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Math and Gender

Math and Gender. Luigi Guiso Ferdinando Monte Paola Sapienza Luigi Zingales. Motivation. There are well-established gender differences in math and reading test performance. What is the cause? Environment Biology

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Math and Gender

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  1. Math and Gender Luigi Guiso Ferdinando Monte Paola Sapienza Luigi Zingales

  2. Motivation • There are well-established gender differences in math and reading test performance. What is the cause? • Environment • Biology • Strongest argument for biology is the existence of some gender differences in cognitive abilities • Men better at • aiming • spatial ability • Men worse at • verbal fluency and recall • These cognitive abilities linked to biological differences between gender. • If they can be linked to math and reading abilities  biology argument.

  3. Recent revival • Debate traditionally intense: why so few women in top science departments? MIT: • Only 8% are women in science (Biology, Physics, Mathematics etc.) • Only one out 38 professors in the Math department! (Gigliola Staffilani) • Debate recently revived by Larry Summer, ex Harvard President, who ventured to argue that from a pure scientific point of view one cannot exclude there is a biological component • Because of this he lost his job as Harvard President • Because of this his appointment as Obama’s lead economic advisor has been heavily criticized

  4. Facts & actors Larry Summers

  5. Approach • Cognitive differences have been found in all the populations (except the Inuit or Yupik ) • But environmental (cultural) differences across countries are huge • Use a large sample of comparable data across countries with different attitudes toward women to determine how much of the difference in performance is environmental

  6. PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) • 276.000 students in 41 countries tested at age 15 • In 2003, 4 tests: • math, problem solving, science, reading • Lots of data on • Intrinsic motivation (taste - driven) • Extrinsic motivation (instrument driven) • Stress levels • Tests are “culture free”

  7. Math tests • Scores reflect ability to apply mathematics in solving real-life problems • Questions in math cover: • “space and shape” (geometry) • “change and relationship” (algebra) • “quantity” (arithmetic) • “uncertainty” (probability) in a range of difficulty that goes from the need of simple mathematical operations to complex thinking. • Math scores scaled to have mean of 500 and standard deviation of 100 in the OECD students’ population.

  8. Gender Gap in Math

  9. Gender Gap in Reading

  10. Focus • Focus so far within countries • At this level a gender gap in math (almost) in all countries • But there are marked differences in the size of these gaps across countries. Why? • They have been overlooked • Explaining them is our focus

  11. Gender Gap in Math by Country ITALY

  12. Measures of Women Emancipation • Gender gap index from the Global Competitiveness Report (WEF, 2006): • World Value Survey: • percentage of people that "disagree" with assertions like "When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women". • Participation to the labor force (UNESCO) • Female-to-male ratio of tertiary enrollment (UNESCO)

  13. Women emancipation index by Country SWEDEN ITALY TURKEY

  14. Math Gender Gap and GGI

  15. Math Gender Gap and Women Participation

  16. It is not just economic development • We run the regression at the individual level • Insert country dummies (that control for all the possible institutional differences) • Insert the interaction between gender and GGI • The interaction is positive and statistically significant => effect robust to other institutional differences

  17. Effect economic sizeable • Raising Turkey women emancipation to the level prevailing in Sweden would close the math gender gap! • Interestingly, increased women emancipation not only improves the math gap but also strengthens women advantage in reading • Women’s performance improves across the board • Men performance is no worse • What is unaffected is the within gender relative performance: • Women do relatively better in reading than in math and men vice versa, independently of society’s women emancipation

  18. How does women emancipation affect scores ? 1) Economic channel: Higher payoff -> higher investment • more hours in homework and classes • more effort in each class 2) Psychological channel -> • More self confidence • Less anxiety

  19. How does women emancipation affect scores ? 3) Educational channel • Teaching style • Discipline • Different approach to subjects 4) Sociological channel • Role model • Peer pressure

  20. 1) Economic channel • Does women emancipation increase: • Hours spent by women in math courses? NO • Hours spent by women in math homework? NO • Effort put by women in studying math (measured as the marginal effect of an extra hour of class)? NO

  21. 2) Psychological channel • Does women emancipation increase • Women intrinsic motivation? • Women extrinsic motivation? • Women self-confidence? • Or decrease • Women level of anxiety?

  22. Variables • Self assessments (To what extent do you agree with a bunch of statements) of • Intrinsic motivation • Extrinsic motivation • Self confidence 1 (self concept) • Self confidence 2 (self efficacy) • Anxiety

  23. Variables definitions: • Intrinsic motivation: • I enjoy reading about mathematics. (+) • I look forward to my mathematics lessons. (+) • I do mathematics because I enjoy it. (+) • I am interested in the things I learn in mathematics. (+) • Extrinsic motivation: • Making an effort in mathematics is worth it because it will help me in the work that I want to do later on. (+) • Learning mathematics is worthwhile for me because it will improve my career <prospects, chances>. (+) • Mathematics is an important subject for me because I need it for what I want to study later on. (+) • I will learn many things in mathematics that will help me get a job. (+)

  24. Variable definitions: • Self efficacy: • How confident do you feel about having to do the following calculations? […] • Self-concept • I am just not good at mathematics. • I get good <marks> in mathematics. (+) • I learn mathematics quickly. (+) • I have always believed that mathematics is one of my best subjects. (+) • In my mathematics class, I understand even the most difficult work. (+)

  25. Variable definitions: • Anxiety • I often worry that it will be difficult for me in mathematics classes. (+) • I get very tense when I have to do mathematics homework. (+) • I get very nervous doing mathematics problems. (+) • I feel helpless when doing a mathematics problem. (+) • I worry that I will get poor <marks> in mathematics. (+)

  26. Female-Male Gap

  27. Results • Motivation and anxiety matter • But no evidence that women emancipation works through an increase in intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, an increase in self confidence, or a reduction in anxiety • In fact, where women are more emancipated they have • lower relative self concept in math • higher math anxiety

  28. 3) Educational channel • Discipline • Correlation between women emancipation and discipline? No correlation • Different approaches to subjects (more emphasis in math) • Correlation between women emancipation and importance of math? No correlation • Differences in teaching style • Foster different learning environments? No correlation

  29. 4) Sociological channel • We compute the average math score of the other boys and the other girls in the same school. • We run a micro level regression of math scores on these variables (level and interacted with gender) for each country • Estimate reflects the importance in that country of the role model (or peer effect)

  30. Pure differential peer effect and GGI

  31. Results • Pure differential peer effect less important in countries with higher GGI • Consistent with the idea that role models are different in more emancipated countries • => in countries with more women emancipation, women performance in math less (positively) affected by the performance of other girls and less (negatively) affected by that of other boys

  32. Looking forward • Very recently Steven Levitt has looked at this issue again. He finds that • Using US panel data, a gender gap emerges early at school=> kids perform initially equal but a gap emerges as they grow older • Confirms our findings in a different dataset when he uses the same countries • But correlation with women emancipation disappears when Muslin countries are added! Why?

  33. Looking forward • In Muslin countries male and female go to same-sex schools • girls do not lag boys in countries with same-sex schooling, even if in the countries where women are much less emancipated • Not exposing them to men seems to be enough to avoid the effect of culture on gender gap in math

  34. Conclusions • We identify a strong cultural factor in women test performance • Where women are treated more equally, they exhibit a strongerabsolute advantage in reading and a weaker absolute disadvantage in math. • This positive effect does not work through: • Standard economic incentives • Psychological effects • Different educational styles • Most plausible channel seems a role model effect

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