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Gender Equity and Mathematics Education

The possibility that mathematics achievement is influenced by a student's gender (as male or female) has been examined for more than half a century in many countries around the world. The evidence collected from different countries makes it clear that differences in mathematics performance between females and males reflect social, economic, and educational disparities rather than any innate gender-based aptitude for mathematics. Some of the different causes of underachievement and nonparticipation for girls and women are reviewed in this entry.

Overview

Four facts are important and enduring in understanding the relationship between gender and mathematics. First, gender differences in mathematics achievement are generally small and insignificant when considered alongside the overlap in male and female achievement. Janet Hyde and colleagues have produced a number of meta-analyses of gender and mathematics showing minimal differences between males and females, yet the media consistently promote the idea that females underachieve. This has bolstered a discourse of difference in the United States that has contributed to a belief among children as young as seven that math is for boys. Second, achievement differences have vastly diminished over time. This gives important counterevidence to claims that gender differences in math may be the result of genetic factors. Third, the greatest differences in mathematics achievement occur at advanced levels, where small differences favoring males are prompted by closed tests such as the SAT college entrance exam in the United States, or the International Mathematics Olympiad test. Fourth and finally, gender differences tend to occur only on questions that assess spatial ability and problem solving. The first two of these four facts reflect positively on females and yet are rarely regarded in gender analyses; the latter two reflect negatively and have been the subject of numerous studies.

Despite near parity in math achievement, a comparison of male and female participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields suggests stark inequalities in participation. In most countries, the participation of girls in mathematics falls as soon as mathematics becomes optional and worsens at higher levels. In the United States, for example, 45% of undergraduate mathematics degrees are earned by women, 24% of mathematics PhD's go to women, and women constitute 17% of tenured university mathematics faculty. The low numbers of female researchers and scientists is also an area of concern for the European Union where only 25% of higher education students in STEM are women. When females choose not to participate in mathematics, they narrow their economic and employment opportunities, countries suffer from low numbers of people working in scientific fields overall, and mathematics as a discipline is impoverished by a lack of female perspectives. In reviewing reasons for low participation of girls and women in math, three important areas of research will be considered—teaching approaches, the university mathematics experience, and the persistence of stereotype and bias.

Teaching Approaches

In classrooms around the world, the prevailing model of mathematics teaching is a traditional one in which a teacher demonstrates methods that students then practice and memorize. This model endures despite a wide body of research showing that when students are more actively engaged in mathematics classrooms—asking questions, using and applying methods, discussing ideas and solving complex problems—they achieve at higher levels, they enjoy mathematics more, and gender inequities in achievement and participation are reduced or even eliminated. As the work of Jo Boaler and others have shown, in more open teaching approaches boys achieve at the same levels as they do in traditional approaches, but girls enjoy mathematics and achieve at higher levels when they receive opportunities to engage more actively. Recent research on gender differences in women's and men's brains offers explanations for the preference of girls toward more conceptual and connected teaching approaches, but the reasons for girls' preferences are less important than the fact that when mathematics is taught in an open, discursive, and connected way, girls and boys achieve equally and participation for both is increased and equal.

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