Luigi Guiso
Ferdinando Monte
Paola Sapienza
Luigi Zingales





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.



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

Recall Fluency
Numeracy
50 60 70 80 50
Men
60 age
70 80
Women
50 60 70 80
Larry Summers

 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

 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”




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.

Densities Mathematics test scores
World level
4.00E-03
3.50E-03
3.00E-03
2.50E-03
2.00E-03
1.50E-03
1.00E-03
5.00E-04
0.00E+00
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 800 850 score
Males
Females

Densities Reading test scores
World level
4.50E-03
4.00E-03
3.50E-03
3.00E-03
2.50E-03
2.00E-03
1.50E-03
1.00E-03
5.00E-04
0.00E+00
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 800 850 900 score
Males
Females

 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

20
15
10
5
0
-5
-10
-15
-20
-25
-30
-35
ITALY

1)
2)
3)
4)
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)

Women Emancipation Index
SWEDEN
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
TURKEY
ITALY
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41
Women emancipation index
Country
CGI

ISL
TUR
THA
IDN
KOR
TUN
MEX
FRA
HUN
POL
RUS
URY
CZE
LUX
SVK
PRT USA
AUTBEL
CAN
CHE
AUS
NLD
LVA
GBR
JPN
ITA
GRC
IRL
ESP
NZL
BRA
.6
.65
.7
Women emancipaiton (GGI)
.75
gender difference in math Fitted values
.8
NOR
SWE
FIN

TUN
TUR
30
IDN
ITA
MEX
HUN
LUX
GRC
HKG
NLD
LVA
YUG
AUT
IRL
CZE
SVK
PRT FIN
SWE
USA
NZL
CHE
JPN
KOR
BRA
NOR
THA
40 50 female economic activity rate gender difference in math
60
Fitted values
70
ISL

 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




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

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

3) Educational channel
 Teaching style
 Discipline
 Different approach to subjects
4) Sociological channel
 Role model
 Peer pressure


1)
Does women emancipation increase:
Hours spent by women in math courses? NO
2) Hours spent by women in math homework? NO
3) Effort put by women in studying math
(measured as the marginal effect of an extra hour of class)? NO

 Does women emancipation increase
 Women intrinsic motivation?
 Women extrinsic motivation?
 Women self-confidence?
 Or decrease
 Women level of anxiety?

 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



Intrinsic motivation:
1.
2.
3.
4.
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:
1.
2.
3.
4.
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. (+)

• 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. (+)

 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.
(+)

Intrinsic motivation -0.21***
Extrinsic motivation
Self-concept
-0.28***
-0.31***
Self-efficacy
Anxiety
-0.35***
0.26***

 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

 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

 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)

TUR
KOR
URY
ITA
JPN
BRA
THA
RUS
CZE
POL
BEL
CHE
CAN
ESP
NLD
GBR
USA
DEU
PRT
LVA
GRC
HUN
NZL
DNK
ISL
NOR
FIN
SWE
.6
IRL
.65
.7
Gender Gap Index 2006
Pure differential peer effect
.75
Fitted values
.8

 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

 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?

 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

 We identify a strong cultural factor in women test performance
 Where women are treated more equally, they exhibit a stronger absolute 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