First-year schooling triggers global math gender gap

A groundbreaking study has revealed that the global pattern of boys outperforming girls in mathematics begins as early as the first year of formal education.

The research examined nearly three million schoolchildren across France and found that boys begin to outpace girls in math within just four months of starting school, Caliber.Az reports via Nature.

Although boys and girls enter school with similar math abilities, a significant performance gap emerges after one academic year. The study suggests this early divergence may explain the long-standing trend of men dominating math-related professions despite no innate advantage in numeracy being observed in infant boys.

“This paper suggests that the gender inequalities in children’s maths performance aren’t innate or inevitable,” said psychologist Jillian Lauer of the University of Cambridge. “If we want to stop girls from falling behind, we need to focus on their early experiences at school.”

To counter this trend, the researchers recommend reducing math anxiety among young learners, encouraging equal participation from girls in the classroom, and fostering curiosity and problem-solving both in and out of school.

“Ethically speaking, we cannot do nothing when we see these results,” said neuroscientist and study co-author Pauline Martinot, of France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

The study is among the most comprehensive to date, analyzing cohorts of children who began school in France in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The results were consistent across all socioeconomic backgrounds, school types, and regions of France.

“This startling universality suggests that policies must be wide-reaching,” noted economist Andrew Simon of the University of Virginia. “The policy can’t be limited to a certain group if you really want to fix it.”

Crucially, the findings point to the start of schooling—not age—as the trigger for the gender gap. By comparing children born days apart but placed in different school years, researchers found the gap present only in those further along in their education.

“There might be some biological factor that we haven’t been able to clearly link to maths or spatial reasoning,” Lauer added. “But this paper suggests that their experiences with the world are mattering more than anything else.”

Martinot emphasized that both boys and girls show equal understanding of numbers and logic in early childhood. “We all have this common core knowledge of mathematics,” she said.

By Naila Huseynova