Gifted girls have an even harder time. Joan Smutney digs in, “Gifted girls…have abilities urging them forward, prompting them to explore all that education has to offer, yet education does not run to meet them.”
Girls' competitiveness often yields to empathetic collaboration so they may even avoid success because they don’t want to differentiate themselves. Girls, in general, prioritize relationships and often change their behavior to fit in. “The Horner Effect” describes a fear of success causing girls to purposely hold back because of a more acute need to please others. I was incredibly unpopular among girls in school; perhaps it was because I was willing to put my energy and enjoyment into math?
Similarly, girls are notoriously eager to please teachers, so if they finish their work early, they likely wait patiently, whereas gifted boys struggle with misbehavior when they get bored. As a result teachers often underestimate the abilities of gifted girls, heuristically training their attention on children who might make learning a problem for the rest of the class.
Societal gender biases work against gifted girls as well. Parents often reinforce humility and politeness in girls but assertiveness and competition in boys. They are more likely to explain away their abilities due to luck or an error on the part of the evaluator. This “Imposter Phenomenon” pressures girls to explain away their success since it contradicts their self-image and social expectations. The TV series Bones features Dr. Temperance Brennan (“Bones”) who often claims her expertise by candidly stating her status among others in her field. When her supervisor offers that she is “the leading forensic anthropologist in the nation,” Bones corrects, “in the world,” and the other characters cringe. Socially impaired, she lacks the programming that states it is unacceptable for a woman to take credit for abilities or even accomplishments.
Researching this article has forced me to face my own biases, missed opportunities and “selfless” priorities. A decade after I swore off math in high school to “help people”, I found myself drawn to teaching over and over again. And the biggest need? Math. I’ve eaten my words for 20 years since, as I’ve taught math at our school and tutored math in the evenings, helping dozens of girls gain confidence in this male-dominated field. Why couldn’t I realize that doing what I was gifted in could actually help people? How far could I have gone in math? And how much more could I be giving!