A study conducted by the journal Science, which aimed to further investigate the claims that there are significant gender differences in learning, presented its results in today's issue.

According to its research, in the United States, high school boys were more successful than girls in standardized math, but in Norway, Iceland, Sweden and many other countries girls were just as good. In addition to that, the results concluded that girls are far better readers in all 40 participant countries.

"These results suggest that the gender gap in math, although it historically favors boys, disappears in more gender- equal societies," Luigi Guiso from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, said in the journal Science. "In more gender-equal societies, girls perform as well as boys in mathematics and much better than them in reading."

The general perception is that males usually perform better on spatial tests and females score better on verbal exams. The study involved a careful analysis of education and also the economic and political opportunities in the participant countries.

The results, where perfect equality would be considered a 1, put Sweden at .81, the United States at .70 and Italy at .64.

The conclusion reached was that the performance gap is significantly less pronounced in countries where there is a clearer gender equality.

A similar discussion stirred quite a hype a few years ago, when former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers suggested that the far less significant participation of women in math and science careers could be explained by an innate difference between sexes.