Addressing gender gaps is crucial for fostering equal opportunities and outcomes for boys and girls. Certain teaching methods can help narrow the gender gap in performance. Moreover, teachers and parents can help to build students’ confidence. These actions require concerted efforts by parents, teachers and employers to become more aware of their own conscious or unconscious biases so that they give girls and boys equal chances for success at school and beyond.
Gender equality in education
Significant progress has been made narrowing or closing gaps in educational and job opportunities available to men and women. Yet, gender differences remain in skills, representation in educational fields, self-confidence, attainment and others. Stronger advances are needed to tackle these persisting gaps.
Key messages
Gender stereotypes at home, in the class and in society, as well as the absence of role models, play a key role in determining boys’ and girls’ educational path and career future. Different strategies tackle gender stereotyping, from curriculum arrangements, to preparation of teachers and school staff with relevant knowledge and skills, to various targeted school-level interventions that ensure school practices are free of gender biases and stereotypes. Moving forward, it is important to address the feminisation of the teaching profession through adequate compensation and public recognition.
Many young people, boys in particular, find it hard to put effort into completing academic tasks. Low engagement with schoolwork leads to low academic achievement and can predict early drop-outs, resulting in a waste of talent that hampers economic and social innovation. Education systems should tackle issues of disengagement and lack of motivation early on and devote adequate attention and resources to the issue. This can be achieved through the use of digital technologies, targeted support to students, and teacher training programmes addressing socialisation problems and stereotypical judgements.
Context
Gender gaps in employment rates among those with vocational upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary attainment hardly changed between 2015 and 2022
Younger men (25-34 year-olds) with this level of educational attainment had higher employment rates than younger women with the same level of education, in both 2015 and 2022. In 2015, 66% of women and 84% of men with this level of education as their highest attainment were employed and in 2022, it was 70% for women and 85% for men. Since 2015, the gap has widened in ten OECD countries.
Trends in the gender gap in employment rates among 25-34 year-olds with vocational upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary attainment (2015 and 2022)
Girls report a higher fear of failure than boys
Fear of failure may prompt teenagers to avoid taking calculated risks because failure to achieve their goal may be regarded as shameful. Fear of failure can lead students to be self-protective and avoid opportunities that are essential for learning and development. In 70 countries and economies, girls reported they fear failure more often, and to a larger extent, than boys.
Gender gap in fear of failure (2018)
