https://nuovoeutile.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Stereotype-threat-Spencer-1999.pdf

Stereotype Threat and Women's Math Performance

The differences model, which argues that males and females are vastly different psychologically, dominates the popular media. Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. Results from a review of 46 meta-analyses support the gender similarities hypothesis. Gender differences can vary substantially in magnitude at different ages and depend on the context in which measurement occurs. Overinflated claims of gender differences carry substantial costs in areas such as the workplace and relationships.

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The gender similarities hypothesis.

Reviewers have consistently concluded that males perform better on mathematics tests than females do. To make a refined assessment of the magnitude of gender differences in mathematics performance, we performed a meta-analysis of 100 studies. They yielded 254 independent effect sizes, representing the testing of 3,175,188 Ss. Averaged over all effect sizes based on samples of the general population, d was -0.05, indicating that females outperformed males by only a negligible amount. For computation, d was -0.14 (the negative value indicating superior performance by females). For understanding of mathematical concepts, d was -0.03; for complex problem solving, d was 0.08. An examination of age trends indicated that girls showed a slight superiority in computation in elementary school and middle school. There were no gender differences in problem solving in elementary or middle school; differences favoring men emerged in high school (d = 0.29) and in college (d = 0.32). Gender differences were smallest and actually favored females in samples of the general population, grew larger with increasingly selective samples, and were largest for highly selected samples and samples of highly precocious persons. The magnitude of the gender difference has declined over the years; for studies published in 1973 or earlier d was 0.31, whereas it was 0.14 for studies published in 1974 or later. We conclude that gender differences in mathematics performance are small. Nonetheless, the lower performance of women in problem solving that is evident in high school requires attention.

Gender differences in mathematics performance: A meta-analysis.

As women increasingly enter leadership roles that traditionally have been occupied mainly by men, the possibility that the leadership styles of women and men differ continues to attract attention. The focus of these debates on sameness versus difference can obscure the array of causal factors that can produce differences or similarities. Adopting the perspective of social role theory, we offer a framework that encompasses many of the complexities of the empirical literature on the leadership styles of women and men. Supplementing Eagly and Johnson's (1990) review of the interpersonally oriented, task-oriented, autocratic, and democratic styles of women and men, we present new data concerning the transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles.

The Leadership Styles of Women and Men

Why do girls tend to earn better grades in school than boys? Why are men still far more likely than women to earn degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics? And why are men on average more likely to be injured in accidents and fights than women? These and many other questions are the subject of both informal investigation in the media and formal investigation in academic and scientific circles. In his landmark book "Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences", author David Geary provided the first comprehensive evolutionary model to explain human sex differences. Using the principles of sexual selection such as female choice and male-male competition, the author systematically reviewed and discussed the evolution of sex differences and their expression throughout the animal kingdom, as a means of not just describing but explaining the same process in Homo sapiens. Now, over ten years since the first edition, Geary has completed a massive update, expansion and theoretical revision of his classic text. New findings in brain and genetic research inform a wealth of new material, including a new chapter on sex differences in patterns of life history development; expanded coverage of genetic research (e.g. DNA finger printing to determine paternity as related to male-male competition in primates); fatherhood in humans; cross-cultural patterns of sex differences in choosing and competing for mates; and, genetic, hormonal, and socio-cultural influences on the expression of sex differences. Finally, through his motivation to control framework (introduction in the first edition and expanded in "The Origin of Mind", 2005), Geary presents a theoretical bridge linking parenting, mate choices, and competition, with children's development and sex differences in brain and cognition. The result is an even better book than the original - a lively and nuanced application of Darwin's insight to help explain our heritage and our place in the natural world.

Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences

A new perspective on women's math achievement.

Contents Preface * Introduction: Feminist Double Visions * Section 1: Historical Antecedents * Saying the Truth: Leta Stetter Hollingworth and Equal-Rights Feminisms * Female From the Start: Karen Horney and Maternal Feminisms * Section 2: Contemporary Feminist Research * Gender and Math: What Makes a Difference? * Moralities of Care and Justice * Section 3: Political Applications * Partial Visions: Changing Science From Within and Without * Care and the Paradox of Resistance * Conclusions: Choices in Contexts * Index

Feminist Visions of Gender Similarities and Differences

College students in two psychology courses estimated their confidence in passing and their anticipated score for three examinations. On the first examination the results from both courses supported the prediction that women, compared to men, would be less confident of passing, would predict lower scores, and would underestimate their obtained scores. These sex differences disappeared, as predicted, on the second and third examination for the course, in which the situation remained relatively constant over the term. However, contrary to predictions, the sex differences were maintained over all three examinations for the second course, which involved different instructors for each exam. Thus, the effects of feedback on performance expectancies seem to be vulnerable to situational changes.

Feedback and performance expectancies in an academic setting

In Translation: How Feminism, Sexual Liberation and The Search for Self-Fulfillment Have Altered Our Lives. Judith M. Bardwick.

Twenty-eight years ago, Rhoda Unger argued that the ‘too inclusive use of the term sex’ (1979: 1085) led to the over-use of biological explanations for sex differences, the lack of interest in the examination of sex similarities, and the confusion between sex as a characteristic of individuals and sex as a stimulus variable. She saw three advantages of adding gender to the psychological lexicon. First, the use of gender would encourage researchers to seek environmental or cultural explanations of sex differences and rely less on simple biological explanations. Second, the use of gender would encourage researchers to focus on sex similarities instead of, or in addition to, sex differences. Third, the introduction of gender would encourage the study of sex as a stimulus variable, either through labeling others in attribution studies or oneself in studies of gender identity. In focusing on the importance of gender in her paper, Rhoda was prescient in her emphasis on the importance of gender as a concept. It is difficult to overemphasize the extent to which gender has become the guiding concept in the study of women and men. Without it, feminist psychology would have been impossible. It has become the focus of a major research area within psychology and through interactions with other areas has created numerous transformations. In 2001, Rhoda Unger edited the first psychological handbook in this area, The Psychology of Women and Gender, with a bibliography of approximately 3000 empirical and theoretical studies pertaining to gender. Clearly it would be impossible to review the work on gender that has taken place since 1979. Thus, in this article, I will return to the three specific predictions Rhoda made in her original article (1979) and examine how each has played out over the intervening years. First, has the use of gender reduced biological explanations of sex differences and encouraged environmental explanations? My answer is both ‘no’ and ‘yes’.

http://fap.sagepub.com/content/17/4/453.full.pdf

Meredith M. Kimball

Papers

A new perspective on women's math achievement.

Feminist Visions of Gender Similarities and Differences

Feedback and performance expectancies in an academic setting

In Translation: How Feminism, Sexual Liberation and The Search for Self-Fulfillment Have Altered Our Lives. Judith M. Bardwick.

IV. Adding Gender to the Mix: A Commentary on `Toward a Redefinition of Sex and Gender'