do think there may still be gender difference involved in career selection. I'm a feminine male who is very good at math, and as a male never had any social pressure not to pursue a math-intensive field (in fact, my dad and brother being engineers, I had pressure to do so), yet I opted for social science because of my more feminine-typical interest in social/verbal puzzles.

Just because girls can do math as well as boys doesn't mean they will on average be as interested in it compared to alternatives. If they are more fulfilled by non-math endeavors, that certainly seems fine. It is important to be wary of social restrictions in choice, but it is also important to be wary of assuming genders will act on average the same.

Anyone who has taught in a higher-ed environment should be able to tell you this. There is no ability gap, but there is often a work-ethic gap. I taught college freshmen as a TA for a year; a lot of the work was quantitative (data collecting and extrapolation, not really higher math but grinding and tedious) and my female students turned in their work on time and completed about 15% more often than my male students. In group projects the groups that were mostly female maintained that ratio while groups that had one or two women either were late with the work or the female students seemed to be doing the the bulk of work.

Also group dynamics were mostly superior in the all-female or predominantly female groups. Male students were more likely to "flake" group meetings or show up for presentations unprepared.

I believe that what is often said about women maturing more quickly than men is truer than not. The male students, even the bright ones, just more often didn't seem to get that this is college and I'm not holding anyone's hand to make sure they are TCB.

I don't think this is so much a "male privilege" issue as it was an "American male privilege" issue. Two of the hardest working students I had were both Chinese men, and working with a language barrier in a class that depended heavily on lecture.

That wasn't really my point. I don't believe that all women inherently dislike math. That's way more essentialist than anything I'd argue.

My point is that I, personally, enjoy other subjects more than math. I've already faced a lot of "well, if you were really smart, you'd pick a real field," and I'm nowhere near finishing undergrad. I just don't want this to turn into a reason to feel guilty for what I enjoy.

I also recognize that in many cases, girls are simply socialized to dislike math. I have good reasons, however, to believe that didn't happen with me.

"I'm a feminine male who is very good at math, and as a male never had any social pressure not to pursue a math-intensive field (in fact, my dad and brother being engineers, I had pressure to do so), yet I opted for social science because of my more feminine-typical interest in social/verbal puzzles."

Hello from a male pushed toward engineering, for being successful in math and science through high school (common in the 1980s), then went on to study over two years of literature, three and a half years of foreign language, and classes on foreign culture before finally getting out of school with a business degree I've never used. I then taught for 12 years, and went back to school to be a nurse, which looks like the career I'll retire with. My income or earning potential have taken an incredible hit, considering what 40 year old engineers or businessmen are supposed to be making or own.

I believe you, katemoore and I are just people who feel more comfortable making choices related to our interests, than what we are "good at". Personally, I have no problem recognizing the privilege that allowed me to make this choice - primarily economic. I'd never have been able to study all those things to explore possibilities, nor live and work abroad all those years, nor go back to school at 35 or change careers at 39, if I had to worry how to feed my family or keep off the streets (the rosiness of our future is however, in serious doubt). And the Japanese wife when informed of these possible consequences, gave her permission and became the sole breadwinner for nearly three years.

I'm in a bit of a similiar position to you, katemoore. I took advanced math in HS, and once I got to college, I took as precisely as many math/science classes as I needed to graduate. I did well in them, and it wasn't as if I was scared to continue in math or science (or econ. or other such classes), I just felt like there wasn't an interest level there, and it's not as if anyone was encouraging me to take these courses. I was, however, being encouraged by friends, family, and even professors to take traditionally feminine classes--notably, child pyschology, social service classes, and art history.

I'm several years out of school right now, and I'm kicking myself for not taking more math and sciences courses. The job field I'm in now requires a stronger background in stats than I have, and the graduate school programs I'm interested in all require bio/anatomy classes.

And I know that I'm an adult, and I'm capable of making my own decisions, especially at college, but am I pretty annoyed that no one in my life encouraged me to take more math and science courses.

Maybe the results of this study will encourage more young women to think twice about these fields, or will encourage more parents and teachers to think twice about it.

I think this article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121691806472381521.html) from the WSJ is a much better summary of the Science article:

"Girls and boys have roughly the same average scores on state math tests, but boys more often excelled or failed, researchers reported. ...

"The study found that boys are consistently more variable than girls, in every grade and in every state studied."

I think it's great news that girls have completely closed the gap in average test scores in all grades, but there is still a gap in the variance of scores, which means that boys continue to be significantly more likely to be in the 99th percentile than girls.

I wish the mainstream media articles had focused on this more. It's exactly what Larry Summers was talking about, and I think there needs to be more research to figure out why girls have closed the gap in average scores but not in the upper tail.

As someone who's taken a lot of higher level mathematics courses, I have to say (as an aside) that I think American high schools make math seem a lot more boring and useless than it really is. I'm sure that somehow factors into the gender "interest" difference that above posters have mentioned.

Also, one doesn't have to choose between math/science and the humanities. Math is a tool that can be very useful in the humanities. Rhetoric is very effective for arguing a point, but it can always be argued against. On the other hand, with math you can undeniably prove things (as long as you state your assumptions). Plus, understanding statistics makes it possible to test social hypotheses with real data and debunk people who do faulty experiments.

As an extreme example of how far math can reach, Claude Shannon used math to discover new juggling patterns.

Then again, the vast majority of people would probably rather believe what sounds best to them instead of what the numbers show. So maybe I'm deluding myself about the importance of math (in our culture at least).

As someone who runs a program that aims to support women majoring in science, eng, & math, I am grateful for this study. It will go a long way in talking with parents who still buy into the myth and perhaps harbor their own mathphobia.

I know that the anti's will be crying...all the way to the boys crisis camp.

This doesn't mean that every girl who aces math should be an engineer, but that every girl that aces math should be encouraged to look into engineering and other technical fields. How many of us even knew what an engineer did before we got to college? How many still don't know?

Our world is so technical that it is imperative for us to show our daughters (son too, yes, but they often already are...) what engineering can do for this world. I meet girl after girl after woman who says they don't want to go into engineering because they want to "do something" aka save the world. Dontcha think that rebuilding NOLA's levees is "doing something?" That's what this report will allow me to do better.

I see what you're saying, Cedar, but I've done my research, and none of the graduate-level programs I'd pursue, nor any of the careers I'm interested in, require a substantial background in higher math or biology or anatomy. I'm also an adult, and capable of making my own decisions. I also think I'm capable of understanding my interests by now.

And, to be honest, American high schools make _learning_ in every subject seem more boring and useful than it is. As a counter-example, look at all the people who don't read because they hated high school English.

I realize I'm coming off as very defensive. But it's okay not to take higher math. It doesn't make you less intelligent. It doesn't mean you think of yourself as less intelligent, either. And it definitely doesn't mean you're betraying other women.

Thanks FGJ. Like you, I was sitting here thinking how I went into the social sciences and I use high levels of math in every study I do. Statistics, one accepted way to translate the results of the study to the masses, is quite prevalent in the social sciences.

I will, however, admit to not taking any non-statistics classes after my calculus credits were accounted for. My college level calc class left a bad taste in my mouth. The teacher was openly dismissive of questions during class (and I like to ask them) and the group work done when I was the only girl in the group was done solely by me. The (male) engineering students were too "busy" to come to the group meetings, or when they did, they worked on their engineering homework. So I did EVERY PROBLEM. Grr. Got an A in the class, though. The engineering guys... didn't.

And now I'm planning on funneling my math abilities into a highly profitable turn as a stats professor. But I've always known that the math gap wasn't based on innate ability.

I'll second that American high schools make everything more boring than it really is. While I loved reading for my English classes in HS, I hated literary analysis papers, which was 100% of the writing done in English. Imagine my surprise when I got to college and English involved non-fiction writing and stuff on rhetoric and argumentation and I suddenly went from a B-/C+ student to an A student in English.

BTW, I think the TV show Numbers is pretty cool in showing that Math can be pretty fascinating.

Katemoore, are you pointing out the fact that math is a (wrongly) privileged field of study?
If so, I agree.

I'm a male physics student. I've been pretty discouraged by the almost total lack of female representation in most of my classes (last semester my Classical Mechanics class had 2 women out of ~30 total students). My girlfriend is a math major, and I think the ratio in that dept. is actually a bit better.

Overall, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to get women involved in the fields of math and physics, as well as engineering, chemistry, and biology. It's fine to say that you're not personally interested in studying them, but science and technology (and the people doing those things) are becoming increasingly important in defining our society. Equal gender representation at that table is key.

It's great to see studies like this, hopefully eventually people will listen - though I don't hold out a lot of hope.

As for socialisation there is a lot of pervasive ideas about girls not being as good at math, but I also just wish we'd stop telling kids not to like math in general! (That and telling kids how they should dread school when they're still little enough to enjoy it - WHY do we do this??)

I was brought up with my father telling me "math is fun!" (yes, literally, and that earned an eye roll from 8yo me)... hence, I enjoy math and plan on taking a summer course in calculus for fun before starting my chemistry degree next year. Yes, I'm naturally good at "hard" sciences, did best in physics out of the three sciences (and worst at chemistry, ha), but hardly spectacular and you get a lot of "eww, why?!" if you tell people you like math - not exactly encouraging.

Possibly it was also the teaching style/teachers as well. Every year I'd take the English, Math and Science Australasian Awards tests... I remember in 6th form (2nd to last year of high school) getting in the top 10% in Australasia for English, while I was flunking English classes out of boredom and lack of connection with the teachers. Don't know what that says, but I've always done best in groups with boys/men and stereotypically masculine environments so maybe there is something to the complaints about social sciences et al being taught in a "feminine" manner. *shrug*

I'd agree with that, SarahMC. I also wouldn't be surprised if part of that perception was because of the gender associations.

I didn't realize this was such a big issue to women. My first girlfriend was as good as if not better than me at math; our SAT math scores were both in the mid-700s. Therefore, it never occurred to me that females were inferior at math or ANYTHING than males. Whatever "sexism" I may have has nothing to with my perception of women's capabilities; I just like women a lot physically.

Now, a quick math-related pitch: We need 270 electoral votes or more for Barack Obama and 60 Democrats in the US Senate. These mathematical figures are critical to women's rights, especially with Roe v. Wade under real jeopardy in a McCain administration. Please help us out, ladies!

Perfect timing. My 16yo homeschooled daughter just signed up for dual enrollment at a local community college. She really wanted pre-cal but they convinced us to register for college algebra instead, simply because she's never had high school pre-cal. (But isn't that the whole point of dual enrollment??)

Later a different admissions counselor called me to whisper that his boss was all wrong. He said she doesn't need the dean's permission to take pre-cal, because her SAT Math score of 590 qualifies her. In fact, it turns out that the guideline used by most colleges it 500-550 algebra, 550-590 pre-cal, 600 up calculus. So she didn't just squeak by, she is well qualified for pre-calculus.

Interestingly, I experienced the same thing. From 6th grade through college I was encouraged to take easier math classes, told I was not good at math, etc. Looking back, it was nothing but a sexist lie. I made the highest SAT score in my county, and my math was higher than my verbal. I clepped out of college algebra -- but was encouraged to take a LOWER math to fill my 1 credit needed (I was an English major) rather than a higher class!

I should have learned by now. Actually, I just did. Tomorrow we will be signing up for pre-calculus.

I saw this earlier and have to admit that this made my day. I just graduated with a double major in mathematics and economics. I was homeschooled and until I went to college never really heard of the idea that girls were worse at math than boys. It was only after that it was pointed out to me that I questioned my capabilities.

BTW Jewel I went through the same issues when trying to sign up for classes.

It's great that this study proves it, but I do think it is a bit sad that boys and girls being equal at math is national news.

I'll add that one of the best mathematicians of the 20th century, and among the greatest of all time, was Emmy Noether. While there may be more men than women at the top end of math, they are few enough that we can ignore whether their sexual organs are convex or concave. One Emmy Noether is worth more than a 100 average mathematicians male or female.

Doesn't suprise me.

Oh, and to the discussion about boys being more variable in scores, it fits with the model that I've heard. The genetic contribution to IQ is supposedly in the X chromosome, so, since girls have two, they tend to balence out near the average, where boys, having only one, are predisposed to extremes.

I'm not completely sold on the "somewhere on the X chromosome, our destinies are determined" line, but it's an interesting thought.

I'm more annoyed by subjects being labeled as masculine or feminine than I am by anything else. Plus, the "traditionally feminine" subjects seem to hold less value as others have indirectly pointed out. Who decides what is a feminine subject, and why is literature a feminine subject even though it totally revolves around dead white males?

Edit: I should clarify, literature does not literally revolve around dead white males, but rather the focus is on them. At least that is all I was taught in college :-(

In school through High School, math always came very easily to me, and so I found it really boring. English was a lot more difficult for me, and because it was more of a challenge, it was also more interesting.

Now I work in a field where I stare at a lot of HTML code all day. The majority of the people in my current department are women.

So, anecdotally, I knew that. But research is good, 'cause then you can throw it at people and say, "HA!"

I luv Janet Hyde. Luv her. I'm a UW grad and took a human sexuality class with a professor with whom she co-wrote our human sexuality textbook. Plus she has some great APA publications on gender.

"...but there is still a gap in the variance of scores..."

No, there is not.

I graduated college with a science major and a humanities major this spring and I have to say that when it comes to looking for a job and deciding what do do with my life the doors that my humanities major opens seem to be more interesting and lucrative. I also come from a line of scientists: my mom, dad and step-mom are research scientists and my step-dad and grandmother are engineers. (Oh and I'm also dating a mathematician.) So from a perspective of a woman that has had great role models and stuck it through with science, the humanities field still looks very appealing.

This might have something to do with the fact that fresh out of undergrad I am making more money than my mom did after she got her PhD.

I'm glad that girls have closed the math score gap but we still have a long way to go before all the deterrents to women in math and science fields are gone.

To Farhat:

Yes, Noether was fantastic and wonderful and amazing, but don't you think the Great Mathematicians model of math history is part of the problem? To say that Noether was worth 100 average mathematicians is, in my opinion, tantamount to saying that anyone who hasn't proved a 17-gon to be constructible before age 20 should quit while she or he is ahead. (This was, of course, one of the most frequent discouraging comments I've faced)

who hasn't proved a 17-gon to be constructible before age 20 should quit while she or he is ahead.

I don't know where you got that anyone "should" quit at some point while they ahead or not. I am saying that at the higher end, the numbers are small enough that it doesn't matter whether the mathematician is male or female statistically speaking. Average mathematicians are average, they are replaceable. To make sure that we do not miss anyone who could be at the higher end everyone with talent, regardless of whether they are male or female, should be supported and encouraged. I think a world in which some Noether is told that she cannot be appointed "because returning soldiers would have to learn at the feet of a woman" is an inferior one. It is inferior regardless of the ratio of men and women at the 99.9th percentile in math.

Now weve got to wait until the rest of stereotype consuming society is saturated by this new information.

I'm still hearing the old myth (Tyra Banks Show) that men are biologically made to be more sexually stimulated by visual imagery. This was in response to a problem the guest had with her boyfriends porn addiction. The woman claiming this was a supposed sex expert!

Traditionally, women have been pushed into "feminine" careers. Simutaineously, those jobs have been devalued.
Men have been pressured into careers involving math and science and THOSE jobs have been given too much value (in comparison).
It all comes down to taking away women's power while overly empowering men. It's sexism and always has been. The socially acceptable "fact" that women are terrible at math and science is just a sympton of the larger problem. Women have been told they can't do math. They've been shamed if they were good at math and science-you know, the "ugly smart girl" sydrome. They have also been kept out of math and science fields by the men in charge.
Luckily, that tradition is beginning to be challenged by brave women.
On the other hand, I do believe that the majority of men haven't developed good communication and social skills. Whether it's biological or simply something our culture has deemed as unimportant (or too feminine for men), it's a huge problem that must be addressed if our society is going to evolve.

...why do we need a study to proves that we are equals, again?

If you don't like science because our education system has worn out our teachers and so you've never been really pushed to enjoy it, I get it.

But that's because any human in Mrs. Pasucci's 10th grade chemistry class would rather clean up monkey shit than break down compounds. Not because you're a girl.

In response to Mickle the study actually did find higher variance for boys. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/321/5888/494
I quote,
"The variance ratio (VR), the ratio of the male variance to the female variance, assesses these differences. Greater male variance is indicated by VR > 1.0.All VRs, by state and grade, are >1.0 [range 1.11 to 1.21 (see top table on p. 494)]. Thus, our analyses show greater male variability, although the discrepancy in variances is not large. Analyses by ethnicity show a similar pattern"
I'm not sure why the media isn't reporting this correctly.

P.S. Please don't take me as being troll. I'm just a lurker.

So, the "science of sex difference" emperor has no clothes! :) The challenge now, of course, is getting people to believe that and to act to remove the barriers that still limit young women's access to nontraditional fields. My co-worker Rose O'Malley has more on this over at NWLC's blog.

Matt said:

I think it's great news that girls have completely closed the gap in average test scores in all grades, but there is still a gap in the variance of scores, which means that boys continue to be significantly more likely to be in the 99th percentile than girls.

This study and a related one came up on Slashdot, and one of the pieces of data that was ferreted out was that more women take the SAT than men, leading to both a greater variance in male scores, and a higher average.
Best guess for why is that men can get fine careers with a GED, or even dropping out of high school - construction, plumbing, auto mechanics, etc. - while women are pressured away from those fields. Instead, they need at least an associate's degree to even get interviewed within most pink-collar fields. This leads to more women taking the SAT, reducing the variance by increasing the sample size, and lowering the average, in that more with marginal academics still take the test.

About higher variability among males. Aside from what Theaetetus said, in other countries, women's math scores are more highly variable, and women's averages are higher.

"For instance, this cross-cultural analysis from 1994 suggests that in some countries, males' math scores are more variable, while in other countries, women's are. Strikingly, a new analysis of math data from 22 countries (not yet published but presented at several conferences) finds men with the expected spread in scores in many countries—but not in Lithuania, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, or Denmark. In these places, female variability is either greater, or there's little difference between the sexes."

http://www.slate.com/id/2194486/entry/2194525/

katemoore--

It's great that you knew what you wanted to do when you were in college, and what classes would take you there.But a lot of people, men and women didn't. Or they did, only to realize that they were really wrong once they graduated. I mean, I was 21 years old when I was decided on classes; I didn't realize how much they were going to impact my life.

I have a brother who's two years older than I am. We went to the same state university, and majored in similar social science fields. Yet, somehow, it seems that I ended up pushed (by my academic adviser in part) to be a teacher (which meant taking education, psychology, and English classes) and him to be a researcher (which meant stats, and physical science courses). As a result, I feel like he has much a much stronger resume, and much stronger and more usable work-related skills than I do.

On a lighter note, I LOVED The Onion's take on this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/girls_boys_in_math

Heh. I'm still not completely sure. But I know that I enjoy what I'm doing now.

As an aside, here's an apropos comic:

http://xkcd.com/385/

Benjy - it found the opposite variance for asian-Americans.

Which pretty much debunks the idea that the gender/math variance among whites is purely genetic, unless you think it's logical that whites and asians would not only have different intelligences, but be polar opposites when it comes to math and gender.

Which you'd know if you'd bothered to read the link.

Benjy - the study found the opposite numbers regarding variance for Asian-Americans.

Which pretty much debunks the idea that the gender/math variance among whites is purely genetic, unless you think it's logical that whites and asians would not only have different intelligences, but be polar opposites when it comes to math and gender.

Which you'd know if you'd bothered to read the link.

A simple look around any of my classes shows this study is complete bullshit. Saying that girls are equal to guys in math is an insult to girls. This study is biased and pointless.

Males are socially crippled, linguistically challenged, hormone driven morons, as many studies reinforce. Why is it a breakthrough for a study to show another place we fail? Even if we were better than girls at math, it wouldn't redeem the extensive failures of our gender.

I saw this study a few days ago, and I'm glad it came out. It just reinforces what I have known for a long time: Individuals have aptitude, not genders.
At an early age, I heard that boys were good at math and science, and girls weren't. But, I WAS good at math and science, so the notion made no sense.
I thought that when I got to college, in an engineering major, I would experience discrimination because of my gender, but I didn't. There wasn't institutional discrimination, though, there were individual assholes. Additionally, I faced 20% female, 80% male classrooms. But the ladies who were in my classes with me rocked.

I'm glad to see that girls are bridging the math gap, although I don't know why it exists to begin with. Some of the girls I associated with in college were light years better at math than I ever could be. And I excelled at those supposed female-dominated humanistic skills while they struggled.

I would think that in this liberated age, if girls are good at math, they would follow the course. If anything, they would do it to reject the social expectations put upon to do something in the humanities. It would be like flipping the bird to society. Hopefully, more girls will make super awesome revelations and contribute to the scientific world because their presence will be greatly appreciated there.

Research in social psychology has greatly contributed to teasing apart the reasons for the gender achievement gap in math and science. Carol Dweck is a professor at Stanford University whose work explores psychological and sociocultural explanations for gender differences in achievement test scores. In general, we don't need to appeal to biological differences between the sexes to explain achievement differences. She's found sex differences in attitudes towards solving math problems in children as young as fourth grade. She believes that adults tend to fall into two camps of theories about intelligence: the entity theorists, who believe that intelligence is a fixed and immutable trait and determines success, and the incremental theorists, who believe that traits can change over time and that hard work is more responsible for success. Just so happens more girls are entity theorists than incremental theorists, hence feelings of frustration and giving up earlier than the boys. Instead of thinking "oh, I should try harder next time" or other situation-based thoughts, they are more likely to think "gee, I'm just not good at math." Now, just how more women end up as entity theorists is another issue all together. I recommend checking out her work and other psychology research in this area, just fascinating stuff.