Sedentarismo y brecha de genero en la escuela.

Abstract

Obesity has become an epidemic worldwide, and in this context, Chile has one of the worst overweight figures in Latin America. Although this phenomenon is largely caused by a sedentary lifestyle, which affects people of both sexes, it is more expressed in the female population, thus generating a gender gap in activity and physical condition which has consequences at the level of health, education and work throughout the life cycle Taking data from the national study of physical education, I show that the gender gap in physical activity is already present in 8th graders. Moreover, I explore whether the origins of the gender gap would be in the schools, specifically due to active or passive exclusion on the part of boys with girls, who would not be allowed to play games on school playgrounds. To study this, I compare the physical activity of girls in mixed schools to the physical activity of girls in only-girls schools. If the hypothesis is true, girls in girls’ schools should do more physical activity than mixed schools, since the former do not have boys that prevent them from doing physical activity. Using ordinary least squares, it has been found that girls in segregated schools have an additional 7% chance of having better structural physical condition indices than girls in mixed schools.