Study shows females' math skills equal to males

This news comes from the university of Wisconsin-Madison.


Large study shows females are equal to males in math skills

The study author, Janet Hyde, says, "My message to parents is that they should have confidence in their daughter's math performance. They need to realize that women can do math just as well as men. These changes will encourage women to pursue occupations that require lots of math."

I agree; parents AND teachers should never in any way imply that girls can't do the math just because they are girls. That's just not true!

I also thought the mention of 48% of math majors being females was interesting. So, at least in pure math, genders seem to be quite equal. But I personally doubt that will happen in engineering because boys seem to be much more interested in that type of work.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Maria Miller, teaching on a high school in Denmark, some of my best students in mathematics are girls, both in ambitions and in skills. Both genders show the same distribution between skilled and "lesser" (if I may put it that way) skilled.

Thank you for your inspiration in math teaching.

Steen Højrup
Mariager
DK
2:09 PM, October 12, 2010
Anonymous said…
Hi Maria Miller, teaching on a high school in Denmark, some of my best students in mathematics are girls, both in ambitions and in skills. Both genders show the same distribution between skilled and "lesser" (if I may put it that way) skilled.

Thank you for your inspiration in math teaching.

Steen Højrup
Mariager
DK
2:10 PM, October 12, 2010
Mary Ann Johnson said…
Wouldn't it be wonderful if more women choose engineering! Having really good math teachers who believe in both boys and girls abilities is so important. I remember both my algebra and geometry teachers advising me to come and be quiet and they would pass me. They got tired of my efforts to learn via the way they taught. Such a shame. I'm sure part of that response was the old stereotype.
4:44 PM, October 12, 2010
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