《自然-通讯》发表的一项研究Gender differences in individual variation in academic grades fail to fit expected patterns for STEM指出，男生和女生在STEM（科学、技术、工程、数学）专业的平均成绩和变化率的差异比非STEM专业的要小。作者认为，男生间的成绩变化率较大不足以解释STEM专业中男生居多的现象。
摘要：Fewer women than men pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), despite girls outperforming boys at school in the relevant subjects. According to the ‘variability hypothesis’, this over-representation of males is driven by gender differences in variance; greater male variability leads to greater numbers of men who exceed the performance threshold. Here, we use recent meta-analytic advances to compare gender differences in academic grades from over 1.6 million students. In line with previous studies we find strong evidence for lower variation among girls than boys, and of higher average grades for girls. However, the gender differences in both mean and variance of grades are smaller in STEM than non-STEM subjects, suggesting that greater variability is insufficient to explain male over-representation in STEM. Simulations of these differences suggest the top 10% of a class contains equal numbers of girls and boys in STEM, but more girls in non-STEM subjects.
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