Dismantling the patriarchy Step by Step

We/we have by now established the superior academic performance of  Woman/Girls compared with men/boys. There exists decades of data on educational achievement to cement this as fact. Yet We/we continue to hear the pathetic cries of 'yes, but.'

'Yes, but' boys are better at math (not true);

From the NYTimes;

There is no difference in math aptitude before age 7.  Starting in adolescence, some differences appear (boys score approximately 30-35 points higher than girls on the math portion of the SAT).  But, scores on different subcategories of math vary tremendously (often with girls outperforming boys consistently).

When boys do better, they are usually also doing worse.   Boys are also more likely than girls to get nearly all the answers wrong.  So they overpopulate both tails of the bell curve; boys are both better, and worse, than girls at math.

That means that how we test for math ability is a political choice.  If you report who is best at math, the answer is boys.  If you report average math ability, it’s about the same.

How you decide to test math ability is also political.  Even though boys outperform girls on the SAT, it turns out those scores do not predict math performance in classes.  Girls frequently outperform boys in the classroom.

And, since girls often outperform boys in a practical setting, math aptitude (even measured at the levels of outstanding instead of average performance) doesn’t explain sex disparities in science careers (most of which, incidentally, only require you to be pretty good at math, as opposed to wildly genius at it).   In any case, scoring high in math is only loosely related to who opts for a scientific career, especially for girls. Many high scoring girls don’t go into science, and many poor scoring boys do.

Boys do better in only about ½ of the OECD nations. For nearly all the other countries, there were no significant sex differences. In Iceland, girls outshine boys significantly.

In Japan, though girls perform less well than the boys, they generally outperform U.S. boys considerably.  So finding that boys outperform girls within a country does not mean that boys outperform girls across all countries.

Oh and who won this years most prestigious international mathematics prize, the Abel Prize? A Woman. A Woman also won the Fields Medal in 2014. The length of time its taken for Women to be recognized certainly has far more to do with the patriarchal structure of academia than with Women's abilities. As patriarchy crumbles, low and behold, brilliant Women emerge into the light.

Same thing in economics, another mathematics intensive subject, this years 2019 John Bates Clark Medal, you guessed it, won by a Woman.

And lets not forget physics where the latest Nobel was won by a Woman.   


 So on the whole math question the results are at best a wash for boys and show that these kinds of gender biased results seem as much correlated with patriarchy then actual math skills. i strongly suspect that if the playing field were leveled the Girls, like in so many other subjects, would run away with the ball. 

Here's some new data on technology / engineering skills, another area often pointed at by the patriarchies defenders


"Eighth-grade girls continue to outperform boys on a national test of technology and engineering skills, despite reporting they take fewer classes related to those skills.

Girls scored five points higher than boys on the Technology and Engineering Literacy Assessment, which was given to 15,400 eighth graders from about 600 public and private schools across the country in 2018. Girls also bested boys in nearly all content areas.

"Girls continue to perform better than boys," Peggy Carr, the associate commissioner of the assessments division at the National Center for Education Statistics, said. "They did that again – improved more than boys and also still outscored boys in this assessment. It's a really strong finding here."

"The boys did not show improvement in any areas," she said.

The results are despite a higher percentage of boys, 61 percent, who reported taking at least one class related to technology and engineering, compared to just 53 percent of girls who reported taking at least one class.

"Girls are outperforming boys but boys are taking more tech and engineering classes," Carr said.

The test, which students take on a computer, includes multimedia tasks and scenario-based tasks that ask students to solve problems or achieve goals such as building a bike path or creating a museum exhibit. The test is part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card, and it's administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, the data arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

"This is a unique assessment into how students use their understanding of technology and engineering to interact, interpret and influence the world in which they live," Carr said on a call with reporters.

Overall, students increased their average score by two points compared to 2014, the first year the test was administered. Nearly half, or 46 percent, of students scored at or above proficient, meaning they have mastery of the subject – 3 percentage points higher than in 2014. "