A new study reveals that girls consistently receive higher scores than boys with ‘equal competence’ because they are neater and easier to instruct.
Researchers from the University of Trento in Italy compared the performance of nearly 40,000 15- and 16-year-olds on a battery of standardized exams.
They discovered that ladies are routinely graded higher than guys despite being equally competent.
The researchers hypothesize that teachers may unwittingly promote typically feminine behaviors, such as stillness and tidiness, that make teaching easier.
Ilaria Lievore, a Sociology Ph.D. candidate, stated, “There is a clear association between higher grades and positive educational outcomes, such as admittance to prestigious colleges and a lower likelihood of dropping out of school.”
Therefore, higher grades are also associated with other outcomes, such as more income, a better job, and even greater life happiness.
Globally, gender disparities in educational attainment are widespread.
Since 1980, British schoolboys have had inferior exam performance than girls, according to a report published in 2020.
However, research has revealed that the nature of the accomplishment difference varies depending on the method of measurement used.
Mathematically, boys will outperform girls when subjected to standardized testing with uniform questions and a standardized scoring system.
When tested in the same manner, girls will perform better in humanities subjects, languages, and reading comprehension.
But when professors issue grades in the classroom, girls outperform males in every topic, and the Italian researchers wanted to determine why.
In the study, which was published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, the researchers compared the scores of 38,957 10th-grade pupils on standardized and classroom examinations for language and mathematics.
The national standardized tests were administered and scored anonymously, whereas the classroom exams were administered and scored by the teachers.
By prior research, girls did better than boys on standardized language examinations, but boys outperformed them by 5.5% in mathematics.
The teachers, however, placed the girls ahead in both courses; their average grade in language was 6.6% and in math, it was 6.3.
The boys averaged a grade of 6.2% in foreign languages and 5.9% in mathematics, which was also below the passing standard of 6.
When a girl and a guy were equally skilled in a subject, the research revealed that the girl would typically earn a higher mark.
The researchers next investigated whether any factors, such as the type of school, class size, and the gender or seniority of the teacher, could be responsible for the gender grade discrepancy on classroom assessments.
However, only two factors were shown to have a statistically significant impact, and only on the math assessments.
Girls scored better than boys when math classrooms were larger and when students attended a technical or academic institution as opposed to a vocational school.
None of the other criteria had a substantial impact on the gender grading gap, indicating that it is a systemic issue rooted within the educational system.
The authors concluded, “School and classroom environments may be modified to typically feminine behaviors.”
‘Female students may therefore adopt in-class behaviors, such as accuracy, order, modesty, and stillness, that transcend the academic success of the individuals, but which professors may highly reward in terms of grades.
‘On the other hand, teachers may exclusively identify these behaviors with female students, as girls are historically assumed to possess these characteristics.’
The researchers suggest that professors praise female students more because they anticipate that they would behave better than because of their actual behavior.
Another argument is that inflated math grades are an attempt to encourage girls, who are typically viewed as weaker in the historically male-dominated field of mathematics.
This is the first study to demonstrate that gender bias is systemic and unrelated to the educational environment or teacher attributes.
As it might be the difference between a passing grade and a failing grade, the bias could have significant effects on the college admissions, career choices, and earnings of boys.
The authors remark that additional research is required to determine if there is a correlation between gender-related behaviors and teachers’ grades.
