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posted by martyb on Monday December 10 2018, @01:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the unexpected-causes dept.

In a landmark study involving over a million students, it appears that the reason boys dominate girls in STEM fields is not that they are better than girls at it (the reverse seems to be true) but, perversely, that gender differences are lower in non-STEM fields.

About the STEM grades, which are often abused as an explanation:

A classroom with more variable grades indicates a bigger gap between high and low performing students, and greater male variability could result in boys outnumbering girls at the top and bottom of the class.

“Greater male variability is an old idea that people have used to claim that there will always be more male geniuses – and fools – in society,” O’Dea says.

The team found that on average, girls’ grades were higher than boys’, and girls’ grades were less variable than boys’.

But girls' and boys' variability were much closer in non-STEM fields.


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  • (Score: 2, Troll) by idiot_king on Monday December 10 2018, @01:57AM (17 children)

    by idiot_king (6587) on Monday December 10 2018, @01:57AM (#772196)

    I've heard Petersonites (friends included) state that "girls are interested in people, and boys are interested in objects" which is supposed to explain the gender gap in STEM and so on. I'm glad that real science is debunking this trash over and over. It's beyond ridiculous that we can't debunk more of this stupid backwards hooey in this day and age. Bravo to the researchers dismantling this myth piece by piece.

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @02:07AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @02:07AM (#772197)

    Petersonites

    So, it is a fly-blown cult now, eh? Petersons are only interested in money. And if that involves insighting a bunch of incels, he has no problem with that. So pass the all-beef dinner, if you don't mind.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by idiot_king on Monday December 10 2018, @02:27AM (1 child)

      by idiot_king (6587) on Monday December 10 2018, @02:27AM (#772201)

      It's not just them, but in my experience they're the ones most explicit about it. Regular ol' classic sexism is implicit about it.
      "Oh you're a woman? Let me take care of that." With that being some task which said woman is completely qualified for.
      I'm starting to call these Petersonites, Dawkinites et al "neo-bigots" because they're bigots except actually honest about their bigotry and emboldened by their conception of "free speech" and "the marketplace of ideas" and whatever other garbage they tout as being superior.

      • (Score: 2) by EventH0rizon on Wednesday December 12 2018, @05:34AM

        by EventH0rizon (936) on Wednesday December 12 2018, @05:34AM (#773322) Journal

        To be clear, are you really labeling Peterson and Dawkins as "bigots"?

        Bigot:

        https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bigot [dictionary.com]
        "a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion."

        https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot [merriam-webster.com]
        "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:01AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:01AM (#772273)

      You name it, then you wonder if it has reached the status of naming, then you shame it. Then you call yourself liberal.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:27PM (#772540)

        Fucking Nazis!

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by exaeta on Monday December 10 2018, @02:45AM (3 children)

    by exaeta (6957) on Monday December 10 2018, @02:45AM (#772213) Homepage Journal

    Actually there is quite a bit of well done research that supports this conclusion as being true. At the least, for very young children. Whether or not this applies to adults is quite a different question.

    However, a study of academic grades fails to control for gender based grading bias, so this study is hardly a "landmark", rather it appears quite weak.

    Here's some example discussion on the subject:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcDrE5YvqTs [youtube.com]

    --
    The Government is a Bird
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:00AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:00AM (#772272)

      There was a study that showed that women are 200% preferred over men during resume shortlisting, on same credentials, in STEM. Of course, that doesn't help a lot of men get laid by claiming alpha status of being a feminist, nor it helps bring moolah to gender bigotsstudies.

      Also, let us nor forget, there are female incels - they are called feminist.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 10 2018, @12:47PM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 10 2018, @12:47PM (#772338) Journal

        there are female incels - they are called feminist.

        Involuntary feminists?
        Ha! There, I laughed.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 10 2018, @08:31PM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Monday December 10 2018, @08:31PM (#772544) Journal

          Infems? Makes sense. Wasn't the name of John Hammond's corporation in "Jurassic Park" InGen? And they were all female dinosaurs, because everyone knows that female (infems?) dinos are better at STEM, because females (Mother Nature) will find a way.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Weasley on Monday December 10 2018, @03:10AM

    by Weasley (6421) on Monday December 10 2018, @03:10AM (#772221)

    This study says that women choose to go into fields where they don't have to compete with high competing boys. That does not preclude the possibility that "girls are interested in people and boys are interested in objects".

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by xvan on Monday December 10 2018, @03:24AM (4 children)

    by xvan (2416) on Monday December 10 2018, @03:24AM (#772224)

    How does this debunk anything? It was worsens it.
    That stem requires higher IQ than most other careers (except philosophy, if I remember right)
    , and that there are more high IQ males than females is an elephant in the room that nobody wants to address. This is just a paper confirming the obvious.

    The issue is that, even accounting for that, the IQ barrier for engeneers is not that high to explain the 20/80 , or even 15/85 gender distribution on mindless programming jobs.

    So to answer, you have account preferences.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:12AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:12AM (#772275)

      Women and men self-segregate in the lunch room.

      Well, the same fucking thing is going to happen in the... uh... STEM room.

      Given that most of the best STEM leaders will be male (according to this and other data), you're going to end up with STEM fields dominated by men and most women avoiding them.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:49AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:49AM (#772298)

        Actually what happens in the STEM room is that the girls take a step back, lower themselves and generally do worse.

        In grade 10, at a public school mind, two classes of the several in grade 10 were split into boys and girls. For science. No really. Literally for science based classes. That first day sucked. I stood with 20 or 24 or so other boys in the 10.5 class not realizing that there was a girls only class looking at the rest of the year in their boy/girl merged classes thinking "wtf". And they looked at us and thought "whats with the sausage fest? Did they put the homos all in one class?"

        No. They wanted to trial boys only chemistry. Girls only chemistry. Physics. Biology.

        At the end of year they announced the test scores. The other classes averaged around 85. Not bad. My boss only class averaged 91. Waaaaay.
        The girls only class average 93.
        Most of the high scores in the year came from the boys only and girls only science classes.

        I remember being chased by 3 girls who wanted to "turn" me. Thanks, High school. I really needed that experience at 15 years old.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @06:10PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @06:10PM (#772457)

          Women cluster around average intelligence, as proved again by this study and others before it.

          Well, no wonder they excel at boring, school, busy work. That's the domain of average folk.

          The boys, on the other hand, while largely average, have 2 other not-insignificant groups: The dumbells and the geniuses.

          Well, the dumbells are not good at boring, school, busy work, and the geniuses don't give a fuck about it. Now we understand why the boys have a lower average score.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday December 10 2018, @12:52PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 10 2018, @12:52PM (#772342) Journal

        Women and men self-segregate in the lunch room.

        Prudent thing to do.
        All that "sexual harassment" training seems to provoke the expected reaction - you aren't paid to be a human, you are paid to be a worke... errr... professional.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 10 2018, @03:32AM (1 child)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday December 10 2018, @03:32AM (#772233) Homepage Journal

    It's not being debunked. Their study reinforced it as I noted above [soylentnews.org].

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday December 10 2018, @08:14AM

      by zocalo (302) on Monday December 10 2018, @08:14AM (#772277)
      While you're right about the bait and switch in the other comment, this study actually isn't even addressing the OP's point about what draws students to a given field. It's purely concerned with the distribution of grades within various fields, one of which happens to be STEM [1] and doesn't even touch on the question of what attracted the students to study it in the first place. In fact, given that the grades are analysed from the age of six up though University, most of the students won't even have had a say in whether or not they get to study a given subject or not as many will remain compulsory throughout their required schooling.

      [1] Since "STEM" is actually a collection of subjects, some that are dominated by one gender or the other and some more balanced, it's also disingenious of them to simply average them out without really getting into the finer details of their methodology as that could (and likely was) also be made to lead the reader's perception of the results. OP's point about what attracts a given student to a given field likely has some relevance to the results as it seems likely that students who opted for a field study of their own volition would have done so because they enjoy it/and or are good at it, both of which might lead to an expectation of higher grades compared to those who picked it through peer/parent pressue or because it is just what their social demographic is expected to do.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!