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Why Do Girls Still Score Lower Than Boys on Maths Tests?
A massive new study challenges the idea of ‘innate’ gender differences — and points instead to something far more malleable
‘Math class is tough,’ declared a talking Barbie released by Mattel in 1992.
The doll was quickly recalled after widespread criticism that Barbie — seen by many as a role model for young girls — was reinforcing a damaging gender stereotype. Mattel even offered a swap for those who’d already purchased it.
But while that maths-loathing Barbie may have vanished from store shelves and our world, the sentiment she voiced hasn’t. The idea that girls and women are somehow ‘naturally’ less suited to mathematics — and other intellectually demanding pursuits — is still alive and well today, bolstered by armchair theories of female intellectual inferiority from a parade of (allegedly) Great Men of History and Science. (Wandering wombs! Tiny skulls! Underdeveloped brains! Women, clearly, never evolved!)
Unsurprisingly, some argue that if these Great Men were indeed wrong, and since there are no longer any formal barriers preventing girls and women from pursuing education or succeeding in STEM, then gender gaps in these areas shouldn’t exist. But they do — checkmate, feminists.
