Thursday, July 24, 2008

Well, it's about time!

Ha! Some of us knew this all along.

Take a look an article entitled "Study: Girls equal to boys in math skills". Here's part of what it says:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that, at math, they are just as tough as boys.

In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in math in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.

Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls, who grew up believing it, wound up avoiding harder math classes.

"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said
...
The stereotype that boys are better at math has been fueled, at least in part, by suggestions of biological differences in the way little boys and little girls learn. This idea is hotly disputed; former Harvard president Lawrence Summers was castigated in 2005 when he questioned the "intrinsic aptitude" of women for top-level math and science.

Hyde has challenged that idea, arguing in an earlier study that in cognition and in many other behaviors, the two sexes are more similar than they are different.

It turns out that these days 48 per cent of baccalaureate degrees in mathematics are awarded to women.

That's nice!

1 comment:

  1. That was one of the wonderful things about Smith. No one ever said 'you can't do that because you're a girl.' I'm glad that society is finally admitting that girls are equal to boys in academics.

    ReplyDelete

New policy: Anonymous posts must be signed or they will be deleted. Pick a name, any name (it could be Paperclip or Doorknob), but identify yourself in some way. Thank you.