
Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the STEM gender gap - barry-cotter
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/31/15435
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tenkabuto
Am I correct in interpreting this as that among 15-year-olds, girls and boys
are about equally skilled at doing math, but girls are even more skilled at
doing reading than boys are, so it's relatively inefficient for girls to do
math-oriented tasks instead of reading-oriented tasks.

With the relative inefficiency might come relative unprofitability, and if the
girls perceive and/or anticipate that doing reading-oriented tasks would be
more profitable for them, they choose to participate in the market for
reading-oriented labor (self-select into that market).

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orev
I don’t buy into the rational/market/economics style theory that people choose
to do tasks based on what they think will be more profitable.

People choose to do things because they enjoy doing them, and people enjoy
doing things more when they’re good at the task. If girls have better language
skills, they will naturally gravitate to those kinds of tasks because they
like them better, which will reinforce their skills, in a cycle. The same can
be said for boys who like to do things and naturally gravitate to/reinforce
those skills. Eventually you have people who are good at doing different
things, because the initial advantage/preference gave them a tendency to move
in a particular direction.

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t0ughcritic
Why aren’t there more Female lawyers or politicians then... Not sure if this
totally holds up

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loopz
You can also ask why not more female top leaders and top investors. Females
are so reputed to be competitive by nature..

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tree3
Unfortunately, I don't see anyone pushing to improve boys' reading skills.

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lykr0n
Yep. We're all focused on lifting up girls, but ignore the suffering of the
boys because ... some perverted ideology.

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dragonwriter
> Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the STEM gender
> gap

It can't explain why math-intensive fields like biochemistry are _not_ male
dominated (with roughly equal distribution between genders for degrees), but
the less-math-intensive, more-human-interaction centered people management
positions in those fields are disproportionately (given the total population
of the fields) male.

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amai
How does this explain that the stem gender gap is different in different
countries? [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/gender-equality-in-
st...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/gender-equality-in-stem-is-
possible/)

~~~
hnlurker
because in poor countries, women must choose what pays most.. stem. in rich
countries, they can choose what they enjoy.

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gnat
We suspected this at our primary school: across gender and ethnicity
divisions, STEM and literacy scores were highly correlated.

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aklemm
But definitely it’s the girls’ fault, am I right?

