Gender Gap: Two Standard Deviations

In physical, emotional, and mental attributes

The male brain has 3 1/2billion more brain cells than the female brain, two standard deviations

GENDER GAP IN PHYSICS: 3 STANDARD DEVIATIONS

TIMSS shows that at the 12^th grade level, whose scores are very different from the 8th grade level in both directions (up for most countries, VERY much down for the US), Norwegian boys scored 2 standard deviations higher than Swiss boys (589 vs. 519).  But Swiss boys scored 2 standard deviations higher than Swiss girls (519 vs. 444).  And Swiss girls scored another standard deviation higher than American girls (444 vs. 393), for a total of 5 standard deviations of separation between American girls and Norwegian boys. 

SAT scores for 12^th graders show that boys in Catholic states score almost two standard deviations lower than boys in Protestant states.  And girls in Catholic states score another two standard deviations lower than boys in Catholic states, for a total of 4 standard deviations of separation between Protestant boys and Catholic girls.  They also show that two thirds of those who score over 600 in SAT math are boys and only one third are girls.  

Even though the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) is not a representative cross-section of the American population, as it's taken mostly by college graduates hoping to go to graduate school and thus represents a small, elite crowd, it still confirms the phenomena closely enough. Not only does it show that the standard deviation for males of every race in every GRE subject is higher than for females of those respective races and topics, but it too shows that the gender gap for Whites and Hispanics is two thirds of a standard deviation, hardly a "statistically insignificant" difference as the news media expounds. Even the smaller standard deviations of .6 for "other" races, .59 for Mexicans, .56 for Asians, .5 for Puerto Ricans, .47 for
Indians, and .4 for Blacks can hardly be characterized as "statistically insignificant".

NAEP confirms the phenomena, plus provides the additional insight that blacks score another 5-9 standard deviations lower than Whites, and that blacks in the District of Columbia have an IQ which is 4 IQ points lover than the average for American blacks, another half of a standard deviation.   

While egalitarians delight in proclaiming that the gender gap in NAEP math decreased from 7 points to only 3 points and the White/Black race gap decreased from 38 points to only 28 points just in the last three decades, the most casual observation of the data will prove to you otherwise. Is it really possible that our education system managed to alter God's Design by narrowing race and gender gaps which have existed for millennia--in only a few short decades? No. Is it possible that, given such huge gender and race gaps in other standardized tests, that NAEP managed to produce a test which illustrates no gender and lower race gaps? No. What did happen is the way the standard deviation was changed in the reporting of the data. The most optimistic assessment of how this standard deviation was changed shows that this supposed decrease in the race gap from 38 to 28 points was actually an increase in the standard deviation from 5.4 to 9.3. Is that possible? Could this dumbing down of America as reflected in the 135 SAT point decrease just in the last four decades and our scoring dead last in 17 of 34 TIMSS subjects have resulted in the dumbing down of Blacks even more?

That's actually not impossible, because the experts who've manipulated this test data (and they are truly experts at manipulating this data) have managed to remove it from our public consciousness and from all political debate.

Not every step along the way is necessarily cumulative.  It's not possible that the total number of standard deviations of separation between American black females in DC and boys in Norway is a total of 14 to 18.5 standard deviations.  This comparison of different types of tests designed to measure different attributes with different and in some cases unknown standard deviations is for illustrative purposes.  The facts are known by the experts and we the sheeple need to know what they know.

GENDER GAP IN THROWING: 3 STANDARD DEVIATIONS

GENDER GAP IN CHESS: 100 TO 1

ABSTRACT—Only 1% of the world's chess grandmasters are women. This underrepresentation is unlikely to be caused by discrimination, because chess ratings objectively reflect competitive results. Using data on the ratings of more than 250,000 tournament players over 13 years, we investigated several potential explanations for the male domination of elite chess. We found that (a) the ratings of men are higher on average than those of women, but no more variable; (b) matched boys and girls improve and drop out at equal rates, but boys begin chess competition in greater numbers and at higher performance levels than girls; and (c) in locales where at least 50% of the new young players are girls, their initial ratings are not lower than those of boys. We conclude that the greater number of men at the highest levels in chess can be explained by the greater number of boys who enter chess at the lowest levels.

GENDER GAP IN FAMILY INCOME: 5 to 1

A US Census Bureau population survey reports that men earn 85% of family incomes and women only 15%.

GENDER GAP IN ARRESTS: ONE STANDARD DEVIATION

We evaluate two alternative explanations for the converging gender gap in arrest—changes in women's behavior versus changes in mechanisms of social control. Using the offense of drunk driving and three methodologically diverse data sets, we explore trends in the DUI gender gap. We probe for change across various age groups and across measures tapping DUI prevalence and chronicity. Augmented Dickey-Fuller time-series techniques are used to assess changes in the gender gap and levels of drunk driving from 1980 to 2004. Analyses show women of all ages making arrest gains on men—a converging gender gap. In contrast, self-report and traffic data indicate little or no systematic change in the DUI gender gap. Findings support the conclusion that mechanisms of social control have shifted to target female offending patterns disproportionately. Little support exists for the contention that increased strain and liberalized gender roles have altered the gender gap or female drunk-driving patterns.

GENDER GAP IN PATENTS: 14 TO 1

Even after four decades of affirmative action and rampant feminism, how can it be explained that men STILL get 14 TIMES as many patents as women?

 "Of the scientists in our sample, 11.5% are listed as inventors on one or more patents. However, the full sample proportion masks a large gender difference: of the 903 women in the sample, 5.65% held patents as of the last year of the data. By contrast, 13% of the 3,324 male scientists in the data are listed on patents. Moreover, the 431 male patenters have amassed a total of 1,286 patents in our dataset. This compares to 92 patents produced by the 51 women patenters."

GENDER GAP IN ACADEMY MATHEMATICIANS: 20 TO 1

Excerpted from the following article is this statement about members of Academy mathematicians scoring 4.68 standard deviations higher than the national average for American males.  Could it be that more than half of Norway's population scores above this level?

"The pool of competitors is roughly the number of Americans between the ages of 25 and 85, approximately 190,000,000. Setting N  = 190,000,000 (the precise value is not important³) and the number of slots N_S  = 143, the competitor to slot ratio, N /N_S , is 1.329 million. With this value in (3), we find that the most probable number of women in the group of 143 Academy mathematicians is 7.1. (I choose not to round to the nearest integer.) At this time there are precisely 7 women in the mathematics sections of the Academy. (The agreement is almost embarrassing.) The 95% confidence interval⁴ is [2,12]. The minimum mathematical ability among the 143 Academy members is 4.68 SD greater than the male population mean. This is indeed an elite bunch!"

GENDER GAP IN BUSINESS INCOME: 2 STANDARD DEVIATIONS

GENDER GAP IN COMPUTER SCIENCE: 5 TO 1

A Globe review shows that the proportion of women among bachelor's degree recipients in computer science peaked at 37 percent in 1985 and then went on the decline. Women have comprised about 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degree recipients in the last few years, and in the elite confines of research universities, only 17 percent of graduates are women. (The percentage of women among PhD recipients has grown, but still languishes at around 20 percent.)

GENDER GAP IN INCOMES--EGALITARIAN MEN EARN $10,000 LESS

"One of the most remarkable changes in the U.S. labor market during the 1980s has been the sharp reduction in the pay gap between men and women. In 1979, the ratio of the average hourly wage of women to that of men was 68.6 percent. By 1991, it had increased to 78.5 percent."

This ignores the other "most remarkable changes" in that timeframe, which was the two thirds plunge in household incomes in the US while other industrialized nations' (as well as former third world nations') household incomes skyrocketed, as well as factors like the following:

"The authors then turned to the connection between attitudes and salaries. Those subjects that had traditional attitudes towards workplace gender and were a standard deviation off the mean showed substantial salary disparities, with men earning over $11,000 more than their female peers. In contrast, those that were a standard deviation more egalitarian in their attitudes had a pay gap just over $1,000. Only about $1,500 of that came from higher earnings by egalitarian females; the rest is accounted for by a precipitous drop in the earnings of egalitarian males.

"Part of that difference arises from career choice; traditionalist men mostly outearned women in fields where there were fewer women employed. The difference was also largest in jobs on the lower-end of the income scale, suggesting that traditional gender roles are stronger influences in blue-collar fields. Seniority also had a big impact on disparities: over the 25-year study period, pay went up 120 percent for women, but nearly 320 percent for men." 

GENDER GAP IN DIVING: 3 STANDARD DEVIATIONS

DIFFERENCE IN LENGTH OF MALE & FEMALE CHROMOSOME

3 STANDARD DEVIATIONS

As early as 1928, it was known in our literature that there is a three standard deviation difference between the lengths of the male and female chromosomes.

GENDER GAP IN POLITICS: 3 STANDARD DEVIATIONS

http://www.gallup.com/poll/pollInsights/#GG

Labor Unions

Most Valuable Subject in School

Fear for Children at School

Public or Private School

Political Parties and Corporate Interests

Look at all the following countries whose 12th graders didn't participate in TIMSS, but whose 8th graders scored up to 100 points higher than ours!

Confessions of a woman teacher

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,49290.90.html

I'll admit, I haven't read all 6 pages of the thread.  Maths terrify me.  I fell off the truck back in 5th grade.  I'm a member of the early "new" math generation, and I went to a private lower school where some teachers liked math and taught it the "old" way, some decided to teach it the "new" way, and some didn't like teaching it so it wasn't emphasised.

I did okay in algebra, as long as we were talking theory.  Calculators were banned, and to this day I still sometimes mentally count on my fingers, so arithmetically I'd sometimes fail getting an answer (which was a fail--loic didn't count for points). 

I really liked, and did well at, geometry for some reason now lost to me in the midst of time and maths fear.  While I was otherwise a good good chemestry student that loved the sciences, I lost it when I had a HS instructor that insisted on starting every class with a graded quiz of 10 questions that stretched across the full front of the room blackboard which had to be answered in 5 minutes using a slide rule.  In that entire year I think I might have managed to get one of those damned questions finished before the time was up.  Other than that my understanding of the science was sound, and I absolutely loved biology, but those damned quizzes cost me my grade--and any confidence I had.  I barely passed that class. 

I've avoided taking any maths and sciences since, although at the zoo I teach basic science, including chemestry, biology, geology, and ecology--and do it very well from what I'm told by teachers bringing in their classes, and by other volunteers that have taught the subjects, some professionally, for far longer than I.

My late husband, who was a math whiz, insisted that, based upon what he'd seen of my interests and abilities, I'd enjoy and do quite well in physics--but the entire idea scares the pants off of me.  In order to eventually graduate from any program I have to have my math requirement satisfied.  I've avoided taking it formally for 36 years (oddly, the older I get, and the more I avoid it formally, the more it makes sense to me in an informal setting).  But, I also haven't graduated in 36 years; I sure as heck have enjoyed all the other courses--mostly, from year 1, upper level-- I've taken in that time, though. 

I sometimes think I'm the personification of Zonker from Doonsbury, except for our different motivations for not graduating.  I'm a fairly strong person, but I actually panic and break down crying at the idea of having to take a math class for a grade.

Redefining the Gender Gap

From http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/13/gender

Both male and female undergraduates are more likely to have higher college grades as the percentage of female faculty members increases. The more time female students devote to exercise and sports, the higher their grades are likely to be. For male students, more time on exercise and sports has the opposite effect. Women are more likely to report growth in critical thinking during college if they attend private colleges than public universities.

These are among the statistics in a new book that aims to change the way educators think about the gender gap in college enrollments. With women making up solid majorities of undergraduate enrollments nationally, and more than 60 percent at many institutions, gender gaps are a hot topic — but the focus has been on why female numbers are up and male numbers aren’t. Linda J. Sax says that’s only part of the equation.

Sax, an associate professor of education at the University of California at Los Angeles, says it is time to focus on the ways men and women experience higher education and why some experiences help either men or women but not both. The emphasis on the total enrollment figures hides real issues facing men and women in college, she argues in The Gender Gap in College: Maximizing the Developmental Potential of Women and Men, just published by Jossey-Bass.

The book’s purpose, she writes, is to “add context to what have become oversimplified but popular messages — that gender equity has been achieved, that women are an academic success story, and that men are experiencing an educational crisis. There is some truth to each of these messages, but they tend to convey the status of women and mean as a zero-sum game.” The more nuanced reality, she writes, is that there are problems facing both men and women — and educators need to acknowledge and respond to these differences.

While arguing for this type of analysis, Sax also acknowledges in her book that there are dangers associated with it. “There is a legitimate argument that the study of gender difference primarily reinforces gender differences,” she writes. Noting that in many cases, differences among men and among women are greater than the differences between them, she warns against using such analysis to “overstate” differences or to stereotype students. But she goes on to say that there are enough notable differences that the benefits of this research outweigh the risks.

And that led her to examine the data from millions of students nationwide collected by UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program — which is best known for producing the “freshman survey” each year, but which also surveys students at other points in their college careers.

One reason that it is important to examine these gender differences, writes Sax, is that the female college experience isn’t consistent with the data showing female students doing better than their male counterparts academically. It’s not that they don’t perform better, but the women enter college with a significant confidence gap. On a series of factors, male freshmen — who on average aren’t as well prepared as females — have much more confidence. Only on writing does the female self-confidence level outpace the male level (and reflect reality).

Self-Confidence of First-Year College Students by Gender, 2006

Of particular concern, Sax writes, is that women appear unwilling to believe or admit that “they are as competent as their performance would suggest,” and that this lack of confidence generally appears to grow during college. [editor's note: whether consciously or unconsciously, teachers give grades to female students which are two letter grades higher than boys of the same academic level].

In looking at data on grades, Sax finds that there are some factors that help both male and female students achieve academically. As many have noted, levels of “academic engagement” promote academic success for all students. And both male and female students are least likely to do well at large public universities.

One finding in particular is striking, given the debates about affirmative action and the importance of diversifying the faculty, which was once overwhelmingly male. The data suggest a direct relationship, Sax writes, between institutions having larger proportions of female students and faculty members and all students — males too — performing better academically. While noting that the data do not suggest why this is the case, Sax urges researchers to explore the reasons for this relationship.

But at the same time, Sax also finds that male students tend to perform better academically when they have campus peer groups that support “traditional gender roles.” And at campuses with a strong emphasis on the arts, male academic performance tends to suffer.

One of the areas of particular concern to Sax is self-confidence in mathematical ability, given that this skill set is necessary for success in so many science and technology fields. Some of the relationships she finds are not surprising — for example that men and women both have higher confidence in math if they major in engineering or science fields. But the impact of major is stronger for women than men, which Sax says could mean “that continued exposure to mathematics is particularly important for female students.”

One key area for women’s mathematics self-confidence level, Sax finds, is the role of faculty. Female students’ confidence levels go up more with positive interactions with professors, but there is also a correlation between female students who feel their questions are dismissed and declines in self-confidence.

At a time when many colleges promote the idea that they are teaching critical thinking skills, Sax also finds differences in the way male and female students report gains. Women are more likely to report gains if they attend private residential colleges and major in the humanities. Women who major in education tend to report little change in their critical thinking abilities, but men at campuses with many education majors — even if the men themselves aren’t in the major — report major gains. Both men and women gain if they seek out ethnic studies or other courses that expose them to different kinds of people than themselves, Sax reports.

In all, Sax’s book identifies 584 “college effects” that are not identical for men and women. She closes by urging other researchers to explore why these differences exist and what steps might be taken to improve the academic experience for men and women. And she notes that even where the data suggest similarities for male and female students (with both benefiting from interaction with professors, for example), the nature of those interactions may have differing impact. “Institutional efforts aimed at improving the college experience for both genders must consider the unique needs of each,” she writes.

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