Regional disparities in socioeconomic-based gender achievement gaps

Abstract

We define Socioeconomic-Based Gender Achievement Gap as the difference between females’ and males’ achievement conditional on socioeconomic background and present estimates for 278 municipalities in Portugal. Achievement is based on national exams scores in Portuguese Language and Mathematics. When considering the proportion of students who achieve a passing score, the pooled subjects gaps are consistently larger for students from less privileged backgrounds. Regardless of socioeconomic background, the gaps tend to be larger in higher grades and when considering Portuguese Language, and smaller in Mathematics. We examine regional disparities in the gaps and explore their association with regional factors. The gaps are, on average, larger in more religious, less densely populated and less educated municipalities, and in municipalities where the wage difference between males and females is lower.