Boys and Girls at STEM
Let me start by expanding a term used throughout this blog: STEM. It stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths”. Now for the provocative question: why are boys better than girls at STEM? Here’s an economist, Alex Tabarrok’s take on the subject. He talks of the so-called “gender-equality paradox”: “Countries with the highest levels of gender equality tend to have the lowest ratios of women to men in STEM education.” Yes, that means those famed Scandinavian countries! The usual explanation for this is that “less is riding on choice of career in the richer, gender-equal countries”. In other words, the benefits of a higher paying STEM job in those countries gets eaten away by high taxes, and in any case, the state takes good care of you regardless of career choice… Another reason for the STEM question is that males have a higher variability . “ Variability” means that there are lots of boys who excel at things and equally, there are lots of boys who ...