Personal Attributes

• Author: McNally, Sandra
• Pages: 22-23

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It should also be noted that there is substantial wi thin-country heterogeneity in

the extent of these gender gaps. Using multiple waves of PISA data Anghel et al., 2019

show that within-country variation accounts for about 61.5 per cent and 54.9 per cent

of the total observed variation in the maths gender gap in the pool ed sample of OECD

and non-OECD countries respectively. Thus, it is likely that similar factors are at work

within different countries that help to explain the gender gap in educational

preparedness and in those other factors that give rise to the gender gap even among

STEM-ready individuals.

5. Personal Attributes

There has l ong been a debate on the role of nature versus nurture with regard

to gender differences in cognitive performance, which also partially influences field of

study in tertiary education. As set out by Lavy and Sand (2018), th is debate is based

on limited credible scientific evidence because it is diffi cult to disentangle the impact of

biological gender dissimila rities from environmental conditions. It i s also difficult to

measure stereotypes and prejudices and to test their causal implications. Whatever the

underlying cause, gender differences in personal attributes have been found to account

for gender differences in ‘STEM readiness’ (as defin ed above) and i n the propensity to

choose different fields of study within tertiary education.

Relevant attributes that appear in the lit erature include confidence, self-efficacy

and competitiveness, which are related to each other. The results of l aboratory

experiments suggest that men are more likely to enter competitive arenas than women

because of higher confidence (Gneezy et al., 2003; Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007). This

also (negatively) influences female performance in high-level maths tests (Niederle and

Vesterlund, 2007). As noted by Shi (2018), insofar as stud ents perceive ST EM majors

to requi re technical mastery, gender gaps in beliefs about on e’s own ability can l ead

men and women to sort into different academic tracks. It might also influence why

women drop out of STEM majors at much higher rate s than men (as found by Astorne-

Figari and Speer, 2018).13 With regard to engineering specifically, Shi (2018) finds that

female beliefs about lower academic ability (even for those who are academically

prepared) are important in accounting for the gender gap in North Carolina. Murphy and

Weinhardt (2018) find that gende r differences in confidence are related to S TEM fields’

choices among college stu dents in the US. Brainard and Carlin (1998) find that among

females who switch out of STEM majors in the US, major reasons cited were ‘lack of

self-confidence’ and ‘feeling isolated’. Many studies find gender gaps in self-efficacy with

regard to maths at all stages of education, even among those who are equally competent

(Cheryan et al., 2017).

Buser et al . (2014) measure competitiveness i n an experimental setting (usin g

the same measure as Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007) and then relate this to actual track

choices of students in the Netherlands one year lat er. The measure of competitiveness

reflects the individual’s preference for entering a competitive arena and not his/her

performance within it. The institutional context is that secondary school students choose

their track at age 15 and this strongly correlates wi th the choice of major in tertiary

education. There is a clear ranking of tracks in terms of mathematical intensity and

academic prestige, with the science track being ranked first. They find that even though

the academic performance of girls is at least as good as that of boys, boys choose

substantially more pres tigious t racks than girls and are much more c ompetitive than

girls in the experiment (even though their performance on th e task is the same). Th ey

find that the gender di fference in competitiveness can a ccount for 20 per cent of the

13 However, they also find that men are more likely to switch out of college than women in general, although

the rate of women switching out of STEM majors is far higher than the male drop-out rate from college.