While both boys and girls are likely to encounter failure in life, research from the Paris School of Economics suggests that girls are far more likely to attribute their failure to a lack of talent than boys are. What’s more, the researchers found that the notion that men have inherently more natural ability appeared to be more deeply entrenched in more egalitarian countries.

The findings emerged after studying around 500,000 students from around the world based on data from the 2018 intake of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The latest version of this ongoing analysis featured a question asking students whether they feel that their failures are the result of not having enough talent.

Lack of confidence

The results were quite shocking, as in 71 of the 72 countries studied, girls were more likely to think that their failures were due to a lack of talent than boys, who were more inclined to blame external factors. What’s more, these differences were most pronounced in wealthier nations, with 61% of girls in OECD countries agreeing with the statement, versus just 47% of boys. By contrast, in non-OECD countries, this gap was just 8%.

It also appeared to be more common among higher-performing students than their more average-performing peers. The authors speculate that one possible reason is that countries with more freedom give people greater space to fall back onto tried and trusted stereotypes.

They also hypothesize that these nations tend to focus more on individual success, and so a premium is inevitably placed on the concept of talent itself. When less emphasis is placed on talent there is less room for stereotypes to be applied.

Undermining performance

What’s more, there appears to be a link between our perceptions of being less talented and at least three other indicators included in the PISA data. For instance, when girls thought they were less talented, this reduced their confidence, made them less likely to enjoy competition, and also less likely to want to work in a male-dominated occupation.

The authors believe that these factors may contribute to the glass ceiling that is hampering efforts by women to reach the highest positions.  They highlight that their results suggest that this glass ceiling doesn’t vanish when countries become either more developed or more gender-egalitarian either. Indeed, they believe that the only real solution is to stop thinking of talent as something innate.

“Success comes from learning through trial and error,” they conclude. “If we deconstruct the concept of pure talent, we will also deconstruct the idea that girls are less naturally endowed with talent than boys.”