A study published on Wednesday 11 June 2025 in the journal Nature and carried out on nearly three million children attending school in France between 2018 and 2022, coordinated by Pr Stanislas Dehaene and Dr. Pauline Martinot, a physician and neuroscientist, reveals that girls and boys have the same performance in mathematics when they enter CP, but that a gap widens very quickly after this entry into schooling in favor of boys.
The rapidity of this gap suggests that it is not a slow impregnation of stereotypes over the years that is at the origin, but rather the start of elementary school, which marks the beginning of formal mathematics teaching. This finding should help shed light on new levers for action : by precisely identifying mathematics teaching as a tipping point in the construction of inequalities, we help specify the means to act to prevent them and thus sustainably reduce the gaps between girls and boys in this discipline.
Published this month in the scientific journal Nature, this French research is a world first in terms of its scope and the wealth of data mobilized.
