Gender Differences in Science

Gender Differences in Science Why are scientists disproportionately men? The answer to this question varies depending on the audience you ask it too. I believe that there are more men scientists because society has always made it out to be that the male is the more dominant of the sexes. Through the years woman have not had as many rights as men, which allows men to flourish in the science careers. Societies expectations of women use to be the “stay at home moms.” With the times changing there has been a gradual increase of women in science careers, but they are still greatly out numbered by men. To understand why men are the more intelligent sex we must look at the field of evolutionary psychology. As the hunter of a hunter/ gatherer society, men were faced with complex life threatening problems that needed solving on a daily basis. For example, killing for food. The hunters, used all their mental capabilities to come up with the answers to successfully killing animals day after day, were clearly the most intelligent. Hunters were the high status males of their day, where as all women were in charge of gathering and raising kids. These hunters were the most eligible mates and their genes would be passed on to the next generation. Through evolutionary psychology men are the more dominant sex. In the United States only ten percent of science professors are women. One of the main reasons why there are not more female science professors is that on average men are more intelligent than women. The biggest imbalance emerges between the sexes at the high levels of intelligence that the most demanding jobs require. At the genius level, IQ of 145, men outnumber women eight to one. In almost 110 years of Nobel Prize history, only two women have ever won the Prize for physics, only four have won the Prize for chemistry and no women at all have ever won the Fields Medal for mathematics. Boys and girls may start out with the same IQ but by 16 boys start to inch ahead.