Explaining the Gender Test Score Gap in Mathematics: The Role of Gender Inequality

Using data from the 2012 PISA across 56 countries, this study examines the link between societal genderinequalities and the gender test score gapin mathematics. We employ a novel two-stage empirical strategy in which the first stage involves decomposing the gendermathematics gapinto a part that is explained by genderdifferences in observable characteristics and a part that remains unexplained. We use a semiparametric Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) decomposition to analyze the gapin each country individually. In the second stage, we investigate whether the decomposition components of the gapare systematically related to country-level genderinequality measures. The results indicate that the gapis not statistically significantly associated with the indicators of genderinequality, but the unexplained part of the gapis. In more gender-equal countries, the unexplained part of the gapfavoring boys appears smaller. Moreover, we find that the relationship between the unexplained part of the gapand the societal genderinequality varies within the test scoredistribution, and tends to become less pronounced at the upper end of the distribution.