Teachers page: The gender gap

Curriculum links

Mathematics and Statistics: Statistics strand – level 3
– Conduct investigations using the statistical enquiry cycle:

• gathering, sorting, and displaying multivariate category and whole-number data to answer questions,
• communicating findings, using appropriate displays.

Mathematics and Statistics: Statistics strand – level 4
– Plan and conduct investigations using the statistical enquiry cycle:

• determining appropriate variables and data collection methods;
•  gathering, sorting, and displaying multivariate category,
•  comparing distributions visually;
•  communicating findings, using appropriate displays.

Background

The activity The gap between men and women comes from a newspaper report that says that more women have degrees now than men. Students investigate the problem using the SURF for Schools dataset.

There are various ways of approaching this problem. A brainstorm with the whole class may be a useful way of starting the groups off. Some things that may need thought are:

•  People under 20 are probably still studying and so might need to be left out.
•  What qualifications would you use – degrees against none? None plus school against vocational plus degree?
• If this is a recent change then we could investigate by grouping by age and seeing if anything changes, or by taking two different age groups and comparing them.

These decisions will help identify which records of the dataset should be used.

It is important to take a random sample (a discussion of why it would be a bad idea to choose from the dataset would be useful). The dataset is in random order so this can be done easily by taking (for example) the last 10 males, or every third person.

This is a very small sample of the population. Students should be encouraged to focus their answers on what this data shows. They should be encouraged to avoid sweeping generalisations about the whole population.

There are not really any right or wrong answers and groups can take different actions. The emphasis needs to be on the justification.

The sample answer below shows one way of answering the question and the sort of comments that are expected for justification. It is not the only, or necessarily the best, way of doing the activity.

Sample answer

Problem: Do more women have higher qualifications than men? Is this different from how it was in the past?

Contingency table for Sex by Highest qualification obtained