



Gender /=/ sex.
Sex /=/ gender.
They are not interchangeable terms.
Gender is constructed by society.
Sex is biology.
Don’t be afraid of the word sex, it’s not a bad word!
When former Harvard President Larry Summers suggested there were “issues of intrinsic aptitude” regarding women’s math abilities it caused quite a stir. Now, a new University of Wisconsin study based on data from 84 countries definitively debunks the still widely perceived idea that boys are naturally better than girls at math. “Culture, not biology, is the primary force behind any measurable differences,” Janet Mertz, PhD, one of the study’s coauthors, told Yahoo! Shine.
Mertz and her colleague Jonathan Kane, who is a professor of mathematics and computer science, wanted to “put to rest the idea that there are innate differences between boys and girls in both average and variable performances in mathematics.” Summers had posited that men hold more PhDs in math than women due to the “greater male variability hypothesis” - that is, there are more men at both the low end and the high end of the spectrum.
According to the international data, in many countries, such as the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, girls today in fact perform as well as boys both on average and at high levels. In other countries, such as the United States, the gap has narrowed significantly in recent decades. In the 1970s, the ratio of boys versus girls who are considered gifted in math by the age of 13 was 13:1; today it is 3:1. Any variability was inconsistent country to country, which would not have been the case if there were an underlying biological principle in play. The study also found that worldwide, girls’ achievement in math couldn’t be linked to whether or not they were in a single sex or coeducational school.
(Source: caraobrien)
Experiment detailed in my sociology textbook to detail the early impression of gender roles. (via emaconly)
Gender is what you make it…
(via stfuhomophobes)
(Source: hyper-bo-lee)
I would comment on this, but it just seems a waste of my time to challenge someone as asinine as this. If you know me at all, you know how strongly this has pissed me off. Why I let people like this get to me…I don’t know….
Want to hear my opinion, Fox News? I want more children to WATCH Chaz Bono dance. Why? Maybe they (the children) feel like they were born in the wrong body and they could realize they are NOT alone. Additionally, maybe they won’t grow up to be closed minded individuals who write bigoted ‘news’ articles like this.