Gender Bender by the Left

Well I'm no math genius, but the story that there was no math gender gap seemed strange to me, because it doesn't square with the evidence I've observed. I thought it was perhaps that boys had been horribly dumbed down and worn down by the feminized outcome-based education (math "journals", etc.) which rules today. But now we have confirmation the story is wrong. Canada's National Post, "Larry Summers' Revenge":

Unfortunately, journalists of both sexes tend to not be math geniuses. Few of them anywhere on the continent noticed that Ms. Hyde's data actually come a lot closer to supporting Mr. Summers' hypothesis than they do to refuting it.

The study certainly does confirm that there is probably no difference between males and females in math ability, on average. This means that, if one were to plot out the observed mathematical proficiency of a large number of male and female individuals, the resulting graphical pattern would produce two sex-segregated bell curves centred on roughly the same average point.

But that doesn't mean the two profiles would be identical. Decades worth of data show that male populations exhibit greater variance in their observed mathematical ability (and their intelligence more generally, for that matter). This means that men exhibit "fatter tails" on their bell curve, with more statistical outliers in the far-flung domains of genius on one side, and total dullard on the other. In the case of women, on the other hand, typical psychometric findings show their abilities to be clustered more tightly around the mean.

I remember the Summers' flap--the universities have been dumbed down too by the priestesses of political correctness, including Harvard.

Heather MacDonald also takes the study apart in CityJournal:

The Science researchers themselves try to downplay the significance of the two-to-one ratio for whites—the vast majority of students—on the grounds that it should produce a 67 percent to 33 percent disparity in male-to-female representation in math-dependent fields. Yet Ph.D. programs for engineering, they say, contain only about 15 percent women. Therefore, the authors conclude, “gender differences in math performance, even among high scorers, are insufficient to explain lopsided gender patterns in participation in some [science and math] fields.”

This reasoning is flawed, however, because the tests used in their study are pathetically easy compared with what would be required of engineering or other rigorous math-based Ph.D.s. The researchers got their data from math tests devised by individual states to fulfill their annual testing obligations under the federal No Child Left Behind act. NCLB has produced a mad rush to the bottom, as many states crafted easier and easier reading and math tests to show their federal overseers how well their schools are doing.

Give it up feminists, liberals, and the NY Times--you are harming your own credibility with these bogus claims. And doesn't it bother you that you may be harming boys, some very poor, stuck in underperforming schools, left to rot? Do you think elevating their sisters at the expense of their brothers is ethical, or healthy--for them or society? Don't you care about your sons too? Couldn't the next cure or technological breakthrough come from a man? The world won't wait for us.

Can't you be OK with women choosing to compete as they see fit and as best fits them--as individuals? Heather MacDonald:

Far from raising the presumption of gender bias among schools and colleges, the Science study strengthens a competing hypothesis: that the main drivers of success in scientific fields are aptitude and knowledge, in conjunction with personal choices about career and family that feminists refuse to acknowledge.

Precisely.