Verbal Boys and Mathematical Girls‐‐family background and educational careers

From a nationally representative sample of 5000 Swedish thirteen‐year‐olds with scores on both verbal and mathematical tests, all of the 800 students with uneven profiles were selected. ‘Uneven profiles’ meant consistently better results on verbal tests than on mathematical tests or vice versa. Students with better results on verbal tests were considered ‘verbal’, and students with better results on mathematical tests were considered ‘mathematical’. Verbal boys with high ability had highly educated parents, but the parents of verbal boys of lower ability had exceptionally low levels of education. Mathematical girls of high ability were distinguished by a high father presence and highly educated mothers. Educational choices in secondary school were more determined by gender than by ability profile, as the differences between boys and girls were much larger than the differences between the verbal and mathematical profiles. Boys’ educational careers were hardly affected by their own ability profile. Girls’ educational careers were somewhat affected by their own ability profile, since mathematical girls chose courses with a technical, scientific or economic course content more often than verbal girls. Verbal students did not attain higher teacher marks than mathematical students, but, regardless of their ability profile, girls attained higher marks than boys.