Gender gap in high school choices: do achievements and peers play a role?

This paper focuses on the gendered choice of high school in the Italian context, where students select the type and subject-focus of their schools when they are around 13 years old (at a younger age than in most of the rest of the developed world). We explore the role of own ability and past performance in mathematics and Italian, the role of own position in the class ranking and the overall performance of girls and boys in the class. The main results show that individual ability by subject is an important determinant of high school choice and these effects vary with gender. Further, relative performance by subject also matter in educational choices, and the effects are similar for boys and girls. Lastly, we show that the gender gap in the choice of high school does not change once we have taken into consideration all these various mechanisms, and therefore the differences in choices are mostly unexplained, and likely to be related to cultural and social stereotypes, gender norms, and different perceptions of own abilities. These results call for policies that address stereotypes and prejudices.