The teaching of mathematics globally at university level, has created an environment that favours the performance of men over women. Men tend to perform better than women at university level. The gender gap has been explained by using biological and social cultural theories. It is also noted that at doctoral level the number of women who earn degrees is very minimal and the women graduates tend to be viewed as less competent when compared with men. The study employs poststructural feminism, socialcultural, and situated learning theories to explore the gender gap in mathematics. Gender stereotypes seem to have a major impact on performance of women in mathematics.
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Research reflects that male students tend to surpass female students in performance in mathematics at university level. The number of females who engage in mathematics in higher education also declines as one moves up the academic spectrum. The chapter presented a background to the study, gender sensitivity, gender identity, globalization of mathematics among other headings. Theories that are used to undergird this chapter are poststructural, socialcultural and situated learning theories. The chapter also presents a discussion, conclusion and recommendations. The study is based on a desk study. The inclusion criteria will be based on peer reviewed publications which included doctoral thesis, peer reviewed journal articles, conference papers on global praxis on the teaching of mathematics and gender studies and Google Scholar articles on globalization and teaching of mathematics. The exclusion criteria are articles that are not peer reviewed.
There is a growing global concern regarding non-participation of women in mathematics at advanced level and tertiary levels (Mandina et al.,2013;Lubienski and Pinheiro, 2020; Marcus and Joakim, 2016). Herzig (2010) noted that women’s engagement in post -graduate mathematics still falls behind that of men. Statistics gleaned from the United States of America (USA), showed that women’s resilience in mathematics, tended to decline as they moved up the academic spectrum, from primary to doctorate level. At doctoral level women tend to grapple with severe issues of retention, raising questions about their capacity to perform at the same level as men after graduation.
The contemporary society has to seek to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as enunciated by the United Nations (UN), which included the provision of quality education, SDG 4,and gender equality SDG 5. Global challenges have accentuated the demands for social justice in many arenas including in the teaching of mathematics. The instruction in mathematics is also assumed to be able to elevate the Global Citizenship Education among students (Carlana, 2019). The teaching of mathematics is anticipated to promote the competencies which include identifying the relationship between mathematics and social formations and also cultural plurality. In addition, students are expected to acquire skills to solve challenging societal issues and develop democratic values and tolerance. Mathematics curriculum is also expected to promote sustainable attitudes among students.
Explicatory work on disparity between men and women in studying mathematics has tended to focalize on diverse factors which included teacher and peer support, enhancing student attainment, classroom factors, student motivation, and level of student anxiety among many other factors. Mathematics is a prerequisite that opens opportunities for students in areas such as science, engineering and technology. Even in developed countries such as the United States (US), gender disparities which had narrowed over time are beginning to become noticeable in mathematics again. Gender differences have been identified among men and women who are located within the same learning environment, highlighting the need for educators and policy makers to engage with this critical issue (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2014). In spite of the statistics which reflects that in the US, more women were likely to attend college than men, the enrolment figures in mathematics showed that in 1997, the percentage of bachelor’s degree earned by women stood at 46%. The figures of women who earned a doctoral degree in mathematics by 2017, was 29% and only 19% of bachelor’s degree in computer science (National Centre for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2019).
OECDiLibrary (2024) noted that women tend to be in the minority in given areas at doctoral level, although they are in the majority at master’s degree level. The number of women who graduated at doctoral level in 2018 constituted 54%, in natural sciences, mathematics and statistics and they epitomise only 46% of the doctoral graduates in OECD countries. A major decline in the number of women who earned doctoral degrees in the domain of natural science, statistics and mathematics was noted in Denmark, India, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Korea, Poland and Czech Repubic in 2018.