New research published in Psychological Science finds that girls outperform boys in STEM studies in two out of every three countries, yet in nearly every country, more girls are capable of STEM studies than actually enroll in college-level STEM programs. That might not be too surprising, but what is surprising is that the researchers found that a nation’s level of gender equality inversely correlates with the percentage of women who earn STEM degrees.
As Olga Khazan explains in The Atlantic, “Just 18% of American computer-science college degrees go to women. This is in the United States, where many college men proudly describe themselves as ‘male feminists’ and girls are taught they can be anything they want to be.”
In contrast, Khazan notes, 41% of college graduates in STEM fields in Algeria are female. “There, employment discrimination against women is rife and women are often pressured to make amends with their abusive husbands,” she writes.
The authors of the Psychological Science paper, Gijsbert Stoet of the School of Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University and David C. Geary of the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, explain this paradox as follows: “A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures in less gender-equal countries promote girls’ and women’s engagement with STEM subjects.” As Khazan explains, girls in countries with low gender equality may pursue STEM professions because such professions “…offer a more certain financial future than, say, painting or writing.” (Levels of gender equality are measured in accordance with the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index.)
Adds Khazan, “The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad: It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested.”
Khazan quotes University of Wisconsin gender-studies professor Janet Shibley Hyde, who wasn’t involved with the study, as saying, “Some would say that the gender STEM gap occurs not because girls can’t do science, but because they have other alternatives, based on their strengths in verbal skills. In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less.”
To be sure, many girls who show sufficient aptitude to excel at STEM studies in college show an even higher aptitude for non-STEM studies. However, the percentage of girls whose greatest aptitude lies in STEM exceeds the percentage of women who actually complete STEM degrees. “That means there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects,” Khazan writes. “The women-in-STEM advocates could, for starters, focus their efforts on those would-be stem stars.”
However, she concludes, “…some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science.”
