ABSTRACT

I brought together two strands of literature, one investigating the moderate but persistent underachievement of girls in mathematics in most countries, and the other examining the role of self-efficacy and other self-beliefs in predicting behaviour and achievement. I implemented detailed decompositions of the gender mathematics gap, both at the mean and for low and high performing students, for a large and diverse group of countries. I found considerable heterogeneity and different cross-country patterns in decomposition components and the contribution of self-beliefs. In OECD-Europe and more affluent East Asian countries, most or all of the gap is explained by gender differences in self-beliefs, especially self-efficacy; on the other hand, in Latin America and the Middle East, most of the gap remains unexplained. I also investigated the cross-country relationship between the gender mathematics gap and gender equity and found that a clearly negative association can be established after controlling for cross-country heterogeneity in gender differences in mathematics self-beliefs, which correlate with gender equality.

摘要

我汇集了两类文献，一类是在大多数国家中调查女生在数学上中等程度但持续存在的成就不足，另一类是研究自我效能和其他自我信念在预测行为和成就方面的作用。我对大量不同国家/地区的男女数学差距进行了详细的分解，包括平均水平的学生以及低水平和高性能学生的情况。我发现分解成分和自信心的贡献存在很大的异质性和不同的越野模式。在经合组织欧洲国家和较富裕的东亚国家中，大多数或全部差距是由自我信仰，特别是自我效能方面的性别差异造成的；另一方面，在拉丁美洲和中东，大多数差距仍然无法解释。