A silent shift, but very real: little girls pick up additions. Not because they would be “zero in math” unlike tenacious stereotype, but because the school pushes them slowly towards the exit.
This is in any case what reveals a monumental French study published in the journal Nature, and conducted on more than 2.6 million CP and CE1 students between 2018 and 2022. The figures are freezing: while girls and boys start with an equivalent level, the boys take a significant advance in math from the first four months, advances which quadruple a year later. Not because of a mysterious male predisposition for figures -because, spoiler: it does not exist -, but because of gender stereotypes and our way of teaching.
The school, vector of gender inequalities
“The appearance of this gap is too brutal to be innate,” explains Pauline Martinot, the main author of the study, doctor and neuroscientific. It has dissected the performance in mathematics of students from all circles, all regions, all pedagogies, from Montessori schools to priority establishments. And one thing is obvious: school plays an amplifier role. It is in class that it happens. Not in DNA.
In question? Troomed, competitive, stressful exercises. Instructions that promote speed more than reflection. And a pedagogy still very tinged with received ideas, where boys are unconsciously more questioned, more congratulated, more encouraged to take risks. As for the girls, we wait for them to be especially wise, applied … and above all less capable of error.
Spoiler: Having the math bump is not in DNA
It is not a mystery: the “pre-muthematic” skills (sense of quantities, elementary logic, structuring of space, etc.) are identical in baby girls and boys. It is therefore socialization that digs the gap, whether at home, through toys, in sport, but especially at school.
And if we still doubt the role of the school, the study spotted an unexpected phenomenon: during the confinement in 2020, the level differences were stabilized. Better still, they have sometimes decreased. The genre was less felt at home than in class. The family cocoon, however often pointed out for its sexist biases, had a surprisingly protective effect in the face of gender stereotypes.
What the figures also show is that boys perform better under pressure. They are more used to failure, challenge, risk taking. Girls, they feel more anxiety linked to performance. In a central study of the study (the famous “digital line test”, where you have to place a number between 0 and 10 without graduation) girls fall faster. Not because they understand less, but because the exercise is perceived as risky, therefore more paralyzing.
Review the copy, urgently
The good news is that levers exist. Teachers can be trained to question girls as much as boys. Teaching children to manage math stress in a more egalitarian way. Value the effort rather than the correct answer, or even offer inspiring female models.
And at home? It’s simple. Lego, dominoes, puzzles, timed games for everyone. No pink for dolls and blue for numbers. No “you are a real girl” when she is afraid, nor to “do the little girl” when he cries. Just children that are allowed to explore all the corners of their brain.
Because if the conclusions of this studies are not new, they act as a beautiful recall bite. Inequalities are not born from the capacities, they are born from our expectations. Girls are not zero in math. We make them zero in math. And this from the CP. So if we want women engineers, IA researchers, Nobel Physics prizes, this is where it starts. Not at college. Not in high school. But from the start of the primaries in September.
