Math and Sex: Aptitude vs. Discrimination

There are far more men who are talented at math, than females who are talented at math. Researchers Camilla Benbow, David Geary, and others have established that claim quite well.

In the 1980s one of us (Benbow), along with the late psychologist Julian C. Stanley, who founded this study at the John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, observed sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability among tens of thousands of intellectually talented 12- to 14-year-olds who had taken the SAT several years before the typical age.

Among this elite group, no significant differences were found on the verbal part of the SAT, but the math part revealed sex differences favoring boys. 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 (putting these test takers in the top 0.01 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds nationwide).

...The ratio of boys to girls, first observed at 13 to 1 in the 1980s, has been dropping steadily and is now only about 3 to 1. During the same period the number of women in a few other scientific fields has surged. In the U.S., women now make up half of new medical school graduates and 75 percent of recent veterinary school graduates....This period coincides with a trend of special programs and mentoring to encourage girls to take higher-level math and science courses. And direct evidence exists that specifically targeted training could boost female performance even further. A special course created by engineering professor Sheryl A. Sorby and mathematics education specialist Beverly J. Baartmans at Michigan Technological University, for example, targeted improvement in visuospatial skills.

...Decades of data from studies of different animal species show that hormones can play a role in determining the cognitive abilities that males and females develop. For example, during typical prenatal male development, high levels of hormones such as testosterone masculinize the developing brain and result in male-typical behaviors and probably male patterns of cognitive performance...More recent studies have shown that hormones continue to play a role in cognitive development throughout life. Such changes have been observed in individuals receiving large quantities of male or female hormones in preparation for sex-change surgery. 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.

The human brain is shaped by these hormones, as well as by our genetic inheritance and a lifetime of experiences, so it should not be surprising that numerous differences appear in female and male brains. In general, females have a higher percentage of gray matter brain tissue, areas with closely packed neurons and fast blood flow, whereas males have a higher volume of connecting white matter tissue, nerve fibers that are insulated by a white fatty protein called myelin. Furthermore, men tend to have a higher percentage of gray matter in the left hemisphere, whereas no such asymmetries are significant in females.

Imaging studies assessing brain function support the notion that females perform better on tasks such as language processing that call on more symmetric activation of brain hemispheres, whereas males excel in tasks requiring activation of the visual cortex. Even when men and women perform the same task equally well, studies suggest they sometimes use different parts of their brain to accomplish it.__SciAm_Benbow,Geary, etal

The article above mentioned an improvement in the number of women scoring above 700 on the SAT corresponding to special (and expensive) outreaches to women, to help them improve math and visuo-spatial skills. Other research has shown that when both men and women are provided with the supplemental training, that the gender gap remains unchanged--even widens. Thus, it appears that it may be important to continue to deprive boys and men of special training, while continuing to provide such training to girls and women--if we want to narrow the gap.

Wiser societies would focus upon the need for better scientists and engineers--of whatever gender. But our society appears to be fixated upon the concept of "gender equity", which is unknown to biology and mother nature. If gender equity requires a type of "brain-binding" of males, to achieve equity--or even female superiority--so be it.

It appears that the journal Nature is under attack by gender-equity feminists, for supposedly discriminating against female scientists and/or technologists. For hyper-egalitarians, any statistical inequity is de facto evidence of discrimination. Logically, such hyper-egalitarians are an shaky ground, but in a post-modernist world, logic carries far less weight than it once did.