An interesting article about gender difference in maths and reading test scores in this week’s economist, ‘Vital Statistics‘:
Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute in Florence and his colleagues have just published the results of a study which suggests that culture explains most of the difference in maths, at least. In this week’s Science, they show that the gap in mathematics scores between boys and girls virtually disappears in countries with high levels of sexual equality, though the reading gap remains.
Here’s a lovely graphic to illustrate the study results:
Basically, it seems that girls, in countries where gender parity is more or less reached (e.g. Iceland). have an absolute advantage. Go read it. I can’t wait to see what the wingnuts make of this…
Nicola Griffith 
You are assuming it seems that these wingnuts can read and then add things up, right? Meanwhile, as the authors of Freakonomics have shown, straight line conclusions don’t mean beans when it comes to the counting.I guess I have been out of the culture wars too long. I didn’t know that this discussion point was still an issue.
Yes, it’s still an issue. Girls in maths classes are still told by everyone around them: you’re unusual, you’re a freak, and anyway you’ll drop out soon, when it gets hard, because girls aren’t really good at this.
In that light, I thought you might like this post by Zak at SchizoFrenetic: http://zakstar.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/unequal-gender-representation-in-objective-media/
I really liked the Joss Whedon video. Thanks for that.