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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: 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.

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