My understanding is that spatial ability is a reason why the strongest boys still do better in math than the strongest girls, even though girls are generally doing better in school than boys these days.
Re girls and math, I believe we've been through this before--but as a refresher course, and from memory (so I may be off slightly), girls now outperform boys, on average, on standardized math tests in elementary schools. There has also been a MASSIVE improvement in their performance on the SAT and on other measures with higher ceilings over the last 30 years--truly massive. The number of women majoring in math has skyrocketed as well.
On measures that assess the really high ends of math performance, I believe boys used to outscore girls 20 to 1, but now it is 4 to 1, and in some countries and populations, 2 to 1. International studies show that the # of girls who compete in extremely elite math competitions varies wildly by country and in fact, appears to correlate somewhat with the situation for women in that country.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't completely reject the possibility that boys and girls (men and women) have some innate differences in verbal and spatial abilities, but we have NO ABILITY to know what those differences are yet due to entrenched sexism. There is NO REASON to assume that we have suddenly, just NOW, reached the point where sexism doesn't matter and all of that has fallen away to show us true natural abilities. People thought that in the '80s, when boys were outscoring girls 20 to 1.
I believe study authors have been trying their best to separate the genetic and social/cultural aspects of the gaps. Wasn't there a study recently posted to this forum indicating that the greater male variability in mathematics already existed in kindergarten? Hasn't it been shown that the female offspring of women with STEM jobs don't fair any better in math classes than their matched female peers?
As a poor boy who grew up in the 80's and 90's with little going for him but a rare ability in mathematics, I found the focus on female and minority performance disheartening. It's frustrating to see greater enthusiasm for someone you could best on your worst day than there is for you. The message ingrained in my head growing up was that my teachers, administrators, and society in general lamented the fact that I was better at math than my female and minority peers. Even though I grew up poor and came from a broken home, everyone would have been happier if the well-off girl with married parents could have bested me.
There is a pendulum here regarding the push for or against performance of underrepresented demographics. Unfortunately, there's really no way to tell exactly where the pendulum is. In my experience, there has been a significant push to help underrepresented demographics in their math performances, and this push has still failed to equalize results at the top. Ultramarina seems convinced that female students are still experiencing sexism against them, and extrapolates from the current trends that more equality is to come. I seem to recall that the latest research indicates that females peaked relative to males a while ago now, but maybe there will prove to be a resurgence.
I'm not posting this to be argumentative. It's an interesting subject to me, particularly as a father of both a son and a daughter. If they have equal talents, shouldn't those talents lead to equal excitement and equal opportunities? For my own part, it will. My daughter is 4 and I am already playing strategy games with her, and have exposed her to chess. I don't expect such parity outside of our home, however.
