Women’s Seeming Ineptitude With Figures Doesn’t Add Up

Is America facing a gender gap in mathematics?

The premise--that girls simply are not as good in math as boys--has gained increasing currency among educators and social scientists in recent years.

BACKGROUND: A 532-page study published by the U.S. Department of Education last June showed that high school girls scored an average of five points lower than boys nationwide on standard mathematics tests (10 points is roughly the equivalent of a year’s worth of course work).

Steve Gorman, an analyst at the National Center for Education Statistics, which tracks such results on a wide variety of exams, said that the figures bolster similar findings from other achievement tests.

But there is no unanimity about why the gender gap in math exists among American high school students, and some experts suggest that it may be more apparent than real.

Researchers report that high school-age girls in other countries seem to score as well as--or better than--their male classmates. And, even in the United States, about 46% of all university degrees in mathematics go to women. So the gap, if there is one, doesn’t necessarily last, Gorman said.

POSSIBLE CAUSES: Patricia Clark Kenscaft, a mathematics professor at Montclair State College in New Jersey, contends that the problem is not based on differences between the sexes--as some critics suggest--but rather is rooted in the customs of American society.

In a report for the Mathematical Assn. of America, Kenscaft cited 55 reasons why women seem to lag behind men in math, from the use of multiple-choice questions in math tests--which she said favor men, who are more aggressive risk takers--to family attitudes.

“Families are more accepting when a girl says she can’t do well in math, just like it’s acceptable when a woman says she can’t balance a checkbook,” Kenscaft says.

Another possible reason why girls fall behind boys in math during high school, according to a recent report by the American Assn. of University Women, is that psychologically girls tend to lose confidence and grow more insecure during early adolescence.

The report links lagging self-esteem with loss of confidence in math and science ability. It shows that girls’ interest in math drops 20 points--to 61% in high school, down from 81% in elementary school. For boys, the decline is less dramatic--to 72% from 84%.

During the same time span, self-esteem drops much more for girls than boys. In the elementary grades, 67% of boys and 60% of girls agree with the statement: “I am happy the way I am.” By high school, 46% of boys agree with the statement but only 29% of girls do.

It is also true that traditional math-teaching techniques are biased toward boys, said Amy Swauger, an analyst at the American Assn. of University Women.

SOLUTIONS OFFERED: Swauger argues that using more “gender-neutral” teaching techniques would encourage girls in math and sciences.

Even so, that’s not to say that girls and women cannot do well on such tests. In other areas, Kenscaft said, girls learn how to succeed in the male-dominated world even though they have barriers to overcome.

Swauger points out that girls achieve more in a cooperative setting than a competitive one. That may explain why they score better in history and geography, where students are often taught to work in groups or as teams.

Kenscaft points out how much perceptions have changed in this area. Centuries ago, she noted, Europeans believed that teaching a girl geometry would upset her internal organs so violently that she would no longer be able to have children.

“Centuries from now people will laugh, like we laugh at those Europeans, about reasons why girls score lower on standardized math tests than boys,” she said.