Do Women Hold an Irrational Fear of Lower Grades?

Yesterday, a friend pointed out this new piece at the Washington Post, which exposes an issue that women tend to shy away from subjects where they are likely to struggle - instead sticking to areas where they expect to receive higher grades.  According to studies cited in that article, "women might also value high grades more than men do and sort themselves into fields where grading curves are more lenient."  Female students apparently do in fact receive higher average grades than male students, but female students also drop out of STEM majors at a higher rate than male students.  


This article immediately reminded me of studies that show that praising young children for effort rather than intelligence encourages them to work through problems when they encounter them.  In contrast, praising intelligence or achievement conditions children to do things they know they will succeed at.  For some reason, parents and teachers both tend to praise effort more in boys and achievement more in girls.  The result is that girls are feel encouraged to do things they know they will be good at, while boys are more apt to try something new and risk failure.  I suspect that this conditioning may in part explain the phenomenon discussed in the WaPo piece.


To some extent, students who seek easier classes may be doing the right thing.  In life we are judged on our output and not our effort.  So applying one's skills where they are more suited is not completely unreasonable.  But I see it as a problem if women are self-selecting out of tech fields at a higher rate just for fear of messing up a perfect GPA. GPA's don't matter as much as you think they do.