are girls realy weak?

[laffin'] And all this time I thought my post was invisible or sumpin'.

Psychology Today: Why Pretty Girls Can't Do Math: In the August 2011 issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologist Laur Park shares the results of a series of studies with college-age women in which she finds that when women think about romance, they become less interested in studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. College-age men, however, can get interested in romance without any impact on their engagement with math and science.



Math is not for Girls: The Stereotype Begins Early: That's the conclusion of Dario Cvencek and his colleagues at the University of Washington, who wrote a provocative study recently published in the prestigious journal Child Development. In the study, the authors wanted to know whether elementary school children, some as young as first graders, already hold on to the stereotype that "girls don’t do math." Research has shown that in the US both adults and older children believe that math is a male activity and this stereotype is believed to be responsible for the gender gap that exists in math achievement (that males tend to outperform females in math).

Female Teachers May Pass on Math Anxiety to Girls, Study Finds: After a year in the classroom with female teachers who say they are anxious about math, girls are more likely to share that attitude — and score lower on tests, researchers say. Girls have long embraced the stereotype that they’re not supposed to be good at math. It seems they may be getting the idea from a surprising source — their female elementary school teachers.



Why Stereotype Threat Keeps Girls Out of Math and Science, and What to Do About It: Girls are still lagging in the classroom when it comes to math – which has a big impact on tomorrow’s workforce, especially considering the important role the technology industry will play in the economy of the future.

How Negative Expectancies and Attitudes Undermine Females' Math Confidence and Performance: A Review of the Literature: There is a common belief that females are less mathematically capable than males. This belief is fairly constant across populations (see e.g. Eccles, 1987). Classroom studies have shown that this belief is in place by the time children enter the third grade (Crawford, Herrmann, Holdsworth, Randall & Robbins, 1989). This belief is mirrored by students' parents. By the time children enter kindergarten, parents expect girls to do better at verbal tasks and boys to do better at math (Lummis & Stevenson, 1990). This belief continues through elementary school (Entwistle & Baker, 1983) and on throughout the academic process (Hyde & Linn, 1988; Yee & Eccles, 1988).

New York Times: Where Are the Women Executives in Silicon Valley? Though it won’t be news to anyone who has worked in Silicon Valley, a new study confirms that tech companies are woefully behind in including women among their board members and highest-paid executives — not to mention the engineering ranks.



New York Times: Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley: Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, and 22 percent of the software engineers at tech companies over all, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And among venture capitalists, the population of financiers who control the purse strings for a majority of tech start-ups, just 14 percent are women, the National Venture Capital Association says.

I've heard very good things about Finland in recent months. Great health system, low unemployment, fewer work-hours per year than any other developed country, excellent schools. It's nice to count another Finn among my friends!

Your testimony is interesting but it's also anecdotal. As you know, it doesn't carry much weight compared to systematic studies. (Speaking of studies...the statistics are summarized nicely in a series of charts here.)

I'll tell you something about those studies. They establish that there is a widespread belief that girls have less math and science competence. They establish that girls, on the average, have less math and science achievement. But they don't -- can't, really -- prove that girls have less native math and science ability. All of the scholars are careful to blame the disparity in achievement on attitudes, beliefs, and social factors.

In other words, while they can't deny that girls have less ability when it comes to math and science, no one is ready to say that they were born that way.

Do they have evidence to support this position? Not really. Maybe it's just political correctness. I admit that I stand firm with them in holding this conviction despite the lack of evidence. If girls were raised with the same expectations as boys, if the media didn't bombard them with harmful definitions of femininity, if there were a level playing field...then girls would do at least as well as boys in STEM subjects. I believe this wholeheartedly, without a shred of evidence!

In recent months I've made quite a study of the lack of women in computer, software, and Web careers. I've learned a few things:

Employers don't discriminate. The small percentage of women among their employees mirrors the small percentage of qualified women who apply for jobs.

Women aren't prepared for high-tech careers. The number of women majoring in computer science and computer engineering (both of which require advanced math, FWIW) is quite low. Employers who want to equal the imbalance and hire more women are stymied by the lack of potential employees with relevant skills. This is known as the Pipeline Problem.

Women in high-tech firms don't advance the corporate ladder as smoothly as men do. A recent study established that men advance more rapidly into management. The reason? Motherhood. Women with parental responsibilities tend not to put in the many extra hours that high-tech firms require of their top employees. Women who take time off to have children never regain their career momentum...in fact, when they return to work, their progress is found to be slower.

Most women -- more than half -- find the workplace an unsafe environment. Even in high-tech companies, even in 2012, women are the target of sexual attention that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. More than half of women report incidents at their jobs, even in Silicon Valley.

Women have formed organizations, clubs, and support groups to address the challenges they face in high-tech careers. There are a lot of such organizations! They focus mostly on the Pipeline Problem, and on sharing anecdotes about workplace pressures and how to meet them. I don't think these organizations can solve the problem, but they can chip away at it.



I find you attractive, and I don't need the picture to make you so. Smart girls are hot.

Because you took the trouble to engage with me and provoke this, another in my series of TL;DR posts, I'll share one of my very favorite songs with you!



Hots for the Smarts
Richard Thompson

I like a girl in satin
Who talks dirty in Latin
A girl who’s flirty
When she quotes Krishnamurti
If she likes to be goosed
While reciting from Proust
I’ll know she’s my kind of creature
Among her delectables
Her intellectables
Must be her sexiest feature

CHORUS
I’ve got the hots for the smarts
The hots for the smarts
IQ off the charts
Give me brains over hearts
I’ve got the hots for the smarts

I like a girl from Mensa
With a furrowed brow
When the tenses get denser
She gets it – and how!
I need a polymath
Called Cindy or Cath
Who likes her Plato not too platonic
An autodidact
Who can add and subtract
While sipping her Tolstoy and tonic

I need a girl with a feel
For Faraday’s wheel
A girl who’ll drool
For Fleming’s Left Hand Rule
Now you may like pin-ups
Of girls who do chin-ups
Like Xena the Warrior Princess
But I’ll take to dinner
My Nobel Prize winner
With plutonium stains down her dress

I like a girl who knows loadsa
Kierkegaard and Spinoza
Who likes to play chess
Humming Porgy and Bess
She must be able
From her logarithmic table
To find all those decimal places
And what do I care
That she’s nothing to wear
And her teeth are imprisoned in braces

I want a girl with a brain
The size of Siberia
With a haughty disdain
Of all things inferior
I don’t want a learner
With a Bunsen burner
She must be the finished article
Who sees our attraction
As chemical reaction
And charm as merely a particle

I want a PHD
Who reads Linear †˜B’
Who applies her lotion
With a Brownian motion
Now some men may favour
A girl who’s a raver
A tease or a saucy young minx
But I’ll get undressed with
The girl I’m impressed with
Who’s tunnelling under the Sphinx

I’ve got the hots for the smarts
The hots for the smarts
IQ off the charts
Give me brains over hearts
I’ve got the hots for the smarts

[laffin'] And all this time I thought my post was invisible or sumpin'.

Psychology Today: Why Pretty Girls Can't Do Math: In the August 2011 issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologist Laur Park shares the results of a series of studies with college-age women in which she finds that when women think about romance, they become less interested in studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. College-age men, however, can get interested in romance without any impact on their engagement with math and science.



Math is not for Girls: The Stereotype Begins Early: That's the conclusion of Dario Cvencek and his colleagues at the University of Washington, who wrote a provocative study recently published in the prestigious journal Child Development. In the study, the authors wanted to know whether elementary school children, some as young as first graders, already hold on to the stereotype that "girls don’t do math." Research has shown that in the US both adults and older children believe that math is a male activity and this stereotype is believed to be responsible for the gender gap that exists in math achievement (that males tend to outperform females in math).

Female Teachers May Pass on Math Anxiety to Girls, Study Finds: After a year in the classroom with female teachers who say they are anxious about math, girls are more likely to share that attitude — and score lower on tests, researchers say. Girls have long embraced the stereotype that they’re not supposed to be good at math. It seems they may be getting the idea from a surprising source — their female elementary school teachers.



Why Stereotype Threat Keeps Girls Out of Math and Science, and What to Do About It: Girls are still lagging in the classroom when it comes to math – which has a big impact on tomorrow’s workforce, especially considering the important role the technology industry will play in the economy of the future.

How Negative Expectancies and Attitudes Undermine Females' Math Confidence and Performance: A Review of the Literature: There is a common belief that females are less mathematically capable than males. This belief is fairly constant across populations (see e.g. Eccles, 1987). Classroom studies have shown that this belief is in place by the time children enter the third grade (Crawford, Herrmann, Holdsworth, Randall & Robbins, 1989). This belief is mirrored by students' parents. By the time children enter kindergarten, parents expect girls to do better at verbal tasks and boys to do better at math (Lummis & Stevenson, 1990). This belief continues through elementary school (Entwistle & Baker, 1983) and on throughout the academic process (Hyde & Linn, 1988; Yee & Eccles, 1988).

New York Times: Where Are the Women Executives in Silicon Valley? Though it won’t be news to anyone who has worked in Silicon Valley, a new study confirms that tech companies are woefully behind in including women among their board members and highest-paid executives — not to mention the engineering ranks.



New York Times: Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley: Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, and 22 percent of the software engineers at tech companies over all, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And among venture capitalists, the population of financiers who control the purse strings for a majority of tech start-ups, just 14 percent are women, the National Venture Capital Association says.