T. Breda - Too good in reading to study math ? (December 2019)

In a few words

The gender differences in mathematics performance in developed countries are small and by themselves do not really explain the significant under-representation of women in maths-related fields.

Thomas Breda (CNRS/PSE) and Clotilde Napp (Dauphine) use individual data from 300,000 15 year-old pupils in 64 countries to bring a new perspective to the debate by also taking into account student performance in the humanities. They show that girls are more often much better than boys in the arts than in mathematics and that they present themselves as more literary than scientific. This “comparative advantage” of girls in letters over maths thus explains, according to Breda and Napp, almost all the differences between the sexes in relation to maths (their declared interest in mathematics, self-confidence in the subject, etc.) and three quarters of the gap in terms of study and career goals.

References of the academic paper

« Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the gender gap in math-related fields » PNAS July 30, 2019 116 (31) 15435-15440; first published July 15, 2019

Authors

• Thomas Breda (CNRS/PSE) - personal website
• Clotilde Napp (Dauphine) - personal website

Press review

• PBS, 15/07/2019 Girls’ superb verbal skills may contribute to the gender gap in math. While most girls excelled at reading over math, boys tended to show the opposite trend. Though there was no evidence to show that girls were doing poorly in math, their scores at age 15 seemed to reflect that they had a relative edge in the verbal department—one that had a big effect on their intentions for the future...

• Detroit CBS Local, 16/07/2019 Study Shows Girls Are Better At Reading, Contributes To Gender Gap In STEM. Girls also internalize social cues and stereotypes about who is good at math and science from a young age, says Erin Hogeboom of the National Girls Collaborative Project, which works to encourage girls to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers...

• CNN, 16/07/2019 - Girls are better at reading than boys. That could be contributing to the gender gap in math jobs, study finds The study doesn’t claim to entirely explain the gender gap in the math field. Girls also internalize social cues and stereotypes about who is good at math and science from a young age, says Erin Hogeboom...

• PRI, 16/07/2019 - Girls aren’t bad at math. They’re just awesome at reading. You know the stereotype — boys are better than girls at math — and that’s why more boys than girls enter STEM fields. That’s not true. A new study shows that girls are just as good as boys in math. But they’re even better at reading...

• Phys Org, 17/07/2019 Study suggests girls’ advantage in reading explains gender gap in math fields. Prior research has suggested that social factors play a strong role, such as a perception of such work as non-feminine—including the views of women who may want to go into such a field, others in the field, and society at large. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that there may also be another reason—girls are better with reading and communication skills...

• New York Post, 19/07/2019 Why teen girls who are as good at math as male peers pick humanities jobs. It’s likely that social and cultural norms — in which women are expected to be more expressive and better communicators — drive young girls to excel at verbal subjects at school, study author Thomas Breda says...

• Physics World, 19/07/2019 Girls’ reading ability drives the science gender gap, claims study. The researchers claim that these differences “can explain up to 80% of the gender gap in intentions to pursue maths-studies and careers”. They add that the contrast in reading and maths ability between 15-year-old girls and boys “is likely to be determined by earlier socialization processes”...

• Los Angeles Times, 24/07/2019 - Gender gap in STEM fields could be due to girls’ reading skills, not math ability. Why don’t more girls grow up to become scientists and engineers? It’s not that they’re bad at math, a new study argues. It’s that they’re even better at reading...

• Le Monde, 25/07/2019 - A niveau égal en mathématiques le meilleur niveau des filles en lettres nuit à la façon dont elles se perçoivent en mathématiques. Si les filles ont désormais de meilleurs parcours scolaires que les garçons, obtenant de meilleurs résultats au brevet ou au baccalauréat, et poursuivant davantage des études supérieures, elles n’en demeurent pas moins fortement sous-représentées dans les domaines reliés aux mathématiques...

• Le Figaro, 26/07/2019 Orientation: les filles sont bonnes en lettres. Dans la quasi-totalité des pays développés, la proportion de femmes étudiant l’ingénierie ou l’informatique n’évolue pas, expliquent les chercheurs dans un article publié en juin par la revue scientifique américaine PNAS. Elles ne sont que 20 % aux États-Unis ou en France...

• The Irish Times, 07/08/2019 - Two positives make a negative for gender bias in Stem. This isn’t a prosaic “girls read good, boys crunch numbers” study. It’s already well-established that diversity in any discipline or industry makes for improved research/product design outcomes. The authors dispute any implication that the results indicate girls don’t have what it takes to succeed in technical careers…

• Star Tribune, 11/08/2019 The STEM gender gap might be tied to girls’ superior reading skills. In just a few countries, including Turkey and Malaysia, the proportion of girls interested in studying math was higher than it was for boys. But in most other countries, boys had the edge over girls. The most extreme example was Switzerland, where 68% of boys and 47% of girls said they were willing to take additional math classes, Napp said...

• Marginal Revolution, 03/09/2019 Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the gender gap in math-related fields. Comparative advantage is also a better predictor of math intentions than perceptions of math ability (women do perceive lower math ability relative to true ability than do men but the effect is less important than comparative advantage). In another data set the authors show that math intentions predict math education...

• Dynamic Ecology, 06/09/2019 Friday links: how to teach paper writing, chill out about self-citations, and more. That is, girls tend to be better at reading than they are at math, whereas the reverse tends to be true for boys. So if everybody plays to their own strengths, you end up with girls avoiding math-heavy fields and boys going into math-heavy fields...

• Quartz at Work, 17/09/2019 - The test results that best explain the STEM gender gap are not the math scores. Now, a new study offers another intriguing explanation: Perhaps there are fewer women in STEM not because girls are worse than boys at math, but because they’re significantly better than boys at reading…

• CNBC, 19/09/2019 Gender gap in science and tech could be down to girls’ academic strengths, say researchers. In a study of more than 300,000 15-year-olds across 64 countries, the report found that boys only marginally outperformed girls in math tests, while girls vastly outperformed their male counterparts in reading exams...

• News24, 20/09/2019 Les capacités écrites supérieures des filles pourraient en être la cause. Le manque de représentation des femmes dans les domaines de la science, de la technologie, de l’ingénierie et des mathématiques – mieux connu sous le nom de STEM – pourrait être davantage lié à leurs forces académiques qu’à leurs faiblesses...

• Thrive Global, 23/09/2019 Lessons from Inspirational Women in STEM: “It’s incredibly important to learn to fail” with Vanessa Sanchez and Penny Bauder. But it has been shown that once people in the sciences have been confronted with their biases and consider the effects on women in STEM, they change their actions, resulting in more equitable treatment of women. I think we should encourage that these changes come from within...