The feminisation of education or are boys getting dumber?

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I only read the abstract because I don't want to pay for the article. I assumed that it would at least cite the study you posted somewhere if one had to look at the whole article. Nonetheless, the abstract does seem to acknowledge that there were previous studies, where they suggested discrimination which looked at differences in peer review. That is exactly the study you posted actually does, it looks at how Sweden rates it's scientists and tries to make a case for differences in peer review with respect to gender. On a personal note, I actually do research in physics in South Africa and I've never met a female colleague who thought the scientific establishment was rampant with sexism. Although, people who work in the field of physics are still mainly men.



Well, I think the point is that such a standard deviation might result in more men going into the more maths intensive fields like physics and engineering. If you wanted people with just average math skills then there will be almost equal numbers of men and women who would be able to do it. However, since those fields require people to be highly skilled in mathematics, a higher standard deviation could mean that there are more men than women with that level of skill.

On a personal note, I've never met a female colleague who thought that the scientific establishment was rampant with sexism (I'm in the physics field). Yet, there are still more men than women who work in it, which is why, here in South Africa, they have a special women in physics group.

Girls are certainly much more represented in dance class than are boys.

There are plenty of girls taking ballet classes, but I have yet to see one boy in a ballet class.

We need to get more boys to study ballet.

they cite several individual papers which they say thier review contradicts; the one I posted is not among them. I suggest you read the whole thing (try looking for a PDF version); it's not a bad article.

It looks at peer review, among other things: many steps along the way to becoming a professional scientist, full-time and well-paid. Just to take another example, women required siginficantly more article citations than men to be considered equally qualified by postdoc selection committees. Basically, it looks not at discrimination per se but at favoritism - which is another beast altogether.

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You should know, then, that anecdotes != data. Again, the question is not of out-and-out sexism of the 'Go make me some coffee while I talk with the men' variety, but a subtler, pernicious thing.
Throughout grade school and high school, I was at the top of my class in mathematics. Not among the top students, but the person to beat. I majored in biology, and took two semesters of calculus not because it was required but because it was fun.
I'm not in science anymore. I'm in medicine. Not because I'm not interested in science - I read lots of articles, listen to lots of podcasts, and try to stay informed - but because the road was greased for me in medicine in a way that it wasn't in research science; I felt like I would be tolerated in research, and welcome in medicine.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/coc ... d-in-here/
http://lindahenneberg.com/post/75766709 ... icist-cern
http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/30150
(note that these, again, are not so much evidence as arguments. And interesting reads)

edit: two more
http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/chillyclimate.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080423/ ... 2918a.html

Do they identify themselves as feminists or is it because of egalitarian attitudes?

The latter.

relevant to this discussion:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6050/1706.summary
The podcast interview is free, if you don't want to pay for the article.

Ok, first of all, sorry that it took me so long to reply, I've been quite busy lately. In any case, remember that that study was done in Sweden, which like South Africa, is one of the few countries that rates it's scientists. So, I'm not actually sure what requirements they look at their for the ratings. It could be that the universities are rating them down or something. However, I'm not actually aware of women requiring more citations to be equally qualified here in South Africa. In the US, I don't think it even applies because they don't really have a rating system, other than an index calculated directly from the number of citations and the number of papers written.



I have never said anywhere that a girl can't be the top of her class in mathematics. That is not at all what my comment about males having a standard deviation of ability meant. Just out of curiosity though, how many of your classmates in your calculus class were also girls? From what I remember when I at university, there were quite a few female students taking first and second year mathematics but by the third year there were only a few and a lot more male students. That you majored in biology isn't that unusual. A lot female students who continue to pursue a career in science seem to go into life sciences, whereas less go into physics, while at the same time more guys go into it, which quite a bit more math intensive. That necessarily mean that they don't have the talent, don't get me wrong, but if you ask them why, they usually say that they don't find it as interesting some of the other subjects, I've even heard woman physicists say this.



Again, I'm not denying that these things exist and I think those issues need to be reduced. Also, I've seen that one article before in Cern Courier. Most physics institutions take the view that they should be supporting women in physics and there's nothing wrong.

I've listened to the podcast and seems that she's talking more about the social effects of separating boys and girls into different groups. Coed is still a good thing for the social interaction. She still admits that on average, there are still gender gaps in learning. With regards to brain differences simply having to do with different experiences, I'll have to look into that but there actually are scientific theories that suggest that there might be inherent differences. Simon Baron-Cohen's, E-S theory for instance, even though it was put forward initially to explain autism and asperger's. Whether that means that need different learning styles, I don't really know.

I haven't read any replies but I think it is a bit of both.

I think that there is a cultural phenomenon, and that is that boys these days aren't learning or being taught in a way that benefits them in the long term. There are numerous reasons for this, mostly due to issues with fatherhood and (in my humble opinion) an unconscious, misguided backlash against their natural masculinity. There are an inherent lack of male role models in school indeed. There are also more problems with black males at school, but I don't wish to comment further on that right now (maybe tomorrow).

Gender does not determine intelligence. The educational system is however more geared towards teaching female students as they are more audio learners than visual. How can you really compare intelligence of two different extremes? In short you cannot. In my opinion social intelligence is flawed greatly as it is a means of controlling others. That's just my view on things.

Found this on reddit today

http://www.singlesexschools.org/researc ... vscoed.htm

Nice preliminary study it seems. Single sex classroom + gender targeted learning practices produces:

Go team boys!