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That article is misleading in its claims. In the derided western countries where "girls do worse", the girls still do better than the praised countries where gi

That article is misleading in its claims. In the derided western countries where "girls do worse", the girls still do better than the praised countries where girls do better than boys. Look at the four countries to the right where the girls did best relative to boys and the girls scores: Kyrgyz Republic (340), Qatar (393), Albania (406) and Jordan (433). Compare to the girls score in countries where girls are alleged to be failing: United States (495), Denmark (494), Netherlands (520), Liechtenstein (511), Chile (433). Notice that girls are doing better in the countries the NYT thinks are bad, like the US, than in the countries the NYT thinks are good such as Jordan.

danso 14y ago
Right...but isn't there some value in comparing populations at a country level? I don't think the OP is making the argument that girls are flat-out better at science. Rather, I think the OP is raising the question: if boys are more naturally inclined toward science, shouldn't we expect them to be relatively better at it in most countries? At the very least, it shows that the gender gap does not have to be an intractable one.
- pekk 14y ago
  If girls do better in country A than they do in country B, that seems to be a win. But when we look at how well boys do, we may find that boys in country B do even worse than the girls, which means that country B scores better for some form of equality. If we score policies by this metric then we may well advise that country A do things just to knock down the boys' scores. This is probably the wrong lesson to draw. We don't improve life or results for girls just by making things worse for boys. At best, a disparity highlights a place to look. So the point isn't that it is bad to compare countries to each other. The point is actually that this comparison should consider girls-to-girls across countries, not just girls-to-boys inside each country.
btilly 14y ago
This is an important point. In a society where girls are pushed not to continue, the minority that does continue is likely heavily weighted towards the ones who would have done better than the average girl. Therefore girls doing better is evidence of the selection process that got girls into that sample, and not the average abilities that girls have.
deleted 14y ago
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danso 14y ago

Right...but isn't there some value in comparing populations at a country level? I don't think the OP is making the argument that girls are flat-out better at science. Rather, I think the OP is raising the question: if boys are more naturally inclined toward science, shouldn't we expect them to be relatively better at it in most countries? At the very least, it shows that the gender gap does not have to be an intractable one.

pekk 14y ago
If girls do better in country A than they do in country B, that seems to be a win. But when we look at how well boys do, we may find that boys in country B do even worse than the girls, which means that country B scores better for some form of equality. If we score policies by this metric then we may well advise that country A do things just to knock down the boys' scores. This is probably the wrong lesson to draw. We don't improve life or results for girls just by making things worse for boys. At best, a disparity highlights a place to look. So the point isn't that it is bad to compare countries to each other. The point is actually that this comparison should consider girls-to-girls across countries, not just girls-to-boys inside each country.

btilly 14y ago

This is an important point. In a society where girls are pushed not to continue, the minority that does continue is likely heavily weighted towards the ones who would have done better than the average girl. Therefore girls doing better is evidence of the selection process that got girls into that sample, and not the average abilities that girls have.

deleted 14y ago

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