Women under perform in maths because of male sexist teachers?
So I heard recently that studies have shown that the reason women don't perform as high as men in maths is because there were a lot of male sexist teachers, that blocked them from wanting to learn- if that makes sense. So I was wondering, is that true? Have there actually been studies like that? Any help greatly appreciated.
I am not aware of any such study, but the premise alone is also sexist. For one, it is assuming the females do perform low in math and two, it assumes that only men are math teachers. In my experience, neither is true. There have been studies done on the development of the brain however and how it affects the abilities of men and women. I would look into these studies before buying into the shallow, biased study you mentioned.
This argument would also imply that a significant number of male mathematics teachers were sexist (which I find unlikely), and for some reason this is not true of other field such as English (I don't really see why a male mathematics teacher would be more likely to be sexist than a male English teacher). So no, I don't find this argument convincing.
The main reason, to my knowledge, has two related components. One is that, on average, girls tend to be less interested in mathematics and science than boys do. Also, this is one area where boys are, on average, simply more proficient, whereas girls are generally more proficient in English and humanities subjects. Although neuroscience is not my field, my understanding is that this is because these fields involve different areas of the brain, and that some areas are more likely to be stronger in boys, and some are more likely to be stronger in girls.
It would be foolish to suggest that males and females are 100% alike in every way. There are certain physical and psychological differences between them. It makes sense that the two genders are, on average, going to have different interests.