Academic Competence Evaluation Scales
Category: Student Learning
The gender gap in STEM careers is shaped in part by educational choices. This study investigates two interventions—absolute performance feedback and personalized advice— aiming at narrowing the gender disparities in investments in math skills. Using an online lab experiment, participants chose between a math or verbal task after receiving one of three treatments: performance feedback on prior tasks, informative advice on task selection, or both. In the absence of interventions, a significant gender gap emerged, with females less likely to select the math task. Providing performance feedback closed this gap by increasing female participation in math tasks while leaving male choices unchanged. Among participants eligible for both math and verbal advice, either performance feedback or randomly assigned math advice significantly increased the likelihood of females choosing math, with no measurable effect on males. Notably, the gender of the advisor—randomly assigned in our study—had no significant impact on advice effectiveness. These findings suggest that performance feedback and targeted advice can encourage female participation in math-related tasks, offering insights into strategies for reducing gender disparities in STEM fields.
Keywords
Gender gap in educational choices, Performance feedback, Advice
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/qfrs-ta21
