Though their numbers are growing, only 27 percent of all students taking the AP Computer Science exam in the United States are female. The gender gap only grows worse from there: Just 18 percent of American computer-science college degrees go to women. This is in the United States, where many college men proudly describe themselves as “male feminists” and girls are taught they can be anything they want to be.

　　尽管她们的总数在增加，但在参加大学前计算机科学(冬天毛注：编程专业的官方名称)考试的所有美国学生中，只有27%是女生。而且，性别差距还不止于此：在美国，只有18%的计算机科学学位是发给女性的。这可是在美国，那个许多大学男生都自豪地自称“女权男”，人们从小就教育女孩要敢想敢做的美国。

　　Meanwhile, in Algeria, 41 percent of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math—or “stem,” as its known—are female. There, employment discrimination against women is rife and women are often pressured to make amends with their abusive husbands.

　　与此同时，在阿尔及利亚，科学、技术、工程和数学专业——合称“理工”——的学生里，有41%是女性。在阿尔及利亚，对女性的职业歧视无处不在，妇女们往往迫于社会压力而只能对丈夫的欺凌忍气吞声。

　　According to a report I covered a few years ago, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were the only three countries in which boys are significantly less likely to feel comfortable working on math problems than girls are. In all of the other nations surveyed, girls were more likely to say they feel “helpless while performing a math problem.”

　　我几年前曾做过的一篇报道里提到，约旦、卡塔尔和阿联酋是仅有的三个擅长数学的男孩比例显著低于女孩的国家。在所有其他受调查的国家，都有更大比例的女孩表示自己“解数学题会感到无能为力”。

　　So what explains the tendency for nations that have traditionally less gender equality to have more women in science and technology than their gender-progressive counterparts do?

　　传统上性别不平等的国家的理工科女性反而多于那些女权更进步的国家，这种现象该如何解释呢?

　　According to a new paper published in Psychological Science by the psychologists Gijsbert Stoet, at Leeds Beckett University, and David Geary, at the University of Missouri, it could have to do with the fact that women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And often, that path leads through stem professions.

　　利兹贝克特大学(冬天毛注：英国公立大学)和密苏里大学(冬天毛注：美国州立大学)的两位心理学者吉斯波特.斯托耶特和大卫.吉尔里最近发表的论文中指出，这可能是因为在两性更不平等的国家，妇女们仅仅是在追求财务上的自由，而为此，理工专业往往是一条必经之路。

　　The issue doesn’t appear to be girls’ aptitude for stem professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they had enrolled in them.

　　这似乎和姑娘们是否天生擅长理工专业没有关系。斯托耶特和吉尔里研究了67个国家和地区的考试分数，发现在大多数国家，女孩的表现都比肩或强于男孩，而且几乎在所有国家，女孩都具备应付大学级别的理科(冬天毛注：此处的理科(science)指数学外的科目)和数学课程的能力，她们只是没有选罢了。

　　But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading. (That is, even if an average girl was as good as an average boy at science, she was still likely to be even better at reading.) Across all countries, 24 percent of girls had science as their best subject, 25 percent of girls’ strength was math, and 51 percent excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38 for science, 42 for math, and 20 for reading. And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject. (The most gender-equal countries are the typical snowy utopias you hear about, like Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates rank among the least equal, according to the Global Gender Gap Index.)

　　然而在相对优势方面，几乎在所有国家(罗马尼亚和黎巴嫩除外)，男孩最擅长的科目都是理科，而女孩则最擅长阅读。(也就是说，即便一个平均水平的女孩的理科能力与男孩相当，她也很有可能更擅长阅读)。将所有国家综合统计后发现，有24%的女孩最擅长的科目是理科，25%的女孩最擅长数学，51%的女孩最擅长阅读。男孩这边，理科是38%，数学是42%，而阅读是20%。以世界经济论坛的全球性别差距指数为衡量标准，一个国家越是性别平等，最擅长理科的男孩和女孩间的比例差距就越大。(性别最平等的国家就是你通常听说的那些乌托邦雪国，譬如瑞典、芬兰和冰岛。根据全球性别差距指数，土耳其和阿联酋是性别平等水平最低的国家。)

　　The gap in reading “is related at least in part to girls’ advantages in basic language abilities and a generally greater interest in reading; they read more and thus practice more,” Geary told me.

　　吉尔里告诉我，阅读能力的差距“至少有一部分是因为女孩在基本语言能力方面有优势，而且通常对阅读的兴趣更大;她们读得多，练得也就多”。

　　What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at.

　　不止如此，那些在理科、工程和数学方面出产女毕业生最多的国家也恰是性别最不平等的国家。两位学者提出，这是因为那些赋予女性权利的国家也间接赋予了她们选择自己最喜欢也最擅长的职业的权利。

　　“Countries with the highest gender equality tend to be welfare states,” they write, “with a high level of social security.” Meanwhile, less gender-equal countries tend to also have less social support for people who, for example, find themselves unemployed. Thus, the authors suggest, girls in those countries might be more inclined to choose stem professions, since they offer a more certain financial future than, say, painting or writing.

　　两位学者写道：“两性最平等的国家往往是福利国家，社会保障水平很高。”与此同时，两性比较不平等的国家对人民的社会扶助也往往较少，这自然也包括失业者。两位学者认为，这导致那些国家的女孩更倾向于选择理工专业，因为相比画画或是写作，这些专业的财务前景更稳定。

　　When the study authors looked at the “overall life satisfaction” rating of each country—a measure of economic opportunity and hardship—they found that gender-equal countries had more life satisfaction. The life-satisfaction ranking explained 35 percent of the variation between gender equality and women’s participation in stem. That correlation echoes past research showing that the genders are actually more segregated by field of study in more economically developed places.

　　而当研究涉及到各国的“总体生活满意度”评级(衡量经济机遇和困难程度)时，两位作者发现两性平等的国家的生活满意度更高。生活满意度排名解释了两性平等度和妇女理工科选择率之间差异幅度的35%。与此一致的是，过往的研究也表明，越是经济发达的地区，两性在学科专业上越是相互隔离。

　　The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad: It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested.

　　这项研究的最终结论不能说很符合女权价值观，但也不算糟：不是说性别平等妨碍了女孩们追求科学，而是它允许她们如果没兴趣就可以不学。

　　The findings will likely seem controversial, since the idea that men and women have different inherent abilities is often used as a reason, by some, to argue we should forget trying to recruit more women into the stem fields. But, as the University of Wisconsin gender-studies professor Janet Shibley Hyde, who wasn’t involved with the study, put it to me, that’s not quite what’s happening here.

　　这些发现可能还是很具争议性，因为男性和女性天生能力的差异往往被一些人用来当做理工专业不应该再多招女性的借口。但就像威斯康星大学性别研究教授珍妮特.谢博利.海德(她与这项研究无关)对我说的那样，这项研究应该不是出于这样的用心。

　　“Some would say that the gender stem gap occurs not because girls can’t do science, but because they have other alternatives, based on their strengths in verbal skills,” she said. “In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less.”

　　她说：“有一种观点认为，从女孩在表达能力上的优势来看，理工科的性别差距之所以存在，不是因为女孩学不来理科，而是因为她们有别的路可选。在那些富裕的国家，她们相信她们有选择那些道路的自由，而不用担心挣得少。”

　　Instead, this line of research, if it’s replicated, might hold useful takeaways for people who do want to see more Western women entering stem fields. In this study, the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger than the number of women who were graduating with stem degrees. That means there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects. The women-in-stem advocates could, for starters, focus their efforts on those would-be stem stars.

　　与此相反，如果这项研究得到了证实，那么对于那些希望看到更多西方女性参与理科专业的人们来说，它恰恰提供了有用的启示。在这项研究中，在理科和数学方面表现优秀的女孩比例仍然大于最终持理工学位毕业的女性。这意味着，即便在最富自由理念的社会，还是有某种力量在把女性推离数理专业，即便那是她们最擅长的科目。妇女学理工的提倡者们首先可以关注那些有志于在理工科做出成就的女孩们。

　　Then again, it could just be that, feeling financially secure and on equal footing with men, some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science.

　　话又说回来，实际情况仍然可能只是，那些不愁柴米、不让须眉的女性往往会选择自己的兴趣所在，而不是劳动经济学家推荐的专业;而且，她们感兴趣的还真未必是理科。