A recent research has shown that girls in gender equal societies not only perform better in studies but can also outperform boys.

The study led by Paola Sapienza of Kellogg School of Management, published in Science, was aimed at finding whether social and cultural factors influence women's success in mathematics and science.

"The so-called gender gap in math skills seems to be at least partially correlated to environmental factors," Sapienza said.

"The gap doesn't exist in countries in which men and women have access to similar resources and opportunities," she said.

As part of the research, more than 2,76,000 children from 40 countries were given a Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test and their results were analysed.

PISA is an internationally standardised assessment of math, reading, science and problem-solving ability.

The team observed that while in general, boys outperform girls in math scoring 10.5 points more on an average, in countries like Iceland and Norway the scores were almost equal.

In more gender equal societies, like Sweden with Gender Gap Index (GGI) of 0.81, the variation in points obtained by girls and boys in maths almost disappeared, while girls scored 23 points below boys in math in Turkey (GGI = 0.59).

Not only did average girls' scores improve as equality improved, but the number of girls reaching the highest levels of performance also increased.

In US, which ranks 23rd on the GGI scale with a score of 0.7, boys scored almost 10 points more than girls in the subject, equalling the average score all over.

They also observed that not only the average scores of girls bettered as the GGI decrease i.e. opportunities provided to them improve, but the number of girls gaining high points also increased.

The GGI is a composite index calculated by the World Economic Forum that summarises the condition of women along four main dimensions, economic participation and opportunity, education attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival measures.

Not only in subjects in which students are assessed on the basis of their written performance, the researchers also found that when it comes to reading, girls in almost all the countries are ahead of boys .