Globally, there are substantial differences in women’s and men’s rates of participation in STEM (science, technology, education, and math) careers and in their test scores in these. Though in some countries and in some levels of education, women earn better scores than men on math and science tests, it is much more common for men to outperform women, and men are universally overrepresented in STEM careers. Researchers have exploited country-level differences in these phenomena in an attempt to identify what cultural and structural factors exacerbate or reduce gender differences. The societal consequences of achievement gaps and of unequal representation are typically segregation, discrimination, and negative stereotypes. For the gender gap
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The appeal of cross-national studies is that they allow for comparison of broad structural and cultural components that would not be present or varied on a national or local level. Researchers evaluate the influence of economic development, organizational structure of schools, and government policy to identify the influence of structural factors. The cross-national perspective focuses highly on societal structure because it can easily be measured on a wide scale. The cultural factors, which include influence of family and societal ideologies, are not as quantifiable and are oftentimes not considered when evaluating cross-national gender gaps. The culmination of both factors is known as the gender stratification hypothesis, which describes how cultural ideologies impact the societal structures that produce gender stratification (unequal access to resources such as power and prestige between the male and female …show more content…
Riegle-Crumb attempts to provide an international context for the gender gap in math achievement and attitudes. She evaluates the gender differences in home, employment, and government for three different levels of economic development using factors such as access to abortion, women’s economic rate, and women’s representation in government. Then, she compares the larger structural gender differences to test scores from Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) by using each factor to ‘predict’ the math achievement. She found that the perceived opportunity structure (as explicitly mentioned by Hanson) is the greatest predictor of math achievement and attitudes (2005). The perceived opportunity structure revolves around the visibility of women in public positions. The same conclusion was found through a meta-analysis performed by Else-Quest. She found that as the representation of women in STEM jobs and positions of power increased the gender segregation in those fields within education began to
The appeal of cross-national studies is that they allow for comparison of broad structural and cultural components that would not be present or varied on a national or local level. Researchers evaluate the influence of economic development, organizational structure of schools, and government policy to identify the influence of structural factors. The cross-national perspective focuses highly on societal structure because it can easily be measured on a wide scale. The cultural factors, which include influence of family and societal ideologies, are not as quantifiable and are oftentimes not considered when evaluating cross-national gender gaps. The culmination of both factors is known as the gender stratification hypothesis, which describes how cultural ideologies impact the societal structures that produce gender stratification (unequal access to resources such as power and prestige between the male and female …show more content…
Riegle-Crumb attempts to provide an international context for the gender gap in math achievement and attitudes. She evaluates the gender differences in home, employment, and government for three different levels of economic development using factors such as access to abortion, women’s economic rate, and women’s representation in government. Then, she compares the larger structural gender differences to test scores from Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) by using each factor to ‘predict’ the math achievement. She found that the perceived opportunity structure (as explicitly mentioned by Hanson) is the greatest predictor of math achievement and attitudes (2005). The perceived opportunity structure revolves around the visibility of women in public positions. The same conclusion was found through a meta-analysis performed by Else-Quest. She found that as the representation of women in STEM jobs and positions of power increased the gender segregation in those fields within education began to