For math, science, boys lead on achievement tests while girls do better on classroom grades, research reveals
Despite the stereotype that boys do better in math and science, girls have made higher grades than boys throughout their school years for nearly a century, according to a new analysis published by the American Psychological Association.
“Although gender differences follow essentially stereotypical patterns on achievement tests in which boys typically score higher on math and science, females have the advantage on school grades regardless of the material,” said lead study author Daniel Voyer, PhD, of the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada. “School marks reflect learning in the larger social context of the classroom and require effort and persistence over long periods of time, whereas standardized tests assess basic or specialized academic abilities and aptitudes at one point in time without social influences.”
Based on research from 1914 through 2011 that spanned more than 30 countries, the study found the differences in grades between girls and boys were largest for language courses and smallest for math and science. The female advantage in school performance in math and science did not become apparent until junior or middle school, according to the study, published in the APA journal Psychological Bulletin. The degree of gender difference in grades increased from elementary to middle school, but decreased between high school and college.
The researchers examined 369 samples from 308 studies, reflecting grades of 538,710 boys and 595,332 girls. Seventy percent of the samples consisted of students from the United States. Other countries or regions represented by more than one sample included Norway, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Taiwan, Malaysia, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Slovakia, United Kingdom Africa and Finland. Countries represented by one sample included Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Mexico, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Slovenia.
All studies included an evaluation of gender differences in teacher-assigned grades or official grade point averages in elementary, junior/middle or high school, or undergraduate and graduate university. Studies that relied on self-report and those about special populations, such as high-risk or mentored students, were excluded. The studies also looked at variables that might affect the students’ grades, such as the country where students attended school, course material, students’ ages at the time the grades were obtained, the study date and racial composition of the samples.
The study reveals that recent claims of a “boy crisis,” with boys lagging behind girls in school achievement, are not accurate because girls’ grades have been consistently higher than boys’ across several decades with no significant changes in recent years, the authors wrote.
“The fact that females generally perform better than their male counterparts throughout what is essentially mandatory schooling in most countries seems to be a well-kept secret, considering how little attention it has received as a global phenomenon,” said co-author Susan Voyer, MASc, also of the University of New Brunswick.
As for why girls perform better in school than boys, the authors speculated that social and cultural factors could be among several possible explanations. Parents may assume boys are better at math and science so they might encourage girls to put more effort into their studies, which could lead to the slight advantage girls have in all courses, they wrote. Gender differences in learning styles is another possibility. Previous research has shown girls tend to study in order to understand the materials, whereas boys emphasize performance, which indicates a focus on the final grades. “Mastery of the subject matter generally produces better marks than performance emphasis, so this could account in part for males’ lower marks than females,” the authors wrote.
Factors influencing academic performance between boys and girls are vast and many are not totally understood. An interesting comment about the different maturation rate could contribute to girls out competing boys as girls apparently mature faster then boys. Additional genetic material found on the second X chromosomes in girl may contain information that leads to greater understanding due to better neuron formation which could also contribute to these differences as boys have a Y chromosome which has less genetic material. However, this is just a speculation and much more research in the nature of genetic material is required before we can make any definite hypothesis as to why girls perform better then boys. Social circumstances also may play a role as girls are ,generally according to age-old standards, at home more then outside thus allowing for greater study times and focus of course due to an increase in gender equality women are allowed more freedom now then ever before so we may see an equalization between how the two genders perform
what an interesting topic indeed, I strongly agree that girls do much better than us boys.Girls plan in advance for academics, they have timetable for self-study, they don’t bunk classes.More over girls mature earlier than us, thus they grasp things so simple.Nowadays if you can even look matric results, girls are the ones getting more distinctions in Maths and Sciences.
From the results of this post and my experience one can deduce that we different as people, and although boys have been known for doing less homework than girls, girls mature faster than boys and are able to adapt and maintain their academic progress due to the fact that they are fully equipped and have social skills which enable them to get higher grades than boy. While on the other hand boys excel in areas that interests them the most, sports for instance. The notion that boys do better than girls in maths and science remains a stereotype.With that being said I do not believe that a person ‘s gender determines one’s intelligence, I believe that hard work and dedication enable you to obtain high grades, and anyone despite their gender is capable and what actually matters at the end of the day is the EFFORT you put in.
The heading of this article really gives the wrong impression. It could be true that girls make higher grades at school, but it definitely doesn’t mean that girls are more intelligent than boys. Boys have never had to prove themselves and were quite content with doing well, maybe not excelling, but girls, on the other hand, have something to prove. They want to show they are equal to men, are just as competent and just as intelligent, which they can be, so, they work very hard! Traditionally, women were the workers, cleaning, cooking, looking after children, while men sat around, drinking beer and talking about problems and how to solve them. Thus, men have become lazy and are not as hard-working, don’t study for hours and are not bothered about achieving the highest marks. They also do more sports than girls and have less time for studying.
Intelligence is not only measured by school grades, you can be average and study very hard at school and you could still do very well, it’s the hard worker that is usually successful! While women are becoming key players in many organisations it’s still the men that dominate the business world, because intelligence is a package.
This is a debatable statement. Are girls really more intelligent than boys? I would like to point out that grades do not necessarily indicate or point towards any kind of ‘super intelligence’ as many of the comments are steering towards intelligence. Firstly,what is intelligence.it can be divided into 9 domains , to name a few, Naturalistic,musical,logical,existential,interpersonal and linguistic intelligence. there are too many types of it for us to say men or boys are more intelligent than females on the basis of school grades. With regards to the article i feel that it may be true that girls receive more attention from their parents because of the stereotype that boys will preform better.In addition to this in some cultures they may simply preform better because they are expected not to.Furthermore, a large number of the comments say that girls have a better work ethic.Do they really? Or is it that more girls have found which study technique works best for them.Or that schools cater to a specific type of learner and ignore either Visual, Auditory or Kinesthetic teaching methods .I would also like to point out that they looked at the grades of about 1 million boys and girls in a population of over 6 billion people. Also, who do these boys look up to? Perhaps the actors and musicians of today are subconsciously teaching them to be more reckless and care less for school.
i feel that we are overlooking the bigger picture here, something bigger than maturity or simple intelligence.
According to experts girls have 20% more neuron the Broncos area in the brain than boys this part of the brain is responsible for where language is produced that is why girls have the language advantage.Girls also have better communications skills they speak at least 2-3 more words than boys which improves their vocabulary and that makes them good at business and marketing skills.Girls do speak earlier than males in general because their left hemisphere which is the center of speech. That is why girls are better at language and business skills.
Wow. This has turned into a sexist love affair. Truth id, girls do better than boys over the course of primary and secondary education. As a male, I can understand that. Most of a boy’s high school career is spent trying to get girls and look good in front of your mates. Also, boys ted to care less about their marks in high school as they don’t see it as important. When you get an outlying male however, one who actually does care about his marks, he tends to easily outperform the girls. This is actually due to evolution which, I’m sorry ladies, is actually sexist. Natural selection has produced males who are better suited to do tasks that include problem solving. It’s how the male brain has evolved. The female brain on the other hand has evolved to be more caring, sympathetic and understanding, which are all traits of a good mother. While this article proves that during school, females outperform males, right in the beginning, it states that when tested for aptitude, males outperform the females, especially in math and science. It has also been proven that males do better than females when it comes to tertiary education, and that, on average, more males qualify with honours, masters and doctorates than females. Also, on the topic of males discovering more than female, I present to the world Marie Curie, who’s research changed the medical world forever. Honestly, everyone can do well, no matter if they’re male or female. We have evolved in different ways, meaning that males are better suited for some tasks while females are better suited for others. Nature is sexist people. It’s a part of life.
This insert is very interesting, its presence the responses that it has triggered have therefore shed some light for me regarding this matter. Research is obviously to a certain extent. Girls do seem to have better studying methods and organisation skills, and many boys, well, don’t have any of that.
And with that said, i have to disagree with Pieter (u14028949). The greatest inventions/discoveries were were only discovered by men because they were the only ones who had a chance, bear in mind that woman only started getting academically recognised not so long ago.
I do agree that girls are most likely to achieve higher grades than boys. Girls are more focused, well organized and less competitive individuals. I’ve often found that most girls come to class well prepared for the lesson, while boys will scramble for answers last minute. Boys are also easy peer pressured, this can be a great distraction towards their academics. Among the suggested explanations for this disparity is the tendency for girls to mature earlier than boys therefore much easier to grasps contents.
In my opinion, girls do better in school because of their study methods. According to scientists, there is one distinct difference between girls and boys. This is the presence of a larger corpus callosum in girls, allowing for increased communication between the brain’s hemispheres. This means that a girls memory, listening skills and tone interpretation is far better than a boys.
Boys are also more active than girls, as researches have shown that a boy’s brain subconsciously defend against learning, which affects the ability to multitask and transition between activities. This means that it makes them more physically impulsive and less likely to be able to sit still in a classroom or in front of a desk to study.
Another variable in the study method is the type of subject. Boys are more likely to achieve better grades in physical subjects like mathematics, science and technology, whilst girls achieve higher grades in languages and business related subjects.
I can agree with the topic, from where i come from there was always more girls than guys in A class and in top 10 of my previous high school there was only two boys and the rest were girls.It is not because boys were always good from the beginning, it is just that girls were not allowed to show what they can do best as they were taken as housewives.Men were always above females as they were taken as the head of the family.Because now we are all equal and allowed to do same things,girls are just proving that they are capable of doing any subjects even better than boys.
Taking into account the previous statements made ,I agree. I would however like to add that I am a great believer in equality among gender so what I have to say should in no way effect any one of the two. Male’s tend to concentrate on their sporting activities at a young age .There are certainly those that don’t but if one would consider a sports field at break time, the female to male ratio of students taking part in a sweaty sports game would paint the appropriate picture. Female’s don’t fall short of sporting abilities but the majority of girls in their early teens tend to converse with each other rather than play soccer or rugby. The competition between these girls could also be a reason for the statistics. But so it could, very well also be the case between the boys as previously stated. The fact remains that when looking at statistics one doesn’t concentrate on the exception but rather on the data as a whole and interpreting a general understanding of it. So the statistics don’t lie, but it is certainly debatable what the reasons are for them. The lack of concentration in boys at an early age due to the fact that they generally don’t find academics as appealing as sports could be said to be one, another could be the competition between individuals when put in certain situations and the last I would like to add and I hope could find more clarity on is the rumor that males are two years behind females in development at an early stage and then catch up later on. The latter I am very interested in ,if anybody could help clear that statement for me, I would be most grateful.
Being from a co-ed high school, I always assumed that the reason more girls received academic awards than boys was because the number of girls at the high school was far greater than that of boys (which it really was). This study has made me realise otherwise. Although I’m a firm believer that ALL individuals are different, I feel like there are a number of reasons for why these results were obtained.
These results include the fact that girls mature faster than boys which then causes a vast difference in how both approach their schoolwork, with girls studying more than most boys, always being up to date with their schoolwork and paying more attention in class than boys do. Another factor could be that boys tend to more focused on sports than girls are.
Despite all of this, I don’t believe that a person’s gender determines their intelligence. It’s all about the individual and how much effort they are willing to put in. A number of environmental and social factors also play a role. That is why there are as many successful men as there are women across different fields.
This is well said, personally agree that girls are more intelligent than boys regardless of maturity. Many girls are organised and this makes it easier for them to access their work than boys.Most of the boys are distracted especially in terms of alcohols and drugs and this affect their thinking capacity. I am not saying that girls are not engaged in this activity but there is a higher percentage of boys than girls. I know that each person’s thinking capacity is different but more recently girls have shown their potential these days even in maths and physics totally agree.
Well, I think one of the reasons could be that back then boys were more confident in their capabilities than girls and we know that higher achievement begins in your mind-it starts from believing that you can do it. Boy were more motivated than girls. However,nowadays girls are encouraged daily,they are taught how to have self-esteem, hence they are brave to attack scientific and mathematical problems.
During the olden days girls were never interested in science-related careers so they probably couldn’t see the importance of mastering maths and science. There are more females in the science fields these days than before,and more girls are encouraged and motivated to go for these fields. This makes them fall in love with maths and science and become more competitive. I think it is the change in the mentalities of females.
Firstly, there is a problem with the heading of the article. It states that girls perform better than boys in ALL school subjects. It is too broad because it does not specifically state in the article which are the subjects they outperform us (except for maths, science and language). This is then a stereotype on its own.
Secondly, there are several reasons/explanations why the overall marks of girls is higher than those of boys (in elementary and middle school):
1) It is a proven scientific fact that girls mature faster than boys in the early stages of life. Thus they will have a higher level of intelligence to do better than boys at a young age. There is a saying which states “Girls are more intelligent than boys, but men are more intelligent than women”. And I completely agree with this. By the time men matures or “catch up” with women, they have a far higher aptitude than woman. This statement could easily be proven when you look at the history of mankind: Most of the greatest achievements/inventions were made by men.
2) Boys tend to be lazier than girls in the earlier stages of life. Thus girls will spend more time on studying, yielding higher grades. But boys will have a higher ability to pay attention in class, which results in less time needed for studying.
The statement may thus be true that girls achieve higher grades than boys in elementary or middle school, but at tertiary institutions, men will outperform women because men are in fact more intelligent than women.
I don’t agree with this article because this article used just a small size of the population. This research includes a million students in USA and also mentioned other countries, but without specific number of students except USA, research from the other countries can’t be reliable. For example, 51% of girls do better than 49% of guys, it’s still “girls do better than guys”, but there’s not really a big difference between them.
On the other hand, it is possible because guys love sport more than girls, and also they put more effort in sport than girls. It doesn’t mean that girls are not good at sport or not passionate at sport, but there are more guys love sports and also who want to become a sportman than girls. There are more sports for the men than girls, and there are more men sport team in the popular sports than girl sport team (e.g. Soccer, Rugby, American football, Cricket, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, etc.)
An interesting thing said indeed. I without a doubt realized this too, that girls now indeed make higher grades in most subjects than boys.
Basically I think this because of many reasons, like many boys get more easily distracted, most of them are even more lazy making them not being able to put more effort in all their subjects or when studying like the research has shown that some boys don’t go to an extra mile to study to understand the materials like girls do. Naturally many would agree that girls like it when things are more neat and orderly. They also know how to manage their schedules and stand firm to it and to tell the truth they are good in organizing their work and this gives them mch more advantage to their school things, it makes them be more focused on their work and more determined.
Despite all of this I still think that both gender still offer different things on the table and they both contribute alot mainly in such a different way.
An interesting thing said indeed. I without a doubt realized this too,that girls now indeed make higher grades in most subjects than boys.
Basically I think this because of many reasons, like many boys get more easily distracted, most of them are even more lazy making them not being able to put more effort in all their subjects or when studying like the research has shown that some boys don’t go to an extra mile to study to understand the materials like girls do. Naturally many would agree that girls like it when things are more neat and orderly. They also know how to manage their schedules and stand firm to it and to tell the truth they are good in organizing their work and this gives them mch more advantage to their school things, it makes them be more focused on their work and more determined.
Despite all of this I still think that both gender still offer different things on the table and they both contribute a lot mainly in such a different way.
I find that this article shows a large amount of bias against how males perform and achieve academically, because the tests and experiments that are mentioned in the article exclude too many factors that may also have an effect on the way students perform, and on the other hand, not all factors have also been included.
For example, there have been many studies to show how sport and physical activity may be more a part of a male’s routine rather than a female’s. Of course it would be stereotyping to say that males are more athletic than females, but not all students, and more importantly, not all people are entirely focused on sport instead of academics.
Most schools will have students that are focused on sport, those who are focused on academics and the students who excel at both (i.e. they are all-rounders). In this perspective, there will be different results for each specific mindset. In this case, the students who were under pressure from a particular sport, should have been excluded from each school, college or university for the various tests that were executed, because not all students may be participating in the same amount of sport as other students in other schools, let alone other countries.
Therefore, the title and the conclusion of this article can be made as unfair, because females and males are not only different physically, but each person also has a completely different mindset, work-ethic and daily routine.