E-Letter responses to:

ed-forum: Luigi Guiso, Ferdinando Monte, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales DIVERSITY: Culture, Gender, and Math Science 2008; 320: 1164-1165 [Summary] [Full text] [PDF]

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Published E-Letter responses:

Response to M. Thorek's E-Letter

Paola Sapienza   (12 August 2008)

Gender Equality in Mathematics Knowledge

Marco Thorek   (12 August 2008)

Response to M. Thorek's E-Letter 12 August 2008
Paola Sapienza Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2001, USA Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Response to M. Thorek's E-Letter	Our paper states that in more gender-equal societies the math gap (average math score of girls minus average math score of boys) decreases. This is an average statement based on a statistically significant linear relationship. It does not imply that in every country with a more gender-equal society the gender gap is smaller, i.e., it does not imply a perfect fit of the data. For example, as Thorek states, Iceland and Finland do not align perfectly on the regression line (1), but this fact does not invalidate the statistically significant relationship found in our analysis. Paola Sapienza Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2001, USA. Reference 1. P.Sapienza, Scatter plot of Gender Gap Index versus Math Gender Gap, available at http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/gender/.
Gender Equality in Mathematics Knowledge 12 August 2008
Marco Thorek Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Gender Equality in Mathematics Knowledge	According to the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (1), Finland is actually ahead of Iceland when it comes to gender equality, yet girls there score a statistically significant 12 points worse in math than in Iceland. And in Germany, ranked 7th on the equality scale, girls are 20 points behind Iceland. In Jordan and Kyrgyzstan, girls do score about the same, yet these two nations rank 104th and 70th on the equality scale. Therefore, L. Guiso et al.'s conclusion, that a gap "doesn’t exist in countries in which there is greater gender equality," (Education Forum, "Culture, gender, and math," 30 May 2008, p. 1164) is not at all supported by the data. Marco Thorek Reference 1. S. Vayssetts, PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World (OECD, 2007); available at http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/0/39704446.xls.