Trends in Gender Disparities Among High-Achieving Students in Mathematics: An Analysis of the American Mathematics Competition (AMC)

Abstract

Using the test scores of more than 2,250,000 students who participated in the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) from 2009 to 2019, this study examined the direction and magnitude of the trends in gender disparity in participation and high achievement in self-select mathematics exams. The results of this study indicated that the male to female ratio among the AMC participants increased significantly from 2009 to 2019. The findings also showed an established disparity that favored males for each year and for all competitions in both the top 1% and 5% levels, while the trend in the male to female ratios over a decade was stable, except for the top 1% of the population in the AMC 8, in which there was a significant increasing trend that favored males. The possible impacts of these findings within the context of the underrepresentation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields are discussed.

Will We Ever Close the Gender Gap Among Top Mathematics Achievers? Analysis of Recent Trends by Race in Advanced Placement (AP) Exams

“…As the number of female students exceeds that of males, the value of the function becomes larger than 1, and the disparity favors female students. As the number of male students exceeds that of females, the value of the FMR function becomes smaller than 1, and disparity favors male students (Bahar, 2021).…”

“…Disparity index calculations. Many prior studies have used disparity indexes to examine gender gaps in mathematics performances (Bahar, 2021;Ellison & Swanson, 2010;Hyde et al, 1990Hyde et al, , 2008Lindberg et al, 2010;Olszewski-Kubilius & Lee, 2011; J. P. Robinson & Lubienski, 2011). In this study, a simple FMR was reported as a measure of gender disparity and denoted with the FMR index.…”

“…Index of gender disparity in top achievement. In prior studies (Bahar, 2021;Benbow & Stanley, 1983;Makel et al, 2016;Wai et al, 2010Wai et al, , 2018, which investigated the gender disparities among top-achieving students, researchers examined the top performances in the extreme right tail of curves including the top 0.01%, 0.1%, 1%, and 5% (Bahar, 2021). However, different from many other norm-referenced high-stake tests, AP exams are criterion-referenced measures and students' scores range from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest possible score.…”

“…As a nonparametric test, MK is a powerful exploratory analysis method to identify the presence of monotonic trends in data collected over time (Kendall, 1975;Mann, 1945). The MK test has been commonly used to evaluate trends in hydrological and climatic data (Jaiswal et al, 2015), though it is not prevalent in educational research (Bahar, 2021). However, MK trend tests are useful, especially for researchers exploring the flow of changes in educational settings and outcomes.…”

“…Sen's slope was calculated for each AP exam across races to identify the magnitude of the slope of the trend over time (Sen, 1968). Sen's slope has been used widely to identify the slope of trend lines (Bahar, 2021), and according to Yu et al (2002), it is a robust measure of a trend's magnitude. Both the MK trend test and Sen's slope were performed using R software.…”