Want to help inundate?
Yesterday I received the following e-mail:
"I recently read an article "Girls Are... Boys Are... : Myths, Stereotypes & Gender Differences" that you have on the Internet as my father and I were (still are) having a heated discussion about male vs female intellect. He printed and laid a copy of an article "Male Versus Female Intelligence: Does Gender Matter?" by Alice A. McCarthy, MBA on my lap top. I in turn, laid you article in front of him. As I said earlier, this argument will probably last until the end of time, but, I was still wondering if it were possible for you to inundate him with all of your research and facts."
I've sent on some things including the following paragraph I wrote 15 years ago
It is possible to create or eliminate the sex differences in test scores in content areas or in "intelligence" by selecting different test items. For example the 1942 revision of the Stanford Binet had as its aim to "produce a scale which will yield comparable I.Q.s for the sexes." To do this the authors accepted the hypotheses that large sex differences on items are likely to reflect sex differences in experience or training and "sought to avoid using test items showing large sex differences in percents passing." These test developers were aware that "intellect can be defined and measured in such a manner as to make either sex appear superior."
Any suggestions? I'll be happy to pass them on.
Comments
I'll give two references.
One is Rosser's The SAT Gender Gap (http://www.amazon.com/Sat-Gender-Gap-Identifying-Causes/dp/1877966002) which shows just how few, just one or two, questions have to be changed to produce a male or female bias in an SAT section. She discusses how the ETS team decided to get rid of the female verbal advantage while retaining the male mathematics advantage. (The book was from the late 80s, so this was still in the news).
The other is Gould's The Mismeasure of Man which discusses the history of intelligence testing. (He actually looked up the grade school report card of the little girl in the "three generations of imbeciles is enough" Supreme Court case; she was a B student). He only discusses sex bias in passing, since his primary interest is in class and racial bias, but it's a fascinating, and lurid, history.
Posted by: Kaleberg | September 8, 2007 09:42 PM