
Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office - colinprince
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/sunday/girls-school-confidence.html
======
opportune
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
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-
pus...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pushed-away-
from-the-tech-industry)

~~~
belorn
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.

------
Yetanfou
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
That's very interesting. I never looked at it that way. Can you elaborate on
how schools are better suited for girls?

~~~
Yetanfou
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-
betygsattning...](https://lararnastidning.se/pojkar-missgynnas-i-
betygsattningen/)

[2] [http://kth.diva-
portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1205...](http://kth.diva-
portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1205359&dswid=8766)

------
lkrubner
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
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.

~~~
jeffdavis
Boys do better on tests?

~~~
pravda
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)

------
tabtab
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.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> In my opinion women are genetically wired to focus more on family.

What does "genetically wired" mean?

~~~
CryptoPunk
It means having two X chromosomes is associated with particular behavioral
traits, just as it's associated with physiological traits.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I don't understand what you mean by "associated". How are chromosomes
associated with behaviour?

Also, what are "behavioural traits"? Is picking one's nose a "behavioual
trait", for example? Is that associated with one's chromosomes?

~~~
CryptoPunk
Associated means correlated with.. I gave you an analogy of chromosomes being
associated with physical traits.

>>How are chromosomes associated with behaviour?

The same way they're associated with physiological traits. Personality traits
are not all learned. There is a large genetic effect on behaviour. There is
plenty of scientific evidence for this.

>>Is picking one's nose a "behavioual trait", for example?

How am I supposed to know that? Why would any researcher conduct a study to
uncover that?

