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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by qzm on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:38AM
The whole study is broken due to selection bias, pretty much by definition..
These people are taking a big pile of existing data and trying to manipulate/interpret it to fit their agenda, not do actual research.
It is quite similar to how you will find that male nurses and teachers these days tend to get better results - because they need to be more motivated to
enter a field dominated by the other gender (in fact you will find a huge bias in both those cases). This does not mean men are better teachers and nurses,
it simply reflects a strong selection bias because you are not sampling randomly..
However they achieved what they want - the media, and decision makers will run with it, claiming this is a reason to push more and more funding towards women in STEM.
Equivalent 'bias' in other areas will be completely ignored of course (the last thing they would want is more women in construction laboring, or god forbid more male teachers)
Such is the world we live in.