Thursday, July 17, 2008

Sex and scIQ: I showed in an earlier post that the male-female scIQ (basic knowledge of science) gap is around one-third of a standard deviation. Folks of all political stripes would agree that sexism in American society has diminished over the past few decades. If the sciIQ gender gap is due to a pattern of men holding women back that has weakened over time, we should see a larger difference among older Americans and a smaller one among younger people.

Here are the means for the "young" and "old" groups (I equalized the number in each group as much as possible since the sample isn't very big):


Mean scIQ score

Ages 43 and up
Men 98.8
Women 94.5
Gap 4.3
N = 213

Ages 18-42
Men 99.5
Women 95.0
Gap 4.5
N = 221

The gender gap is essentially the same for older and younger Americans. Although it might make some female professors pass out upon hearing the news, the data are consistent with the thesis that the sexes differ in their interest and aptitude for science.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:48 PM

    Well, I dunno about that stuff you are peddling, but I wonder if we are seeing more reprehensible black on white violence because of the internet effect or because blacks are becoming emboldened by Obama's seeming win.

    ReplyDelete

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