Gender Inequality and Science Education: Comparison with Brazilian Students in PISA and ENEM

Abstract

Background: Natural sciences is considered a markedly masculine field of study. Despite the criticisms and changes observed in recent years, the effects on society of male science are still observed in school performance. Objectives: This study proposes to compare the performance inequality based on students’ gender in the contents of natural sciences in Brazil at the end of two learning cycles, lower secondary education (LSE) and upper secondary education or high school (USE). Design: The research was designed to identify the size of the effect on the performance of male and female groups in the International Student Assessment Program (PISA) and in the National High School Exam (ENEM) between 2009 and 2018. Setting and Participants: Public school students who, in the year in which the exam was taken, were in their final year of LSE or USE. Data collection and analysis: PISA performance data were collected from the PISA Data Explorer. From ENEM, they came directly from the database made available by INEP. We applied statistical significance tests to identify differences in performance in the natural sciences test of the two exams. Results: The PISA results indicate that there is no difference in the students’ performance based on gender. In contrast, the ENEM results indicate a difference of 0.3 standard deviations in favour of boys. Conclusions: The results point to an expansion of the gender-based differences in the contents of natural sciences during the EM.