The digital divide in general, and between women and men in particular, is a manifestation of exclusion, poverty and inequality, and is likely to continue because of the effects of unemployment, poorly functioning digital skilling programmes and socio-cultural norms in some economies, and...

In this paper, we decompose worldwide PISA mathematics and reading scores. While mathematics scores are still tilted towards boys, girls have a larger advantage in reading over boys. Girls’ disadvantage in mathematics is increasing over the distribution of talents. Our decomposition shows that...

Many countries remain far from achieving gender equality in the classroom. Using data from 126 countries, we characterize the evolution of gender gaps in low- and middle-income countries between 1960 and 2010. We document five facts. First, women are more educated today than 50 years ago in...

On average, boys score higher on math achievement tests and girls score higher in reading; these gaps increase between primary and secondary school. Using PISA, PIRLS, and TIMSS data, we investigate the role of early educational tracking (sorting students into different types of secondary...