Hello, Rebecca Vukovic here from Teacher magazine and before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to share some exciting news: Little J & Big Cuz is nominated for Best Children’s Program in the 2025 Logies! This beloved series is created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to support deeper understandings of Country and community, as well as preparing young learners for school. Support the show and cast your vote online today at littlejandbigcuz.com.au.
Thanks for listening to this podcast from Teacher – I’m Rebecca Vukovic. Today I’m joined by Pauline Martinot, a medical doctor who specialises in child health and prevention. Dr Martinot pursued a research career in cognitive neurosciences on the developing child and did her PhD at NeuroSpin CEA Paris Saclay. Today, she works as an AI medical and scientific Director at Doctolib in France.
Dr Martinot is also the lead author of the groundbreaking study that points to the first year of school as the time and place where a maths gender gap emerges in favour of boys. The results of this study were published in the paper titled Rapid emergence of a maths gender gap in first grade, published in Nature last month. The paper reports the results of a 4-year longitudinal assessment of language and mathematical performance of all French first and second graders, representing over 2.6 million children. The researchers found that boys and girls exhibited very similar maths scores upon school entry, but a maths gender gap in favour of boys became highly significant after just 4 months of schooling and reached an effect size of about 0.20 after one year. In this episode, Dr Martinot joins me on the line from France to share how her colleagues went about conducting the study, some more key findings, and the impact of this research on schools and teachers around the world. Let’s jump in.
Rebecca Vukovic: Pauline Martinot, thanks for joining us here at Teacher magazine.
Pauline Martinot: Thank you for having me today.
RV: Let's begin by talking about why you and your team decided to do this research in the first place. What were you hoping to find out?
PM: We actually, we actually found out those results… it was just unexpected, totally unexpected to find to find those differences between boys and girls in math. We were not expecting those results as cognitivists and neuroscientists. We know that both brains of boys and girls from birth are totally equal in math capacities from the start, so we did not expect to have, to notice this such an [advantage] for boys compared to girls. And initially what we did was we had those millions of data and we wanted to explore what are the determinants of boosting your performance in language and math capacities at school when you're 6 years old. And when I did all this research, we suddenly noticed that one parameter that had such an impact, a strong impact on how boys or girls perform, is gender.
RV: Yeah, fantastic. And of course, we're going to delve into some of those results a bit later on in the conversation. But first of all, I want to point out that this is an exceptionally large study involving over 2.6 million children. Can you tell our listeners how you actually went about conducting this study?
PM: This study was great to conduct. It was an amazing adventure, a story of collaborating with both scientists, teachers, decision makers in France. What we did is we defined 46 cognitive tests – half in math and half in language (both oral language and written language) to assess specific functions in the brain of children. And then the decision makers in France allowed us to diffuse those tests to all the children entering primary school in France, in first grade and in second grade, which represents 1.5 million children per year that undergo those 46 tests 3 times during the year. So it's a huge collaboration with so many people and so many children and teachers which I'm so thankful for that we did, yeah, that we planned.
RV: Yeah, fantastic. And just focusing on mathematics now, what were some of those areas of mathematics that were tested?
PM: Different kinds. The determinants that is the most associated with your mathematical capacities is called ‘the number line’ and it is basically a line from zero to 10 and you ask the child to position the number 3 on the line. This number line test is the most famous one that the children had to do. And then we had other exercises such as number quantities, counting, counting quantities and identifying the largest quantity compared to the others, comparing numbers, problem solving, calculation, geometry. So, different kinds of math test.
RV: Yes, fantastic. And so let's go into some of those findings then, because this is really the most interesting part. You found that before school entry, girls and boys were well matched in their basic numerical abilities regardless of their age, with only a small excess of boys at both extremes of that scale. But after just 4 months of schooling, the maths gender gap emerged and deepened as maths instruction proceeded. Can you tell us more about that?
PM: So many things to say about those results. First, the sudden and rapid emergence of gender gaps in math in favour of boys was totally surprising because it doesn't really make sense in a cognitive and evolutionary approach that this change happens so fast. So, really surprising. And second, we notice that when children enter first grade, most of the children, boys and girls, have equal performances in math, except for very like higher income populations where boys already have a small and significant [advantage] in mathematics. And this results were found also in other countries when we did the literature review, we found that in like so many other places, which was really surprising.
And second, all types of schools in France, both private and public, were touched equally on the gender gap, no matter which parental occupation children had, the gender gap grew so fast in favour of boys. No matter which school environment or geographical area in France, everyone was concerned with this gender gap. The only modification of the gender gap we found was related to, for example, the first of class in math. When we measured, when we compared classes where a girl was first of class in math was the best student, whereas classes where boys were first of the class in math – in the class where the girl was first in math, all the other girls of the class had a better performance in math compared to classes where the boy was a leader in math. So, the impact of the role model was really one of the points we discovered.
RV: Yeah, and that's really interesting too and I want to ask you a little bit about role modelling a little bit later. But before we get to that, I was wondering if you could tell me about any of the other key findings to come from this study.
PM: Another chance we had with those beautiful data is that we studied children from 2018 to 2022 and what happened specifically in 2020 is the COVID-19. It's a time where students had to do homeschooling in France for 2.5 months more than the other years. So, on the year 2020, we were able to measure, to compare all the gender gaps between the years and what we noticed – and it was so surprising – the gender gap was lower during the year of the COVID-19 where girls spent more time at home and actually their level and their performance in math was higher this year compared to the other years.
RV: Wow, that is really interesting. I'm sure that when people read this report and they read some of the data to come from this study, they want to know why this is happening. And the paper does offer some potential causes of the maths gender gap. Can you run us through some of those reasons why the gender gap exists that you uncovered from this research?
PM: Totally. We were not able to explore the real why with our research, unfortunately, because this would require a technique called randomised control trial, which we didn't do. But thanks to the study, we know who is concerned in priority for this gender gap. Especially higher income children, we know when it happens – it's as soon as you're exposed to formal mathematical teaching, way of teaching math. We know how it developed and how it increased and how in which environment it decreases or increases.
But when we when we did the literature review all around the world, what is our best instinct and hypothesis about why will be a bunch of several causes, especially a bunch of several causes and several populations also that are concerned about this gender gap, the happening of this gender gap. So I will start with the population. We measured that some things happen in between children themselves, such as the role model or such as the fake information that girls are bad at maths. It's been measured among children themselves, that boys and girls believe that boys are more intelligent than girls, and that girls are not made for math, nor for science. So this is a fake idea that still exists among children themselves.
Then if we look at the parents and the adults situation – the same fake information, it's still going on and so many studies show that adults tend to ask more logic and math and scientific and exploration questions to their boys compared to their girls. They tend to play games that are very different for boys and girls, more competitive games for boys and more challenging games. They allow the boys to make mistakes, whereas people are more, they are more demanding with girls regarding not making mistakes and therefore it's been measured that girls have a higher anxiety when facing math exercises and challenging and time, a time constraint exercise compared to boys.
And finally the teachers – the way of teaching math has been very formal with usually a competitive approach, for example, I talked about the number line earlier, the exercise of number line. It's a whole new exercise where obviously you have to make mistakes and this is the only exercise where boys really overpass the performance of the girls at this specific exercise compared to the others. So, our best instinct and hypothesis about it, it's not mainly and only teachers, because we could wrongly converge to this conclusion, which is not true. It's not only teachers, it's the way of teaching, the way of approaching math, it's the adults, the children themselves. But also what we think is from zero to 6 years old, you're not at school, like you're not exposed to a formal way of teaching. So when you're born, boys and girls have equal performances in math concepts and by and by because of the games you're playing too, because of all the fake information that boys and girls differ in mathematics, girls, by and by, they lose confidence. They raise their anxiety around all the competitive approach, etcetera, and their parents, the environment is not really pushing them to be more [ambitious] compared to the boys. And all these elements, additionally to being exposed to formal mathematical tests at school, are explaining why girls are losing confidence so fast.
Coming up after the break, Dr Martinot will be sharing more findings from this study, and will discuss how research of this magnitude can go some way to actually addressing that gender gap in mathematics.
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RV: So Pauline, one thing that we do here at Teacher magazine, we always look at research and then we ask ourselves 3 key questions. So, what can teachers actually do with this information? How can they use it to improve their practice? And then also, of course, what does this actually look like in the classroom? I think it's probably a good point now to talk about what teachers can actually do with this information. Of course, the report offers some insights, but I'd love to hear more from your perspective.
PM: Thanks for this very good question. I don't know how it is in Australia, but in France most teachers of primary school are ladies, women, and usually they come from a literature path compared to a scientific path. More than about 85% of our teachers are women and non-scientific women, and usually we've been measuring that among those women most of them have a high anxiety regarding math and they don't really like math. So that's the first element. Teachers can practice and gain confidence in their own relationship with math first, maybe when, you know, understanding that it's fake information that girls are not made for math, for example.
Second, it's been measuring as well that teachers tend to interrogate boys more often than girls when it comes from math or scientific domains inside the class. What they can do also is... so the anxiety that has been measured among teachers has a direct impact on raising up anxiety among girls, but the boys are totally not concerned. We don't measure anxiety among boys when the teacher has it in math. So helping little girls to cope with anxiety when it comes to competitive tests, when it comes to being more confident regarding math is very helpful from a teacher point of view. And maybe finally sharing role models where girls can identify themselves too, especially girls of their age. And being like grading the girls when they're doing a lot of effort in maths. So grading them around the efforts and not about the results more and finally make sure that there is an equal, gender equal interaction inside the class.
RV: Yeah, there's a lot of things there for teachers to think about and consider for their own classrooms. Just finally, it has been about a month or so since this research was published online, and it's been picked up widely in the media all over the world, and teachers and school leaders are certainly talking about it. What has the impact been so far? Do you think research of this magnitude can go some way to actually addressing that gender gap in mathematics?
PM: I really wish that it does. It's been a great journey trying to break these fake ideas that girls are bad at math. So my first hope is that this fake news can be broken all over the world, no matter which country you belong to. Knowing that boys and girls have equal performances in mathematics and scientific approaches, it's a great knowledge that we should all consider. And so far in France, for example, the decision makers in the national education programs already started programs for girls being better in math and science, including exercises for girls themselves and boys themselves so that they break this fake news. They already started a training with teachers inside the teachers training, they included as many elements from cognitive sciences, including the results of this study.
And for the parents themselves, they suggested to start a program where you can embark the parents in practicing different gestures and encouraging more boys and girls to participate equally to different types of games. And maybe finally, a little bit related still, there is this plan for recess to encourage boys and girls to play games that occupy a volume of the recess area that is more equal. Because in France, most of boys are playing a lot of sports during recess in primary school and girls tend to have like games that are very shy and, on the side, so they want to teach boys and girls how to be more confident in occupying the space.
RV: Yeah, fantastic. Well, congratulations on this amazing piece of research that you've published with your colleagues. Pauline Martinot, I have absolutely loved speaking with you today. Thank you for sharing your research and your insights with Teacher magazine.
PM: Thank you so much, Rebecca. I'm so happy that you give voices to those research results. Thank you so much for your invitation.
That’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. You’ll find a link to the research paper we spoke about today in the transcript of this podcast episode over at our website teachermagazine.com. While you’re there, check out the thousands of articles, infographics, videos and podcasts in our archive – they’re all online, they’re all open access, and we publish fresh content throughout the week! We’ll be back with a new episode very soon!
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References
Martinot, P., Colnet, B., Breda, T., Sultan, J., Touitou, L., Huguet, P., ... & Dehaene, S. (2025). Rapid emergence of a maths gender gap in first grade. Nature, 1-10. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09126-4
Consider the types of games you play with children in your class. Do you provide challenging and competitive games to children of all genders? How do you ensure that all students participate and engage with these games? Do you allow room for all students to make mistakes?
In your classroom, how do you work to boost girls’ interest and engagement with mathematics? Have you found an approach to be particularly effective? What supports do you need to do this more effectively?
