Report: Girls around the world are outperforming boys in academics

Girls across the globe aren't letting inequality keep them down. A new report from Dr. Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Glasgow in Scotland and David C. Geary of the University of Missouri found that in 52 out of 74 studied countries, high school girls performed significantly better than boys on an international standardized test.

The study, published in the journal Intelligence, looked at PISA data from 2009 and found that even in countries where females face "political, economic, or social inequalities," girls outperformed boys in reading, math, and science in 70 percent of the countries studied, The Huffington Post reports.

"In a lot of these countries, women are not allowed to do a lot of things, but what's interesting is even in these countries, girls are doing better in school," Geary told The Huffington Post. That includes Muslim countries with a "lack of opportunities for girls and women," Geary said.

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Geary hopes the study will shed light on the issue of boys underperforming in schools. "It's an important problem and a worldwide problem and potentially has some serious implications," he told The Huffington Post. "It just hasn't been addressed and is not even on people's radar to even figure out why this is the case."