Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office | Hacker News Reader

Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office

nytimes.com

33 pointscolinprince24 comments

One thing that always bothers me about articles like this is that they compare gender equality among young people, which are much better than they ever were, with gender equality among people who were born 50-60 years ago and thus obviously grew up in a different environment regarding gender equality. C-suite gender distribution will always be a pretty lagging indicator of current gender equality.

But otherwise this article makes some good points. I remember in school seeing lots of people (almost all girls) diligently highlighting and color-coding, taking extremely detailed and clean notes, and otherwise spending a lot of time working on academics outside of the metrics which were actually being measured (homework, projects, and tests). It always struck me, a male, as an inefficient use of time. But I was almost on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, with all my class' papers in one disorganized pile and generally doing everything at the last minute. I wonder if this stereotypical girl approach to doing academic work is due to socialization or some other factor

In 1990, 35% of all software developers were women. In 2016, only 26% of software developers were women. The situation for women in tech was much better 30 years than it is now.

There are some professions, such as medicine, that have become more welcoming to women. Roughly 50% of new doctors in the USA are women. Likewise, there are more female lawyers than ever before. But there are some professions that have gone in the wrong direction, and software development is among the most important of these.

See more here:

http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pus...

In Sweden, 1990 saw an increase in unemployment as well as a change in gender segregation. Industries that was dominated by women saw more men in sectors such as health care, while areas that was dominated by men like construction saw more women.

In about 1993 the trend changed with lower unemployment. More women started to go into health care sector and more men in the construction sector. From 1993 and 2017, that trend has continued and current 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated profession.

The situation with gender segregation is much worse today than 30 years and this is universal for both genders. You might applaud the "Roughly 50% of new doctors in the USA are women", but Sweden has already seen that and continued down the path where some doctor professions are now 90%+ women. The same gender segregation we can see overall also happens within professions that subdivides into specialties, and to take a different example, in education we see language being almost 100% women while physical education being almost 100% men, while overall the teaching profession is heavily dominated by women with around 80%+. In IT we can see a similar divide happening with for example graphic design vs server infrastructure.

The linked article claims that the tech industry is somewhat unique and uses wage difference as evidence, but gender segregation is not unique to tech. All work professions are following more or less identical paths to more gender segregation, and there is no distinction between men and women in this regard. With 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men working in gender segregated professions, if women are being pushed away from technology then men are pushed with exactly equal force from professions dominated by women.

And this matters. One reason why girls "beat" boys at school is bias in evaluation. Just like the typical experiment where people send in identical application for tech positions and see a difference in acceptance rate based on what gendered name they use, similar experiment show the same results for academic reports. The topics in school where boys do worse is exactly those where the wast majority of teachers are women, with the reverse results for girls.

I can make a simple suggestion as to the discrepancy between girls' school results and those in 'real life': the 'modern' school system in most western countries is tailored more to the way most girls/women work than it tailors to boys/men. This is not the case for the average work environment which is more competitive and generally a better fit to the way most men work - possibly because until recently it was mostly dominated by men. As to whether this will change - schools focusing more on boys and the workplace becoming more attuned to women - only time will tell. The former seems more likely than the latter as competitiveness is inherent in the desire to gain status and wealth.

That's very interesting. I never looked at it that way. Can you elaborate on how schools are better suited for girls?

There is a host of literature on the subject from many authors but I'll surmise the problem: schools reward behaviour like being quiet and attentive in class, sitting still for longer periods, not goofing off and following instructions which is far more common in girls than it is in boys while punishing typically 'boyish' behaviour (which more or less comes down to the opposite of the former). Outdoors and practical activities - which are more aligned to the way boys learn - are limited to a minimum or even taken away completely while indoors, formal classroom-based teaching based on literacy and numeracy is the norm, an environment tailored to those aforementioned traits which are more common in girls. Boys do better when they have positive male role models but male (and here it is important to realise I'm not just talking about sex but also about behaviour, i.e. 'typically male') teachers and assistants are as rare as hen's teeth in the primary and increasingly also in the secondary school systems. Continuous assessment plays a larger role in setting final results, again favouring girls as they are essentially being rewarded for having the earlier characteristics while boys are being punished for lacking them. In some school systems - the Swedish being one of them according to the teacher's union - girls get higher test scores than boys for the same performance when the tests are scored by the pupil's teachers [1]. A study titled "Grading and gender : Equality or discrimination?" [2] arrives at similar conclusions.

[1] https://lararnastidning.se/pojkar-missgynnas-i-betygsattning...

[2] http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1205...

It says:

"Hard work and discipline help girls outperform boys in class, but that advantage disappears in the work force."

Maybe hard work and discipline are the problem? Most of the guys I know who do well find ways to cheat the system, at least a bit. I'd use the distinction that Paul Graham has made about "naughty" versus "evil". Some people go to far and they end up in jail -- those are the "evil". But the naughty cheat just a little bit, and they get ahead. Maybe it is women's integrity that keeps them from being successful?

Girls get better grades then boys. That is because grades measure, or at least are influenced by, conformity.

Boys do better on tests then girls. Because tests are objective and not subjective.

Tests are not objective. Have you ever tried to design an unbiased survey question? It’s really hard.

Tests are biased toward native speakers of a language and people who share a culture with the test creators. The subset of questions can have a bias inherent to them. There are just a million ways that they’re not “objective,” and that’s not even getting into the context around the taking of the test!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406121532.h...

Boys do better on tests?

On math SATs they do.

http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/satnew.png

Can't find a similar chart for verbal, but it looks like in combined scores boys outscore girls.

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/29/news/mn-39684

Re: Girls consistently outperform boys academically. And yet, men nonetheless hold a staggering 95 percent of the top positions in the largest public companies.

The top positions are dominated by obsessive workaholics. In my opinion women are genetically wired to focus more on family. Long hours and business travel heavily cut into caring for family. I'm not making a value judgement, just an observation. While I do believe there is gender discrimination at work: people tend to hire clones of themselves, there are biological factors also.

I find the abstraction of men vs. women to not be the optimal one.

Or rather, another (better) way to ask the question, is "Why are the obsessive, power-hungry, workaholics who hold these positions, primarily men?" Rather than "Why do men do better than women?

Except you’re implying that they are doing better in the first place...

Look, I’m pretty much an obsessive workaholic myself (getting better now that we’ve got kids) and I was making about 5x of what my wife was making when I met her. She’s got a 4 year degree from a nice private university and I went to state university.

She is absolutely every bit as smart and hard working as I am, but she never wanted a career in an office.

In our first few years together I helped her with her resume, suggested all the work she was doing would absolutely qualify her for making at least twice as much as she was making and she just didn’t want to play the game. She wanted to be a mom, and didn’t even want to play the game until motherhood showed up.

If she did what I do every day (at now almost 20x what she was making when I met her) she’d jump out a window.

Conversely I wouldn’t take double the pay I’m making to stay home with the kids, I love ‘em, but jeez- I don’t know how my wife does it.

She would definitely not consider herself doing better if we swapped places. And I think that’s the key. Man or woman, some people just don’t have the same goals, and running a company and making lots of money don’t necessarily play any part in what they aspire to do.

Yeah. While it's important to make sure women who, for whatever reason, want to do this, are not dismissed on behalf of their gender (and this definitely happens), it's also a little lazy to do men vs. women, and interpret the difference as a signal of a social disparity.

>> In my opinion women are genetically wired to focus more on family.

What does "genetically wired" mean?

It means having two X chromosomes is associated with particular behavioral traits, just as it's associated with physiological traits.

I don't understand what you mean by "associated". How are chromosomes associated with behaviour?

Also, what are "behavioural traits"? Is picking one's nose a "behavioual trait", for example? Is that associated with one's chromosomes?

Associated means correlated with.. I gave you an analogy of chromosomes being associated with physical traits.

>>How are chromosomes associated with behaviour?

The same way they're associated with physiological traits. Personality traits are not all learned. There is a large genetic effect on behaviour. There is plenty of scientific evidence for this.

>>Is picking one's nose a "behavioual trait", for example?

How am I supposed to know that? Why would any researcher conduct a study to uncover that?

I think the point is that man and woman are different biologically in a lot of ways that tend to crop up in their personalities. The interesting thing is many of the gaps in personality traits are largest in “prosperous, healthy, and more gender-egalitarian cultures”. Have a look at the Big 5 personality traits page on Wikipedia [1] specifically the part on gender differences (for some reason the mobile site won’t let me get a permalink to that section.) To back up the gp’s claim that woman are wired to focus more on family I would say this goes a long with woman scoring higher in agreeableness particularly compassion. Compassion is sacrificing things like your own time and comfort for that of others. In my results page on understandmyself.com, which is a big five personality test and assessment site, it states that woman score on average in the 61.5 percentile for agreeableness while men score in the 38.5 percentile on average. This is a pretty stark difference and there is roughly the same gap between men and woman in the compassion part of agreeableness. As a side note people with high agreeableness are also less likely to ask for raises and promotions.

In the article it spoke of woman being better at school work and it says woman are more conscientious than men in school work. Conscientiousness is another big 5 personality trait and women do score slightly higher on average than men in this trait they score 51.5 on average while men score 49.5 on average. They score higher on the orderliness part of conscientiousness while men score higher in the industriousness part. Women outscore men in orderliness 54.5 to 45.5 and men slightly outscore woman in industriousness 51.5 to 49.5.

The article also says that woman are more anxious about their school work. In my opinion this is probably due to the fact that woman score higher on neuroticism than men. Neuroticism just means you’re more prone to negative emotions such as fear and anxiety.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

All that stuff about the big-5 personality traits sounds about as accurate as horoscopes.

Well I'm no expert (not even in the field of psychology), so most of my trying to pin all these problems down to personality traits may not be all that scientific though it seems to be aligned with what I've studied so far. It would be wonderful to hear from someone that is an expert on what I might have said wrong or just to aid in the discussion.

As for the legitimacy of the Big 5 from what I've heard the big 5 personality test is one of the better ways to determine personality in psychology. Wikipedia seems to say this about the big 5s acceptance in Psychology [0].

> In a 1980 symposium in Honolulu, four prominent researchers, Lewis Goldberg, Naomi Takemoto-Chock, Andrew Comrey, and John M. Digman, reviewed the available personality instruments of the day.[1] This event was followed by widespread acceptance of the five-factor model among personality researchers during the 1980s.[2]

As far as putting personality solely due to being a matter of Sex I am not saying that. I'm not saying all men or women are like this just on average this is the way their personalities are. I feel these differences on average might explain a lot of the things brought up in the article. As an example of not every man and woman having the same personality traits even though I am male I score much higher than the average woman on agreeableness. This just means I need to be more careful when negotiating salary or being taken advantage of, which trust me in at least subtle ways that may not even be on purpose from the perpetrator I get taken advantage of because of my personality all the time. Higher agreeableness isn't all bad for those who have it, because there are disadvantages to low agreeableness too. People low in agreeableness are more likely to commit crimes. It stated on my understandmyself.com report that low agreeableness is one of the major reasons there are more men behind bars (as opposed to women), because they are more likely to commit these crimes. Here's a clip from a research paper about the big 5 traits and crime if you don't believe that personalities could explain that difference [3]:

> Big Five and criminal behaviour

> Within the criminological literatures, studies have shown that certain traits are highly associated with a wide range of criminal behaviours. For example, Wiebe noted that among the “Big Five” components of trait personality, agreeableness and conscientiousness have been found to be predictive of adult criminal behaviour. Earlier, John et al. found that delinquents aged 12-13 years old who had engaged in burglary, drug dealing, and strong arming behaviour scored lower on Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness and obtained higher scores on Extraversion than non-delinquents. Heaven found neuroticism in addition to agreeableness and conscientiousness to be predictive of delinquent behaviour.

Wikipedia's page on Personality [4] seems to think highly enough about the Big 5 personality traits to feature it on its page. Notice you won't find mention of Meyer's Briggs (which has personality types encoded as INFJ, ESTP, etc.) at all on that page even though Meyer's Briggs seems to be a popular test among non-psychologists I've heard it is not very popular for psychologists.

To quote wiki's Personality page on the Big 5 personality test [4]:

> Personality is often broken into statistically-identified factors called the Big Five, which are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (or emotional stability). These components are generally stable over time, and about half of the variance appears to be attributable to a person's genetics rather than the effects of one's environment.[5][6]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Re...

[1]:Goldberg LR (May 1980). Some ruminations about the structure of individual differences: Developing a common lexicon for the major characteristics of human personality. Symposium presentation at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association (Report). Honolulu, HI.

[2]: Saville & Holdsworth Ltd. (1984). Occupational Personality Questionnaires manual. Esher, Surrey: Saville & Holdsworth Ltd.

[3]: http://www.aseanjournalofpsychiatry.org/index.php/aseanjourn...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality

[5]: Lucas & Baird 2004, pp. 473-485

[6]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263324524_Genetic_a...

Who ever flagged this "away", I would really like to know why. Flagging is not feedback; you can't fix people by flagging. If I'm wrong or bad, please explain with strong evidence & logic how I am wrong or bad. Is that asking too much? Arrrrg. -tabtab

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