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It's commonly believed that men are better at STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) than women. I've heard before that men are naturally better at more logical thinking and problem-solving, while women have more emotional intelligence. But I've never heard conclusively whether this is true, and it seems likely that it could just be a well-ingrained stereotype passing itself off as a scientific understanding.

To be clear, I'm not interested in intelligence in general (there's a question for that already) but in any specific differences that make men or women better at particular subjects. That means whether they're actually inherently better because of biology, not because of social reasons or whether they're perceived to be better.

I'm thinking of two potential sources of evidence:

  • Neuroscience that tells us the differences (or lack thereof) of structures in the brain.
  • Statistics that prove one way or another (perhaps from studies done on children)
PointlessSpike
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  • @Jamiec- Fair enough. I'll get rid of that one. – PointlessSpike Oct 13 '15 at 08:07
  • You're just asking if men are smarter than women. There you go: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14190/are-men-smarter-than-women – George Chalhoub Oct 13 '15 at 08:27
  • There is no reason why you should involve STEM in this question (Also, you didn't add any notable claim) when you're looking for references that include "neuroscience that tells us the differences". – George Chalhoub Oct 13 '15 at 08:28
  • I thought that because it's a very common claim to hear, notability was obvious. I doubt anyone hasn't heard it. Also, this is about particular subjects, not general intelligence, as specified. – PointlessSpike Oct 13 '15 at 08:33
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    @PointlessSpike-Kindly provide sources of your notable claim for neuroscience (differences (or lack thereof) of structures in the brain). – pericles316 Oct 13 '15 at 08:52
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    I'm not sure how this can be considered "opinion-based". I can understand notability issues as it's more a cultural perception that's difficult to pin down, but you could answer this with facts. Just something that shows whether neurological differences can cause one gender to be better than another at certain subjects. – PointlessSpike Oct 13 '15 at 09:14
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    I think this is an interesting question, but it'd help if there were specific examples of the claim provided, so we know exactly what to address. – Andrew Grimm Oct 13 '15 at 10:24
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    I will vote to reopen this if notability is shown. – March Ho Oct 13 '15 at 12:46
  • "naturally inclined" - we've never been able to raise a child in a vacuum completely free from all cultural and social influences thus we absolutely can't know what is nature and what is nurture. Not even going into the observer bias http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/09/AR2009100902615.html "[11-month-olds] girls and boys proved equally adept at crawling and risk-taking: On their own, they tried and conquered the same slopes. But the mothers of the girls -- unlike the mothers of the boys -- underestimated their daughters' aptitude by a significant margin." – Sam I Am Oct 13 '15 at 18:01
  • Closing this because answers will be opinion based is weird. If you don't believe that you can measure aptitude, you don't believe in a few major branches of science. This claim is fairly notable as well. For example, a former president of Harvard [famously claimed](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/18/educationsgendergap.genderissues) that men were more inclined to be better at science. Do people really think that the claim that men are better at science than women isn't notable? I obviously don't believe it's true, but lots of people believe it unfortunately. – KAI Oct 13 '15 at 18:35
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    For what it's worth, the notable argument that Summers was using was basically based on [this](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7093/do-men-show-greater-variance-in-the-distribution-of-their-iq-than-women?rq=1). The reasoning goes that if men have higher variance IQ scores (or even higher variance math scores), there may be a higher percentage of high aptitude male scientists. I do not necessarily buy this argument, but that is the basics of how it goes IIRC. The question is worth being opened IMO. – KAI Oct 13 '15 at 18:43
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    @KAI You can measure incarceration rates of whites and incarceration rates of blacks and then conclude that blacks are naturally inclined to be criminals. That conclusion would also be wrong. Please understand any differences in measurements of aptitude between the sexes in the same way. if we are talking about natural inclination this question is not answerable. – Sam I Am Oct 13 '15 at 19:42
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    @SamIAm That's a strawman. The fact that a primitive comparison of incarceration rates could be used to reach incorrect conclusions does not imply that aptitude testing is impossible. Cognitive science exists. Neurological research exists. Educational research exists. At least read the link to a previously accepted SE answer which discusses some mental testing related to scholastic ability. It's a not unreasonable starting point, although it may be too simplistic so I'm not claiming that you have to believe the accepted answer (you just have to see that such research exists). – KAI Oct 13 '15 at 20:05
  • Also note that there is a big difference between "this is difficult" and "this is impossible". The fact that you probably can't just compare test scores between genders means that the study is difficult, not impossible. To claim that it is impossible to attempt to tease out a result that corrects for confounding factors is to be ignorant of a lot of statistics and experimental methodology. Although I agree that the study would be very difficult. – KAI Oct 13 '15 at 20:10
  • If the question is "Do (contemporary) women perform worse than men on a particular aptitude test?", find a notable claim of that, and change the question, but note that that is a very different question. – Oddthinking Oct 13 '15 at 23:22
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    The idea that modern neuroscience could determine whether men or women are "naturally" better at a skill would itself be a good question, if we could find a suitable claim. I am strongly skeptical that neuroscience is going to suddenly resolve the nature versus nurture question. – Oddthinking Oct 13 '15 at 23:26
  • @KAI I don't believe anyone here has solved nature vs nurture yet so its as unanswerable as it gets. Aptitude tests exists but there's no way to tell if gender differences are due to nature and not environment. Girls and boys are socialized differently since before they are even born. – Sam I Am Oct 13 '15 at 23:35
  • Surely being unanswerable isn't an issue here? I would think that in itself is an answer, that we can't know yet. I would accept that, if backed up. That doesn't make it a bad question, as long as it's not obvious. – PointlessSpike Oct 14 '15 at 08:14
  • @SamIAm "Hasn't yet been answered" is not the same as "unanswerable" in science. A response of "scientists don't know yet, here is the state of the art research for both sides" would be a fine response for this site. – KAI Oct 14 '15 at 15:35
  • Another thing that would need to be cleared up for this question to be answered is whether it's asking about all men vs. all women or about how the statistical distributions vary by gender. That is, is the claim being tested that any man, given equal environmental issues, would possess an advantage in deductive reasoning skills over any woman, is the claim about how the statistical distributions differ (e.g. men, on average, are more naturally inclined to deductive reasoning, the top 10% of men are more naturally inclined to it than the top 10% of women, etc.?) – reirab Oct 15 '15 at 21:06

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