Are Boys Better at Math than Girls?

Sarah Briggs

EDUC-361L-Spring, 2009

The issue of gender and ethnic differences in the subject of math is a controversy that has been researched and tried for a number of years. Men are said to have higher achievement in math while women have a lower achievement. That may have been true in the past but research and statistics today are begging to differ. On the other side of the argument, researchers say that gender differences in the classroom are not true but that it is an attitude; a stereotypical mind set and a lot of people go along with the concept and think of it as a way of life. Research argues on both sides of this issue, “Is the field of mathematics gender-based?”, in this paper I would like to try and figure out more if this statement is true or false, I hope false but if true, why and what factors contribute to this?

            There has been much support and research that males have higher scores in math

on the Scholastic Aptitude Test as well as the qualitative section of the Graduate Record

Examination (McElroy, 1997). In another study researchers looked at the SAT exam

and boys did score better than girls. The study also stated however, that more girls are taking the SAT because more girls are going to college which brings down the average score. The fact still stands however that men are going into more math-related fields while women are not. There is research that suggests the gender difference lies in areas other than achievement, such as confidence, interests, attitudes and anxiety.

            There is the standpoint that women do not find mathematics as interesting as other fields, even though they are fully capable. Another theory behind gender differences and achievement is men and women have different learning styles and math is a style which is more dominant in men. Hammer and Dusek (1995), using Gardner's multiple intelligences theory, suggested that males may have higher cognitive-logical intelligence and females have a higher linguistic intelligence. Historically, the traditional educational system in this country has focused on the cognitive-logical type of intelligence. Therefore, the gender discrepancy in certain achievement scores, such as math and science, may be due to the fact that information is being presented in a manner that is better received by the "male" style of learning as opposed to the "female" style of learning.

In a study done from the University of Michigan (Vanderkam, 2005), surveyed young Michigan scientists' career choices. Women in the sample said they viewed pure math and physics careers as isolating and not so helpful to society. Since they saw themselves as people-oriented, they chose Biology research or health instead. I think we see that with nurses, the nursing field is booming right now and with a lot of women. Perhaps mathematics careers need to include verbal skills and other intelligences that would appeal to women more.

             After going through lots of data - including SAT results and math scores from 7 million students who were tested in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act - a team of scientists says the there is not a difference between men and women. Whether they looked at average performance, the scores of the most gifted children or students' ability to solve complex math problems, girls measured up to boys. In a study done with 250 students in New Jersey, grades 4-8, and the results were analyzed using a two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).The results of the study were unexpected. First, there was no gender difference in math anxiety. Second, there was a gender difference in math achievement that, as a group, the females performed significantly better than the males (McGinley, 2000). "There just aren't gender differences anymore in math performance," says University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde, the study's leader. "So parents and teachers need to revise their thoughts about this." (Hammer, 2008).

            An interesting perspective to think about when talking about this issue is comparing it with other countries. Boys outperform girls on a math test given to children worldwide, but the gender gap is less pronounced in countries where women and men have similar rights (No Author, 2008). Among 40 countries studied, Iceland was the only country where girls did better than boys on the math test. In about a dozen countries, both boys and girls scored about the same. In many of those places, like in Iceland, men and women have similar opportunities and rights. The United States fell in the middle of the pack in terms of both equality for women and the gender gap in math. There are a few countries where girls don't have the same opportunities as boys, but girls score about the same as boys on the math test, the report found. These included Indonesia and Thailand. There also are countries, such as Germany, where there is a lot of gender equality but where a girl-boy math gap exists anyway. The study did not attempt to explain such anomalies.

In Science Daily (Hammer, 2008) they say girls are taking just as many courses in math as boys do, and women earned 48% of all bachelor degrees. This issue I find is just a stereotypical assumption made from our mother’s or grandmother’s time when this might have been true because women did not have the education women have today. Parents, Teachers, scholars, and communities believe in this theory and tell this to students throughout their education. When students here this information from their parents or teachers of course it is going to make a huge difference in their self-concept and their ideas about math. Luckily for me, I can not remember hearing this idea till around high school and I liked math but I thought it was hard.

Women who are aware of gender stereotypes related to math ability may experience anxiety related to the confirmation of those stereotypes, and as a result, their performance on the math tests will suffer (Steele, 1997). There is a lot of evidence that stereotype threat can affect intellectual performance. Steele's early work on the topic looked at the affect of racial stereotypes on the intellectual performance of African Americans. However, he's found that even the performance of white males can be affected by stereotype threat if task-related stereotypes are active. Specifically, when the stereotype that Asian males have better math skills than white males is active, white men perform worse on standardized math tests than when the stereotype is not activated.

More recently, researchers (at Harvard, even) have shown that female undergrads in male-dominated majors (math, science, and engineering majors) experience high levels of stereotype threat compared to women in majors that are not male-dominated, to the extent that they are much more likely than males to consider changing majors. If women experience stereotype threat in the context of math education, and given that stereotype threat has been shown to affect intellectual performance, it would not be surprising to find that stereotype threat affects women's performance on standardized math tests, and thus plays a role in the gender differences in math ability (Steele, 1997).

Teachers have been pointed to as the mediator of this stereotype to young children. So what can teachers do in order to decrease this stereotype? I think this stereotype can be reduced by mutual interdependence; have students work together in math no matter if the student is high, low, boy, girl. I think through this students can gain personal contact by talking and interacting with each other and the students will be able to see strengths from each person.

 I think the teacher needs to make a common goal for every student; this way students can be motivated and feel alike. I believe if we give students high expectations and give them the tools to succeed, girls wouldn’t have that attitude of, “I can’t do it.” Children who are encouraged to figure out problems on their own are likely to be more engaged in the task, and ultimately perform better," said Pomerantz, referring to a study she and colleagues published in the journal Child Development in spring (McGinley, 2000). It is also important to have good communication with parents and let them know that they can create a stereotype. Let the parents be aware and realize it and realize if their child may be suffering from a stereotype.

 I think it is important to create equal status in groups in your classroom, make every student feel included and feel like an equal. When I become a teacher I would like to bring the community into my classroom. I would like to bring in blacks, whites, women, etc. into the classroom who are in the math field. I believe if students come in contact with people who are in the math field they can relate and feel motivated.

Something that needs to be addressed with girls as well as boys is math anxiety. I believe some of the studies that have been done in the past do not have to do with the math abilities but math anxiety. I think one reason why students have math anxiety is from the stereotype heard about math. So this stereotype sort of does around a circle around the victim and stresses them more than anything else.

What about parents? How do they affect a student’s ability in math? Research shows that when parents endorse the stereotype that math is a male domain, their daughters underestimate their math ability,” Bhanot said. Somehow, parents communicate gender stereotypes to their children. Jovanovic and Bhanot hypothesized that parents inadvertently impose stereotypes when they give unsolicited help with their child’s homework. Thirty-eight middle-school boys and girls received checklists to complete after they finished their homework in math and English. The checklists asked the children if their parents had given unsolicited help, if their parents had checked their homework without being asked and if their parents had reminded them to do their homework. Children and parents also answered questionnaires. Children assessed their math and English abilities. Parents answered questions about their gender stereotypes for abilities related to Math and English and their perceptions about their child’s ability in those subjects. Bhanot and Jovanovic found that while boys received more intrusive support than girls, girls were more sensitive to such intrusions. “We found that girls have less self-confidence in their math ability when their parents give intrusive support,” Bhanot said. “This was not true for intrusions during English homework and not true for males” (McGinley, 2000).

Through this research paper I have seen that women really do have the ability to do math just as well as men but society is weighing them down. Social factors such as parents, teachers, media and history have affected girls today to where they feel incapable. With the teachers help at a young age hopefully we can create every student as an equal and give them every opportunity to feel confident and to feel like they can do math.

Bibliography

(No Author). (2008, May).  Gender-based math missing in some countries. Retrieved

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Hammer J, & Duesk,C. University of Wisconsin-Madison (2008, July). No gender

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McElroy, M. (2005, July). Girls' confidence in math dampened by parents' gender

stereotypes. Retrieved March 11, 2009 from Yahoo Web site: http://news.illinois.edu/NEWS/05/0726math.html

McGinley, J. (2000). Gender differences in mathematics anxiety and achievement. 

Retrieved February 25, 2009, from Google Scholar Web site: http://www.rowan.edu/library /rowan_theses/RU2000/0081GEND.pdf

Steele, C.M.(2005, July). Gender, math, stereotype threat, and testosterone. American 

Psychologist, 52, 613-629. Retrieved March 11, 2009, from Expanded Academic ASAP database.

Vanderkam, L. (2005, April). What math gender gap? Retrieved March 1, 2009 from

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