A new study published in the journal Nature Communications has found that despite the widespread belief that men are inherently better at STEM subjects than women, girls leave high school just as qualified in STEM as boys.
The study examined 16 million students across 227 different studies that were conducted from 1931 to 2013. The researchers found that girls actually do better in STEM subjects in high school than boys. On average, high school girls performed 3.1 percent better in STEM classes and their results were 7.6 percent less varied, which means that they had more consistent scores than their male peers.
Additionally, the study also compared girls and boys scores in non-STEM subjects. The results showed that while top marks in STEM were equal among girls and boys, girls did much better in non-STEM subjects, scoring 7.8 percent higher on average than their male classmates. The researchers found that men have a greater variability in non-STEM subjects as well.
The full study, “Gender Differences in Individual Variation in Academic Grades Fail to Fit Expected Patterns for STEM,” may be accessed here.