Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Less gifted girls than boys in the USA?

Please excuse the intentionally provocative title but I wanted to get as many as possible to read this and share their thoughts.

Every gifted meet up or program that I have taken my DD10 to has had way more boys than girls. When I look at even the AMC8 I see that boys are excelling at a much higher rate than girls.

Even this site has way more 'ds' posts than 'dd' posts.

I have always believed that girls have the same potential as boys but the empirical evidence just is not to be seen any place that I have looked.

Is this an Oedipal thing where mothers are favouring boy children? Is this a male conspiracy? Is it cultural bias in that Asians definitely favour boy children and Asians tend to be over represented in any gathering of the gifted? I don't know and would appreciate help finding answers.

I am asking this because I am trying to find peers for my DD and it hasn't been easy. My DD has been lucky enough to connect with some gifted girls (even a couple of DDs from this site) but the pickings sure seem slimmer for girls.

Would any here like to share their thoughts and offer advice to help me find more success in finding peers for my DD within 1-2 hours drive?

If so, I would be glad to hear them and the advice.

PS

I am not and my DD is not a snob about being gifted in the slightest. I just want my DD to see that she doesn't have to be a bimbo and that there are actually more girls out there than she thinks who like to think deeply and quirkily.

As to empirical evidence: I would say the definitive data that there is no distinction in distribution of IQ based on sex would be the norms for cognitive (IQ tests) and achievement assessments, which are all sorted by age, but not sex, because the statistical analyses do not support separate male and female norms (at least for IQ <= 150, which should cover enough GT individuals, as numbers above that are too rare to affect the norm tables).

My data-free speculation is that GT girls may be more successful at masking/"passing", which reduces the likelihood that they will show up at GT-specific meetups. On the average, girls are also more likely to express their poor instructional fit with internalizing, non disruptive behaviors, while boys (as a generalization) tend to be more likely to express it with externalizing, disruptive behaviors, which increases their chances of being identified as -something-.

My own anecdotal observation is that girls who are smart are fine-- girls who are TOO SMART, on the other hand, tend to be not fine, socially speaking.

Girls are still (culturally-- and this is something that is also seen in transplanted cultures that otherwise produce gifted girls too) cautioned to be "modest" and "gracious" and "socially nice" rather than "bossy" or "aggressive" or other things that are seemingly okay for boys to be/do. Girls are taught, from a VERY young age, that making other people comfortable is THE job for them, socially. They learn it well. Gifted girls have learned to hide by the time schools go about identifying them.

I hesitate to use the hackneyed term "patriarchal" but that does seem to be what it is, at the root of it.

That's my take. I also think that parents are more inclined to see passionate/assertive imaginative or excitable play as a "boy" thing, generally. In girls, it's seen as possibly ADD, selfishness, or just "flighty." They also get shunned by gender-conformist female peers if they have more androgynous traits/interests (and most hg+ people do), and quickly learn that there is a tremendous social cost to being themselves.

If you happen to have a highly gifted girl, the best advice that I can give is to let her know that while dumbing down in social settings is a valid CHOICE, and that you respect that choice-- there are down sides, too. The fact is, though, when they reach adolescence, it's a lonely place, being a gifted girl. The girls don't like you much because you're one of the guys, and the guys LIKE you because you're one of them-- and because you have cute friends and insight into what will work in dating those cute friends. You, on the other hand, get to be a sideshow freak-- a tremendous amount of fun to be around, but far too scary to date, unless you happen to find a super-bright romantic partner who isn't threatened by the possibility that they aren't the smartest one in the couple...

Most bright people have something of their own ego tied to being competitive and bright. The brightest of them very often have it tied to being "the smartest" one. This makes the teen years rough ones for little porcupines, needless to say-- and girls are so, so good at going along to get along, and oh my GOSH, how many times have I watched my DD feign utter ignorance in front of a group of peers or friends. Sheesh.

Humor is a good tool for "matching" with potential friends and dating partners. For my DD, it's THE trait that she uses as a screening tool. It's that important to her. It is also a shorthand way of assessing processing speed and global ability, too. Handy, that.

What I find an interesting model among the first-generation immigrant families that we know is the N. Indian/Pakistani/Persian cultural tradition (and maybe it's unique to the area in which we live, or it's a feature of immigrant culture). In those families, the girls are often encouraged to be VERY assertive, VERY bright, and to not hide it for anyone. That is the community in which DD has found female peers in the largest numbers, by the way.

It's just plain hard. If you accelerate, then your girl is years younger than her high school/college classmates, looking down the road a bit. On the other hand, if you don't-- she's not going to fit in much better for being a decade beyond her peers intellectually (and possibly emotionally/developmentally). There is no good fit until adulthood. That's the reality. I have a 16yo who is (developmentally) unwilling to date or hang out with the 18-20yo peers in her college cohort-- because they are immature. Her attitude about the college party scene is that she doesn't need to experience it to know that some things are simply a colossally bad idea. Her peers don't really see things that way. She's all about consequences and can generally see them coming a mile away. They won't be on par with her in that respect until they are more like 25. Her friends tend to be seniors, the serious and driven high-achievers, and grad students. She is quite lonely, though college is by far the best that it's ever been-- she does HAVE friends, and doesn't feel like she has to hide how capable she is the majority of the time, anyway. She still does things that freak her peers out because most human beings cannot do them-- but mostly others accept it as quirky, rather than alarming.

Sorry that isn't more encouraging. Smart girls hang out with smart boys-- because there aren't groups of smart girls who are willing to BE smart. Nowhere is that more true than in middle school, incidentally.

Here since there are pretty much no services that select by IQ rather than achievement kids aren't really tested unless there are other problems. Boys seem to have other problems more frequestly.

As aeh noted, there doesn't seem to be evidence that boys are more likely to be gifted than girls.

Our experience has been that certain types (most?) gifted boys tend to be such absolutely abysmal fits for the typical classroom environment that their parents can either decide they are delinquents-in-the-making/give up or go searching for what is really going on and find out that their child is gifted. As HK pointed out, most girls fit better into classroom environments and thus, while they may be suffering or developing unproductive habits/beliefs about themselves, they are less likely to wreak the sort of havoc described above re: boys.

I would keep trying gifted programs, camps, etc... whatever her interests happen to be, follow those to the levels that might bring gifted female peers there as well. We have seen a fair number of girls at a university's weekend program, but I do think they tend to be more concentrated in the art and writing workshops. Be sure to let her know that, although it may seem she's alone in her giftedness among female peers, they are out there. They are just going to be harder to find. In my own 40 years, I've come across probably a few dozen gifted females with whom I've personally "connected." Most were flying under the radar, or showing up as "overachievers" in a few cases. The latter were not really overachieving, just showing enough giftedness to do well at whatever the program, class, etc.

The highly gifted program in my district is almost 2/3 boys. I actually looked up data on this subject a year or two ago and found that above a certain IQ level on the CogAT (the test our district uses to identify), boys with very high scores far outnumber girls on certain sections, especially the quantitative section. Our district requires 98th percentile or above. They don't care much about non-verbal, but they want a high quanititative and verbal. So a lot of girls are going to get crossed off the list for the highly gifted program, even if their achievement scores are really high. In fact the data from our district showed that the girls achievement data and grades are higher than the boys, but it's the boys who are more likely to be id'ed as gifted and given specialized instruction.

I don't know why those with very high scores on the CogAt quant and non-verbal sections are more likely to be boys but I'm surprised that no one has made a fuss about this in terms of gifted selection programs and how widely the test is used. A lot of districts eliminate people for services based on one piece of data like the CogAT.

I have to admit that our core solution to this problem has been mainly other stems on the family tree.

I agree with others that identification is more likely if there is a poor fit with the current school environment - and that girls, stereotypically, are socialised to fit in with their peers better.

There's probably also an innate selection bias based on gender stereotypes. Here's a (likely boring) anecdote. I have 2 DDs who are school age, both very high achieving. The eldest is very good at literacy based tasks and has won a scholarship place to a much sought after school; the school is renowned for its very strong academic results in the later years but possibly is less rigorous at junior level than her current school. She's very good at music and swims competitively and this school caters well for this.

The younger has also been promised a place soon. She is also very highly achieving but the one we had tested as she gets irritable when under stimulated and is mathy. She's been allowed to move at her own pace this year and has finished 3 years ahead in maths, it's a co-ed school but she's easily the school's best maths student. She's at the top of her year for English as well. However, her lovely teacher warned me that each year I'd need to advocate for her to be appropriately extended and that, with her personality, DD would fail to thrive if not extended.

There is a gifted school in the area that we've overall rejected due to its limited sport and extra-curricular activities. In addition, it doesn't do any better overall in its senior level academic results. It does, however, let students work at their own pace at junior school level, and I've been worried that this is what my second DD needs.

I thought it wouldn't hurt to know my options so called the gifted school recently. The (male - I think it's relevant) staff member in charge of admissions confirmed that she'd meet their criteria and asked about her strengths; I said she was very mathy, very good on computers and, according to her teacher, top of the year in science as well. He sort of chuckled and said, "Well, she's the sort of girl who really would have been better being a boy".

I was stunned. And we certainly WON'T be sending her there. And it makes me wonder how many girls are subtly discouraged from displaying maths based skills because they're girls.

I have 2 DYS, one DD and one DS. I will say, off-the-bat, that male social relationships seem infinitely easier than female relationships.

madeinuk, I wish that you lived closer, because my DD10 really likes your DD.

I was as shocked as you are, though, when the ELA G&T classes were formed in DD's 3rd grade...and DD was a girl among many, many boys in the class! Actually, I figured with an ELA class, the bias might actually be tipped in favor the girls (I knew of more girl early readers, it seemed, than boys). Students were selected for the class, however, based upon a slew of tests. The tests included IQ, CogAT, Iowa, and MAP (among other factors). Apparently, boys did much better than girls on these tests (as DD was one of the only girls).

In advanced math class, which is EXTREMELY boy-heavy (and I DON'T think that they should let in girls just to even it out!), DD is typically paired with boys in group-work.

One of the reasons we went ahead and had DD fully IQ tested at the age of 8 (rather than waiting) was that we'd heard that girls can start to "hide" if testing is done later. Seeing the social pressures that have already started, I am very glad that we had testing done when we did.

DD has always been EXTREMELY independent and self-directed. She is not particularly susceptible to social pressure (so far). I can easily see a more sensitive female feeling the pressure to "dumb-down" and pretend to be interested in things that she is not. So far, DD doesn't seem to even attempt to fake being interested in things that she is not...which has a downside. She has always had, as HK astutely points out, more androgynous traits/interests. Until recently, she also spent a fair amount of time with boys (seems we've hit an age where that is getting more complicated...). Still, DD's personality DEFINITELY places her at risk for being labeled "too assertive," or other unpleasant things (sigh).

I think that HK's assessment is spot on. I do not believe that there are truly more HG+ boys than girls. I do wonder a bit about the tests themselves that identify, but I think that the bigger factor is probably social pressure on girls.

Luckily, DD has a very large class at school and she seems to have found her "people." We are bracing ourselves for middle school.

I also feel that HK's assessment ring true, particularly for my own childhood. I will add that my ODS lays it out as obvious while YDD is quieter, in part because DS was so much more obvious and talkative, and he's older. It's taken a lot more encouragement to make her see that he's not "smarter than" her, they just express it in different ways that aren't always obvious. I feel like she's concerned about being like him -- he's always felt different, and he mostly embraces that, and I don't think she feels comfortable with standing out. I see her potential for masking as super high. So far, she still has a strong independent streak, and she plays with boys and girls rather than a girly group (she's not into girl drama, which there is in other circles I know about from mom-friends), but I am so torn about how to support her. I think she'd be better off home schooled, but she loves people so much -- classmates entertain her.

Looking back to last year (1st grade), before I knew better, I feel like I respected DD's teacher and I thought she would stay on top of DD's needs. The teacher's passion is reading, which is fine, though I found out later that she was giving a boy in class math extension work (upper level worksheet packet, which didn't appeal to DD, who prefers direct interaction) but not DD (despite pointing out to me how intuitive DD was) until I mentioned that DD had totally withdrawn. It seemed like quite a blind spot to me. We had a huge setback in her love of math.

DD didn't consider herself particularly strong at math, because she said that boy was the math wiz in class. She's finally confident in math again and considers it her favorite at school, but now literacy has dropped to least favorite, because this year's teacher gives her math support (thanks to the report that really stressed this), but DDs verbal abilities are under-supported.

I feel like at our school there are a lot of advanced readers early on, while the district overall centers on math in their gifted extension (meaning, they offer an accelerated path in math, but only enrichment and differentiation in other subjects, with AP ultimately in HS). Even at middle school level, there's no advanced literacy class. The best way to work at a higher reading level is to accelerate a grade-level.

So girls being strong at verbal abilities are going to get the short stick, really, in terms of nurturing their high abilities. If you were just treated as a top-group reader, with slightly deeper reading material for in-class instruction, instead of gifted in verbal abilities, you might not feel as confident in your giftedness as the math wiz. It's as if the high verbal abilities are second-tier appreciated.