Cultural Attitudes Affect Girls' Math Performance

The article Culture, Gender and Math in the May 2008 issue of Science, reports on research which compared the results of more than 276,000 15-year-olds in 40 countries who took a test in 2003 run by the OECD. On average, girls scored 2 percent lower than boys in mathematics. When they compared the gaps in mathematics scores to various measures of gender inequality, they found a possible reason for those national variations. In the countries that had the greatest gender inequality, such as Turkey and Korea, girls tended to fare worse compared to boys. In countries with more equality, such as Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, the gender gap in mathematics test scores disappears. (As reported in the Choronicle of Higher Education, 5/30/2008).