The Global ‘educational-gender-equality Paradox’: The More Gender Equality in a Country, the Fewer Women in STEM

In a new research paper that was just published in the journal Psychological Science (“The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education“) by Gijsbert Stoet and David C. Geary, the chart above displays an international phenomenon that the two researchers call the educational-gender-equality paradox — the greater the degree of gender equality among 67 countries studied (vertical axis is the Global Gender Gap Index, a measure of gender equality), the lower the female share of STEM college graduates. The title of an article in The Atlantic by Olga Khazan describes the paradox as “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM,” with this sub-title — “In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.”

From the research paper’s introduction (bold added):

We found that countries with high levels of gender equality have some of the largest STEM gaps in secondary and tertiary education;we call this the educational-gender-equality paradox. For example, Finland excels in gender equality, its adolescent girls outperform boys in science literacy, and it ranks second in European educational performance. With these high levels of educational performance and overall gender equality, Finland is poised to close the STEM gender gap. Yet, paradoxically, Finland has one of the world’s largest gender gaps in college degrees in STEM fields, and Norway and Sweden (see those three countries on the chart above), also leading in gender-equality rankings, are not far behind (fewer than 25% of STEM graduates are women). We will show that this pattern extends throughout the world, whereby the graduation gap in STEM increases with increasing levels of gender equality.

“So what explains the tendency for nations that have traditionally less gender equality to have more women in science and technology than their gender-progressive counterparts do?” asks Olga Khazan in The Atlantic, in reference to the research article in Psychological Science. Surprisingly maybe, the economic concept of “comparative advantage” helps answer that question (bold added):

[According to the research], it could have to do with the fact that women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And often, that path leads through STEM professions.

The issue doesn’t appear to be girls’ aptitude for STEM professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they had enrolled in them.

But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading. That is, even if an average girl was as good as an average boy at science, she was still likely to be even better at reading. Across all countries, 24% of girls had science as their best subject, 25% of girls’ strength was math, and 51% excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38% for science, 42% for math, and 20% for reading.

And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject. The gap in reading “is related at least in part to girls’ advantages in basic language abilities and a generally greater interest in reading; they read more and thus practice more,” Geary told me. What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at.…..

The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad: It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested. 

It could just be that, feeling financially secure and on equal footing with men, some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science.

MP: According to an international study of nearly 475,000 adolescents in 67 nations, the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields (and overrepresentation in non-STEM fields) is explained by the findings that: a) women have a comparative advantage in basic language abilities and a generally greater interest in reading, while men have a comparative advantage in basic science and math abilities and a generally greater interest in math and science, and b) countries that empower women with greater opportunities also empower them to follow their passions and select the college majors and careers they enjoy most and are best at. In other words, the underrepresentation (overrepresentation) of women in STEM (non-STEM) in the US and other advanced countries reflects the great progress that has been made empowering women to follow their passions and academic interests and should be celebrated as a great sign of female success, rather than a “national crisis that will be deeply detrimental to America’s global competitiveness” as former astronaut Sally K. Ride said in 2009 about the STEM gender gap.

Trying to socially engineer greater female representation in STEM will not only be expensive if those efforts require taxpayer or private foundation money, but those efforts will also likely be futile in light of the research outlined above. As paradoxical and counter-intuitive as it may seem, female underrepresentation in STEM may actually be the result of the great advances in female empowerment, progress, and advancement that have taken place in recent decades, and not the result of systematic gender discrimination. As Olga Kahzan concludes, greater gender equality empowers women to follow their academic and career passions, and gives them the luxury of not pursuing STEM degrees and careers, even though those voluntary choices are different from the unnatural outcomes that gender activists and labor economists think are best! Maybe it’s the case that the research above suggests that female underrepresentation in STEM could best be described as one of those “first world problems”….