Are boys better in Physics - my own little research
During the course of history, there were many significant turning points.
If you lived in the times of Galileo, what would you do? Would you defend him? Would you remain silent? Or maybe, just maybe, you would join the mob and take your favourite pichfork?
During the regime of Nazism, who would you be? One of those with their right hand in the air, or this guy, August Landmesser
What this devil, Alessandro Strumia said?
He made a presentation, supported by data, that at the top level, men are better in physics.
What a shock - if you are blind!
Who is that guy at all?
Actually, he is absolutely great scientist, and this is the proof
11 of his papers have more than 500 citations - crazy good result!
and 62 more papers with 100-500 citations - absolutely crazy good result!
Is he right?
Absolutely, and 100% confirmed, men are better in math on the highest levels, and this is the Reference
There is nothing to discuss, it's a fact. You can like it or not, but that's the fact.
Maybe you even don't know what the fact is... But it's still your problem
My Little Research
In Serbia, there is a strong tradition of competition in Math and Physics among the students.
On average, girls perform better or equal when it comes to regular school grades (all subjects mixed together in this statistics).
Grades are given on the scale from 1 to 5.
However, best of the best compete on the:
- School Level (regular holder of the grade 5 can achieve about 70-80 %)
- Town Level (regular holder of the grade 5 can achieve about 50-60 %)
- Regional Level (regular holder of the grade 5 can achieve about 20 %)
- Republic Level (regular holder of the grade 5 can achieve about 0-20 %)
I visited http://takmicenja.ipb.ac.rs/ with the full database for Regional and Republic Competitions
- for Regional competition I counted the winners by gender
- for Republic competition I counted those who won the First Prize, also by gender
Just to clarify this, First Prize is calculated by a bit complicated normalization formula, but in practice, 92 - 100 % is the first prize.
Let's see the results
- Girls and boys are equally good in accomplishing regular school tasks
- The same goes for physics
No discrimination, no bias, no fancy meaningless words.
1 : 1 Ratio!
On Regional Level Competition, high schools:
- Boys won 71 time
- Girls won 32 times
2.21 : 1 Ratio!
Now, if... The girls are performing equally well on the top level physics... This ratio will be more or less the same. Give or take some sampling errors.
On Republic Level Competition, high school students:
- Boys won the First Prize 177 times
- Girls won the First Prize 50 times
3.54 : 1 Ratio!
Always choose the best people, don't use any sort of quotas. I lived in such country - and it's one of the poorest countries in Europe! It's fundamentally wrong!
Even more important, women are not mindless drones without free will! If they don't like/ want to pursue a career in Top-Level Physics - so what?
Let them do what they want to do!
Ehm. So the conclusion of that paper that you cite reads:
You are citing it a bit out of context.
Ok... Maybe...
But how do you explain the fact that PISA test and general school tests are showing that boys are in much smaller advantage *(if at all).
On the other hand, we see that in Serbian physics competition we can see 2:1 ratio on regional level, 3:1 ratio on national level and 5:1 ratio (even 10:1) in Math Olympics?
If there is no measurable and real advantage at all on high-level skills in math/physics I would expect to see much smaller differences.
Or, at least, I would expect to see at least one nation where girls are more prevalent, or at least one recorded case that 3 girls won the first, the second and the third place.
Also worth mentioning, men are better in chess, game correlated with math skills.
I also don't understand why do we need 50:50 ratio in physics?
Why it's not ok to have 3:1 ratio in physics and 1:3 ratio in biology?
What is the advantage of having 1:1 and 1:1?
With that difference that there are no initiatives to increase the number of men in professions where women are prevalent :)
I am not saying anything about a 50:50 ratio or other type of ratios. I don't get how your reply is related to my comment. My point is that you are using that reference out of context.
Baš tako. Na kraju krajeva svi smo mi Čoveci*
* 3. Razred, gramatika. Naša učiteljica pita mog drugara, šta je množina od "Čovek"? A on ko iz puške: "Čoveci!". 😂
Pre nekoliko godina gleado sam dokumentarac o Norveškoj. I u tom dokumentarcu facit je bio, da što razvijenije jedno društvo/Zemlja, to manje žene uzimaju poslove u industriji i u tzv. STEM-u a sve više ih je u socijalnim poslovima.
U siromašnim zemljama industrija i STEM su mogućnost za ljude, da izađu iz bede, ali to u razvijenim zemljama nije tako akutno, tako da ljudi više rade poslove koji im prijaju.
Da, da, znam za tu statistiku
The highest percentage of women in STEM is observed in - Albania?!
Albania, the most traditional country one can imagine.
SRB, CRO, HUN... High percentage
Scandinavia - very low percentage
From my perspective, the answer to this is very simple.
In poor countries, education is the ticket for better life.
"Da diplomiram, pa da emigriram" (to get my degee and emigrate)
In "happy countries" good life can be achieved even if jeopardized by following interests and passion. This is why we see women do women things.
Albania is by far not the most traditional country one can imagine. I think it has a worse reputation than it deserves in Serbia. I was in both countries, and (you will not like to hear that) there is little difference in how progressive people are - at least in the cities. Rural countryside in Albania, and even more so in Kosovo, could be very different indeed from what I heard.
Albania was communist as well, and thus Religion and tradition is marginalized (again: in the cities and at the coast, not in the mountains). If I want to imagine the most traditional country possible, I'd go with Saudi Arabia.
Generally speaking, among almost any kind of skill, I believe the power of evolution has caused the distribution of men to be flatter than the distribution of women - take a population and pick out the 5% worst and 5% best at almost any skill or subject (in this case: physics), and I think it's quite likely that there will be mostly men in this group of people.
Based on that I do believe that if you find some average people on the street, the chances are that there isn't much correlation between sex and skills in physics - but a top notch physician is more likely to be a man than a woman.
There is also another force at play, women generally spend more time and energy on birth and childcare, hence they have less time available for academics.
And again, there is nothing wrong with that
If we compare the results of Kalenji people in marathon, they are way, way better than for example - Serbs.
2:13:57 Borislav Devic
2:01:39 Eliud Kipchoge
2:17:01 Mary Keitany (woman
2:25:29 Remzi Laho for ALB
2:25:06 Trpe Martinovski for FYRM
2:24:18 Drago Musić for MNE
2:17:05 Drago Paripovic for CRO
How it became wrong to say that even Kanyan Women are faster than Balkan Men?
How is it wrong to say that Men are more successful in High-End Physics?
I simply don't understand...
I don't necessarily buy that, "Men are better in math." This suggests that the distribution of men's math abilities and women's have mean values that are different. I might be wrong, but I don't see evidence for this. My anecdotal experience is that the "average" male and female having very similar difficulties with mathematics. If there is a different, it is within the noise.
I do think that there is evidence for the "Greater Male Variability Hypothesis," which tells us that the distribution of traits in men is greater than in women, therefore there are more men in the tail of the distribution. Hence there are more boys that win math competitions, as you pointed out.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis)
Exactly what we observe in school kids:
For "normal physics" boys and girls are equal, because the Mean of the distribution is equal and the spread is not to wide.
Once we compare high level physics - boys are becoming to dominate.
They will also dominate in crime :D
Mindless feminism and similar movements glorifying the idea of made up oppressors and their made up victims (oppressed) are taking their last breaths...
Pro level victims! Or how we can screw up the evolution:
Evolution = survival of the fittest
Postmodern logic:
Good for you, you are equal, but you are still not compatible with the reality.
You still don't have any skills for the sport called Life.
And unfortunately, there are no better than you to fix the problems you caused.
I may quote my biology teacher from high school:
Evolution is not the survival of the fittest. It's the survival of the fuckest. If you manage to reproduce faster than you are killed, you win the game.
exactly... and it's more fun anyway. I have already done my part. 😄
I've started too, but I fear I might not be finished yet^^
LOOOOOL I'm stealing this quote :D
No problem. In German it's even better, because "fickest" is really sounding similar to "fittest"^^
Equality of opportunity favors competence, meaning that most capable and competent people end up in top positions (on average), which is how the Western civilization made its technological and scientific progress, and because of which we have electricity, we have medicine, we have science, etc.
Equality of outcome (equity) has resulted in deaths of tens of millions of people during the communism establishment.
Think about it.
Obviously, there are other traits, like ambition etc., but also differences in fostering, interfering with the picture, so it doesn't even have to be the actual talent for physics/math which produces the outcome.
Anyway, the difference does exist, and thus any 1:1 quota is a discrimination against men. Btw.: It is also bad for the women in the field, as they are seen as those who are just here because of the quota, and not because of their skills, even if they are skilled.
Quotas are - bad.
I used to study biology, very "girly" faculty. It was so bad that we were not able to make our sports team, so we played volleyball together with girls. That part was not bad at all :D
I would never vote for more boys in biology.
In my old institute, in Serbia, the majority of researchers were females. The ratio was 2 or even 3 to 1. I was carrying around all the boxes you can imagine. (and no volleyball at all :( )
Now I'm going to work in a physics lab, and we have 3 times more females.
I see nothing wrong in letting all the people to find their niche
You don't have to tell me... When I started in our "food toxicology" department, I was the only male among 7 pre-docs. Nothing wrong with that. We have a female boss, are now (with me) 50/50 split at the post doc level. I can't see why we'd ever need a quota.
Flawed analysis conflates natural ability with test scores influenced by societal exposure.
In math, physics, chess... Across all the countries... From elementary school to adolescence... During very long time span...
Maybe it's not real result, but it looks like one
Well, as others have pointed out, it's not so much that men are better in physics based on the conclusions and the paper itself as mathowl pointed out, you can only really say 'Men get better results in physics' - which is entirely different and an important distinction to make.
I have no idea to what extent sexism or inequality or racism or whatever is involved, though it's more than likely always a thing, given the historical nature of academia - for example, women not being allowed tto do research, go to University etc for much of our history, meaning there are, to date, very few historically significant female figures and role models, whether or not they were actually capable of achieving great things. So kids raised in school can only learn that 99.5% of historical geniuses are men (and yeah, white)
But there are numerous quite famous studies raising interesting factors not raised here regarding societal pressure, racism or percieved racism, sexism or percieved sexism and so on.
Groups of black and white, or male and female students are given a test, but the approach is done in two dfferent ways; either 'it's not a test' and 'all students score equally', or it is a test' and 'this race/gender scores better usually'.
As you can guess, blacks and women did far worse than whites and men when they were initially singled out, but the results were equalised when students were equalised, and in many cases blacks and women actually fared slightly better than whites and men.
Of course this is not a conclusive point - much more research needs to be done - but it raises the issue that the absolute, non-discussible-facts-based-on-numbers-alone are not to be taken in isolation.
There is no country that I know of which is either totally neutral regarding gender and race - which makes sense given the nature of humanity and how, you know, women and men are not actually equal biologically - so it's just as reasonable if not more to say the societal impact is the significant cause as it is to say biology of the brain is the cause.
Even if there was a perfectly equal society in which men and women are completely indistinguishable, globalisation and ubiquitous news and media around the world creates a cross-culture that would likely bring this knowledge to those women and create a perception of sexism regardless. Again, I can't say this with facts to back it up, but it's another point of discussion.
I read up on this some years ago, how the balance of white and grey matter, which serve different connective functions in the brain, is different in men and women which drew certain conclusions, but this idea has since been broken down (something I have yet to go back into reading about) and thus needs a lot more research to reach any solid consensus. So again, there is absolutely something to discuss - many more things than those I raise above
Sorry, English is not my native language. In Serbian, better means "scores better results"
This computer is better = has more RAM, faster processor
Djokovic is playing tennis better than me and wins tournaments = he is better than me
In that case - we can't have science or at least a great part of that.
If we dismiss all sorts of meta-analyses there is nothing to conclude.
For example, sports activities are healthy.
No we can't say that... Because people who like sports are maybe pre-supposed to play sports.
Kenyans are not that good in long-distance running, maybe it's just due to culture and not the fact they are fat-less with fantastic body proportions.
I only don't understand why it's not a taboo to say that women from Kenya are faster than men from Balkans, because it's a measurable fact.
However, it's a sexist taboo to say that boys are better than girls in high-level physics/math, although it's a measurable fact.
And it's Ultra Racist to say that white people from the Balkans have higher IQ than Kenyans, which is also a measurable fact?
Well, one person can say a computer is better because it has more RAM which is what they need for their purposes. Another will say it's better because it has a Pantone display showing accurate real-world colours.
That is to say, and I think you know this already, that there are other facets to consider. Yes, the RAM is objectively better in computer A, and if we decide to grade a computer based on RAM performance alone, we can conclude that A is objectively better than B.
But this completely skips the necessity of HDD space and speed, screen resolution, portability etc.
Likewise, saying men get higher grades can only objectively say just that 'men get higher grades'. We completely ignore all other elements I mentioned above which, unless you can show me through research and evidence is untrue, is, as you say, 'a measurable fact'.
I think you, as an academic yourself, should know this.
Well, I never said that. What I did say, in case you didn't understand due to your Serbian native tongue, is that due to sexism and racism which was objectively a real problem in history (women were not allowed to work/vote/do research/be attributed to work), reflects part of the culture of the modern day, regardless of whether it persists nowadays. Measurable fact.
Again I haven't heard me or anyone say that but you defeat your own argument here because again, IQ tests only measure specific features of intelligence, completely omitting social and cultural elements, as well as other forms of intelligence which are just if not more valid: interpersonal/intrapersonal, creative/musical, physical, linguistic, memory, reasoning, verbal agility, etc. This again, is a measurable fact.
The same applies to your physics results. Give humanity more credit than simply a letter grade average to depict who is 'better'. We are far more complex than that. Try to consider why those results are actually there, before you jump on the bandwagon of 'well there you go, absolute fact, indisputable, genetic proof that men are better'.
To be clear, this argument isn't about sexism, it's about academic bias
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