Thaindian News

Washington, Dec 14 (IANS) Girls are equivalent to boys in maths and any perceived differences can be explained by attitude towards women, reveals a study.

The study is based on data from schools in 86 countries, including those from non-Western societies, that concluded differences in mathematical ability were due to unequal societies and not biology.

Scientists previously believed that the relatively low numbers of women in high-level mathematics could be due to biological differences between men and women.

But a new international study has cast doubt on the idea that the differences are biological at all, the journal Notices of the American Mathematical Society reported.

Previous studies tended to focus on a limited range of countries - whereas the new study observed school-level mathematical performance in 86 countries.

The differences in performance seemed to be caused by social factors, that is each society’s attitude towards women, according to the Daily Mail.

“People have looked at international data for many years,” said Janet Mertz, senior study author and professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“What has changed is that many more non-Western countries are now participating, enabling much better cross-cultural analysis,” she said.

“We found that boys - as well as girls - tend to do better in maths when raised in countries where females have better equality, and that’s new and important,” said study co-author Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematical and computer sciences at the Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Researchers have cast doubts on popular assumptions about gender and math, particularly the idea that women have less ability due to a difference in biology.