There is a stereotype that girls are less capable of mathematics (and indeed of the exact sciences) than boys. Therefore, one should not expect much success from them in these subjects. Is this true, and if so, why?
Recent study1 showed — most likely, the opinion about the mathematical abilities of girls is nothing more than the so-called «self-fulfilling prophecy». That is, when society (or family) is taught (directly or implicitly) from childhood that “mathematics is not a woman’s business,” this can undermine their self-confidence and affect academic performance.
British economist Almudena Sevilla and her colleagues are studying how cultural stereotypes about the role of women in society affect the success of schoolgirls. To do this, scientists analyzed the estimates of more than ten thousand teenagers. All the children were from immigrant families.
“All the guys live in the same country and study in the same conditions, but their parents were born in other places. Therefore, the difference in academic performance between boys and girls will certainly largely depend on what ideas about equality (or vice versa, inequality) of the sexes they have absorbed in the family. And these ideas, in turn, depend on the cultural characteristics of the countries where the parents came from,” says Almudena Sevilla.
“The success of girls in mathematics was directly related to how developed gender equality was in the homeland of their parents”
It turned out that the success of girls in mathematics was directly related to how developed gender equality was in their parents’ homeland (this was assessed using the so-called gender inequality index (Gender Gap Index — GGI).
“An example of a country where gender equality is relatively underdeveloped is Turkey. Girls whose parents emigrated from this country show noticeably worse results in mathematics compared to boys (also children of emigrants from Turkey). Our data show that if the situation with gender equality in Turkey improved, the results of schoolgirls would be no worse than their classmates,” says one of the authors of the study, economist Natalia Nollenberger (Natalia Nollenberger).
“Before, we didn’t know exactly why girls do worse on average in math – because they believe that this subject is not necessary for them for the future or career, or because of beliefs like “math is not a woman’s mind” ? The first reason is related to public institutions, the second — to the value system. Our research has shown that it is values that matter,” adds economist Nuria Rodriguez-Planas. However, a lot depends on the parents. It turned out that the influence of the family means at least as much (if not more) than the influence of society.
1 N. Nollenberger et al. «The Math Gender Gap: The Role of Culture», American Economic Review, vol. 106, May 2016.