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Girls vs Boys in STEM and non-STEM

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

hendrikboom writes:

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) by PiMuNu on Monday December 10 2018, @09:39AM (3 children)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday December 10 2018, @09:39AM (#772294)

    > So much of the rest is pure indoctrination into woo bullshit

    I think calling STEM "indoctrination and woo bullshit" won't get you very far. Mod -1 flamebait.

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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 10 2018, @09:48AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday December 10 2018, @09:48AM (#772297) Journal

    I think our unpleasant craflo was referring to the non-rigorous extra-STEM stuff, like grammar and spelling, which seem to be sadly lacking here at SN. Oh, and History, and English. You know, the "woo-woo" stuff, outside of model trains.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Monday December 10 2018, @10:04AM (1 child)

    by zocalo (302) on Monday December 10 2018, @10:04AM (#772301)
    They didn't. They excepted STEM, then excepted a few other fields, then referred to the rest (you even quoted the word) as the "indoctrination and woo bullshit". The rest, in this context, would be subjects where the students output is pretty much entirely subjective and non-testable, e.g. the arts, social studies, and so on, where you generally *do* get a higher grades for submitting work that appeals to the reviewer or (for the better and more open-minded class of reviewer) that effectively challenges it. It's a valid point; astute students are going to figure that kind of bias out pretty quick and submit what they need to get the grades, even if they think it's bullshit, which I guess is a useful "school of life" style education for dealing with PHBs at least.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday December 10 2018, @10:25AM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday December 10 2018, @10:25AM (#772304)

      The GGP is ambiguous. That's not how I read it, although it is probably what was intended.