Girls are no worse than boys at maths: Study in 86 countries shows differences caused by attitudes to women



More non-Western societies than previous studies

'This is not biological' claim researchers

Single-sex approach does NOT improve results

The study used data from schools in 86 countries - it's the first major study to include so many non-Western societies - and concluded that differences in mathematical ability were due to unequal societies, not unequal biology

Scientists have previously believed that the relatively low numbers of women in high-level mathematics could be due to biological differences between men and women.

But a new, international study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has cast doubt on the idea that the differences are biological at all.

Previous studies tended to focus on a limited range of countries - whereas the new study observed school-level mathematical performance in 86 countries.

The differences in performance seemed to be caused by social factors - ie, each society's attitude to women.

‘People have looked at international data for many years’, says Janet Mertz, senior author of the study and a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

‘What has changed is that many more non-Western countries are now participating, enabling much better cross-cultural analysis.’

The new study, by Mertz and Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematical and computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, was published today in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

‘We found that boys — as well as girls — tend to do better in maths when raised in countries where females have better equality, and that's new and important,’ says Kane.

‘It makes sense that when women are well-educated and earn a good income, the maths scores of their children of both genders benefit.’

Playground at a girls school in Bahrain: Previous studies had suggested that Muslim societies' single-sex schools allowed girls to flourish mathematically - but Bahraini boys may have low maths scores because some attend religious schools

'This is not a matter of biology. We found that boys — as well as girls — tend to do better in maths when raised in countries where females have better equality,' said the researchers

‘This is not a matter of biology: None of our findings suggest that an innate biological difference between the sexes is the primary reason for a gender gap in math performance at any level. Rather, these major international studies strongly suggest that the maths gender gap, where it occurs, is due to cultural factors that differ among countries - and that these factors can be changed.’



One hypothesis, expounded by Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard in 2005, suggested that male mathematical ability 'varied more greatly' at both ends of the scale - ie there were better male mathematicians at the top end, and worse ones at the bottom end.

The study looked at data from 86 countries, which the authors used to test the ‘greater male variability hypothesis’ famously expounded in 2005 by Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, as the primary reason for the scarcity of outstanding women mathematicians.

But, using the international data, the Wisconsin authors observed that greater male variation in math achievement is not present in some countries, and is mostly due to boys with low scores in some other countries, indicating that it relates much more to culture than to biology.

The new study relied on data from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the 2009 Programme in International Student Assessment.

The Wisconsin study also debunked the idea proposed by Steven Levitt of ‘Freakonomics’ fame that gender inequity does not hamper girls' math performance in Muslim countries, where most students attend single-sex schools.



Levitt claimed to have disproved a prior conclusion of others that gender inequity limits girls' mathematics performance. He suggested, instead, that Muslim culture or single-sex classrooms benefit girls' ability to learn mathematics.

By examining the data in detail, the Wisconsin authors noted other factors at work.



‘The girls living in some Middle Eastern countries, such as Bahrain and Oman, had, in fact, not scored very well, but their boys had scored even worse, a result found to be unrelated to either Muslim culture or schooling in single-gender classrooms,’ says Kane.

He suggests that Bahraini boys may have low average math scores because some attend religious schools whose curricula include little mathematics.



Also, some low-performing girls drop out of school, making the tested sample unrepresentative of the whole population.

‘For these reasons, we believe it is much more reasonable to attribute differences in maths performance primarily to country-specific social factors,’ Kane says.

To measure the status of females relative to males within each country, the authors relied on a gender-gap index, which compares the genders in terms of income, education, health and political participation.



Relating these indices to math scores, they concluded that math achievement at the low, average and high end for both boys and girls tends to be higher in countries where gender equity is better.



In addition, in wealthier countries, women's participation and salary in the paid labor force was the main factor linked to higher maths scores for both genders.



One proposed solution, creating single-sex classrooms, is not supported by the data.



Instead, Mertz and Kane recommend increasing the number of math-certified teachers in middle and high schools, decreasing the number of children living in poverty and ensuring gender equality.

‘These changes would help give all children a chance to succeed,’ says Mertz.





