A new study by scholars from Harvard University and several French educational institutions have found evidence that the gender gap in children’s math skills does not exist in infancy and rather emerges within the first few months of first grade.
Using data from more than 2.5 million children in France, the authors examined four cohorts of children entering school between 2018 and 2021. Prior to their formal schooling, girls and boys showed similar proficiency with basic numeracy and girls demonstrated slightly stronger literacy skills.
Four months after they entered first-grade, the children were retested. While the literacy gap favoring girls was reduced, a small gender gap favoring boys emerged with children’s math performance. By the time the children had entered second-grade, the math gender gap had quadrupled.
Notably, the gap did not correlate with age, but instead with the number of months spent in school. Furthermore, the authors found that in the 2019 cohort of students, whose last few months of schooling was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, the gender gap grew less than it did with other cohorts. Based on these findings, the authors believe future research on mitigating the gender gap in math scores should focus on implementing interventions as soon as children begin their formal education.