Studies Show

It’s Official: Women Have Higher IQs Than Men

In related news, girls rule, boys drool.

Women have officially begun to score higher than men on IQ tests, according to a new report published by IQ expert James Flynn. Flynn, according to the Telegraph, came to his findings after looking over the last 100 years of official IQ testing. And while both sexes have improved their intelligence steadily over the years, women have finally begun to outpace the dudes.

The main reason behind this is pretty obvious to anyone who’s been following education statistics lately, which show that women are enrolling in college and attaining advanced degrees at increasingly higher rates than men, as Time pointed out. As women move into increasingly complex careers and jobs, we’re forced to step up our brain game.

But there’s also another, more insidious reason, as Time noted: “Women have always been capable of score higher but, because of discriminatory gender socializing, never realized their own potential.” And since there’s plenty evidence to show anxiety and low confidence can affect women’s academic and career performance, we’re inclined to believe this could be true.

Of course, there’s a lot more to being smart than your IQ score — there’s social intelligence, practical know-how and “street smarts.” We’ll refrain from doing a victory lap, is what I’m saying. But while IQ scores are (somewhat) superficial figures, they’re showing something very valuable here: All those advances in gender equality and access to education are actually providing some real-world, tangible results.

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