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While girls mostly outperform boys throughout school, this gap not only disappears, but reverses at the university level. But why is that so? So far, research has not yet scrutinized potential reasons empirically. To explore this further, the authors investigated students’ academic achievements across different disciplines and evaluated perceived discrimination against women and perceived competition among students as potential mechanisms related to this reversal.

The analysis of data from the German Student Survey spanning nearly three decades shows that high school grades are less strongly correlated with university grades for girls as compared to boys. This is especially the case in the male-dominated field of engineering compared to the gender-mixed field of social sciences. A high perceived level of competition is to the contrary not associated with a gender gap; instead men and women who perceive their study environment as competitive have on average lower grades. The study also demonstrates that a high perceived level of discrimination is strongly associated with lower university performance for young women. Since women are shown to perceive more discrimination against women at university, this might explain the reversal of the gender gap in grades from high school to university. Again, this link is especially pronounced in the male-dominated engineering field, where women who choose to enter these fields generally have better high school grades than their male counterparts. This supports the notion of a “chilly climate” in these fields, making it more challenging for women to reach their full potential. 

Thomas Hinz and Susanne Strauss are Professors at the Department of Sociology at University of Konstanz. Diana Roxana Galos is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen and affiliated with the Center for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination, Aarhus University.