New evidence on the gender gap in mathematical achievement in Brazil
Camila Rafaela Alvarenga, Cícero Augusto Silveira Braga
Abstract
South American countries have some of the worst overall achievement scores in math compared to developed countries. Brazilian students have the lower relative score which boys outperform girls in all ages. In this work we aim to demonstrate that gender plays a decisive role in the difference in math achievement in Brazil. We performed an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of the math-gender gap in unconditional quantiles in order to measure which proportion can be attributed to actual gender differences in converting individual and contextual characteristics into math achievement. The average differences we observed are partially a function of socially constructed gender roles and stereotypes, which may affect each individual differently. Nevertheless, we found that gender differences in math achievement persist across primary and secondary education (increasing with school-grade), and they are not explained by individual, family and school characteristics, but mostly by unobservable gender differences in returns to these characteristics.
Keywords
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Submetido em:
11/09/2023
Aceito em:
04/06/2024
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