-Girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of every three countries.
-In nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled.
-Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. An explanation of this paradox that the authors offer is that “the liberal mores in these cultures, combined with smaller financial costs of foregoing a STEM path, amplify the influence of intraindividual academic strengths. The result would be the differentiation of the academic foci of girls and boys during secondary education and later in college, and across time, increasing sex differences in science as an academic strength and in graduation with STEM degrees.”
-In 97% of the countries, boys’ intraindividual strength in science was (significantly) larger than that of girls.
-In all countries, girls’ intraindividual strength in reading was larger than that of boys, while boys’ intraindividual strength in mathematics was larger than that of girls.
-The gap between boys’ science achievement and girls’ reading achievement relative to their mean academic performance was near universal.
-Boys’ science self-efficacy was higher than that of girls in 58% of the countries.
-Boys expressed a stronger broad interest in science than girls in 76% of the countries
-Boys reported more joy in science than girls in 43% of the countries.
-Countries with lower levels of gender equality had relatively more women among STEM graduates than did more gender-equal countries.
-The sex differences in academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM graduation gap.
2018 - The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education
Authors base research on expectancy-value theory. It is hypothesized that students use their own relative performance (e.g., knowledge of what subjects they are best at) as a basis for decisions about further educational and occupational choices.
-The authors used the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data set.
-The sample size was of 472,242 students in 67 nations or regions, which represents 25,141,223 students (i.e., the sum of weights provided by PISA for
each student).
– We used the 2015 data (World Economic Forum, 2015)on the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) which assesses the degree to
which girls and women fall behind boys and men on
14 key indicators (e.g., earnings, tertiary enrollment
ratio, life expectancy, seats in parliament) on a 0.0 to
1.0 scale, with 1.0 representing complete parity (or men
falling behind).
– Data on overall life satisfaction (OLS) comes for the United Nations Development Program.
-DV: % of Girls choosing further STEM study at Age 15. % of women graduating in STEM in Tertiary Education.
– IV: Ability, attitudes, personal strength in subject, overall life satisfaction of the country, gender equality.