Tag Archives: gender

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How Can We Encourage Girls to Pursue STEM Disciplines?

When we see alarming statistics about gender disparities in STEM disciplines, we quite naturally wonder how to fix this imbalance. (This hope – by the way – isn’t simply a do-goody desire to sing “It’s a Small World After All.”



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Sleeplessness Harms Women’s Thinking More Than Men’s?

You can understand why this study lit up my twitter feed recently. It makes a remarkable claim: women — but not men — experience working memory declines after a sleepless night. Why We Care We have at least two powerful



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Mindset, Gender, and Intelligence: Confusing Myth or Painful Truth

In this research, there was no consistent gender split on Mindset. And, for men as well as women, intelligence level didn’t consistently influence Mindset; nor did a Growth Mindset predict academic accomplishment. Continue reading



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More Thoughts on Gender Differences

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a skeptic about gender differences in learning. Although they certainly do exist–I think particularly about differences in 3d mental rotation–I often think they’re overstated or overemphasized. At the same time, my emphasis



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The Battle of the Sexes, in Headlines

Two articles jumped out at me today because of the illustrative way they clash with each other. Writing on Twitter, and providing helpful links to several sources, Adam Grant argues that “Differences between Men and Women are Vastly Exaggerated.” Whereas



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Rates of ADHD Diagnosis: Age, Gender, and Race

Dr. David Rabiner offers a helpful summary of trends in ADHD diagnoses. The short version: rates of diagnosis continue to increase. The longer version: depending how you analyze the categories, you get very different results. For children younger than 5,



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Promoting STEM for Women by Requiring More High School Math. Or, not.

How can we encourage young women to pursue STEM fields? In the German state of Baden-Württemberg, school leaders tried a substantial reform: they increased the math requirement during the final two years of high school. Instead of taking math three days



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Gender Differences in Dyslexia Diagnoses

It has long been true that men are diagnosed with dyslexia more often than women. This article (rather technical, by the way) offers one potential explanation: processing speed. What is processing speed? It’s an unusually straightforward concept in psychology. Imagine



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“Nevertheless, She Persisted”

If you watched the Oscars this past weekend, or simply had lucky t.v. timing over the past few weeks, you may have caught GE’s newest commercial featuring MIT scientist Millie Dresselhaus. The ad aims to promote GE’s upcoming diversity endeavor:



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Gender and Competition

According to new research, a key difference might be the choice of opponent.  Whereas men typically prefer to compete against others, women often choose to compete against themselves. (As always: be careful about oversimplifcation of gender roles. I myself am much likelier to



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