Abstract
We analyzed one decade of data collected by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), including the mathematics and reading performance of nearly 1.5 million 15 year olds in 75 countries. Across nations, boys scored higher than girls in mathematics, but lower than girls in reading. The sex difference in reading was three times as large as in mathematics. There was considerable variation in the extent of the sex differences between nations. There are countries without a sex difference in mathematics performance, and in some countries girls scored higher than boys. Boys scored lower in reading in all nations in all four PISA assessments (2000, 2003, 2006, 2009). Contrary to several previous studies, we found no evidence that the sex differences were related to nations’ gender equality indicators. Further, paradoxically, sex differences in mathematics were consistently and strongly inversely correlated with sex differences in reading: Countries with a smaller sex difference in mathematics had a larger sex difference in reading and vice versa. We demonstrate that this was not merely a between-nation, but also a within-nation effect. This effect is related to relative changes in these sex differences across the performance continuum: We did not find a sex difference in mathematics among the lowest performing students, but this is where the sex difference in reading was largest. In contrast, the sex difference in mathematics was largest among the higher performing students, and this is where the sex difference in reading was smallest. The implication is that if policy makers decide that changes in these sex differences are desired, different approaches will be needed to achieve this for reading and mathematics. Interventions that focus on high-achieving girls in mathematics and on low achieving boys in reading are likely to yield the strongest educational benefits.
Highlights
In recent decades, women’s participation in the workforce and pursuit of higher education has increased substantially, but there continue to be striking sex differences in college majors and career choices
We found that the paradoxical relation between the sex differences in mathematics and reading across different nations occurred in each of the four Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessments carried out over 10 years
Countries with a smaller sex difference in mathematics tended to have a larger sex difference in reading. This inverse relation between the sex differences in mathematics and reading is not merely an effect that emerged between countries, it occurred across the performance distributions within countries
Summary
Women’s participation in the workforce and pursuit of higher education has increased substantially, but there continue to be striking sex differences in college majors and career choices. Sex differences are notable at the highest levels of scientific achievement; for example, under 3% of Nobel laureates in science are women, and no women have so far received one of the top three awards in mathematics (the Fields Medal, the Abel Prize, and the Wolf Prize). A much publicized study showing that boys greatly outperform girls at the highest ranges of mathematics ability [1] ignited the debate about underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields in the early 1980s. In a talent search among students in secondary education, researchers reported a 13:1 ratio of high-achieving adolescent boys to girls in the U.S [1,2]. The causes of the sex difference in mathematics performance, in general, have been extensively discussed over the ensuing years. Though, is the international variation in the pattern of these sex differences
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