Does placing females in environments in which they have contact with males, cause them to experience deficits in problem-solving performance? Is a situational cue, such as gender composition, sufficient for creating a threatening intellectual environment for females-- an environment that elicits performance-impinging stereotypes? To explore these questions, participants completed a difficult math or verbal test in 3-person groups, which consisted of two people of the same sex as the participant (same-sex condition) or of the opposite sex (minority condition). Minority females experienced performance deficits in the math test only, whereas males performed equally well on the math test in both conditions. Further investigation showed that females' deficits were proportional to the number of males in their surrounding. Even females who were placed in a mixed-sex majority condition (2 females and 1 male) experienced moderate but significant deficits. Findings are discussed in relation to t...

for assistance, and Nora Newcombe and Elliott Blass for advice and comments on the manuscript. Above all, I am grateful to Ariel Grace and Kristin Shutts for their unending support and after-hours labor on this project. Draft, 4/20/05. This paper has not yet been peer reviewed. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. This report considers three prominent claims that boys and men have greater natural aptitude for high-level careers in mathematics and science. According to the first claim, males are more focused on objects and mechanical systems from the beginning of life. According to the second claim, males have a profile of spatial and numerical abilities that predisposes them to greater aptitude in mathematics. According to the third claim, males show greater variability in mathematical aptitude, yielding a preponderance of males at the upper end of the distribution of mathematical talent. Research on cognitive development in human infants and preschool children, and research on cognitive performance by students at all levels, provides evidence against these claims. Mathematical and scientific reasoning develop from a set of biologically based capacities that males and females share. From these capacities, men and women appear to develop equal talent for mathematics and science.

SUMMARY—Amid ongoing public speculation about the reasons for sex differences in careers in science and mathematics, we present a consensus statement that is based on the best available scientific evidence. Sex differences in science and math achievement and ability are smaller for the mid-range of the abilities distribution than they are for those with the highest levels of achievement and ability. Males are more variable on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, which necessarily results in more males at both high- and low-ability extremes; the reasons why males are often more variable remain elusive. Successful careers in math and science require many types of cognitive abilities. Females tend to excel in verbal abilities, with large differences between females and males found when assessments include writing

Abstract. Individuals vary across many dimensions due to the effects of gender-based, personality, and cultural differences. Consequently, programming contests with a limited and restrictive structure (e.g., scoring system, questioning style) are most favourable and attractive to a specific set of individuals with the characteristics that best match this structure. We suggest that a more inclusive and flexible structure will allow contests to be more appealing to a wider range of participants by being less biased towards specific traits. As well, by making contests more broadly appealing, they become better post secondary recruiting tools that can potentially be used to attract under-represented populations to the discipline of computer science. In this paper, we focus on gender-based differences and the effect of a competition’s structure on female participants. Key words: programming contests, scoring systems, gender bias. 1.

This is a pre-print copy of the chapter forthcoming in New

s old. Large differences in cognitive functioning were associated with attendance at school, grade in school, age, and urban-rural residence. Gender was found to account for less than 5% of the variance in children's performance on cognitive and academic tasks. Gender effects appeared to decline with increased amount of schooling. This was reflected in interactions involving gender and schooling and in a greater number of significant gender effects for children who did not attend school or were in first grade. The results present a complicated picture of various interactional effects of task, location, age, and schooling on the detected gender differences in cognitive abilities and academic achievement. Most psychological studies of gender differences in cognitive abilities have relied upon urban, schooled children and adults from industrialized countries as their subjects. Despite the long interest in the topic, we know `The study was supp

The authors review criticisms commonly leveled against cognitively loaded tests used for employment and higher education admissions decisions, with a focus on largescale databases and meta-analytic evidence. They conclude that (a) tests of developed abilities are generally valid for their intended uses in predicting a wide variety of aspects of short-term and long-term academic and job performance, (b) validity is not an artifact of socioeconomic status, (c) coaching is not a major determinant of test performance, (d) tests do not generally exhibit bias by underpredicting the performance of minority group members, and (e) test-taking motivational mechanisms are not major determinants of test performance in these highstakes settings.

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Abstract not found

This study was designed to investigate a phenomenon, persistence of undergraduate women in their engineering majors, from a qualitative paradigm. Guided by the tenets of feminist and inclusive research, the assumption was made that all women, whether they persist or not in their engineering majors, have strengths and insights into their own personal experiences. The experiences of African American women, Asian women, Caucasian women, Hispanic women, women from rural geographical areas, and non-persisters were investigated. A developmental lifespan and social learning perspective called for an examination of factors relevant to engineering major choice and persistence from early childhood to the present time, including family background and individual factors, environmental factors and experiences with the engineering culture, and social factors relevant to major choice and persistence. Twenty-eight (28) persisters and 8 nonpersisters participated in the study which was conducted at a large land-grant university in the southeastern United States in the fall of 1996. The following questions guided the study: (1) What experiences have been influential in undergraduate women’s selection of engineering as a major? (2) How does the culture and climate of engineering education influence the experiences of these undergraduate women? (3) How do