Documentos de trabajo
Mixed but not scrambled gender gaps in single-sex classrooms
Fecha
2018Registro en:
Series Documentos de Trabajo No. 470, pp. 1 - 32, Septiembre, 2018
Autor
Paredes Haz, Valentina
Institución
Resumen
In this paper we study the effect on the math gender gap from attending a singlesex
classroom in a coeducational school versus a coeducational classroom in a coeducational
school. In contrast to the previous literature that has studied the effect of
single-sex schools, the advantage of using single-sex classrooms is that we can calculate
gender gaps within schools, and therefore the results are not confounded with
other school characteristics that may correlate with the gender composition. We find
that single-sex classrooms reduce the math gender gap by more than half, with no
effect on the language gender gap. The effect is consistent with an increase in the
math achievement of female students with no decrease in the achievement of male
students. Moreover, this effect is not driven by teacher characteristics, but it seems
to be driven by the gender composition of the classroom itself.