The study is based on data from schools in 86 countries, including those from non-Western societies, that concluded differences in mathematics 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, 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, said 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 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.
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