Gender Pressures Add Up

PERFORMANCE

Why can't Susie add? It may be the nature of math tests--not her
inherent ability--that's the problem. The belief in men's math
superiority is supported by the fact that boys consistently outscore
girls on the SAT and GRE by about 50 points. Still, girls get higher
grades in math classes. To Robert Josephs, Ph.D., of the University of
Texas-Austin, the numbers didn't add up. The assistant professor of
psychology gave a GRE math section to undergraduates and found that women
who believed it would expose academic flaws performed much worse than
those who thought it would demonstrate ability. Men, however, performed
worse when they thought the test would show their proficiency. While
women worry about proving that they are bad at math, says Josephs, men
are concerned with confirming that they are better at sums. So both sexes
feel more pressure-and do worse, on tests which reinforce gender
stereotypes of behavior. Which is why girls perform confidently in class
but lose points on standardized tests: exams like the GRE are used to
weed out weak students, but school math tests are designed to let them
show what they know.