– Female students are more likely to take advance math and science classes in high school and declare a STEM major in college if they believe that boys are not better than girls in math and science
– Students’ beliefs can be influenced by their 9th grade teachers.
– Female students are less likely to believe that boys are better than girls in math or science when they have a female teacher in those subjects, or when their teacher creates a positive learning environment by listening and promoting students’ ideas. Such positive effect is consistent with the role model effect discussed in the previous literature. Furthermore, it is in line with the positive effect of female leaders on girl aspirations and educational attainments- female teachers can also change male students’ beliefs and make them less likely to believe that boys are better than girls.
– Female students who indeed believe that boys are better than girls are a minority (although a substantial one). In addition to this, the last empirical section demonstrated that it is possible to (considerably) increase women in STEM by changing these beliefs, but it would not be enough to completely fill the gender gap in these fields.