Article
Rapid emergence of a maths gender gap in first grade https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09126-4 Received: 11 March 2023 Accepted: 8 May 2025 Published online: xx xx xxxx Check for updates
P. Martinot1,2 ✉, B. Colnet3, T. Breda4, J. Sultan5, L. Touitou5, P. Huguet6, E. Spelke7,8, G. Dehaene-Lambertz2, P. Bressoux9 & S. Dehaene2,10 ✉
Preventing gender disparities in mathematics is a worldwide preoccupation1,2. In infancy and early childhood, boys and girls exhibit similar core knowledge of number and space3–8. Gender disparities in maths are, therefore, thought to primarily reflect an internalization of the sociocultural stereotype that ‘girls are bad at maths’. However, where, when and how widely this stereotype becomes entrenched remains uncertain. Here, we report the results of a 4-year longitudinal assessment of language and mathematical performance of all French first and second graders (2,653,082 children). Boys and girls exhibited very similar maths scores upon school entry, but a gender gap in favour of boys became highly significant after 4 months of schooling and reached an effect size of about 0.20 after 1 year. These findings were repeated each year and varied only slightly across family, class or school type and socio-economic level. Although schooling correlated with age, exploiting the near-orthogonal variations indicated that the gender gap increased with schooling rather than with age. These findings point to the first year of school as the time and place where a maths gender gap emerges in favour of boys, thus helping focus the search for solutions and interventions.
Why are women under-represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics domains1,2? Biologically, all humans start in life with a core knowledge of objects, space and number that serves as the foundation for mathematical development8–10. Number sense, the ability to distinguish sets of objects based on their numerosity, is identical in male and female infants5. In young children, most maths-related cognitive tasks exhibit near-zero gender differences in overall performance, and distributions of interindividual variability overlap massively across both genders3,4,7,8. Notably, a male advantage for mental rotation and spatial navigation skills is occasionally reported in infancy7,11, but it is small, disputed and does not consistently appear before age five6,12. Most importantly, gender disparities in maths vary across cultures and testing conditions7,13,14. For instance, gender differences favouring males in mental rotation and maths diminish when time pressure or competition are removed, both characteristics frequently associated with maths assessments14–17. For such reasons, young children’s mathematical attitudes, perceptions, interests and competence are thought to constitute universally shared ‘neurocognitive start-up tools’18 that are later shaped by a sociocultural belief that girls exhibit lesser proficiency in mathematics relative to boys5,19–21. Previous research by economists, sociologists, educational researchers and psychologists has demonstrated that a maths gender gap favouring boys emerges within the first years of schooling in the USA, even when regressing out the effect of age21–24. This finding was confirmed by a cohort study following 2,633 children in France, which revealed that the maths gender gap is absent in
kindergarten and becomes favourable to boys at age 7–8 (ref. 25). In the USA, the boy advantage appeared earlier among high-achieving students before extending across the entire distribution21,22, but this trend varied significantly among ethnic minorities24. Both the size and the direction of the maths gender gap, as well as attitudinal variables such as confidence in mathematics, valuing mathematics and maths anxiety, can change rapidly with certain affirmative interventions2,20,26,27. Previous research has explored several potential factors that either exacerbate or mitigate the maths gender gap. Adults’ beliefs and stereotypes, including teachers’ techniques and ratings, could interfere with the neutral estimation of students’ performance and reinforce gender disparities in maths achievement, in both elementary and secondary school21,28–32. For example, teachers commonly underestimate girls’ mathematical abilities, assuming that boys possess innate talents whereas girls progress only through diligence and effort, assumptions that may undermine girls’ confidence in their capacity to learn mathematics21,30,31,33–35. Girls also suffer more from maths anxiety than boys, especially in scenarios involving competitive or time-limited maths tests, an effect discernible as early as second grade worldwide36. Furthermore, maths anxiety in female teachers decreases girls’ mathematical performance, whereas boys remain unaffected36,37. Parents and teachers can also be biased in the time spent challenging children of either gender in maths or reading30,32,38. A limitation of former studies, however, is that many were conducted on population subsamples collected 12 to 26 years ago, which, hence, limits their ability to reveal whether the early gender gap stems from
University Paris Cité, Paris, France. 2NeuroSpin Center, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA, INSERM, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif/Yvette, France. 3Soda Project Team, Premedical Project Team, INRIA Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France. 4Paris School of Economics, CNRS, ENS-PSL, Paris, France. 5Institute for Public Policies IPP, Paris, France. 6LAPSCO, University of Clermont Auvergne and CNRS, Clermont-Ferrand, France. 7Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. 8The Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, Cambridge, MA, USA. 9LaRAC, University Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France. 10Collège de France, Université Paris-Sciences-Lettres (PSL), Paris, France. ✉e-mail: pauline.martinot.dlm@gmail.com; stanislas.dehaene@cea.fr 1
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