Spacial reasoning gender gap disappears in female-dominant cultures

ZME Science, November 05, 2013

Currently, only about 30% percent of the total scientific workforce is comprised of female scientists. Thousands of years of cultural discrepancies might be to blame for this, like stereotyping, however in societies where math gender gaps disappears, the gender gap remains in higher education.

In Sweden or Norway, the math gender gap has been bridged, as persons of both sexes manage to score similarly in tests, however even there men seem to show a better spatial reasoning ability. Are men and women hot-wired differently from birth with these terms in mind or are these discrepancies as a result of social engineering? A team of scientists capitalized on a set of perfect natural experiments as part of a recent study published in PNAS looking to answer these questions.