Are research findings that girls have better grades than boys a challenge to the male ego?
—-
Years ago, Harry Belafonte had a big hit with a song called “Man Smart, Woman Smarter.” It’s a fun little song with a million verses. If you check out Robert Palmer or The Grateful Dead, you’ll get different lyrics. The chorus goes something like this:
I say, it’s the women today
Are smarter than the men in every way
That’s right, the women are smarter
In case you needed it, there’s also research proof. A new study by Daniel and Susan Voyer tells us something many people have long suspected: Girls and women get better grades or “marks” (so as not be confused with 1st grade, 6th grade, etc.) than boys and men. The study, published in the highly respect journal Psychological Bulletin, breaks down marks in a variety of ways, including type of course (math, science, languages, etc.), level of schooling (elementary through graduate), race/ethnicity, year and a few other factors.
Ultimately, one thing stood out: across all types of courses, including math and science, across nearly 100 years of data, from 1914 to 2011, and across a broad variety of countries, the results were remarkably stable: females outperformed males.
Girls outperformed boys in the aggregate for every analysis. Every one. There was not a single analysis in which boys and men had better marks than girls and women.
|
We’re all used to studies that come out one week saying something like red wine is good for you and then another study comes out the next week that says red wine is bad for you. But that’s not the case here. This study is a mathematical review of all those prior studies or a “meta-analysis.” In practice, it’s the bomb. By reviewing all other studies, results can’t be ignored because “it was just one school” or something like that.
The Technical Details
The Voyers, who specialize in meta-analysis, followed a 6 step procedure to examine the question “who gets better marks in school?”
- Identify all studies in the professional databases by using all combinations of keywords from column A (“academic performance,” “GPA,” etc.) and column B (“gender differences,” “sex differences,” etc.).
- Post notices on professional listserves looking for these types of studies, including unpublished findings.
- Eliminate any findings about one-time tests like the SAT, GRE, end-of-grade exam, etc. in order to focus on school marks.
- Eliminate any study that focused on a special population, such as gifted students, developmentally delayed students, students with a mental health diagnosis (or IEP or 504), or students with a serious medical condition (e.g., low birth weight, children with cancer) because this is about the general or “average” student.
- Eliminate any study that focused on only boys or only girls because they wanted to examine comparisons between boys and girls.
- Eliminate any study that doesn’t have the necessary technical details, such as number of students or a numeric indicator of the difference.
Following this procedure, they identified more than 15,000 published studies and more than 2,000 unpublished works (these and dissertations). Of these, 369 groups of students (“samples”) who were compared in 502 ways by the original authors became the focus of the Voyers’ analysis. There are more comparisons than samples because some studies compared grades in two or more areas, like math and science, while other studies focused on just one set of marks. In total, the Voyers relied on data from 538,710 males and 595,332 females from 1st grade through graduate school.
The Findings
The biggest finding is that females get better marks than males, overall and in every course content area including math and science. It’s true from elementary school through graduate school, although the differences were smallest among graduate students. Although there were individual studies where boys had better marks than girls, when the Voyers examined results across studies, girls outperformed boys in the aggregate for every analysis the Voyers computed. Every one. There was not a single analysis in which boys and men had better marks than girls and women.
Additional analyses showed the gender gap to be larger in North America (defined as the US and Canada) than in other countries and that females have been getting better marks than males for nearly 100 years. That’s about the entire time that mandatory public education has been available.
Some things weren’t related to the academic gender gap, like public vs. private schooling, the grading system, or the racial composition of the school.
|
Some things the Voyers examined weren’t related to the academic gender gap, like public vs. private schooling or the grading system (0-100, 0-4.0, letter grades only). In the US, the school’s racial and ethnic composition wasn’t a factor. That means the academic gender gap was about the same regardless of who the students were. The Voyers had to use a simplified scheme to quantify this; schools were classified as White, Black, Latino, or Asian if more than 75% of students were in one of those categories; else, they were “mixed.”
So What?
Robert Palmer has a verse that’s always struck me as particularly poignant because it talks about not being able to live up to some definition of masculinity.
A little boy sat down and cried
An old man passing, asked him why
He said I can’t do what the big boys do
Old man sat down and he cried too
From Palmer, I’ve always assumed it was about sex. But the notion that men should be or are naturally smarter than women, is certainly widespread. And clearly wrong, according to these results. If you believe “girls are better in language (native or foreign) and boys are better in math and science,” you’re half wrong. Girls are better in language courses, for both their native and foreign languages. In fact, language courses were the place where girls and women had their biggest advantage. But it’s wrong about performance in math and science; girls and women have better marks. Admittedly, their smallest advantage was in math, but that’s their smallest advantage. A win is a win, whether it’s a squeaker or a blowout.
Stereotypes influence the expectations of students, parents, and teachers, as well as the perceived value and effort placed on particular subjects. If you think that you, your son, or a male student in your class should be good at math, then you’ll place more value on it and (encourage him to) work harder. The Feminist movement has done a good job of pushing Americans to question their stereotypes about girls and women and has convinced us all that they can be good in math and science, but there’s no coordinated movement to question our male stereotypes. In that, the 5 year old Good Men Project is a pioneer.
Schooling is cumulative, so small gaps in the earlier grades can become big gaps later on. As a result, the top 10% of a high school graduating class may be dominated by girls and the bottom 10% dominated by boys.
|
The Voyers’ findings give some support to the notion that schooling may be better suited to the average girl than the average boy. Schooling is cumulative, so small gaps in the earlier grades can become big gaps later on. As a result, the top 10% of a high school graduating class may be dominated by girls and the bottom 10% dominated by boys. Michal Gurian has spent the past decade describing how classrooms can be changed to better help all students reach their academic potential. I think we also need to invest more heavily in vocational training because not everyone can or should go to college, plumbers, electricians, and auto mechanics make good money, and those jobs can’t easily be outsourced.
You could twist these findings to say that schools are a form of institutional sexism that privileges girls. I don’t buy that. Until the 1970s, many colleges and universities were male only. Among the colleges that did accept women, many allowed them to study teaching and nursing but nothing else. And while women now outnumber men at the undergraduate and graduate level in the US, more men than ever are attending college.
Then again, maybe we don’t need to do anything to schools. Despite hysterical claims about “the end of men,” the reality is that men have and will continue to adapt to the culture around them. Even though boys and men have always gotten worse grades than girls and women, it doesn’t seem to have negatively impacted men’s earnings (i.e., gender wage gap), their ability to move up the corporate ladder (e.g., male-to-female ratio among CEOs, in high political office, etc.), or even straight men’s ability to find marital partners. Maybe the academic gender gap is something that men should just get over? Or perhaps it should be teaching men humility?
*author’s note: Last paragraph edited after publication.
-photo by William Creswell/flickr used under Creative Commons 2.0 license.
The link to the study doesn’t work. Can you post the title/authors names?
I really dont think girls are smarter (call me sexist if you want) but I do think there is a surprising lack of IQ in the echelons of education. The boys who lag behind 20y from now will be adult poorly educated and unemployed (if you dont have paper and good grades, im sorry but its difficult to get a good job) who ever your daddy was is totally irrelevant if you dont have a education, beside only few have a father who is a CEO thus making this point invalid. I wonder if the educator of the future will… Read more »
I posted a comment with actual sources but its stuck in mod queue. here is the upshot:
Once again- lets summarize the facts:
1. When low bias instruments (standardized testing and IQ tests) are utilized boys tend to outscore girls.
2. When high bias instruments are utilized girls tend to outscore boys.
What do the readers of the GMP Conclude?
*Women are smarter and girls face discrimination and those nasty boys get too much attention.
Its very hard to pretend that progressives wear the white hat when they exhibit thinking like this.
Once again- lets summarize the facts: 1. When low bias instruments (standardized testing and IQ tests) are utilized boys tend to outscore girls. 2. When high bias instruments are utilized girls tend to outscore boys. What do the readers of the GMP Conclude? *Women are smarter and girls face discrimination and those nasty boys get too much attention. I am a religious person. I have faith in God. I am very aware of what faith is and its lack of rational basis (hence just how personal it is). What I see here is a bunch of people who follow a… Read more »
I read this as stating that girls are better at adapting to a system and more likely to work towards pleasing their keepers. This is typical behavior for any people whose status is on softer footing than their companions, and girls’ standing in society has always been chancier than boys’. I hope you have seen studies on the attention gap in schools? Where teachers’ attention is timed, and most teachers give about 5x the amount of time to boys that is given to girls? The same dynamic is seen in most movies, where men have a gross majority of the… Read more »
Kitti: “The same dynamic is seen in most movies, where men have a gross majority of the speaking lines and camera time.” They are also the majority cannon fodder and make up the body count in action movies, majority villains, and majority dunderheads in screwball comedies.. Please quit trying to spin this into denial of men and boys struggles please. “Maybe boys know, from this unequal treatment, that their grades aren’t quite as important. They know that they’ll be given support regardless of how they behave.” As someone pointed out earlier, jobs for these boys have gone extinct. And as… Read more »
Will my big comment get accepted or do I need to split it?
“That’s right, the women are smarter [than the men]”
We used to talk about men as smarter and women as dumber, then use the statistics of the time to prove it.
It has been rightfully labeled “sexist”. So why hasn’t the reverse?
And since when were grades a measure of intelligence?
Interesting how when girls were lagging behind, grades mattered very much- apparently- because there was a big outcry over it. And yet, when boys fall behind it’s “well, girls are just smarter, I guess.” When girls are told boys are better at math, it causes their test scores in that area to suffer. And yet… people seem shocked that after at least one generation (possibly more) of the media telling boys, both covertly and overtly, that girls are smarter than they are… that boys start doing poorly in schools. I’m trying very hard to see what your point here is,… Read more »
8Ball,
Boys have done worse in school for 100 years, but during that time they’ve always done better as far as salary and higher end jobs. Perhaps what this study is really telling us is that school grades don’t mean much outside of school? I agree that the historical record is no guarantee of what will happen in the future, but I’ll also point out that boys haven’t suddenly started doing worse, they’ve always done worse and the magnitude of that worse hasn’t changed.
If they’ve done worse, then that is clearly a sign that schools may be catering too much to styles of learning that females excel at?
Again, what’s your point? Do you see a problem with the state of education in regards to boys, or don’t you? I honestly can’t tell from your article. I suspect you’re waffling on the subject because you’re afraid of being called sexist. You’re also ignoring the fact that a lot of the jobs men relied on in the past flat DO NOT exist anymore. At least, not in America. We’re at the point where even a bachelor’s degree (costing tens of thousands of dollars to get, by the way) often isn’t enough to get you a decent paying jobs. Women… Read more »
As I am pretty tired when writing this, what differences does this study have with the ones listed here? http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/sexdifferences.aspx
It’s kind of hysterical that you’ve mentioned this twice to no response. Gotta protect that confirmation bias
I’m not surprised at all.
I agree with your assessment of the article. I see it as largely pandering to the cult of negative feminism. A perfect example is the sentence “You could twist these findings to say that schools are a form of institutional sexism that privileges girls. I don’t buy that.” Why not? I’ve heard time and time again in feminist arguments that the existence of an imbalance is an indication of discrimination. The gender pay gap is a prime example. Gender equality, like all forms of social justice, requires an initial presumption that imbalances are unfair and unnatural. I, like most good… Read more »
In part, I don’t buy the argument about institutional sexism because there’s no history of policies at the state (or national) level, or policies replicated by school after school, that explicitly prevented boys from receiving an education, barred them from certain types of classes, etc. I do think there is a group of boys out there who are particularly poorly served by the educational system and thus do very poorly, and they’re the ones who “cause” a small but persistent difference. A group as “small” as 10% of boys could produce that kind of difference. It’s a small percentage, but… Read more »
If someone reported results according to race and concluded “whites are smarter” the shit would hit the fan. Careers have ended for making conclusions that favor whites or males. Mystifying as to why you would blithely write this without noting the blatant hypocrisy. Y’all progressives are kind of hysterical like that- you commit the same “sins” as the most ardently emotional social conservatives except with opposing biases. You even rationalize them in the same fashion using different frameworks. As far as the data goes- when researchers include subjective data rife with human variation and reject objective data and then try… Read more »
Simpler version- if you reject standardized test differences between races as saying anything fundamental about differences between races yet make conclusions using this study as showing differences between genders, you need to spend a whole hell of a lot of time soul searching as to why it’s acceptable for you to think this way.
CW, I didn’t say anything about race, and rarely do. There’s clear evidence that race is closely linked to income and that blacks & latinos are concentrated in school districts that have less funding and less well-trained teachers than districts that serve primarily white (& asian) kids. The parents of Black & Latino kids also tend to be less-educated, another important factor. I don’t think those issues can be dismissed from discussions of race. So, are those differences really about race, or are they about poverty or parental education? Some combination of those factors? When comparing boys to girls, those… Read more »
You don’t even bother to touch the fact that low bias instruments show opposite conclusions. Your confirmation bias is showing and boy is it ugly. Did you bother to look at prior research that shows inherent bias toward girls in grading?
Recently I have been looking at this topic with a more critical view than I would have a couple years ago. In general I have seen 2 completely different mentalities between girls and boys. Girls are taught to succeed. They feel they have something to prove. This leads to women “hungrier” to win and achieve whatever they put their mind to. Boys are taught not to fail. This creates a complacent attitude of “good enough”. Some parents are just happy with them not getting into trouble. “It could be worse, he could flunk out.” This leads to men who settle… Read more »
Very good observation, Eduardo.
Boys are taught not to fail. This creates a complacent attitude of “good enough”. Some parents are just happy with them not getting into trouble. “It could be worse, he could flunk out.” This leads to men who settle for average, leading an unmotivated life.
I think the “do not fail” can lead boys in another direction where they become borderline obsessed with achieving some measure of to the point that they foresake all other things and basically (if not literally) work themselves to an early grave.
Interesting point Eduardo. It ycertainly fits with some smaller scale studies that point to the importance of compliance inthe classroom and its effect on marks (favoring girls).
When I see a meta analysis that chooses to leave out data , I ALWAYS wonder WHY , iow, Why did they leave out SAT scores etc, WHY did they leave out ALL BOYS or ALL GIRLS exams, WHY. The usual answer is that they wanted the results to be a certain way and that data would not have allowed the result they desired. Also, GRADES are not given in a vacuum, al the studies I have seen like this show an outcome in favour of girls BUT when the throw in TEST scores , iow, OBJECTIVES measures, the no… Read more »
They wanted to examine direct comparisons of boys vs. girls marks in classroom settings, so any study that didn’t include that information was tossed.
There are already several studies of SAT, GRE, etc and the Voyers didn’t want to repeat that. Because they wanted to know about comparisons between boys & girls, they couldn’t use data from an only-boys study (or an only-girls study) because the comparison wouldn’t have been part of the study.
If you believe that they were only out to prove what they wanted to prove, I can’t change your mind.
The problem here is not related to ego. It is that when the equivalent naturalistic arguments are put forward but with the genders swapped, it’s frenetically denounced as misogynistic hatred.
Swap the genders back, and it’s perfectly acceptable to claim.
I would say it’s surprising, but such inconsistency is not really that surprising anymore.
Or, when it comes to race, test scores are obviously evidence of racial bias in schools. Say “ethnic group X is smarter than ethnic group Y” because of test score evidence, and you’ll see all the arguments for why grading data is deeply flawed.
Somehow, the “Bell Curve” argument is flat-out junk social science when it comes to race, but simply self-evidently true when it comes to gender.
The report discussed does make this very point – that the gap is larger when race is also included as a moderating factor. Another important distinction is “teacher assigned” marks versus standardized test results. The former is where the gap is larger. In standardized test meta-analysis, the advantage that boys have in mathematics, for example, reemerges. Anyway – this is really not news. Back in 1992 the AAUW authored a report titled: “How Schools Shortchange Girls” The report by the AAUW was contrary to existing evidence at the time and rebuked by many who knew better and understood the difference… Read more »
Yet, that didn’t stop the school system from kowtowing to these special interest groups that insist girls were being shortchanged. And it also didn’t stop the discussion of boys struggling from becoming taboo years later.
Shows where priorities lie.
Hi Erin, The question of schools being a good environment for boys is longstanding and doesn’t have a single good answer because “boys” are a highly varied group. Most boys are able to sit still, pay attention, and do their work without difficulty, so it’s can’t be _that much_ of a problem. I think a better question is “for whom is school a problem?” or even “what parts of mainstream schooling are a problem for which kids?” For example, we know (some) ways that schools can help kids with Attention problems, and we know boys are much more likely to… Read more »
I’m going to throw this in and it’s not to derail anything but ….. Our educational system, in many areas fall short. Two out of three eighth-graders can’t read proficiently. (NAEP, 2011) (NAEP, 2011) Nearly two-thirds of eighth-graders scored below proficient in math. (NAEP, 2011) Seventy-five percent of students are not proficient in civics. (NAEP, 2011) Nearly three out of four eighth- and 12th-grade students cannot write proficiently. (NAEP, 2012) Some 1.1 million American students drop out of school every year. (EPE, 2012) For African-American and Hispanic students across the country, dropout rates are close to 40 percent, compared to… Read more »
Hi Tom,
All excellent points: there’s a rather sizable disconnect between what the educational system is supposed to be achieving and what’s actually happening.
1) Grading at school is not done blindly — teachers are aware whether they are grading a boy or a girl. This limits the scientific value of any of these studies. 2) Giving girls better grades does not imply that they are privileged. Indeed there is ample theory to argue that it is actually a sign of female discrimination. E.g. grades are influenced by the student’s behaviour in addition to their performance, and from earliest age girls are conditioned to be quiet and dainty, which works to their advantage in these settings. So the argument that it cannot be biased… Read more »
Hi Theorema Egergium, In order: 1. As stated, stereotypes influence teachers, so no argument about that part. The limitation is in the question of “do grades mean anything beyond classroom performace?” is an open one, but they certainly have an impact on admission to college & (first) employment. 2. I didn’t say girls were privileged. I did say I don’t buy the argument that the academic gender gap reflects discrimination against boys. You are welcome to make an argument that it _is_ sexism against boys. 3. I dismissed Hannah Rosin’s book as “hysterical,” nothing else. As for dismissing men’s ego… Read more »
Thank you for your reply. I was not clear enough in my point 2), I think. I understood your argument thus: If we assume biased grading, and girls get better grades that would mean that girls are privileged, but we know that girls are not privileged, so there can not be biased grading. My point was: Even a misogynist reality can (paradoxically) cause girls to get better grades, so biased grading cannot be disproven this way. Alright then, the picture you paint of boys’ future reminds me of Thomas Edison. He did drop out of school, but boy, did he… Read more »
Good talking to you. And thanks for #6 – I edited the last paragraph to include what I said to you. That was very helfpul for me.
Thanks for the clarification re: #2. I follow you now. And I hadn’t heard Tesla’s comment about Edison before. Nice.
Andrew, I agree that there is a general pattern of thought that men are smarter then women. I’ve seen people, (okay honestly mainly men), back this up in discussions with any number of famous men that have contributed to the world while not being able to think of many women who have. What they fail to understand is that there have been heavy prejudices agaisnt women in the fields of accomplishment where they were greatly over-looked or simply ignored. For centuries, women had to work mearly as “volunteers” in labs even when they had proper schooling similiar to their male… Read more »
Hi Erin, The question of schools being a good environment for boys is longstanding and doesn’t have a single good answer because “boys” are a highly varied group. Most boys are able to sit still, pay attention, and do their work without difficulty, so it’s can’t be _that much_ of a problem. I think a better question is “for whom is school a problem?” or even “what parts of mainstream schooling are a problem for which kids?” For example, we know (some) ways that schools can help kids with Attention problems, and we know boys are much more likely to… Read more »
Part of it is males are much more varied in IQ compared to women, it gives rise to more male geniuses than female but also more males with lower IQ whilst women’s IQ tends to be closer to median on the bell curves.