Gender differences in mathematics performance: A meta-analysis.

Abstract

Reviewers have consistently concluded that males perform better on mathematics tests than females do. To make a refined assessment of the magnitude of gender differences in mathematics performance, we performed a meta-analysis of 100 studies. They yielded 254 independent effect sizes, representing the testing of 3,175,188 Ss. Averaged over all effect sizes based on samples of the general population, d was -0.05, indicating that females outperformed males by only a negligible amount. For computation, d was -0.14 (the negative value indicating superior performance by females). For understanding of mathematical concepts, d was -0.03; for complex problem solving, d was 0.08. An examination of age trends indicated that girls showed a slight superiority in computation in elementary school and middle school. There were no gender differences in problem solving in elementary or middle school; differences favoring men emerged in high school (d = 0.29) and in college (d = 0.32). Gender differences were smallest and actually favored females in samples of the general population, grew larger with increasingly selective samples, and were largest for highly selected samples and samples of highly precocious persons. The magnitude of the gender difference has declined over the years; for studies published in 1973 or earlier d was 0.31, whereas it was 0.14 for studies published in 1974 or later. We conclude that gender differences in mathematics performance are small. Nonetheless, the lower performance of women in problem solving that is evident in high school requires attention.

Women's underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations.

“…Of course, change in either direction underscores the malleability of sex differences. Finally, for mathematics, Hyde, Fennema, and Lamon (1990) reported a mean effect size for studies published prior to 1973 of d ϭ 0.31 (boys superior) but only 0.14 for studies since 1974, a decline also found by others (Friedman, 1989).…”

“…In contrast to these demonstrations of impressive consistency, there are a number of examples of inconsistency in the gender ratio at the right tail, which are also based on large national samples or meta-analyses (B. J. Becker & Hedges, 1984;Friedman, 1989;Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990;Linn & Hyde, 1989) The resolution to the question of whether sex differences in math and spatial ability have been consistent or narrowing over time requires consideration of a number of factors, many of which are discussed later. Factors such as (a) the composition of the tests (consistency is more likely when the test content has remained consistent over time, as changes in its composition can lead to shifts in the proportion of problems that favor each sex), (b) changes in the proportions of each sex taking the test, because as one group becomes more numerous in its participation, its scores go down (and there have been increases in female students taking some tests such as the SAT [Nie & Golde, 2008]), (c) changes in analytic approaches, for example, extreme-tail-sensitive approaches versus OLS (see Penner, 2005), and (d) changes in the type and number of math courses each sex has taken (which has occurred; Hyde et al, 2008).…”

Performance of a Brazilian population in the EC 301 calculation and number processing battery: a pilot study

“…In healthy adults, the difference between genders showed an advantage of males over females when the level of education is less than four years 18,21 . Never- C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C13 C14 C15 C16 C17 C18 C19 C20 C21 C22 C23 C24 C25 C26 C27 C28 C29 C30 theless, adults with a higher level of education did not demonstrate any statistically significant difference regarding sex 22 . Therefore, our findings are similar to those described by the authors cited, since there was no difference between genders 17,20 .…”

The effect of gender on university students’ school performance: the case of the National School of Agriculture in Meknes, Morocco

“…Hyde, Fennema, Lamon 1990;Kahle 2004;Chang 2008;Lai 2010;Abubakar, Bada 2012;Eze, Ezenwafor, Obi 2015) focused on differences in performance related to different science subjects. There are many different points of view, a fact which makes it a contested area (Kahle 2004;Penner 2008;Guo, Tsang, Ding 2010).…”