6 ms·

Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office

33 points by colinprince 8y ago

lkrubner 8y ago
It says: "Hard work and discipline help girls outperform boys in class, but that advantage disappears in the work force." Maybe hard work and discipline are the problem? Most of the guys I know who do well find ways to cheat the system, at least a bit. I'd use the distinction that Paul Graham has made about "naughty" versus "evil". Some people go to far and they end up in jail -- those are the "evil". But the naughty cheat just a little bit, and they get ahead. Maybe it is women's integrity that keeps them from being successful?
pravda 8y ago
Girls get better grades then boys. That is because grades measure, or at least are influenced by, conformity. Boys do better on tests then girls. Because tests are objective and not subjective.
- smt88 8y ago
  Tests are not objective. Have you ever tried to design an unbiased survey question? It’s really hard. Tests are biased toward native speakers of a language and people who share a culture with the test creators. The subset of questions can have a bias inherent to them. There are just a million ways that they’re not “objective,” and that’s not even getting into the context around the taking of the test! See also: http://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-they-have-for-a-century/ http://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-t... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406121532.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406121532.h...
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  Boys do better on tests?
  - pravda 8y ago
    On math SATs they do. http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/satnew.png http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/satnew.png Can't find a similar chart for verbal, but it looks like in combined scores boys outscore girls. http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/29/news/mn-39684 http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/29/news/mn-39684
opportune 8y ago
One thing that always bothers me about articles like this is that they compare gender equality among young people, which are much better than they ever were, with gender equality among people who were born 50-60 years ago and thus obviously grew up in a different environment regarding gender equality. C-suite gender distribution will always be a pretty lagging indicator of current gender equality. But otherwise this article makes some good points. I remember in school seeing lots of people (almost all girls) diligently highlighting and color-coding, taking extremely detailed and clean notes, and otherwise spending a lot of time working on academics outside of the metrics which were actually being measured (homework, projects, and tests). It always struck me, a male, as an inefficient use of time. But I was almost on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, with all my class' papers in one disorganized pile and generally doing everything at the last minute. I wonder if this stereotypical girl approach to doing academic work is due to socialization or some other factor
- lkrubner 8y ago
  In 1990, 35% of all software developers were women. In 2016, only 26% of software developers were women. The situation for women in tech was much better 30 years than it is now. There are some professions, such as medicine, that have become more welcoming to women. Roughly 50% of new doctors in the USA are women. Likewise, there are more female lawyers than ever before. But there are some professions that have gone in the wrong direction, and software development is among the most important of these. See more here: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pushed-away-from-the-tech-industry http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pus...
  - belorn 8y ago
    In Sweden, 1990 saw an increase in unemployment as well as a change in gender segregation. Industries that was dominated by women saw more men in sectors such as health care, while areas that was dominated by men like construction saw more women. In about 1993 the trend changed with lower unemployment. More women started to go into health care sector and more men in the construction sector. From 1993 and 2017, that trend has continued and current 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated profession. The situation with gender segregation is much worse today than 30 years and this is universal for both genders. You might applaud the "Roughly 50% of new doctors in the USA are women", but Sweden has already seen that and continued down the path where some doctor professions are now 90%+ women. The same gender segregation we can see overall also happens within professions that subdivides into specialties, and to take a different example, in education we see language being almost 100% women while physical education being almost 100% men, while overall the teaching profession is heavily dominated by women with around 80%+. In IT we can see a similar divide happening with for example graphic design vs server infrastructure. The linked article claims that the tech industry is somewhat unique and uses wage difference as evidence, but gender segregation is not unique to tech. All work professions are following more or less identical paths to more gender segregation, and there is no distinction between men and women in this regard. With 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men working in gender segregated professions, if women are being pushed away from technology then men are pushed with exactly equal force from professions dominated by women. And this matters. One reason why girls "beat" boys at school is bias in evaluation. Just like the typical experiment where people send in identical application for tech positions and see a difference in acceptance rate based on what gendered name they use, similar experiment show the same results for academic reports. The topics in school where boys do worse is exactly those where the wast majority of teachers are women, with the reverse results for girls.
tabtab 8y ago
Re: Girls consistently outperform boys academically. And yet, men nonetheless hold a staggering 95 percent of the top positions in the largest public companies. The top positions are dominated by obsessive workaholics. In my opinion women are genetically wired to focus more on family. Long hours and business travel heavily cut into caring for family. I'm not making a value judgement, just an observation. While I do believe there is gender discrimination at work: people tend to hire clones of themselves, there are biological factors also.
- natalyarostova 8y ago
  I find the abstraction of men vs. women to not be the optimal one. Or rather, another (better) way to ask the question, is "Why are the obsessive, power-hungry, workaholics who hold these positions, primarily men?" Rather than "Why do men do better than women?
  - manyxcxi 8y ago
    Except you’re implying that they are doing better in the first place... Look, I’m pretty much an obsessive workaholic myself (getting better now that we’ve got kids) and I was making about 5x of what my wife was making when I met her. She’s got a 4 year degree from a nice private university and I went to state university. She is absolutely every bit as smart and hard working as I am, but she never wanted a career in an office. In our first few years together I helped her with her resume, suggested all the work she was doing would absolutely qualify her for making at least twice as much as she was making and she just didn’t want to play the game. She wanted to be a mom, and didn’t even want to play the game until motherhood showed up. If she did what I do every day (at now almost 20x what she was making when I met her) she’d jump out a window. Conversely I wouldn’t take double the pay I’m making to stay home with the kids, I love ‘em, but jeez- I don’t know how my wife does it. She would definitely not consider herself doing better if we swapped places. And I think that’s the key. Man or woman, some people just don’t have the same goals, and running a company and making lots of money don’t necessarily play any part in what they aspire to do.
    - 8y ago
Yetanfou 8y ago
I can make a simple suggestion as to the discrepancy between girls' school results and those in 'real life': the 'modern' school system in most western countries is tailored more to the way most girls/women work than it tailors to boys/men. This is not the case for the average work environment which is more competitive and generally a better fit to the way most men work - possibly because until recently it was mostly dominated by men. As to whether this will change - schools focusing more on boys and the workplace becoming more attuned to women - only time will tell. The former seems more likely than the latter as competitiveness is inherent in the desire to gain status and wealth.
- thunderbong 8y ago
  That's very interesting. I never looked at it that way. Can you elaborate on how schools are better suited for girls?
  - Yetanfou 8y ago
    There is a host of literature on the subject from many authors but I'll surmise the problem: schools reward behaviour like being quiet and attentive in class, sitting still for longer periods, not goofing off and following instructions which is far more common in girls than it is in boys while punishing typically 'boyish' behaviour (which more or less comes down to the opposite of the former). Outdoors and practical activities - which are more aligned to the way boys learn - are limited to a minimum or even taken away completely while indoors, formal classroom-based teaching based on literacy and numeracy is the norm, an environment tailored to those aforementioned traits which are more common in girls. Boys do better when they have positive male role models but male (and here it is important to realise I'm not just talking about sex but also about behaviour, i.e. 'typically male') teachers and assistants are as rare as hen's teeth in the primary and increasingly also in the secondary school systems. Continuous assessment plays a larger role in setting final results, again favouring girls as they are essentially being rewarded for having the earlier characteristics while boys are being punished for lacking them. In some school systems - the Swedish being one of them according to the teacher's union - girls get higher test scores than boys for the same performance when the tests are scored by the pupil's teachers [1]. A study titled "Grading and gender : Equality or discrimination?" [2] arrives at similar conclusions. [1] https://lararnastidning.se/pojkar-missgynnas-i-betygsattningen/ https://lararnastidning.se/pojkar-missgynnas-i-betygsattning... [2] http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1205359&dswid=8766 http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1205...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
malcolmgreaves 8y ago
Sexism.

33 points by colinprince 8y ago

It says: "Hard work and discipline help girls outperform boys in class, but that advantage disappears in the work force." Maybe hard work and discipline are the problem? Most of the guys I know who do well find ways to cheat the system, at least a bit. I'd use the distinction that Paul Graham has made about "naughty" versus "evil". Some people go to far and they end up in jail -- those are the "evil". But the naughty cheat just a little bit, and they get ahead. Maybe it is women's integrity that keeps them from being successful?

pravda 8y ago

Girls get better grades then boys. That is because grades measure, or at least are influenced by, conformity. Boys do better on tests then girls. Because tests are objective and not subjective.

smt88 8y ago
Tests are not objective. Have you ever tried to design an unbiased survey question? It’s really hard. Tests are biased toward native speakers of a language and people who share a culture with the test creators. The subset of questions can have a bias inherent to them. There are just a million ways that they’re not “objective,” and that’s not even getting into the context around the taking of the test! See also: http://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-they-have-for-a-century/ http://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-t... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406121532.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406121532.h...
jeffdavis 8y ago
Boys do better on tests?
- pravda 8y ago
  On math SATs they do. http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/satnew.png http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/satnew.png Can't find a similar chart for verbal, but it looks like in combined scores boys outscore girls. http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/29/news/mn-39684 http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/29/news/mn-39684

opportune 8y ago

One thing that always bothers me about articles like this is that they compare gender equality among young people, which are much better than they ever were, with gender equality among people who were born 50-60 years ago and thus obviously grew up in a different environment regarding gender equality. C-suite gender distribution will always be a pretty lagging indicator of current gender equality. But otherwise this article makes some good points. I remember in school seeing lots of people (almost all girls) diligently highlighting and color-coding, taking extremely detailed and clean notes, and otherwise spending a lot of time working on academics outside of the metrics which were actually being measured (homework, projects, and tests). It always struck me, a male, as an inefficient use of time. But I was almost on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, with all my class' papers in one disorganized pile and generally doing everything at the last minute. I wonder if this stereotypical girl approach to doing academic work is due to socialization or some other factor

lkrubner 8y ago
In 1990, 35% of all software developers were women. In 2016, only 26% of software developers were women. The situation for women in tech was much better 30 years than it is now. There are some professions, such as medicine, that have become more welcoming to women. Roughly 50% of new doctors in the USA are women. Likewise, there are more female lawyers than ever before. But there are some professions that have gone in the wrong direction, and software development is among the most important of these. See more here: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pushed-away-from-the-tech-industry http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pus...
- belorn 8y ago
  In Sweden, 1990 saw an increase in unemployment as well as a change in gender segregation. Industries that was dominated by women saw more men in sectors such as health care, while areas that was dominated by men like construction saw more women. In about 1993 the trend changed with lower unemployment. More women started to go into health care sector and more men in the construction sector. From 1993 and 2017, that trend has continued and current 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated profession. The situation with gender segregation is much worse today than 30 years and this is universal for both genders. You might applaud the "Roughly 50% of new doctors in the USA are women", but Sweden has already seen that and continued down the path where some doctor professions are now 90%+ women. The same gender segregation we can see overall also happens within professions that subdivides into specialties, and to take a different example, in education we see language being almost 100% women while physical education being almost 100% men, while overall the teaching profession is heavily dominated by women with around 80%+. In IT we can see a similar divide happening with for example graphic design vs server infrastructure. The linked article claims that the tech industry is somewhat unique and uses wage difference as evidence, but gender segregation is not unique to tech. All work professions are following more or less identical paths to more gender segregation, and there is no distinction between men and women in this regard. With 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men working in gender segregated professions, if women are being pushed away from technology then men are pushed with exactly equal force from professions dominated by women. And this matters. One reason why girls "beat" boys at school is bias in evaluation. Just like the typical experiment where people send in identical application for tech positions and see a difference in acceptance rate based on what gendered name they use, similar experiment show the same results for academic reports. The topics in school where boys do worse is exactly those where the wast majority of teachers are women, with the reverse results for girls.

tabtab 8y ago

Re: Girls consistently outperform boys academically. And yet, men nonetheless hold a staggering 95 percent of the top positions in the largest public companies. The top positions are dominated by obsessive workaholics. In my opinion women are genetically wired to focus more on family. Long hours and business travel heavily cut into caring for family. I'm not making a value judgement, just an observation. While I do believe there is gender discrimination at work: people tend to hire clones of themselves, there are biological factors also.

natalyarostova 8y ago
I find the abstraction of men vs. women to not be the optimal one. Or rather, another (better) way to ask the question, is "Why are the obsessive, power-hungry, workaholics who hold these positions, primarily men?" Rather than "Why do men do better than women?
- manyxcxi 8y ago
  Except you’re implying that they are doing better in the first place... Look, I’m pretty much an obsessive workaholic myself (getting better now that we’ve got kids) and I was making about 5x of what my wife was making when I met her. She’s got a 4 year degree from a nice private university and I went to state university. She is absolutely every bit as smart and hard working as I am, but she never wanted a career in an office. In our first few years together I helped her with her resume, suggested all the work she was doing would absolutely qualify her for making at least twice as much as she was making and she just didn’t want to play the game. She wanted to be a mom, and didn’t even want to play the game until motherhood showed up. If she did what I do every day (at now almost 20x what she was making when I met her) she’d jump out a window. Conversely I wouldn’t take double the pay I’m making to stay home with the kids, I love ‘em, but jeez- I don’t know how my wife does it. She would definitely not consider herself doing better if we swapped places. And I think that’s the key. Man or woman, some people just don’t have the same goals, and running a company and making lots of money don’t necessarily play any part in what they aspire to do.
  - 8y ago

Yetanfou 8y ago

I can make a simple suggestion as to the discrepancy between girls' school results and those in 'real life': the 'modern' school system in most western countries is tailored more to the way most girls/women work than it tailors to boys/men. This is not the case for the average work environment which is more competitive and generally a better fit to the way most men work - possibly because until recently it was mostly dominated by men. As to whether this will change - schools focusing more on boys and the workplace becoming more attuned to women - only time will tell. The former seems more likely than the latter as competitiveness is inherent in the desire to gain status and wealth.

thunderbong 8y ago
That's very interesting. I never looked at it that way. Can you elaborate on how schools are better suited for girls?
- Yetanfou 8y ago
  There is a host of literature on the subject from many authors but I'll surmise the problem: schools reward behaviour like being quiet and attentive in class, sitting still for longer periods, not goofing off and following instructions which is far more common in girls than it is in boys while punishing typically 'boyish' behaviour (which more or less comes down to the opposite of the former). Outdoors and practical activities - which are more aligned to the way boys learn - are limited to a minimum or even taken away completely while indoors, formal classroom-based teaching based on literacy and numeracy is the norm, an environment tailored to those aforementioned traits which are more common in girls. Boys do better when they have positive male role models but male (and here it is important to realise I'm not just talking about sex but also about behaviour, i.e. 'typically male') teachers and assistants are as rare as hen's teeth in the primary and increasingly also in the secondary school systems. Continuous assessment plays a larger role in setting final results, again favouring girls as they are essentially being rewarded for having the earlier characteristics while boys are being punished for lacking them. In some school systems - the Swedish being one of them according to the teacher's union - girls get higher test scores than boys for the same performance when the tests are scored by the pupil's teachers [1]. A study titled "Grading and gender : Equality or discrimination?" [2] arrives at similar conclusions. [1] https://lararnastidning.se/pojkar-missgynnas-i-betygsattningen/ https://lararnastidning.se/pojkar-missgynnas-i-betygsattning... [2] http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1205359&dswid=8766 http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1205...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

malcolmgreaves 8y ago

Sexism.