Physics gender gap eliminated

David J. Webb (UC Davis Dept. of Physics and Astronomy) and UC Davis alumna Cassandra A. Paul (San Jose State University Dept. of Physics and Astronomy and Science Ed. Program) have new results in physics education research. 

Their research shows that the gender gap commonly seen in physics exam scores can be explained by the stakes associated with the exam and that, despite the exam grade gap, there may be no underlying gap in physics understanding or skills.  They use three independent sets of data from an introductory course series to show that the largest gender grade gaps are for exams with the highest stakes, that lower stakes exams have reduced gender gaps, and that the lowest stakes exams had no gender gap.  The lowest stakes are produced by allowing each student a retake exam if they want to try to raise their score.  The first attempts at such exams have the lowest stakes and had no gender gaps.  This research is published in Physical Review Physics Education Research here, and has also been discussed in Physics World.