Gender, Math, and Scientific Achievement

December 12, 2007

There are real reasons why fewer women are mathematicians and engineers — but the situation is improving. The December issue of Scientific American Mind features an article that takes a stab at uncovering the reasons why men dominate in the arenas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and suggests how that may be changing.

Titled "Sex, Math and Scientific Achievement," the article posits a host of factors that may account for the disparity in numbers, despite the fact that women have constituted the majority of U.S. college students for the last quarter century and that they have been getting better grades in mathematics and science. The six authors are Diane F. Halpern, Camilla P. Benbow, David C. Geary, Ruben C. Gur, Janet Shibley Hyde, and Morton Ann Gernsbacher.

According to authors, "preschool children seem to start out more or less even, because girls and boys, on average, perform equally well in early cognitive skills that relate to quantitative thinking and knowledge of objects in the surrounding environment." However, "by the end of grade school," they say, "females perform better on most assessments of verbal abilities" while "boys are measurably better at solving mazes on standardized tests."

A study of thousands of gifted 12- to 14-year-olds in the 1980s revealed that "there were twice as many boys as girls with math scores of 500 or higher (out of a possible score of 800), four times as many boys with scores of at least 600, and 13 times as many boys with scores of at least 700."

Yet change has occurred. The ratio of boys to girls, first observed at 13 to 1, has dropped significantly and is now about 3 to 1. During the same period, the number of females in certain scientific fields has surged. They now make up half of medical school graduates and three-quarters of veterinary school graduates.

Hormones, the authors argue, play an important role in cognitive development throughout life. "Researchers found, for example, that people undergoing female-to-male hormone treatment show 'masculine' changes in their cognitive patterns: improvements in visuospatial processing and decrements in verbal skills," they note.

Yet there are factors beyond sex differences in brain structures that lead to career choices in STEM fields. "What," the authors ask, "leads one little Einstein to choose electrical engineering and the other law? A 10-year study of 320 profoundly gifted individuals (top one in 10,000) found that those whose mathematical skills were stronger than their verbal ones (even though they had very high verbal ability) said math and science courses were their favorites and were very likely to pursue degrees in those areas." On the other hand, "those kids whose verbal skills were even higher than their math skills said humanities courses were their favorites and most often pursued educational credentials in the humanities and law."

And, of course, "even when husbands and wives both work full-time," the authors say, "women continue to assume most of the child care duties and to shoulder most of the responsibility for tending to sick and elderly family members. Women work, on average, fewer hours per week and spend more time on family and household tasks than comparably educated men do."

"The truth is not so simple," the article concludes. "Both sexes, on average, have their strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, the research argues much could be done to try to help more women — and men for that matter — excel in science and coax them to choose it as a profession."

Source: Scientific American Mind , December 2007.