Gender Differences in Performance: The Role of External Testing Environments

Gender occupational segregation remains a central barrier to closing the earnings gap, with women underrepresented in high-paying, math-intensive careers.

We study whether evaluation settings shape early gender gaps using population-level administrative records covering all 6th-graders in Madrid and multiple rounds of school-level randomization to identical standardized exams administered either internally or externally. Girls’ mathematics performance declines under external administration, while verbal performance is unaffected. To examine mechanisms, we link administrative records to contemporaneous student-level attitudes and beliefs from a post-exam survey. We provide causal evidence that girls’ underperformance in mathematics under external administration is explained by higher stress.

These findings establish evaluation settings as an overlooked determinant of early gender gaps with lasting consequences for career segregation.

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