Study Reveals Women are More Prone to 'Mathematics Anxiety' Than Men

Mathematics is among the many fields where women are known to be underrepresented due to "mathematics anxiety." According to a recent study, countries that have higher gender equality are also shown with sex differences in technical and math scores.  

The "mathematics anxiety" is the overall negative emotion that women are experiencing towards the subject that leads to the avoidance of the said topic. This was based on the study conducted by a team of experts from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, the University of California-Irvine and the University of Missouri, KMBZ reported.

Activities that involves math is among the several factors that affect the increased mathematics anxiety in women compared to men. The analysis was gathered from a sampling of 15-year-old students in over 60 countries with socioeconomic indicators, which includes the UK and the United States. According to the Curators Professor of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Sciences, David Geary, the findings showed that mathematics anxiety of women has nothing to do with their mothers' level of engagement in STEM careers. Neither was it connected to their country's gender equality.

Gender difference in mathematics anxiety was, in fact, greater in the more progressive and gender-equal nations. The mathematics performance of men and women in more progressive countries was higher, with lesser mathematics anxiety, yet the pattern was stronger for men than women, according to Metro.

The study further analyzed the potential role of the views of the parents regarding the importance and value of mathematics for their children. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, the parents in more progressive countries put a stronger focus on their son's mathematical development than their daughters, in spite of the fact that these more countries have bigger proportions of mothers who work in the STEM sector.

The study on mathematics anxiety, which shows that countries that have higher levels of gender quality have larger national sex differences, and comparatively lesser parental math valuation for women, was already published in PLOS ONE.