LA BRECHA DE GÉNERO EN MATEMÁTICAS Y EN LECTURA: LA PERSPECTIVA DEL ESTUDIANTE

Abstract

The gender gap in maths favouring boys at school has gained considerable attention throughout the last decades. Since maths skills are critical for STEM academic studies and for properly integrating in math-related occupations in the labour market, this gap is a source of social concern. The existence and origin of this gender gap have been highly debated. Scholars representing socio-cultural approaches have emphasized the fact that it has been narrowing along the years, and also its variability across countries, and the correlation between the extent of the gap and various socio-cultural factors, such as measures of country’s gender inequality, to debunk biologically based explanations. However, despite dozens of publications the issue seems far from resolved. The reverse gender gap in reading has been documented consistently across countries and ages. The gap favouring girls has received less attention although language skills are as crucial for workforce success as maths. Comparing the gender gaps in reading and in maths revealed that the two gaps are highly correlated across countries and over time and that there is a consistent rank order in their magnitude. Accordingly, when the gap in maths would get smaller, usually the reverse gap in reading would get larger. Due to this reciprocity, in all circumstances, even when girls outperform boys in maths, girls tend to perform better in reading than in maths and boys tend to perform better in maths than in reading. In this study a comparative approach was used to explore the gaps in maths and reading mutually and comprehensively by applying the within-group perspective to the personal level. Using PISA 2012 data on about half a million 15 year old students and 10 thousand schools in 63 countries, we examined the intra-student difference between achievements in maths and reading and a series of potential explanatory correlates. Out of dozens of individual and school factors, gender was identified as the most dominant predictor of the within-student difference. The results were consistent across countries and may explain the persistence of gender stereotypes regarding maths performance and the under representation of women in STEM.