Women Overtake Men in IQ Tests for First Time in 100 Years: Are Women Smarter Than Men?

First of all there are more women on the planet and that alone should give females the advantage. But as a teacher of gifted students for 36 years, I can say that even though I personally feel women win hands down in intellect every time, over the years, I have found it has been pretty even in the classroom. Some years I have more girls who are more intellectual and other years the boys win. That being said, the criteria to determine high IQ has been skewed for years. I have given many IQ tests and what they measure is determined by the backgrounds of those being tested. Plus, some tests are geared towards verbal individuals and other tests are performance based. The scores vary. That is why many times certain minorities, after being tested, used to be excluded based on test scores alone since the tests were geared to white middle class men and the test creators were also white middle class men. The types of questions are often more advantageous to the male gender and to those who are caucasian and often ask questions or skills that most girls were familiar with or not introduced to. However, since the tests have been revamped and are continuously redone every few years to make sure they keep up with technology, slang, and the changing world, they are much more accurate, thus more minorities and more women score in the gifted range. ( An example is on the picture quiz. When I used to test an elementary school child I would start by showing them a group of pictures and they had to identify what they saw. A few years ago they redid the test because there were photos of a record player and no child knew what that was and that acted against their score, and also a hand wound pencil sharpener. The children simply had no clue what it was. ) The IQ tests had to be changed totally. When you even the playing field, update concepts, things usually even out. Women are ( or at least they were) normally less aggressive and therefore think things through and are generally less impulsive in testing situations. Boys are raised a certain way and their left brain skills are usually more highly developed because their creative side isn't as encouraged in childhood, or at least it wasn't in the past. Women on the other hand used to have a very highly developed right brain. I would say that it is pretty even now in regards to test scores. In life.....now that is a whole different story. I think women score higher in every category. LOL But, as a teacher who sees male and female students of every color and every ethnicity, I have found none of that matters. They are either bright or they aren't. Gender, race or religion doesn't really determine any of that. There is usually about 2 percent of the population at any given time that is gifted.

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http://inventors.about.com/od...