Question

Discuss the controversy over female abilities for math and/or science. How do females typically fare in math and science? Be sure to address biological and social factors.

Answer 1

Note: The following answer provides guidelines or sample points that you can refer to. You can add research, elaborate the points, and add more similar points.

1. The controversy over female abilities in math and science is based on the idea that disproportionately fewer women opt for careers in STEM, and a majority of people in the fields are men.

2. This led to the idea that men have superior mathematical and logical skills. Evolutionary perspectives argued that since men were required to hunt, they developed superior visuospatial skills and thus have better faculties to excel in math and science.

3. Certain studies proved this, along with the fact that women performed better than men on tests of verbal abilities. This cemented the idea that women evolved these skills to be able to rear children and gather food, while men have better mathematical and scientific abilities.

4. However, recent research has proven that this may be skewed data and that this gap may be due to socialization, norms and cognitive biases rather than brain structures:

• Studies using brain scans have shown that the cognitive skills of both genders in math are equal and that there are no gender differences in brain function.
• fMRI Studies using young boys and girls show that their brains function similarly when exposed to mathematical content and educational videos, and that brain development also occurs similarly.
• The reason older studies show men as superior may be because men show more variability in terms of visuospatial and mathematical abilities, which may have led to those on the higher end skewing the data. On average, both genders perform equally.

5. This leads to the question as to why the disparity exists. Research points towards sociological factors.

• For example, cognitive biases against women may operate in employment circles, academia and even at an educational level which prevent women from progressing despite having the same mental abilities as men.
• For example, studies show that professors are less likely to label a woman as ‘brilliant’, and in the field, there is the idea that brilliance outshines hard work.
• Underrepresentation of women fuels this problem, and also contributes to the lack of roles models for young girls looking to make a career in the field.
• Cultural barriers may operate, that dictate social norms and gender roles. Math and sciences as careers are seen as undesirable or unsuitable for women. This impacts self-confidence in adolescent girls and causes them to underperform and drop out during high school. Research shows that in countries where the gender equity gap is smaller, and more women are in careers related to math, the gender gap in terms of math also becomes smaller.
• Cultural barriers may lead to math anxiety, which then becomes another barrier.
• Women are more likely to experience discrimination in the field due to underrepresentation, which may discourage them from pursuing such avenues.
• Women also have to sometimes bear the burden of household duties, which interferes with their ability to put out more work, such as research papers and slows down their attempts to enter the field.

Please reach out to me in the comments for any clarifications!