In 2005 Harvard’s president, Lawrence H. Summers suggested that innate differences between the sexes explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers. There was an outrage that led to his ousting. Was he right though?
Around the world, girls are less likely to be educated. This is more evident in the Arab world and poor countries because:
- Poor parents prefer to pay to educate the boy.
- Girls leave school if they become pregnant.
But education has become one of the few ways to gain independence from husbands and fathers. So when girls enroll, they are more likely to do better, especially in reading. Arab girls almost consistently outperform boys in the OECD PISA exams, every 3 years. In Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE the gap in 2015 was equivalent to girls having had 1 extra year of schooling in science and 2 extra years in reading.
There are other startling stats to be added to the puzzle:
- Today, colleges and universities around the world enroll just 88 men for every 100 women.
- According to PISA tests, boys score a bit better in math and science but are 50% more likely than girls to fall short of basic standards (be at risk) in all 3.
Causes
Why do boys fare worse than girls in school? There are various reasons for this and the most notable are:
Studying: Boys are 17% more likely than girls to play collaborative online games. On average, girls spend 5,5 hours per week doing homework while boys spend a little less than 4,5 hours. Researchers suggest that doing homework set by teachers is linked to better performance in maths, reading, and science.
Reading: In addition to this, girls read more than boys. Reading proficiency is the basis upon which all other learning is built.
Cultural problems: Parents do not help boys as much as they help girls with studying. And their teachers mark them down because they are rowdy! In anonymous tests, boys perform better, and the gender gap in reading drops by 33% when teachers don’t know the gender of the pupil they are marking.
School structure: Male teachers are the minority in most developed countries. Even in poor countries, policemen make more than teachers making men skip the teaching profession. So, a shortage of male teachers is a problem because boys do not have role model.
Single-sex schools: Segregated schooling is also a part of the problem. Single-sex schools are common in Arab countries. Hiring male teachers for schoolboys is tougher, an opening attracts 3 or 4 resumes vs. 10 for an all-girls school.
Bullying: Boys also report higher rates of violent bullying at school than girls. 60% of boys tend to get into fights at school. Bullying takes place also by their teachers as boys are beaten way more often than girls. In Zimbabwe and Singapore, for example, teachers are not allowed to hit girls but are allowed by law to beat up boys. UNESCO analyzed a poll and found that more than 40% of teenagers in the Middle East and North Africa are bullied at least once a month, compared with 32% in North America and 25% in Europe.
Effects
This poses a huge cost to society because:
- Boys are more likely to repeat years of school, which is expensive
- Boys get frustrated with repetition and eventually drop out
Research showed that in Australia estimate the cost of boys ditching school costs the country A$25.9bn ($17.2bn) over the boys’ lifetimes. For girls, this figure is A$10bn. This cost includes the knock-on effects that are generated by a lack of education.
Countries with lots of uneducated men are more likely to have crimes. A study of the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s found that uneducated boys were 9 times more likely to become soldiers than their educated counterparts. This economic drag is more evident in the Arab world.
General research shows that less-educated males are more likely to be sexist and that men who do not complete secondary education are more likely to abuse their partners.
Recent reforms
UNESCO issued a report that identified 19 countries where schoolboys are doing badly. Only 4 out of the 19 countries had come up with reforms to help address the issue. But there is some hope. Recent reforms in the Middle East would help carry the load.
Arab countries now participate in OECD PISA assessments and in 2018 the UAE began creating mixed-sex classes in public schools. In 2019 in Saudi Arabia, women teachers were allowed to teach in all-boys schools.
Solutions
Preschools can also be a remedy to the problem but the way to make this effective is by increasing the participation rate: Less than 33% of students in the Middle East and North Africa go to one, which is about 50% less than the global rate.
So what can parents do to help close the gap? They should:
- Make boys read non-fiction comics and newspapers.
- Get boys to cut down on screen time would help.
Most importantly we should abandon gender stereotypes. Chinese girls in Shanghai outperform boys in math and boys in countries with the best schools read much better than girls.
Mandoulides Schools
