We study gender gaps in mathematics performance and confidence for cisgender, transgender, and non-binary 10th graders in Chile using linked administrative and survey data. Relative to cisgender men, we find test score gaps and confidence gaps for cisgender women and most gender-minority students. These score gaps are distribution-dependent: they widen at the upper tail for students assigned female at birth, while for transgender women, the gap is concentrated in the lower tail and vanishes among top performers. Transgender and non-binary students report markedly higher rates of discrimination and aggression. While these adverse experiences explain only a modest portion of the score gaps, they account for a substantial share, up to one-third, of the math confidence gap, operating primarily through differences in exposure rather than differential returns. Finally, we find that school context matters: schools with a formal religious curriculum exhibit larger achievement gaps, especially for gender-minority students.
Work in Progress
College Major Choice and Gender Diversity Gaps
This paper provides novel evidence on the college major choices of transgender and non-binary students. Using Chilean administrative data linking 10th-grade gender identity reports to centralized college applications, we estimate a random utility model of major choice. This model recovers heterogeneous preferences across cisgender, transgender, and non-binary students. A counterfactual analysis, based on the estimated structural parameters, quantifies the role of these preference differences.