Despite the narrowing of other gender gaps in the labour market, women choose degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) less often. Using microdata from diagnostic tests in the Community of Madrid between 2016 and 2019, we see the labour market gap reflected in compulsory education: on average, girls outperform boys in reading, but boys outperform girls in mathematics. This latter difference doubles as compulsory education progresses (between the 3rd year of primary school and the 4th year of ESO).

Boys outperform girls in the 3rd year of primary school by the equivalent of 5 months of schooling, which doubles to 10 months in the 4th year of ESO. Moreover, these differences are concentrated at the extremes, among the highest- and lowest-performing students. All this points to an apparent comparative advantage of boys over girls in mathematics. But stopping here only tells part of the story:

→ The data show that girls report feeling 50% more nervous when taking
the mathematics test than boys, indicating that they are under more
pressure and connecting with accumulated evidence pointing to gender differences
in performance in competitive settings.
→ Girls report lower confidence in their mathematics skills, and
when they are the best in the class, they make more errors in predicting their own level:
girls appear to have worse information about their abilities.
→ All these results contrast with the fact that, in language, the differences are practically non-existent, which fits with explanations linked to gender stereotypes. To close the gap and improve students’ performance and educational decisions, four groups of policies are proposed.

For low-performing students:
→ Tutoring programmes: these programmes have a high impact on the performance and
educational aspirations of low-performing students.
→ Remedial education: these programmes usually increase instruction time
for these students. Empirical evidence shows that they have a significant effect on
improving the academic performance of the students with the worst results.

For high-performing students:
→ Mentoring programmes, school counsellors and role models: programmes in which
students are advised by a mentor, or having a female science adviser (instead
of a male one), substantially increase women’s access to and graduation from
STEM degrees.
→ Providing information on relative performance: giving students
information on their relative performance can help improve their motivation and confidence.

All the proposed public policies have two major advantages: they show high returns
in improving performance and access to STEM degrees, and they are very low cost
compared with other programmes.

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José Montalbán Castilla

Profesor Asistente de Economía, Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) en Stockholm University

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