New research by Stanford University in the US shows that while gender gaps in math proficiency still exist, they are steadily closing.
The study – published on the Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education website – looked at 260 million test scores in more than 10,000 school districts in the United States between 2008 and 2015
Stanford Professor Sean Reardon and his research team found that the math gap between genders has narrowed over the years and that boys now outperform girls in math only slightly.
An interesting finding was that boys outperform girls in math in wealthy, suburban school districts and girls outperform boys in math in low-income districts only slightly.
However, girls excel in English across all economic groups.
“Our goal was to map the patterns of gender achievement gaps across the entire country in order to develop a better sense of what kinds of communities and school districts most commonly provide equal educational opportunities for girls and boys,” Professor Reardon said.
“We hope this information will help educators and policymakers eliminate educational gender disparities.”
One hypothesis holds that, in wealthy families where the men earn much more than women, the stereotypical idea that boys are better at math and sciences and girls are better at reading and storytelling may be inadvertently bolstered when a son shows early interest in robots or girls stage a play.
That's because richer families have the resources to invest in, say, after-school science or theater programs.
“It may be easier for parents to reinforce stereotypical patterns in affluent places because they have more money to do so,” Reardon said.
“In less affluent places parents can't spend the same kind of money and, therefore, may not reinforce those patterns as much.”
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