G.01. Bias, Schooling, and Trajectories in STEM: How to Go Beyond the Gender Gap

Persistent gender disparities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) are neither uniform across disciplines nor explained by innate differences in ability. Research shows that boys and girls start school with comparable early numeracy skills, yet large-scale longitudinal evidence indicates that a mathematics gender gap, absent at school entry, becomes significant after a few months of schooling and consolidates within the first year. This points to schooling processes, rather than biology, as a key site where inequalities are produced.

Gendered expectations from teachers and families, assessment regimes that reward competitiveness and speed, school cultures that present some STEM fields as “naturally” masculine, and peer dynamics that normalise boys as “suited” to maths and technology shape students’ self-perceptions and trajectories. These mechanisms operate differently across disciplines: while some life sciences have become more gender-balanced, areas such as mathematics, physics, computer science, and engineering remain male-dominated and symbolically exclusive.

This panel examines how biases embedded in teaching practices, assessment regimes, family expectations, peer cultures, and school organisations structure students’ pathways across STEM disciplines. It explicitly welcomes interdisciplinary contributions from sociology, educational studies, psychology, and related fields, and is open to all methodological approaches, including quantitative analyses, qualitative inquiry, mixed-method designs, and intervention-based studies. The panel also encourages cross-country and comparative work. Drawing on these diverse perspectives and on large-scale evidence of the early emergence of gender gaps, it discusses how schools can build more equitable learning environments, support girls’ identification with STEM, and challenge the cultural assumptions that constrain their educational choices.