The Math Gender Gap: The Role of Culture

Natalia Nollenberger (), Núria Rodriguez-Planas and Almudena Sevilla ()

No 8379, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper explores the role of cultural attitudes towards women in determining math educational gender gaps using the epidemiological approach. To identify whether culture matters, we estimate whether the math gender gap for each immigrant group living in a particular host country (and exposed to the same host country's laws and institutions) is explained by measures of gender equality in the parents' country of ancestry. We find that the higher the degree of gender equality in the country of ancestry, the higher the performance of second-generation immigrant girls relative to boys. This result is robust to alternative specifications, measures of gender equality and the inclusion of other human development indicators in the country of ancestry. The transmission of culture is higher among those in schools with a higher proportion of immigrants or in co-educational schools. Our results suggest that policies aimed at changing beliefs can prove effective in reducing the gender gap in mathematics.

Keywords: gender gap in math; immigrants; gender identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 J16 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-evo and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - substantially revised version published in: American Economic Review, 2016, 106 (5), 257-61

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp8379.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Math Gender Gap: The Role of Culture (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8379

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().