It’s the kind of finding to warm the hearts of us liberal, Larry-Summers-hating, gender-egalitarians. Summers — you saw him in The Social Network as the Harvard president who had no patience for the Winklevoss twins (he didn’t have much patience for Cornel West either and probably many other things) — suggested that the dearth of women in top science and engineering positions was caused not so much by social forces as by innate sex differences in math ability (more here and many other places).
As others were quick to point out, those differences are greater in societies with greater gender inequality. That’s why the math gender gap in the U.S. has become much narrower over time. In societies with greater equality, like Sweden, Norway, and Israeli kibbutzim, the male-female gap in math disappears. But even in those societies, males still score higher on one type of mathematical skill: spatial reasoning.
I’m sure that evol-psych has some explanation for why male brains evolved to be more adept at spatial reasoning. I’m equally sure that those who favor social explanations can find residual sexism even in Sweden to explain spatial differences. That’s why a field experiment reported last summer is so interesting.
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