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.
I strongly believe we all have equivalent mental capacities. It is unfair and absurd to conclude that girls are smarter than guys as if Einstein himself was a woman. Men are critical thinkers and think better on their feet. Yes, in most cases women are good in long-term planning, organizing themselves and prioritizing but often men can get away with doing things haphazardly and still get away with exceptional results. Therefore, I conclude by saying that we are proportionate. Intelligence level is not determined by an individuals sex.
The reason we get inventors, astronauts and scientists that are men, is because women were oppressed before the 1800’s, so women didn’t get the opportunity to prove themselves to society as intelligent, but it didn’t take them much time to get to the level that men were placed and higher if I may say. Rosalind Franklin’s theory on DNA being a double helix structure was rejected by men because of the mere fact that she was female and it was only accepted in the middle of the 20th century. Women now take the highest positions in the corporate world, imagine how it would have been if they had the same opportunities from the beginning. They would be taking over the world.
lets be frank girls are smarter than guys when it comes to long term commitments. it has been said behind a smart man is an even smarter woman, this is because woman groom men to be intelligent beings that they claim to be today. go to a man and you will here him say because of my ‘mom’ ‘gran’ ‘aunt’ because the intelligence comes from a more knowledgeable and witty foundation which is the woman.
This is a “VERY” controversial global generalisation. in my opinion, we ALL have equivalent mental capacity. Saying girls are smarter than girls is like comparing apples to oranges, men and women think differently. In some areas women are capable of more and in some areas men are… On the whole, I would say they are equal.Its just about time the world got rid of this “stereotype”
In general girls are just more goal driven and don’t take as much risk as boys. eg if there is a big test ahead boys are more likely to play around or only make time for studying a day or two before the time whereas girls would have such a huge fear of failure, they would study like hell. In classes I have also noticed that the girls pay so much more attention then the guys sometimes. As for the society we live in today, we as girls don’t want to relay on others (men) to take care of us one day, we want to pay for our own Mercedes, so of-cause girls will work hard to achieve what they want in life one day. This isn’t the 19th century anymore, girls don’t stand in kitchens and take care of babies till they die one day.
There is a wonderful study “My beautiful brain” that explains the difference between boys and girls, regarding working ability and intelligence. When one looks at a mental sport like chess it is apparent that boys out perform girls in chess. My opinion is that girls apply more emotional weight to their academics than boys do.
As scientifically proven, girls do perform better than boys academically. Girls work much harder and boys, are more diligent and are more persistent. It is much easier for a girl to put effort into her studies and to try and puzzle out work she does not understand. Whereas boys, give up easily and has little perseverance. As proven, boys do better in Maths, because they are practical and it is more fun than having to be creative and write a poetry essay for English.
Secondly, girls have a higher concentration span than boys. This might also be why girls perform better than boys do. It is much easier for a girl to sit and listen intensely to a teacher for about forty minutes than it is for a boy. Girls will listen to very word the teacher says without being distracted quickly. Boys on the other hand, are distracted much easier. This might be another reason why girls perform better in some subjects than boys.
I believe that one of the main reasons why boys do worse than girls is because boys tend to be more playful and are more involved in sports than girls. Boys at a young age, tend to go out more, play outside with friends and do more adventurous things, which in turn makes them less interested and concentrated in school work. They also spend more time in sports and don’t give schoolwork the required attention it also needs.
I recently read a scientific report that stated that fast-paced action games help the brain solve things faster and understand things more effectively. This could be a reason why boys do better in science and maths because many boys like to play these fast-paced action games. It helps them to solve things mathematically.
Girls are naturally persistent and hardworking. They take the time out to nurture and understand certain things thus it reflects in the academics. Boys on the other hand loves the more fun and practical side of life thus it reflects in how well they do in subjects such as maths and physics. They always do things in a rush and they hardly take out to understand certain things thus this reflects in their academics. Girls do better than boys in general academically and we finally have scientific facts to prove it and back it up.
Girls do better in academics because they are a lot more committed than boys are. They have different priorities than boys have. Girls are definitely more competitive than boys and are always challenging one another. Because of the competitive they push each other to work harder and they automatically achieve higher marks. Boys is more competitive in sport and not all of them care about academic. There is an assumption that boys who spent to many hours infront of their books are nerds.
The idea of social and cultural factors influencing whether or not girls achieve higher marks than boys seems to be quite relevant however i do not agree with it only being due to parent’s influence as the author suggests. It seems more likely to stem from the past exclusion of females in regard to education. In some countries it could be directly related as they have only recently been allowed to attend schools whereas in other countries they feel stigma to some extent as the article suggests, and work harder as a result.
Girls tend to perform better academically, but it goes towards the saying, “proof is in the podding”. Girls work a lot harder, concentrate more in class and put in more learning hours than boys, where boys “goof” around in class thus concentrating less and learning half as hard as the girls. Work supposedly comes more natural to boys and the feel that is enough to pass, whereas as the workload increases that “natural talent” isn’t enough anymore and this is where the girls come in as the put in the time to achieve the marks they need, achieving better grades than boys. I feel boys are easily distracted to when it comes to time where they need to crack the whip and put the time is – the smallest things distract boys.
Girl power!
Thank you for this insightful information. It encourages me as a female to try even harder in my studies. I think that is what makes us women achieve higher, not only in school work but also in other areas of life. It is expected for males to do well, so we try even harder to be seen on their level.
I personally feel that in order to be seen as equal to males, I must show that I am capable of performing the same, or higher than my male counterparts.
Women are talkers, we like to find things out by asking many questions which helps us understand things whereas males might just accept that “this is that” and “that is this”.
It is working in our favour.
Times have changed, we don’t have be housewives, we can be the bread winners.
We are given the opportunity to make something of our lives and we are aware of it, now more than ever.
This article is very enlightening and it is exciting to see that science can be used to prove what has been and in many places still is doubted , that girls are in actuality academically stronger than boys . Could the reason for this “phenomena” not being recognized, be societies bias against girls and females in general over the years all over the world . The basic idea that girls belong at home , in the passed it is known that girl children were not allowed to finish school in some cultures , and were not allowed to work or follow a career. The reasoning behind girls being better academically makes logical sense , in saying that it is because girls are more logically and tidy and so forth. Coming from a girl school I agree with this statement , I remember going to school and classes being very calm and behaved when work needed to be done – for the most part. As compared to hearing what our brother schools days were like. I’ll definitely be showing this to a few people who are always arguing with me on the topic .
Finally there is scientific proof to justify that girls tend to perform better academically then boys do in schools. I do agree that the generalization that boys are better in maths and science are one of the reasons girls tend to work harder. Girls are encouraged to put in more effort in order to compete with boys.Where boys on the other hand don’t have that kind of motivation which can be very disadvantageous and one of the reasons why girls have been performing better than boys for nearly a century.
I was in an all boys high school and I remember one of my teachers, who also teaches at an all girls high school, saying she has to prepare more work, for the same class, when she is teaching an all girls class compared to an all boys class because of the discipline and diligent behaviour of the girls compared to the boys. When class starts the girls would walk in, sit down, not say a word, open their books and would be ready to learn. Boys on the other hand would take 5 minutes to get into class, be talking, probably be throwing a rugby ball around, take 5 minutes to sit down and to be ready. These 10 mins add up over the course of the semester and then its cram time for the teacher nearing exams and boys will have to self study to properly understand the work. Could this be a contributing factor? or how about, in general, girls are more neat and organized then boys when it comes to summarizing work, leading to better understanding in work and better all round marks.
I for one always had the idea that boys perform better than girls in maths and physics, and girls dominate in other subjects, but after reading this blog as well as an article by Maggie Fox on NBCNews.com -titled “Girls Do Better Than Boys in School at All Ages and Subjects, Study Finds”- I find myself a bit on the fence with that thought. In this blog it is stated that “boys typically score higher on math and science”, whereas in the article by Maggie Fox it is stated that girls perform better than boys “at all ages, in all subjects including math and science and around the world” (said by the American Psychological Association analysis). Therefore that can still be unclear, but a fact which is clear is that girls do perform better than boys in overall subjects and both the article and the blog agree and provide that the reason could be that girls feel the need to understand work and apply knowledge as opposed to how boys want to excel in writing a test. To say that there is concrete scientific proof as to why girls perform better than boys, I think would be inaccurate , because suggestions as to why this might be were provided and in the blog the authors state that it is “speculated” and they also say “possible explanations” meaning it is not factual yet. So we can say that we girls are smarter science proves it, but I feel it’s inaccurate to say science proves why.
All in all a great post :-) now I can go around telling my brother what I’ve always said and back it up with showing results, It would be nice to state scientific facts as to why though. Is it genetic? Or in the way the female brain was constructed?
It is not surprising that girls make higher grades than boys because girls are usually hardworkers and take their work serious. As for boys..they can be usually too lenient on their work and tend to think that they know better and not take much effort on their work thus losing marks or failing.
Same thing happened when I was in high school.Boys were scoring high grades in mathematics and science than girls. And girls were performing better than boys in theory and language and getting higher aggregate grades than boys.It is amazing because my friends and I were having a conversation about something like this and we were wondering why. I am so pleased as now there is scientific proof.
I have heard a few times before that girls are typically better at studying and achieving higher grades than boys- of course generally speaking and not looking at other environmental factors that would influence that result. It is interesting to see that it has some scientific evidence to back it up.I think this is related to how females and males are “wired”. Perhaps the old “hunter”-men and “gatherer”-women reference? I have also observed at my university that the guys enjoy and are much better at the understanding subjects (mathematics and physics) than the theory and language subjects (English and history), which the girls seem to dominate. Could it be related to the practical and maybe straight forward way of thinking in men and the emotional and “feeling” way of thinking in women? Perhaps women are better at language because they are more in touch with their feelings. And also in school- lets say primary school, boys just want to play sport and practically want to do things whereas girls are more content sitting in a classroom (again, this is in general) and thus girls are then more likely to do better in school.