International Comparison of Gender Disparities in Educational Outcomes
Research question/goal:
Since the educational expansion, two trends have been observed regarding gender inequalities: On the one hand, boys and men increasingly lag behind girls and women in educational attainment. On the other hand, despite the overall advantage of females, males continue to outperform females in mathematics and science in many countries. The aim of this project is to investigate interactions of mechanisms on the micro- and macro-sociological level. On the individual level, we will put a special emphasis on theoretical arguments that assign a key role to gender norms and significant others’ expectations in order to explain gender gaps in academic outcomes. Comparing these mechanisms across countries should allow us to identify institutional settings that reinforce the (im-) balance of female and male students’ academic success.
For the purpose of our project, we use data from the project Children of Immigrants Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) to test explanations for girls’ disadvantage in mathematics and boys’ limited educational success. Additionally, with the CILS4EU data we can examine ethnic differences in the male or female gap respectively. Moreover, we cannot only look at the factors that account for the gender gap among adolescents, but we can also compare the differences between England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
