criticalconsciousness shares:
AP Tests broken down by gender
Interestingly, out of 35 tests, 20 had female ‘over-representation’ (meaning over 50%), 14 had male ‘over-representation’, and 1 was exactly equal.
Now, this isn’t entirely surprising as female college enrollment is outpacing male college enrollment. (females are nearing 60% of the college population)
Looking at the gender-subject imbalance falls soundly on stereotypes. First, I’m going to throw out subjects that are 55%-45% or tighter.
From here, the female-dominated subjects are:
-Studio Art, French Language, Art History, English Literature, Psychology, Spanish Language, Spanish Literature, English Language, Biology, Chinese Language, French LIterature, Environmental Science, and Japanese.
Mostly art, humanities, and language. The two science classes, Bio and Environmental Sci. are female dominant majors in college.
The male-dominated subjects are:
Microeconomics, Music Theory, Calculus BC, Physics (all types), Computer Science (all types).
Aside from music theory, all very heavy quantitative courses. Computer Science AB has the biggest disparity of any tested subject, at 86% male, 14% female.
I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but it definitely makes me wonder. In a perfect world, do we want every subject to be 50-50 (or at least identical to the population) Is it okay for certain classes to fall on gender lines?
