Published On 4/23/2026
In 2003, boys outperformed girls in mathematics in almost a quarter of the countries studied. In 2023, they exceed them by four-fifths. Three and a half times in two decades, and the trend is accelerating.
This is a summary of a report issued Thursday by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in partnership with the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, based on data from the global TIMSS study, which monitored students’ performance in mathematics and science between the years 1995 and 2023, in 47 countries and territories at the primary level, and 38 at the beginning of secondary school level, which includes Spain, China, Australia, and the United States.
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Behind the numbers is a slower story than it seems. The gap that had long separated the performance of boys and girls in this subject had been steadily narrowing throughout the first two decades of this century, until many thought it was on its way to disappearing. Then 2019 came, and everything started going in the opposite direction.
A moment of brokenness
Four years of monitoring were enough to bring things back to what resembles the starting point, or even to something less than it. In 2019, boys outperformed girls at the end of primary school in 52% of countries; In 2023, the percentage increased to 81%. It is as if fifteen years of slow progress were swallowed up by one academic generation.
The paradox becomes clearer when the other end of the spectrum is considered. The percentage of countries where girls fall below the global minimum level of mathematics skills has more than quintupled between 2019 and 2023, from 4% to 21%. At the same time, troubled boys have almost disappeared from the census, as the percentage of countries with boys at this level has dropped to just 2% in 2023. Thus, one scene is visualized in two contrasting forms: Boys are approaching the top, girls are being pushed away from the foundation.
What the pandemic did
When UNESCO and the Association search for an explanation, the Covid-19 pandemic tops the list of culprits. The closure of schools for long periods, the sudden transition to distance education, and the “educational losses” that affected mathematics more than other subjects, are all factors that eroded the gains of two decades. But the interpretation goes beyond the physical given.
The report focuses on what is lighter and has a deeper impact. Girls’ self-confidence is eroded. In mathematics – more than most subjects – it is not enough to know the solution, but rather it requires certainty of the ability to reach it. When this certainty is absent, the hand hesitates before writing the answer. Years of classroom distancing and learning alone in front of the screen have eroded some of this certainty for girls more than it did for boys.
The stereotype starts early
UNESCO recommendations apply to primary classes, not secondary schools. Because the moment in which paths deviate, according to the report, is not the moment of adolescence in mathematics and its complex equations, but rather her simple childhood in the third and fourth grades, when the eight or nine-year-old girl picks up an unwritten signal that this subject does not belong to her completely. Some of them may survive it, but most of them memorize the sign.
The organization calls for enhancing girls’ confidence through recreational activities in mathematics from the early years, training teachers to monitor their unconscious biases, and systematically monitoring results according to gender, not according to the general average alone. Measures that do not promise a miracle, but rather attempt to dismantle what was built silently over years.
Commenting on the findings, UNESCO says that strong mathematics skills “stimulate economic and social development, foster innovation and create solutions to urgent global problems.” This statement refers to something beyond economics; When girls withdraw from a subject in which the decisions of the next century are formulated, the labor market does not lose female employees as much as the knowledge landscape loses questions that only those who were in the seat ask.
