Comments on: A discussion on the disparity between male and female performances in the basic sciences

By: Radu Tomescu

Radu Tomescu — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:06:15 +0000

I view the results as irrelevant (let me state that I am a male. Romanian-born name for the matter, and, as such, at least in theory, subject to early-age sexist indoctrination). The only possible conclusion is that, in the study group, women turned out to be less informed than men on scientific and engineering issues. Period. Any other inferences are unwarranted. Two things for those fixed, for whatever reason, on the question:
1) Why is this even an issue? Good science is good regardless of the gender of the researcher.
2) If and when cultural conditioning and education will gender-homogenize, likely the science gender gap will disappear. Simply put, we have no reasons whatsoever to expect anything else.

By: Kambiz

Kambiz — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:05:48 +0000

Haha Razib, you’re always giving me flak!

By: razib

razib — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:03:56 +0000

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE ASKING THIS QUESTION IN THIS WAY! WE NEED TO STOP OPPRESSION!!!!

By: Alex Greengaard

Alex Greengaard — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:27:00 +0000

As with most data sets, I doubt there is a solitary force operating here. It would seem likely that both biological and cultural forces are acting upon the results, although I would conjecture that a number of cultural forces are the main culprits.

One of the cultural forces that appears to act upon the data is religion; specifically monotheistic, fundamentalist religion. I assume this has something to do with the unusually low scores for both males and females in questions like “The universe began with a huge explosion.” While this force may be observed universally, it may bear implications on the disparities as well.

In my observations of my own students, I have encountered at least twice as many hostile females than males on the topic of evolution. My female students who are unwilling to accept scientific fact are much less flexible and tend to repeat the same anecdotal arguments. Males who are uneasy about evolution, at least in my experience, appear to be more willing to find a compromise between science and religion.

Of course, this is in itself an anecdotal observation, but it seems possible that this may have some impact on the data.

By: archaeozoo

archaeozoo — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:24:53 +0000

It’s hard to say. My experience is that fewer females do science A-Levels than boys, which in the UK is about the first time you get a choice in the matter. Up until that age, everyone is supposed to be doing some sort of science. That said, those girls that did do science did well and regularly out-scored boys in tests. On the other hand, the balance of boys to girls varied in different science classes. More boys tended to do physics, for example. Indeed so much so that our physics teacher tried to metaphorically arm-twist girls who he thought could do the subject into continuing with it simply because he wanted to see more of a mixed class. He usually failed, I have to say. Biology, on the other hand, was about equal numbers. In fact, there may even be more girls. Now that situation may well have changed in the years since I did my A-Levels, but I’d be surprised if it has reversed dramatically. And of course it has a knock-on effect university-wise because if you don’t do science A-Levels than you don’t generally do a science degree and so on.

Why don’t females do science, or at least physical science? I don’t know. I suspect culture does play some part in it, but maybe there is a biological component too and some types of sciences suit the way females think better than others.