thesis on gender difference

Psychology: Research and Review

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• Published: 21 October 2021

Gender difference in the effect of cultural distance on academic performance among cross-border students in China

• Jieyi Hu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1852-178X 1 &
• Chau Kiu Cheung 2  

Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica volume  34 , Article number:  33 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Cross-border students’ academic performance draws people’s attention, whereas perceived cultural distance might influence their performance with gender difference. Based on role theory, men and women present different roles in society, and women are good at perceptual, cognitive aspects, making them more sensitive to cultural distance. Finding shows that the negative moderation role of gender existed in the relationship between cultural distance and academic performance. Particularly, female students showed lower cultural adaptation after cross-border migration, which then influenced their academic performance in universities. This study provides implication for policymakers and universities to pay more attention with additional resources to support female students’ cultural adaption.

Introduction

Migration shapes and changes in receiving societies (International Organization for Migration, 2013 ), which is crucial in understanding their move, ideals, values, and beliefs with them (Phinney et al., 2001 ). Migration is one of the most complicated components of demographic change (Bell et al., 2002 ). Although most of the studies have examined international variation in movements (Guo et al., 2018 ), few have explored internal migration and constructed a framework related to internal migration or cross-border movement. Internal migration or border crossing may be different from traditional migration. However, internal migration has become more popular than international migration in most countries in recent years (Guo et al., 2018 ). Mobility is a distinctive feature of cross-border migrants between Hong Kong and Mainland China (Li, 2011 ). Although Western research has mainly paid attention to international migration (Yang & Qin, 2016 ; Yue et al., 2016 , p.79), this study of cross-border students in universities contributes to filling the research gap about cross-borderers’ wellbeing.

Identities, cultural distance (norms, values, cultures, customs, and differing views), public awareness, ethical sensitivity, and motivation all influence migrants’ life after migration (Sheu & Fukuyama, 2007 ). When it comes to the issue of migration or cross-border transfer, cultural difference refers to the difficulties faced by immigrants and cross-borderers to integrate into the host society. Bean ( 1986 ) agreed with Tinto’s ( 1993 ) view that factors beyond the institution exist, such as the environmental factors influencing students’ academic interactions with their teachers and peers, as well as those affecting their social relations in the host society. One of the crucial environmental factors is the cultural factor. Thus, Tinto ( 1975 , 2010 ) incorporated students’ interaction, performance, and retention in an environmental factor model. Moreover, encouragement and decreasing the cultural distance as cultural factors can strengthen a person’s goal commitments (Nora et al., 1990 ), improve academic performance (Cabrera et al., 1992 ), promote persistence, and thus reduce dropout rates (Nora & Cabrera, 1996 ).

For a cross-border student group, academic performance is likely a distinctive feature influenced by other social experiences after crossing the border (Guo et al., 2018 ). A student’s academic achievements (Kuncel et al., 2005 ) serve as a common indicator of academic performance. Cross-border students are likely to integrate into mainstream society by assimilating its language or broader culture (Echenique & Fryer, 2007 ; Forrest & Kearns, 2001 ). The student integration model proposed by Tinto ( 2010 ) is useful to enhance social and academic connectivity among the students. Here, education is a resource that facilitates integration (Marhuenda, 2017 ). Beekhoven et al. ( 2002 ) related students’ academic performance acculturation in the university or the new environment. While indicating that academic and social integration matter, that theoretical insight does not tell what they would do to achieve academic and/or social integration in their setting (Tinto, 2010 ). Thus, further research on predictors of academic performance is necessary.

Countless studies have examined the factors of academic performance, especially among cross-border students. Cultural distance might be one of the predictors of academic performance in cross-border student groups. The relationship between academic performance and cultural distance or cultural adaptability has also found support in many studies. For example, Martin et al. ( 2017 ) found that the correlation between adaptability and academic buoyancy, which is a form of academic performance, was significantly more positive in the Chinese student than in other. Accordingly, academic performance significantly influences adaptability among Chinese students. Martin et al. ( 2012 , 2013 ) proposed adaptability to be an important indicator for individuals to successfully deal with the fluctuation changes accounting in an academic area or even economic, cultural, and technological aspects (Hofäcker et al., 2010 ; Tomasik et al., 2010 ). Although studies of the relationship between perceived cultural distance and academic performance have become popular (Fiske & Markus, 2012 ; Johnson et al., 2011 ; Melkonian et al., 2019 ), the moderation role of gender remains uncertain.

Cultural distance between social groups has been supposed to be a crucial predictor for intergroup attitudes (Allport, 1954 ), resulting in intergroup attitudes influencing relationships or ties among people (Wray et al., 2011 ). Meanwhile, a study reported that multiculturalism can lead to inevitable ghettoization and polarization, which are dangerous cultural phenomena (Penninx et al., 2006 ). However, male and female students have different cultural adaptations. Female students who are good at perceptual, cognitive aspects are sensitive to new culture and environment, whereas men are likely to interact with others without being shy (Dupuis et al., 2008 ). Moreover, this data contributes to examine the gender difference in the effect of cultural distance on academic performance among cross-border students. Based on role theory, male and female students perform differently in society. Men have dominated in cultural domains (e.g., science, technology, and athletics; Miller, 1999 ; Guttmann, 1991 , Battersby, 1989 ). By contrast, women may benefit by displaying talents that are different from those of men (Campbell, 1999 ; Cashdan, 1996 ). Therefore, perceived cultural distance might have differential effects on academic performance because of gender. This research studies gender difference in the effect of cultural distance on academic performance among cross-border students in China.

Effect of cultural distance on academic performance

Educational outcomes typically include three aspects, namely, enrollment, attainment, and achievement (Cuesta et al., 2016 ; Glewwe et al., 2011 ; Mitchell et al., 2008 ; Snilstveit et al., 2017 ). Considering universities in Mainland China, educational outcomes are more associated with achievement, as enrollment rates are always stable with Hong Kong migrants coming to Mainland China, whereas attainment is greatly susceptible to family education. Therefore, educational achievement is vital, which always presents the Grade Point Average (GPA) (Berthold & Hoover, 2000 ) and prizes (Kuncel et al., 2005 ).

The relationship among university students’ grade, cultural adaptability, and academic integration in host society is prominent (Hoffman & Lowitzki, 2005 ). Students’ social and cultural capital relates to their academic performance in college (Hagedorn & Tierney, 2002 ; Warburton et al., 2001 ). Martin et al. ( 2017 ) investigated the correlation between academic buoyancy and adaptability (including cultural adaptability) that is significantly higher in Chinese student samples, in which, academic buoyancy is a form of academic performance.

The definition of cultural distance, given by Triandis ( 1994 ), concerns difference in the mother tongue, religion, family and marriage life, and values across cultures. Milem and Berger ( 1997 ) indicated that students come to an institution with specific original characteristics, where they encounter new experiences with values, ideas, and norms. Then, as they also interact with their teachers and local peers, they develop perceptions and adaptation to the present environment. Cultural distance is also the way they feel when they come home after years of crossing the border. Conflicts may happen to migrant students, resulting in poorer mental health (Covarrubias & Fryberg, 2015 ), or worst, home–school value conflict, where values in school are contrary to the values in their hometown, leading to lower academic achievement and wellbeing (Vasquez-Salgado et al., 2015 ).

Drawing from the cultural orientation emergent from four folds of acculturation (Berry, 1997 ; Bourhis et al., 1997 ), this study relates cultural distance to academic performance to determine how the distinctive feature among cross-border students influences their academic performance. People encounter cultural distance when they engage with a person or a context with different opinions of appropriate values and behaviors with theirs (Markus & Conner, 2013 ; Stephens et al., 2007 ; Stephens et al., 2012 ). Cultural distance may increase feelings of exception of non-academic integration, resulting in underperformance, dropout, or disengagement of students’ group (Fiske & Markus, 2012 ; Johnson et al., 2011 ).

Gender matters: the effect of cultural distance on academic performance

The predictors of academic performance, especially in migration groups, include age (Gadzella et al., 2002 ; Jost, 2008 ; Kotey & Anderson, 2006 ), ethnicity (Lu et al., 2003 ), and residency status (Jost, 2008 ). These predictors of academic performance among migrant or cross-border students are under the effect of cultural distance. These predictors might be the moderators between cultural distance and academic performance. However, although gender also appears to influence migrants’ academic performance (Jost, 2008 ; Peiperl & Trevelyan, 1997 ), the mechanism for its influence has remained unclear. The achievement observed for cross-border students between male and female students has prompted this study to fill the gap about the differential effect due to gender.

The effect of cultural distance on academic performance has been presented in the work of Melkonian et al. ( 2019 ). However, perceived cultural distance is different between the man and woman. Some studies performed in Western countries have presented that women are more interested and involved in deinstitutionalized spirituality than their counterparts (Heelas & Woodhead, 2005 ; Stark, 2002 ; Trzebiatowska & Bruce, 2013 ), such as cultural adaptation after migration. Gender differences might influence women to adapt to the cultural difference in the host society, such as biological sex differences or personality traits (Francis & Penny, 2014 ; Thompson, 1991 ). In addition, same-sex relationships are likely to involve greater reciprocity and emotional intimacy, which are crucial for reducing their perceived cultural distance, than the direct competitions among men (Baumeister & Sommer, 1997 ; Geary, 2010 ). Thus, women communicate through indirect means (e.g., gossiping) rather than dispute competition (Campbell, 1999 ). Moreover, women supposedly use resources for attractiveness and sexual exclusiveness in a new group (Fischer, 2004 ; Hrdy, 1999 ). By contrast, on average, cultural displays may be preferable among men because they actively seek avenues for fighting the opportunity to develop it (Kanazawa, 2003 ). When men present their own culture, they are more challenging with riskier strategies, such as when in sports (Ronay & von Hippel, 2010 ) and even playing games with a female opponent (Dreber et al., 2010 ).

Furthermore, some scholars have argued that cultural distance has disadvantages to female students’ academic performance. The cultural displays of men present the function of demonstrating their mental and behavioral talents, which then serve as reliable indicators of culture in the society (de Block & Dewitte, 2009 ; Lombardo, 2012 ). Therefore, a male-dominated society can deprive women’s resources (Xie & Shauman, 2003 ) and self-confidence (Hyde & Kling, 2001 ), which impedes women’s cultural adaptability and academic performance. By contrast, women have developed some strengths. For example, Hyde ( 2005 ) and Spelke ( 2005 ) proposed that women are good at perceptual, cognitive aspects, which brings them difficulties in overcoming cultural distance to focus on their courses. Cultural distance and gender intersect in many ways. High cultural distance may involve the consideration of safety, basic survival needs, and welfare (particularly welfare of children), which are mostly concerns of women (Dupuis et al., 2008 ). In addition, sociocultural factors in gender roles and socialization patterns (Levitt, 1995 ; Mol, 1985 ) show that women might be less interactive with their teachers and peers. Female students are more shy than male students in talking and cooperating with others. Furthermore, women are mostly concerned with others in the new environment (Dupuis et al., 2008 ); thus, their sensitivity may hinder their cultural adaptability.

Given the above discussion, whether female students have higher cultural adaptability is the research question in this study. Female students encounter fewer resources and biased evaluation for cultural adaptability in a male-dominated society. Although the situation has been increasingly improving, the patriarchy history remains. In comparison with the previous literature that uses family (spouse) data, the present work used data on university students to examine the effect of gender in the relationship of cultural distance and academic performance.

Role theory explaining gender difference between cultural distance and academic performance

Gender roles are lifelong expectations shaped by culture “through direct communication and through media” (Kerr & Multon, 2015 ). The updated version of role theory has related gender to culture. Cross-cutting social group identities (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, nativity, sexuality) and social contexts (e.g., historical period, country, region) might interact to shape individuals’ gender beliefs and values (Chatillon et al., 2018 ). Role theory differentiates the roles of men and women in society (Shimanoff, 2009 ). As such, role theory can predict male and female performance. Men and women behave differently since they supposedly fulfill different roles in society, such as task orientation, dominance, and even independence (Shimanoff, 2009 ). Role theory has been useful in ample research on communication and interaction (Allen et al., 2002 ; Dindia & Canary, 2006 ; Eagly, 1987 ), which influences cultural distance. Although most men and women communicate in similar ways, researchers have emphasized statistical differences between them (Hyde, 2005 ; Martell et al., 1996 ).

Role theory suggests that culture acts on the sorting process rather than on the valuation process, resulting in gender difference in society (Charles & Bradley, 2002 ; Charles & Bradley, 2009 ). In this view, women are socialized to choose the fields of study that furnish students with more cultural than economic capital, which makes them feel more sensitive to cultural change (Hakim, 2000 ). Gender affects returns (e.g., wages). Thus, given that women’s fields provide less economic capital and fewer quantitative skills, they have drawbacks in acquiring resources for cultural adaptation (Paglin & Rufolo, 1990 ; van de Werfhorst, 2002 ). Women communicate through indirect means and sexual exclusiveness in a new group, thus hindering the reduction in cultural distance (Fischer, 2004 ; Hrdy, 1999 ). Moreover, women are good at perceptual, cognitive aspects in their roles to become sensitive to cultural distance. Because of their sensitivity to and concern for cultural distance, female students cannot focus on their study, resulting in poorer performance than their counterparts (Fig. 1 ).

Theoretical framework

Given the above literature review and theoretical framework, we propose the following hypotheses about cross-border students:

H1: Cultural distance exerts a negative effect on academic performance.

H2: Cultural distance exerts a negative effect on academic performance, particularly in female students.

Participants

Participants were Hong Kong students studying in universities in Mainland China, in their various grades, classes, and majors. Questionnaires were distributed to these students in Guangzhou at Guangdong Province in Mainland China. As verified by backtranslation (Brislin, 1970 ), the questionnaire in the present study initially underwent a Chinese translation process. Each potential participant was found by teachers or by convenience sampling. This survey was conducted in the second semester of the academic year. Thus, although first-year students have the academic performance in the last semester, all the collected data were included in this study.

A total of 616 students from Hong Kong studying in Mainland China universities (from undergraduates to graduates) took part in this survey in early 2019. Among them, 40.3% were male, and 59.7% were female. Most of them were in the age of 18–25 ( N = 587). In addition, the average grade was 2.33. The average time of studying in Mainland China was 99.54 months with a minimum and maximum of 1 and 295 respectively. The entrance exam score was coded 0–4, with an average score of 3.21.

Measurements

• Academic performance

GPA (Berthold & Hoover, 2000 ) and other prizes (i.e., curricular and extracurricular activities) represented academic performance, because they were easily reported as objective indicators. The most obvious subjective approach is the self-reported GPA. However, obtaining the school report of GPA is difficult due to limited research channels. As for academic performance, self-reported GPA and prizes were indicators. GPA and prizes (i.e., the frequency of receiving prizes) both ranged from 0 to 4. They summed to represent a student’s academic performance.

Information on the admission scores and GPA in the recent semester were asked in the questionnaire. Belloc et al. ( 2010 ) stated that a student’s academic success in secondary school is directly related to the success of the same student in college. Thus, the entrance exam score should be a control factor in the analysis.

• Cultural distance

Previous works that have studied students’ interactions in unfamiliar environments (Moschetti & Hudley, 2008 ; Stanton-Salazar, 1997 ) presented theoretical explanations that social and cultural capitals accumulate over time (Coleman, 1988 ). Participants responded to the question, “In the past year, what did you think was the difference between Hong Kong and Mainland China?” on a 10-point scale. As such, the experience was a plausible predictor of academic performance in the recent semester.

Grade ranged from 1 to 8, representing students’ grades from first to higher grades (including the first year, second year of undergraduates or graduates, etc.).

Duration of study in Mainland China

The duration of stay in the host society may influence cultural distance between the hometown and host society (Coleman, 1988 ). It might influence cross-borderers’ perceived cultural distance. Although all the participants were Mainland China university students from Hong Kong, their time of starting their study is a variable. Thus, the duration of study in Mainland China is a control variable.

Acquiescence

According to Baumgartner and Steenkamp ( 2006 ), “acquiescence” is the variable generated to measure a response set in rating. To control for the probable bias in self-report, the analysis included an acquiescent response set. Bachman and O’Malley ( 1984 ) suggested that the proper approach is to average a handful of heterogeneous items in the rating scales. Acquiescence is the average of the average of positive items and the average of negative items to provide weights to the positive and negative sets. It was also the control variable used in the regression analysis in this study.

The consent form included information regarding the purpose of the study, the researcher, and so on. All the participants were informed of the purpose of this study and the process of the survey before the survey started. They then would realize their right to participate or not. Moreover, the participants could stop the survey whenever they feel uncomfortable. All their responses to the questionnaires would remain confidential.

Questionnaires were distributed to Hong Kong cross-border students in Mainland China with diverse universities, grades, classes, and majors by trained researchers. Once the students completed the survey, they would be given gifts.

Data analysis

Statistical Product and Service Solutions 24.0 was the software used for data analysis. Potential multicollinearity problems were not evident (tolerance < .3). The analysis proceeded with correlation and regression analyses. Regression analysis held academic performance as the outcome, and cultural distance and backgrounds as predictors. Model 2 of the analysis notably tested the moderating effect of gender on the effect of cultural distance on academic performance.

There were 616 participants in total involved in this study, while after selected those participants were not first-year students. Among them, 40.3% were male ( N = 248) and 59.7 % were females ( N = 368). The mean ( SD ) of academic performance, cultural distance, duration studying in the Mainland China, grade, and entrance exam score were 5.13 (1.353), 6.25 (1.941), 99.54 (84.498), 2.33 (1.355), and 3.21 (.323) respectively (Tables 1 and 2 ).

The correlations between academic performance and cultural distance, between gender and cultural distance, and between gender and academic performance were not significant. Therefore, there is no collinearity problem in the interaction effect of gender and cultural distance on academic performance (Table 3 ).

The moderating effect of gender on the effect of cultural distance on academic performance was significantly negative ( β = −.141, p < .01), which aligned with the view of Chatillon et al. ( 2018 ) that the cross-cutting social group affects values and behaviors, contributing to the research gap of cross-cultural studies. The main effects appeared in model 1, while the interaction effect presented in model 2. Male and female students showed differential cultural adaptation after crossing the border, as supported by van de Werfhorst ( 2002 ). Gender as well as cultural distance showed no significant effect on academic performance in both the main effect model (model 1) and interaction effect model (model 2). One of the predictors of academic performance, age, exhibited a significant negative effect on academic performance ( β = −.167, −.168, p < .01). In addition, the student’s admission grades had a significant positive influence on academic performance ( β = .332, .333, p < .01). Acquiescence ( β = .100, p < .05) presented a significant positive effect on academic performance in model 2. All tolerances were acceptable in the regression models. Model 1 and model 2 explained 10.4% and 12.4% of variance in academic performance respectively.

Consequently, cultural distance and gender showed no significant effect on academic performance. The male and female students showed no significant difference in academic performance, although they presented differential cultural adaption ability after crossing the border (Paglin & Rufolo, 1990 ; van de Werfhorst, 2002 ). The result did not support H1 that cultural distance negatively influences academic performance. However, this result supported H2 that female gender negatively moderates the contribution of cultural distance to academic performance, as supported by role theory (Allen et al., 2002 ; Dindia & Canary, 2006 ). Therefore, it refuted H1 but supported H2 regarding the moderating effect. Furthermore, the female student faced more difficulty to adapt to the new culture and thus to perform well academically than did the male one compared to male students.

Discussion and implication

In relation to perceived cultural distance to academic performance in cross-border students (Hagedorn & Tierney, 2002 ; Hoffman & Lowitzki, 2005 ), previous literature (Martin et al., 2012 ; Martin et al., 2013 ) indicates that stating that cultural distance does not affect students’ academic performance after crossing the border is difficult to say. Thus, we considered that there must be some moderators between cultural distance and academic performance, for example, gender (Francis & Penny, 2014 ). Women are sensitive to environmental change (Dupuis et al., 2008 ), which hinders their performance after crossing the border. Sociocultural factors in gender roles and socialization patterns (Francis & Penny, 2014 ; Levitt, 1995 ; Mol, 1985 ) may impede women’s social interaction and cooperation. The effect of gender in this study is one of the examples that males present a positive effect in the relationship between cultural distance and academic performance, whereas female students show the opposite.

Furthermore, like Deaner ( 2006 ), we found gender difference in performance, which also expands Deaner’s ( 2006 ) work in student groups. This phenomenon presented in many studies and was corroborated by Frick ( 2011 ), who showed similar patterns to test the sex difference in relative performance. Therefore, this study examined the effect of gender in the relationship between cultural distance and academic performance. As hypothesized, an interaction between gender and cultural distance exists. Gender influences the effect of cultural distance on academic performance in many ways. Female cross-borderers showed lower cultural adaptation compared with their counterparts. Several reasons result in this phenomenon. First, women have fewer resources for decreasing cultural distance and supporting their lives after crossing the border (Xie & Shauman, 2003 ). Second, high cultural distance may involve the consideration of safety, basic survival needs, and welfare, which are concerns of women (Dupuis et al., 2008 ); thus, they cannot fully focus on their study or career. Women are sensitive to environmental changes (Dupuis et al., 2008 ), which hinders their performance after crossing the border. Third, women might be less interactive and cooperative (Francis & Penny, 2014 ; Levitt, 1995 ; Mol, 1985 ).

The findings warrant the application of role theory to academic performance in a cross-border study. Role theory has been applicable to guiding research on interaction (Allen et al., 2002 ; Dindia & Canary, 2006 ; Eagly, 1987 ), resulting in cultural distance after migration. The theory can help predict attitudes and behaviors in society with reference to the sociocultural context (Chatillon et al., 2018 ). Women communicating through indirect means rather than direct means (Fischer, 2004 ) increase the distance between the host culture and their own culture. Males have more economic capital and quantitative skills for thinking of getting higher grades for their long-term benefits, such as winning scholarships.

The study’s findings may be particularly important to policymaking for cross-border students, especially in “Talent Plans.” Compared to international migration (Yang & Qin, 2016 ; Yue et al., 2016 , p.79), the sample of cross-border students in universities contributes to filling the research gap of internal migration or cross-border. Governments can reduce gender differences in perceived cultural distance among cross-border students, for instance, by organizing cultural exchange activities for female students particularly. In addition, the study suggests enhancing the confidence of administrators or policymakers in providing considerably needed support for female cross-border students. For example, programs for newcomers for cultural exchange can pay attention to female students. The results also suggest universities and teachers to provide resources and encouragement, particularly to female students to improve their cultural adaptation and academic performance successively. In addition, based on role theory, women should overcome difficulties in adapting to the host society and perform well (Shimanoff, 2009 ). These difficulties might result from the female characteristic of being sensitive to cultural distance (Charles & Bradley, 2002 ; Charles & Bradley, 2009 ).

Limitation and future research direction

First, despite their common use in educational research (Pace, 1985 ), self-reported data (GPA and prizes) has biases, which require clear phrasing of questions and students’ careful mind in responding to the questions (Pace, 1985 ). Anyhow, self-report measures are at risk of subjective bias (Nederhof, 1985 ). This must be a reflection point of school-reported measures. Therefore, future research should incorporate more objective measures.

Second, student achievement in the context of ability (e.g., team spirit and leadership) is considerably broader than test scores, which should include self-knowledge, exhibits, portfolios, etc. (Lambert, 2003 , p. 7). Academic performance that only includes GPA and prizes cannot sufficiently explain academic performance. Thus, other measurements of teamwork, leadership, etc., will be helpful in future studies.

Third, some unmeasured variables might confound the gender differential and other findings. Future research needs to identify such variables and examine their confounding effects.

Finally, this study only included participants in China. Samples from other places are necessary to clarify the effects cross-culturally. Comparison of different cultures is necessary to ascertain the robustness of the present findings.

The present study demonstrated gender difference in the effect of cultural distance on academic performance among cross-border students in Mainland China. While Western research mainly paid attention to international migration (Yang & Qin, 2016 ; Yue et al., 2016 , p.79), the data of this study, cross-border students in universities, contributes to filling the research gap of migration research.

Likewise, the demonstration of the nature in the relations of cultural distance and academic performance further stresses the need to foster the values utilization of the host culture and the acceptance of a bicultural position in host communities. Women are sensitive to cultural change, and lacking resources in the society makes them face more difficulties in adapting to the changing culture, which influences their performance given that they cannot focus on their studies. Furthermore, governments and universities should pay more attention to the lower cultural adaptation groups, that is, female cross-borderers.

Self-reported data, the measurement of academic performance, other unmeasured variables which might confound the gender differential, and the limitation of samples (only Chinese samples included) hindered the accuracy of the results, which should be improved in the future studies. For instance, incorporating more objective measures, adding teamwork and leadership to the measurement of academic performance, identifying gender differential variables, and examining their confounding effects and comparison of different cultures with cross-border samples in diverse countries should be considered in the future studies.

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Hu, J., Cheung, C.K. Gender difference in the effect of cultural distance on academic performance among cross-border students in China. Psicol. Refl. Crít. 34 , 33 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41155-021-00199-4

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How men and women differ: gender differences in communication styles, influence tactics, and leadership styles.

Karima Merchant , Claremont McKenna College Follow

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This paper lays the historical background for why women and leadership is an important topic today in order to discuss gender differences in communication styles, influence tactics, and leadership styles. This paper also outlines barriers women face when trying to attain and succeed in leadership positions. The analysis should provide a greater understanding of how men and women differ, especially in leadership and management positions, and what companies can do to help women overcome gender bias and discrimination in the workplace.

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Merchant, Karima, "How Men And Women Differ: Gender Differences in Communication Styles, Influence Tactics, and Leadership Styles" (2012). CMC Senior Theses . 513. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/513

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Understanding gender and health: systematically comparing the health and health experiences of men and women

Hunt, Kate (2007) Understanding gender and health: systematically comparing the health and health experiences of men and women. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Gender differences in health are the product of a complex interaction between biology and the social world. Our ascribed sex and how this is interpreted in the culture within which we live (gender) have life-long consequences for our life chances, including our health.

For many years the aphorism that ‘men die quicker but women are sicker’ was presumed to encapsulate gender differences in health. The first paper presented in the thesis challenged this dominant paradigm. First, an analysis of morbidity in two British data sets showed more similarity than difference between men and women. Secondly, we highlighted earlier research with similar results which had been overlooked and failed to shake the ‘gender orthodoxy’. Thirdly, we stressed the ahistoric and decontextualised way in which research on gender and health had been conducted or reported.

The remaining papers in the thesis share two underlying principles; all make systematic comparisons between men and women, and all attempt to also examine diversity within gender. All but one of the papers utilise data from the West of Scotland Twenty-07 Study, a study of the social patterning of health in three age cohorts.

The second paper examined the impact of paid and unpaid work on symptoms, treating each domain as being relevant in principle to the health of both women and men. The experience of paid work was the predominant influence on malaise symptoms, and unpaid work in the home did not explain any variation in men’s symptom scores. Similar associations were seen between most aspects of paid work and malaise symptom scores in both genders. The paper highlighted the dearth of literature that had compared systematically either the conditions of men’s and women’s paid work, or the health effects of the paid and unpaid work environment for men and women.

Men’s ‘under-usage’ of health care is often constructed as a problem, potentially reinforcing an assumption that women ‘over-use’ health care. On average, women have more consultations with their general practitioner, but this excess is mostly apparent in the reproductive years. The third paper examined whether these gender differences exist when taking account of the underlying nature and perceived severity of illness. Women were no more likely than men to have consulted their GP in the past year amongst those reporting morbidity in any of the five condition groups, and men were more likely to have consulted amongst those who reported digestive conditions.

The fourth paper takes as its starting point the strong patterning of cigarette smoking by gender (and class) throughout the twentieth century. In it we examined the relationship between ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ scores using the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI, an instrument developed within social psychology in the 1970s). No relationship was seen between either score and smoking in the youngest cohort, nor amongst men in the middle cohort, and in the oldest cohort there was only a suggestion of an association between higher femininity scores and smoking in men. The strongest relationship was seen between ‘femininity’ score and smoking amongst women born in the 1950s who also had a somewhat elevated risk associated with higher ‘masculinity’ scores.

Suicide and suicidal behaviours are strongly patterned by gender, and the dramatic rise in suicides amongst young males in the late 1980s and 1990s in several countries was often attributed to a ‘crisis’ in masculinity. The fifth paper examines the association between serious suicidal thoughts and the same measures of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ and a measure of gender traditionalism. In both men and women in early and late middle age, we found a negative association between higher ‘masculinity scores’ and serious suicidal thoughts, and a positive association between more traditional gender role attitudes and serious suicidal thoughts at older ages. No such associations were seen in early adulthood, and no relationship was seen between serious suicidal thoughts and ‘femininity’ scores at any age.

Gender differences in the pattern of coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality have been described as enigmatic and one of the most striking features of cardiovascular mortality in the twentieth century. In an analysis controlling for many of the classic risk factors for CHD (smoking, blood pressure, body mass index, mental health), we found that higher ‘femininity’ scores (using continuous scores from the BSRI) were associated with a decreased risk of CHD mortality in men. No such association was seen in women, and the continuous ‘masculinity’ scores were unrelated to mortality in both women and men. Some advantages and problems with using these measures of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ in sociological research on gender and health are discussed.

Previous research on one distressing side effect of some cancer treatments, chemotherapy-induced hair loss, has almost exclusively focussed on women. The final paper compares young adults’ experiences of hair loss following chemotherapy. Hair loss was a challenging aspect of the experience of cancer for both women and men which made them acutely aware of their vulnerability and visibility as a ‘cancer patient’. Both recounted negative reactions to their altered image, challenging social norms of interaction. However, there were two notable gender differences: it was only men who discussed the loss of body hair below the eyeline; and only women who spoke of being encouraged to wear wigs or offered ice helmets to delay or disguise hair loss. These differences are discussed in relation to social constructions of hair as a marker social identity, including gender. I argue that the gender-comparative approach taken reveals important commonalities across gender, highlighting a greater need for more support for men with chemotherapy induced alopecia, and makes what is not said in the women’s interviews as revealing as what is said in men’s.

The concluding remarks highlight the challenges in researching gender and health, and discuss the complex ways in which gender can influence health and vice-versa.

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Article Contents

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Sex and Gender Differences Research Design for Basic, Clinical, and Population Studies: Essentials for Investigators

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Janet W Rich-Edwards, Ursula B Kaiser, Grace L Chen, JoAnn E Manson, Jill M Goldstein, Sex and Gender Differences Research Design for Basic, Clinical, and Population Studies: Essentials for Investigators, Endocrine Reviews , Volume 39, Issue 4, August 2018, Pages 424–439, https://doi.org/10.1210/er.2017-00246

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A sex- and gender-informed perspective increases rigor, promotes discovery, and expands the relevance of biomedical research. In the current era of accountability to present data for males and females, thoughtful and deliberate methodology can improve study design and inference in sex and gender differences research. We address issues of motivation, subject selection, sample size, data collection, analysis, and interpretation, considering implications for basic, clinical, and population research. In particular, we focus on methods to test sex/gender differences as effect modification or interaction, and discuss why some inferences from sex-stratified data should be viewed with caution. Without careful methodology, the pursuit of sex difference research, despite a mandate from funding agencies, will result in a literature of contradiction. However, given the historic lack of attention to sex differences, the absence of evidence for sex differences is not necessarily evidence of the absence of sex differences. Thoughtfully conceived and conducted sex and gender differences research is needed to drive scientific and therapeutic discovery for all sexes and genders.

A sex- and gender-informed perspective increases rigor, promotes discovery, and expands the relevance of biomedical research

Methods exist to test sex and gender differences as interactions; inference from sex- and gender-stratified data should be viewed with caution

Without careful methodology, the pursuit of sex and gender difference research as a poorly considered mandate will result in a literature of contradiction

However, given the paucity of sex and gender differences research, the absence of evidence for differences is not necessarily evidence of the absence of differences

Many compelling publications have argued why sex and gender should be considered in preclinical, clinical, and population research ( 1–4 ). Both sex (the biological attributes of females and males) and gender (socially constructed roles, behaviors, and identities in a spectrum, including femininity and masculinity) affect molecular and cellular processes, clinical traits, response to treatments, health, and disease ( 1 ). Since 2010, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has mandated that all grant applicants address whether they had considered sex and/or gender in their applications ( 5 ). In 2014, the European Commission issued the Horizon 2020 guideline, which makes explicit the rules for sex and gender inclusion as elements of European Union grant evaluation and monitoring ( 6 , 7 ). Although the 1993 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act required the inclusion of women in NIH-funded clinical research, it was not until 2015 that the NIH announced policies requiring the consideration of sex as a biological variable in study design, analysis, and reporting ( 1 , 8–10 ). Such mandates to include females are not mere political correctness ( 11 ). A sex-informed and gender-informed perspective is essential to increase rigor, promote discovery, expand the relevance of research, and improve patient care. At the very least, it will allow readers of the scientific literature to critically assess the validity of what they read.

Investigators who wish to—or now find themselves required to—include both sexes in their studies are faced with a number of methodological questions, including issues of motivation, subject selection, sample size, data collection, analysis, and interpretation. We provide an overview of these issues in this review as they pertain to basic, clinical, and population research ( Table 1 ). This review builds on earlier discussions of sex differences research methodology ( 11–18 ) in several ways: we consider gender as well as sex differences; we examine the entire research process, from motivation to analysis and presentation; and we discuss nuances of statistical design and interpretation, particularly how to plan robust tests of sex or gender interactions that can help minimize statistical artifacts. Rather than assume ubiquitous sex and gender differences in biology, health, and disease, we propose methods and interpretation that will increase the likelihood of detecting true differences where they exist.

Methodological Considerations in Investigations of Sex and Gender Differences

There is ample evidence of sex differences—at the level of the cell, organism, and population—to motivate sex differences research. Sex chromosomes encode sexual differentiation through three mechanisms: (1) presence of Y genes; (2) increased dose of X genes in XX vs XY cells; and (3) X chromosome inactivation and imprinting ( 12 ). These primary chromosomal differences lead to sexual differentiation and the somatic and gonadal expressions of sex ( 19 ). The resulting “sexome” produces differences in all organ systems and across the lifespan, influencing how our bodies interact with the environment to determine health ( 20 ). The sex-informed framework considers sex differences in anatomy and physiology, understood within a lifespan perspective of sensitive periods of fetal and childhood development, differential pace and timing of puberty, reproductive events, and senescence. This is critical given that timing is everything when it comes to identifying developmental sex effects ( 14 , 21 , 22 ). Furthermore, sex differences in treatment abound: pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of medications often vary by sex, as may effects of other treatment modalities ( 23 ).

Gender, too, is a determinant of health, influencing the physical and social environments to which individuals are exposed, their access to resources that affect health, their agency to seek health care and receive treatment, and the equitability of research that drives medical discovery ( 14 , 17 , 24–26 ).

This sex- and gender-informed perspective is necessitated by widespread differences in disease incidence, prevalence, and survival that have been reviewed elsewhere ( 2 , 26–28 ). There are sex and gender differences in symptoms and clinical presentations of illness, reliability of diagnostic tests, and response to treatment. There is “sex bias’” down to the level of epigenetic marking and gene expression ( 28 ). In short, the rigor of research depends on researchers’ understanding of the ways in which sex and gender influence the biologic systems they study.

Investigators seeking to construct a sex- and gender-informed framework for their research may be disappointed by a lack of systematic evidence regarding sex and gender differences in the literature. There is a particular dearth of true gender-difference studies; in fact, literature searches on “gender differences” largely turn up studies on sex differences that have used the term “gender” to refer to biologic sex. The historic neglect of women in clinical studies and the sex of animals and cells in basic research should be kept in mind when gathering evidence of sex and gender differences. Although data to interrogate sex differences may exist in some studies, they have yet to be examined. In other cases, sex-informed questions have yet to be posed. Furthermore, as argued below, the proliferation of ill-considered and often unplanned sex difference inquiries leads to a literature of contradictions. Thus, the absence of evidence for sex differences is not necessarily evidence of the absence of sex differences.

Overarching study design

In most cases, the choice of overarching study design, whether experimental or observational, is little affected by considerations of sex and gender. Exceptions to this are experiments precluded by ethical considerations, such as inclusion of pregnant women for trials of potentially teratogenic drugs. However, nearly every other feature of study design necessitates a sex-informed perspective, including subject selection, randomization, sample size, and data collection.

Subject selection

Inclusion of both sexes is more nuanced than deciding that the sample should be equally divided by sex. Sex-specific age incidence of disease, reproductive stage, reproductive cycle, and environment need to be considered to optimize the validity, generalizability, and efficiency of a study sample. More often than not, investigators have to compromise between competing goals of validity (by narrowing subject selection to increase the likelihood that findings are true for a specific population) and generalizability (by widening subject selection to make broad inference at the risk of overgeneralizing across true differences between groups.) There are also compromises between large scientific goals and restricted available funds. Such trade-offs are best made as choices informed by already known sex and gender differences. The most efficient subject selection will pick the minimum number of each sex or gender necessary to make valid inferences about sex and gender differences; a 50/50 split between males and females may not be the most efficient, as discussed below.

Sex-specific incidence of disease

Sex differences in incidence and age-incidence trajectories are important considerations in subject selection. For example, at ages 55 to 64 men have more than double the rate of coronary heart disease (CHD) of women. By ages 85 to 94, male CHD rates are only 10% higher than those of females ( 20 ). Thus, an investigator wishing to enroll a cohort of 50-year-olds to study CHD incidence will need to enroll two to three times as many women as men to ensure equivalent statistical power, or consider selecting older women. For example, the Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial study of dietary supplements to reduce heart disease, stroke, and cancer includes women aged 55 or older and men aged 50 or older to account for the later onset of disease in women ( 29 ). Sex differences in disease incidence exist in animals as well. For example, in the nonobese diabetic mouse, diabetes is more prevalent in females, so that more male mice must be included to yield the same number of affected animals of each sex ( 30 ).

Sex-specific differences in aging

Females outlive males in most vertebrate species ( 31 ). In mammals, the heterogametic (XY) sex may have a shorter lifespan because of the unguarded expression of harmful recessive alleles on the Y sex chromosome. Similarly, the homogametic (XX) sex may be protected by the stochastic X-inactivation that creates mosaics of females; although female neonates are a 1:1 mosaic of maternal and paternal allele expression, over time that ratio becomes skewed to favor the cellular population whose active X presumably confers a survival advantage ( 32–35 ).

Sex differences in the rate of aging and the incidence of disease onset are reflected at the cellular level. For example, there are sex differences in the length of telomeres, noncoding DNA sequences that cap and protect chromosomes, the length of which are correlated with longevity. Although similar at birth, male telomeres shorten faster during the lifespan than do female telomeres ( 35 ). This difference could be the result of sex or gender; most likely, it is a combination of biological sex differences and gendered experiences (such as smoking) ( 36 ). Similarly, although stem cell populations decline with aging, this loss is earlier and more rapid in male than in female mice ( 37 ). Methylation patterns also differ between the sexes, likely influencing DNA expression over the life course ( 38 , 39 ). As research further clarifies sex-specific or sex-dependent mechanisms of senescence, investigators may want to consider sex differences in the cellular age and methylation patterns of their subjects, be they cells, animals, or people.

Reproductive stages and cycles

All animals, regardless of sex or species, go through a process of reproductive maturation whose timing, duration, and outcome are subject to physical and social cues from the environment. In mammals, puberty involves sex-specific, but variable, changes in central neural systems, gonadal steroid production, and the emergence of secondary sexual characteristics, including behaviors. When a study investigates adolescence or young adulthood, accounting for sex differences in the pace and timing of puberty will be critical for identifying sex effects ( 14 ).

Mature mammals of both sexes have variations in gonadal steroid levels that may affect subject selection. In males, testosterone levels have circadian and perhaps seasonal variations and vary with age, physical activity, and energy homeostasis ( 40 , 41 ). Reproductive age females have menstrual or estrous cycles. On top of natural variability, women may use hormonal contraceptives or menopausal hormone therapy; many men use exogenous androgens and anabolic steroids. These factors are important in subject selection if an investigator wants to understand how the exposure–outcome associations under study are impacted by sex hormones. Researchers may decide to include a representative range of reproductive phases or cycles. For example, cyclical patterns of DNA synthesis and rates of cell division and death would not have been discovered if females in different cycle phases had not been studied ( 42 , 43 ). The knowledge that natural killer cell activity peaks during the luteal phase came from studies of cycling women ( 44 ). Understanding of the roles of neurokinin B and kisspeptin in reproduction has been facilitated by studying male and female animals at varying reproductive stages, with and without gonadectomy ( 45 ).

Sex differences in physiology and behavior have been observed even in the prepubertal and peripubertal periods, before the pubertal activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis and production of gonadal sex steroid hormones. These prepubertal sex differences have been largely attributed to the effects of prenatal and perinatal activity of the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis and resultant sex steroid hormone production and actions. Among the best described effects are the so-called activational and organizational effects of gonadal hormones on brain development ( 46 ). The first robust sex difference described in the mammalian brain was the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area ( 47 ). More recently, a sexually dimorphic population of kisspeptin neurons was identified that is present in higher numbers in the anteroventral periventricular nucleus in prepubertal females than in males, to which the sexually dimorphic preovulatory luteinizing hormone surge that occurs in adult females but not males is attributed ( 48 ).

Thus, to the extent that hormone levels affect study outcomes, researchers may need to examine subjects who are premenopausal or postmenopausal, in the follicular or luteal phase, and with or without hysterectomy or gonadectomy. Including or excluding participants using hormonal therapies, such as contraceptives and female and male hormone replacement or suppression therapies, is another potentially important design choice. To fully capture between-sex variability, it may be of use to compare men to two or more groups of women. For example, a study of brain activity in the stress response circuitry found few differences between healthy men and women in the early follicular phase, but striking differences between men and the same women at midcycle ( 49 ). Furthermore, sex differences in brain activity in memory circuitry were statistically significant in premenopausal and perimenopausal women, but attenuated in postmenopausal women compared with men ( 50 ). To capture within-sex variability, studies compare the same females at different cyclical stages, perhaps in crossover fashion.

Note that the effects of sex steroid hormones extend beyond estradiol and testosterone. There are multiple types of estrogens produced by the ovaries and other tissues, as well as multiple androgens beyond testosterone. Progesterone levels also need to be considered. Furthermore, there is target tissue specificity in the actions of estrogens, which can be attributed to tissue-specific expression patterns of estrogen receptors (ERs), including ER α , ER β , and estrogen membrane receptors such as membrane ER α and the G protein–coupled receptor GPER1/GPR30 ( 51 , 52 ).

In addition to the multiple ERs, tissue-specific responses to estrogens can occur through the presence of modulating proteins such as coactivators and corepressors, among others. Varying tissue-specific responses are exemplified by the action of synthetic agonists and antagonists such as the selective ER modulators, including tamoxifen, raloxifene, and toremifene. These selective ER modulators are competitive inhibitors of estrogen binding to ERs, with mixed agonist and antagonist activity, depending on the target tissue ( 53 ). For example, tamoxifen is used in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer as an ER antagonist, but it has ER agonist activity in some other tissues such as bone and endometrium. Progesterone also acts through multiple receptors, which are generated as splice variants from a single gene ( 54 ). The actions of testosterone, through the androgen receptor, are modulated at the local tissue level through local activity of the enzyme 5 α -reductase, which catalyzes the formation of the more potent androgen receptor agonist, dihydrotestosterone ( 55 ).

Gender and subject selection

Many determinants of disease, both physical and social, are differentially distributed by gender. Some of these factors may confound experiments if not carefully accounted for in study design and analysis. For example, in many societies, women are more likely to have vitamin D deficiency ( 56 ), affecting multiple tissues and systems, and men are more likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. Men and women are exposed differentially to types of violence and trauma ( 57–61 ). Such stressors may affect gonadal steroid secretion in a sex- and hormone-dependent fashion ( 12 ). In the case of powerful covariates strongly associated with gender or sex, investigators may want to select participants to ensure these covariates are balanced in male and female samples.

Special considerations regarding subject selection for basic studies

Historical reliance on male animal models ( e.g. , mice, rats) has resulted in incomplete data to guide human subject research in both men and women. Basic studies can complement clinical studies by investigating mechanisms of sex-dependent or sex-specific processes in greater depth by manipulating genotypic and phenotypic sex experimentally ( 12 ). Beyond simply studying both male and female animals as they age naturally, studies can include classic gonadectomy with or without hormone replacement: prenatally and perinatally to address developmental effects; in juvenile animals to study postnatal developmental and differentiation effects; in adults to assess the effects of sex steroid hormones at the time of testing; and in aging animals to study effects of sex steroids in models of aging. Several new genetic and epigenetic animal models have increasing translational validity to represent human ovarian failure and menopause ( 62 ). Some alternative models of menopause or ovarian failure include Foxl2-deficient mice with accelerated rates of decline in ovarian reserve ( 63 ).

Another frequent approach is to study “knockout” mice (or other species) that lack a specific sex steroid receptor. ER α knockout mice have shown that the absence of ER α promotes adiposity in male and female animals and, in turn, the progression of breast cancer in females ( 64 ). Animals with “conditional knockout” or “conditional knockin” of a specific sex steroid receptor can be used to target specific tissues or life stages.

Additionally, targeted mutagenesis can be used to address the role of specific domains or specific functions of a sex steroid receptor. For example, although ER α has traditionally been thought of as a nuclear, ligand-dependent transcription factor acting through estrogen response elements in gene promoters, the molecular mechanisms of action are more complex. Estradiol actions can be mediated by other “nonclassical” ER α pathways: (1) ligand-independent ER α signaling, in which gene activation alters phosphorylation of ERs via second-messenger pathways that affect intracellular kinase and phosphatase activity; (2) rapid, nongenomic effects through a membrane-associated ER; and (3) genomic, estrogen response element–independent signaling, in which ER α regulates genes via protein–protein interaction with other transcription factors, including c-Fos/c-Jun B (AP-1), Sp1, and nuclear factor κ B ( 65 ). For example, as noted above, estradiol is critical to the regulation of energy balance and body weight. In an experiment with female mice, ER α -null mutant mice become obese, with decreased energy expenditure and locomotion, increased adiposity, hyperleptinemia, and altered glucose homeostasis, characteristics similar to the propensity of postmenopausal women to develop obesity and type 2 diabetes. Interestingly, knockin mice that express a mutant ER α that can signal only through a nonclassical pathway ( i.e. , without direct estrogen response element binding) restored the metabolic parameters to normal or near-normal values, including energy expenditure. These findings indicate that nonclassical ER α signaling mediates major effects of estradiol on energy balance, raising the possibility that selective ER α modulators may be developed to reduce the risks of obesity and metabolic disturbances in postmenopausal women ( 66 ).

“The hormonal environment of cultured cells…can affect experimental outcomes.”

Sex of cells

Although it is facile to insist that basic researchers use and report on both XX and XY cells in their experiments, this is not always possible ( 11 ). In fact, cell lines are a poor model with which to study sex differences, even when the sex of the lineage is specified. By definition, immortalized cell lines, chosen for their peculiarities and derived from a single organism, may be inherently impossible to cull or create from a second organism of any sex. Even where it is possible to create cell lines from a male and female similar enough to interrogate a particular question, inferences about sex differences cannot reliably be made. As with a clinical study with n = 2, a comparison of a male and a female cell line, because each is derived from a single individual, cannot distinguish sex differences from other genetic, epigenetic, or environmental characteristics of the founding individuals from which they were derived. Cell lines may have sex-dependent features other than the sex chromosome complement, including differences in hormone production or hormone responses related to variation in steroidogenic enzyme expression or expression of sex steroid hormone receptors. There may also be differences in expression of other genes related to imprinting or epigenetic differences. Moreover, each cell line is clonal in origin and has unique characteristics based on the experimental conditions in which it was derived and propagated—even two cell lines derived from the same organism may have different characteristics.

It is more reasonable to request that investigators specify the sex of a cell line used in a study ( i.e. , derived from a male vs female, or XX vs XY in sex chromosome complement), as the sex of many cell lines has been established ( 70 ). However, even this is not always possible, as cell lines can lose their sex chromosome complement over time ( 11 ). Although primary cultures can isolate cells directly from the body, permitting the creation of a small population of male or female cells, the procedure may be technically difficult and time-consuming, and the cells may be short-lived, limited in number, difficult to manipulate, and can change their characteristics over time in culture. Furthermore, Miller et al. ( 14 ) caution that the hormonal environment of cultured cells, including some media, can affect experimental outcomes. Finally, comparisons of isolated male and female cells oversimplify the question of sex, let alone gender, because such cells are removed from the complex interactions with other cells, hormones, neurotransmitters, nutrients, pathogens, and environmental exposures, which themselves vary in living organisms by sex and gender ( 11 ). In such cases, the absence of evidence for sex differences in vitro may well be absence of any evidence at all, a straw man (or woman) of an experiment purportedly about sex.

Randomization by sex and/or gender

Experimentalists, particularly those conducting studies with >100 subjects, may wish to randomize the sexes separately to ensure similar distributions of treated and untreated males and females. In preclinical experiments, this is known as a factorial design ( 15 ). Such stratified randomization retains the advantages of standard random allocation, effectively creating a mini-trial within each sex stratum ( 71 ). Stratified randomization can accommodate a study plan with unequal numbers of male and female subjects, especially helpful when men and women join a study at different rates or in different time periods. Stratified randomization can also be used to balance follicular vs luteal phase participants, or any other marker of sex or gender.

Sample size considerations for studies including males and females

Most studies are planned from the outset with a sample size just large enough to afford 80% statistical power to detect the main effect of the primary exposure. Unless preplanned, most studies are underpowered to examine associations separately for males and females. This is particularly true of secondary data analyses of studies never designed to examine subgroup differences. This lack of statistical power to detect sex and gender differences can lead to the premature conclusion that such differences do not exist; in fact, most studies are simply too small to fairly test all but the most pronounced sex and gender differences. In the current era of accountability to analyze and present sex-stratified data, it is worth considering ideal practice and reality with respect to power and sample sizes to detect sex differences. Although most researchers will find that limited samples and funds constrain their ability to investigate sex and gender differences, we will also address the special case of “big data,” where problems may ensue from an abundance of statistical power to detect trivial differences, rather than too little power to detect meaningful differences.

Effect modification and interaction by sex

Epidemiologists and clinical researchers are familiar with the concepts of effect modification and interaction, although the terminology may differ between disciplines. However, basic investigators, whose aim is usually to limit all variation other than the exposure under examination, may be less familiar with these issues. “Effect modification” refers to the ability of a third variable (here, sex) to modify or interact with the “main effect” of the exposure (say, treatment) on outcome (usually, disease). For example, the association of diabetes with cardiovascular disease (CVD) is stronger for women than men ( 72 , 73 ); it is said that sex “interacts” with diabetes to cause CVD or that sex “modifies” the diabetes–CVD association.

Although stratifying data by sex to examine the exposure–disease association separately for males and females allows the investigator to eyeball effect modification by sex, such estimation gives no indication of the extent to which any observed sex differences are due to chance. To gauge this likelihood, many researchers test the statistical significance of sex differences by incorporating into their statistical models a (usually multiplicative) “interaction” term that represents the intersection of exposure and sex. For example, if the main effect of treatment is represented as a binary variable (0 if untreated; 1 if treated) and the main effect of sex as a binary variable (0 if male; 1 if female), then an interaction term (treatment × sex) which equals 1 only for treated females will, when modeled with the main effects of treatment and sex, capture the additional increment or decrement in the risk of the outcome that is attributable to both treatment and female sex, that is, the sex difference in the association between treatment and disease. By convention, P values <0.05 for such interaction terms are indicative of a statistically significant sex difference, one that is unlikely due to chance alone. Such tests of effect modification or interaction by sex can (and should) be as easily incorporated into basic research as in clinical and population research. The difficulty is having the statistical power to do so.

Ideal: statistical power to detect interaction by sex

The sample size required to detect statistically significant sex differences (interactions by sex) is considerably larger than that required to detect the main effects of treatment or sex alone. Statistical power to detect a sex difference depends on the prevalence of the exposure, outcome, and sex, as well as the strength of the associations between them. Software is freely available to calculate sample sizes to detect interactions ( 74 , 75 ). However, the rule of thumb is that it takes fourfold the sample size to detect an interaction than it does to detect main effects ( i.e. , treatment or sex alone) ( 76 ). Investigators need to take into account differential disease rate by sex and the expected magnitude of the main effect in each sex; statistical power to detect either main effects or a sex interaction may not be optimized by recruiting half women and half men. In planning, investigators may have to make “best guesses” at the magnitude of expected sex differences, based on the literature and biologic understanding. As with any power calculation, it is best to input a range of likely main effects and interactions to evaluate the impact of sample size on the ability to detect a sex interaction.

A study that is large enough to detect a sex interaction, if one exists, represents the “ideal” in sex difference studies. Few studies are planned with the power to detect statistically significant sex differences. Many studies that have attempted to test interactions by sex have been woefully underpowered to do so. Unfortunately, researchers easily forget that an interaction P value >0.05 often says as much about the design and size of the study as it does about the presence or absence of a sex difference.

Next best: statistical power to detect main effects within sex strata

Even where a study is too small to test for sex interaction effects, it may still have enough statistical power to examine the main effects of exposure within sex strata. This is simple sex stratification to examine exposure–disease associations for each sex. (Does diabetes predict CVD among males? Does diabetes predict CVD among females?) A study may find a statistically significant beneficial impact of treatment on disease among males and fail to find a significant effect of treatment among females (or, in extreme cases, find statistically significant benefits or harms that vary by sex). However, if the study lacks power to test an interaction by sex, investigators cannot claim that they have detected a difference between males and females that meets conventional standards for ruling out chance. As discussed, the detection of a statistically significant interaction by sex is a high bar. However, apparent contrasts in sex-stratified data—differential main effects of treatment by sex—can suggest the presence of sex differences. At the least, they provide a rationale for larger studies powered to detect sex interactions, or incentivize data collection across studies for meta-analyses of interactions by sex ( 15 ).

To plan a study with adequate statistical power to detect main effects by sex is straightforward: simply calculate sample sizes needed to detect main effects in men and women separately (and add them up), taking into account sex differences in rates of disease, expected size of impact of exposure, and, for observational studies, expected prevalence of exposure.

Many studies analyze their data by sex as an afterthought. Such subgroup analyses of main effects stratified by sex are often underpowered, which heightens the risk of type II error, or false-negative results. This is true even when the original analysis, in which all subjects are analyzed together, regardless of sex, reports a statistically significant association of exposure with disease. For example, in a study in which the exposure–disease association approaches statistical significance (say, a 2 standard error difference in outcome between study arms), splitting subjects into two groups of similar size will yield a one in three chance that the association will be sizeable and statistically significant ( P < 0.05) in one group and inconsequential in the other (less than a standard error difference) ( 77 ).

“Defining gender in human studies is both difficult and controversial.”

Better than nothing: representation of sex

Studies underpowered to detect even sex-stratified main effects can still make available data and/or analyses stratified by sex, particularly in supplemental material, without making inferences regarding sex differences per se. Such data may serve as preliminary analyses for future studies adequately powered to detect sex differences and may be used in meta-analyses.

Special considerations for “big data”

We have entered an era in which enormous datasets are increasingly available. Many of them include the variable “sex.” Two cautions are important to emphasize. First, such datasets, while deep in sample size, are often narrow in breadth, lacking the variables (discussed below) helpful to contextualize and understand sex differences. Second, the temptation in very large datasets to stratify by any variable is strong, as it is easy to detect statistically significant interactions, including sex differences, of clinically trivial and meaningless magnitude ( 78 ). Sound motivation to test sex differences, discussed earlier, is essential. So is conservative interpretation of statistically significant findings. To whom much data are given, much common sense is demanded: extra caution needs to be exercised in interpreting studies with enormous statistical power to detect minute differences between subgroups.

Truly sex-informed research is more than just stratifying by sex or gender. Researchers should collect the data to characterize the ways in which exposures, diseases, and contributing environmental factors vary by sex and gender.

Defining and measuring sex and gender

Although it can be difficult to determine the sex of subjects in some species, for the most part, the sex of humans and nonhuman subjects in biomedical research is known. Categories of sex include males, females, intersexual individuals born with male and female characteristics, and people who undergo interventions to reassign their sex ( 25 ). In some instances, syndromes resulting from atypical sexual development can complicate categorization of sex ( 79 ).

Defining gender in human studies is both difficult and controversial. Indeed, some have argued that sex and gender are “irreducibly entangled,” and that even the most seemingly straightforward presentation of sex as a biological variable in human studies is inevitably a mix of sex and gender ( 24 , 25 , 80 ). Sociologists Westbrook and Saperstein ( 81 ), observing the tendency of large surveys to conflate sex and gender, call the state of measurement a “conceptual muddle” that is fraught with essentialist treatment of sex and gender as synonymous, obvious, easily determined by others, and unchanging over the life course.

The very concept of gender is subtle, complex, and shifting. It has been suggested that gender comprises at least three distinct, but interrelated components, the “three dimensions of gender” ( 82 ). These include: (1) our physical bodies, how we experience them, and how others interact with them; (2) our gender identity, our internal sense of ourselves as female, male, a blend of both, or neither; and (3) our gender expression, how we present our gender and how society interacts with the gender we present. Note that these dimensions are independent of sexual orientation. We are likely to see new measures of gender emerge; however, at present, there are few studies that have attempted to relate nuanced dimensions of gender to health and disease ( 81 , 83 ).

In the meantime, some researchers have ventured measures of gender that are intended to be distinct from sex ( 84–86 ). For example, several gendered factors correlated with poor health among women have been proposed as proxies for gender influences on health, including income, education, labor force participation, single-headed household, unpaid child and elder care, unpaid housework, political participation, and access to education or health ( 86 ). Particularly problematic has been the identification of proxies for male gender that might influence men’s health. The prevalence of gun ownership, for example, has been proposed ( 84 ). Such measures of gender are often measures of gender inequality. Many times they are based on national or state-level statistics, rather than more granular individual or household data ( 86 ).

Pelletier et al. ( 85 ) have proposed a method to measure individual-level gender as “psychosocial sex,” in contrast to “biological sex.” They argue that, as gender roles and attitudes—components that might comprise a gender index—depend on culture, age, and era, no single gender scoring system is broadly applicable. Rather, a method for defining gender within a study population is a better approach to measure gender. Drawing from extensive questionnaires completed by their study participants, the researchers identified a set of seven variables (including income, hours doing housework, and scores on a sex role inventory survey) that resulted in a continuous gender score ranging from masculine to feminine characteristics. Independent of sex, a high gender score (more feminine characteristics) was associated with increased risk of diabetes, hypertension, and depression and anxiety symptoms ( 85 ). In fact, once gender was accounted for, sex no longer predicted these health outcomes. Although the study was not large enough to exclude a modest interaction between sex and gender ( i.e. , did the gender score predict outcomes more among males or among females?), the authors observed that the higher femininity score appeared to predict outcomes for men as well as for women (Louise Pilote, personal communication). This study was possible only because of the extensive collection of economic and psychosocial covariates related to gender. To the extent possible, studies should be designed to collect data on gender. However, lack of data with which to construct a comprehensive gender measure does not absolve investigators of considering gender in their interpretation of data regarding sex differences.

Is gender relevant to animal studies? If it is hard to measure gender in human beings, it would seem entirely alien to do so in other species. However, a few investigators have attempted to design exposures that mimic human gendered experiences. For example, Shors et al. ( 87 ) developed an animal model (sexual conspecific aggressive response, or SCAR) to examine the effects of sexual aggression on the brain and learned behaviors. Pubescent female rodents are paired with sexually experienced adult males. The female releases high levels of adrenal stress hormones. Her ability to learn, including to learn maternal caring behavior, was suppressed. The authors suggested that such experiments are aimed at understanding how sexual trauma impacts mechanisms that shape the female brain. Although other interpretations of that animal model are possible, studies have reported that women with a history of childhood sexual trauma exhibit changes in brain and associated physiology. Women with a history of childhood sexual trauma, a highly prevalent exposure, have irregularities to cortical and subcortical tissue and long-term alterations to their hypothalamic–pituitary adrenal axis, compared with women without childhood sexual trauma ( 88 , 89 ). Sexual assault occurs to all sexes and genders, but considerably more often to girls and women, and therefore constitutes a gendered exposure ( 58–61 ). National surveys show that physical child abuse is also common, often more so for boys than girls ( 59 , 60 ). Other violent exposures, such as combat casualties and war-time trauma, also have gendered distributions and implications ( 90 , 91 ).

Measuring sex and gender differences in disease presentation

It is essential to capture outcomes in sufficient detail to detect sex and gender differences in disease presentation. The classic example in clinical research is CHD, one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality for men and women in the United States. Traditionally, myocardial infarction was characterized as the result of obstruction of the large coronary arteries. However, up to one third of women with a myocardial infarction and two thirds of women with chest pain had unobstructed arteries upon angiography ( 92 , 93 ). It is now recognized that myocardial ischemia may result from disease of the coronary microvessels. The Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation study reported that roughly half of the women with angina and ischemia without coronary artery obstruction evidenced microvascular dysfunction ( 94 ). Instead of the classic chest-crushing sensation of coronary artery obstruction, women with microvessel disease may present with shortness of breath and fatigue, nonspecific symptoms easy to misdiagnose and often dismissed. Thus, an investigator studying CHD in both sexes needs to consider the symptoms and diagnostic tests that will capture the presentation of disease in women and men ( 95 ).

Another example of differential disease presentation by sex is the tendency for prolactinomas to be detected as microadenomas among women, but macroadenomas among men. This results, at least in part, from the earlier detection among women, in whom small elevations in prolactin can cause infertility, menstrual disturbances, and/or galactorrhea. In contrast, in men, prolactinomas may progress to macroadenomas before they become symptomatic with headaches, double vision, or vision loss resulting from the mass of the tumor pressing on neurologic structures in the brain. Although this difference between the sexes is largely attributed to differences in diagnostic timing, the possibility that prolactinomas are more aggressive in men has not been entirely excluded ( 96 , 97 ). In animal models, sex differences in the expression and activity of pituitary transforming growth factor β 1 may contribute to sex differences in prolactinoma incidence ( 98 ).

Sex and gender differences in drug exposures and metabolism

“The failure to consider exogenous hormone use…may contribute to the lack of reproducibility in many studies.”

The use of exogenous hormones, such as oral contraceptives, menopausal hormone therapy, testosterone, and anabolic steroids, is particularly important to document. Taken systemically, by mouth, injection, or patch, such drugs affect reproductive and nonreproductive systems throughout the body, and they could be important to investigations in which the exposure–disease relationship could be affected by sex hormones. In the United States, sales of testosterone, available as oral medicine, gel, patch, or injection, grew 77% from 2010 to 2013, with 2.3 million prescriptions filled ( 103 ). It is estimated that 2.9 to 4 million Americans, largely men, have used anabolic steroids in their lifetime ( 104 ).

In addition to their direct impact on brain, bone, muscle, metabolism, immune, cardiovascular, and reproductive function ( 105–107 ), reproductive steroids often interact with other drugs. For example, among patients with growth hormone deficiency, women taking oral estrogen require twice as much growth hormone as men or women not taking oral estrogen to achieve the same levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 ( 108 ); current guidelines for treatment of adult growth hormone deficiency now recommend the consideration of estrogen status in dosing ( 109 ). Basic scientists may find it illuminating to vary the levels of exogenous hormone exposures in their experiments to mimic widespread human exposures.

In addition to intentional exogenous hormone exposure, there is an increasing body of literature suggesting that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment may affect human health. For example, phthalates are a nearly ubiquitous class of chemicals used in the manufacturing of household products, including food packaging and personal care products such as cosmetics and nail polish. Exposure to phthalates may depend on occupation and use of personal care products; higher urine concentrations of phthalate metabolites have been reported among women compared with men ( 110 , 111 ). Phthalate exposures have been associated with insulin receptor and glucose oxidation in the Chang liver cell line (unspecified sex) ( 112 ), signs of diabetes and endocrine disruption in female rats ( 113 ), and with insulin resistance and diabetes in men and women ( 111 , 114 , 115 ).

The failure to consider exogenous hormone use, endogenous hormones, and/or markers of hormonal status (such as menopause) may contribute to the lack of reproducibility in many studies. For example, investigators found that the serum concentrations of 68% of 171 serum biomarkers associated with chronic disease were affected by sex, oral contraceptive use, menstrual phase, or menopausal status ( 116 ). They estimated up to 40% false discoveries in biomarkers when sex was ignored and up to 41% false discoveries when oral contraceptive use was ignored. Heeding this caution, investigators may want to collect data on menstrual or estrus phase, menopausal status, use of exogenous hormones, and/or levels of circulating hormones ( 14 ).

Measuring reproductive cycle and phase

There are nuances to asking women to report their menstrual cycle and menopausal status. For example, as the duration of the luteal phase varies less than that of the follicular phase, menstrual cycle timing is best recorded retrospectively from the first day of the next menstrual period ( 117 ). As menstrual cycles may be suppressed or dictated by hormonal contraceptives (including hormonal intrauterine devices), or breastfeeding, it is useful to record these variables when assessing menstrual timing. Menopause may occur naturally or may result from hysterectomy, oophorectomy, or chemotherapy, and it cannot be determined until a year after the last menstrual period. Measurement of menstrual cycle phase and menopausal transition are covered elsewhere ( 117–119 ). Archived biospecimens should include information about such variables ( e.g. , time of blood draw, day of menstrual cycle).

Influential covariates that vary by sex and gender

Some factors that vary by sex or gender can influence the exposure–disease association under study, either as confounders (easily mistaken for sex differences) or effect modifiers (covariates that interact with sex to change outcome). Some of these sex-dependent covariates are obvious, such as parity. Other aspects of reproductive history may affect nonreproductive systems under study ( 120 ). For example, history of the hypertensive pregnancy disorder preeclampsia predicts twofold higher risk of CVD in women affected by the disorder ( 121 ). A woman’s history of preeclampsia might modify the impact of an antihypertensive drug. Exposures to exogenous endocrine drugs, such as those administered in the course of assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, might affect systems under study.

The degree to which other exposures, such as cigarette smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, socioeconomic position, caretaking responsibilities, and medication use, vary by sex and gender will depend on the population under study. For example, in some, but not all, cultures and climates, circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations may differ considerably between men and women as a result of gender differences in factors such as clothing, time spent outdoors, and supplement use ( 122–124 ); depending on the country, these differences may be equalized by dietary vitamin D intake, particularly of fortified foods. Additionally, as shown in a study in the Netherlands, lower 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels among women may be explained by their higher adiposity levels, a difference that could be attributed either to sex (a biological difference) or gender (as many social determinants of adiposity are gendered) ( 125 ).

Particularly important to consider are sex or gender differences in the distribution of comorbidities that might influence an exposure–disease association. For example, compared with diabetic women, diabetic men have lower prevalence of depression and anxiety, gendered psychosocial factors that impede self-care activity and treatment success ( 126 ). Thus, it would be wise for studies examining sex differences in CVD to account for major depression history, especially when depression is associated with the main exposure under consideration ( 21 ).

The problem of stratifying everything by sex

Subgroup analyses from studies thoughtfully designed to query sex differences, particularly once replicated, can provide sound evidence of benefit or protection from harm for women and men. Alternatively, post hoc sex difference analyses, devoid of theoretical basis and sound construction, may create more noise than light. A recent analysis of sex differences presented in Cochrane reviews of clinical trials suggested that few met the stringent criteria of documenting statistically significant interactions by sex ( 127 ); this criticism of sex differences research is cautionary. Whether the absence of sex differences reflects fact, indiscriminate testing, lack of sample size, or the decades it takes for sex differences observed in basic or population research to reach clinical testing remains to be seen ( 128 ).

The risk of a blanket mandate to require all studies to stratify all results by sex is that the literature-wide type I error, that is, the risk of detecting false sex differences, will skyrocket. Furthermore, as we increase the size and statistical power of our studies to detect true sex interactions (minimizing type II error), we court the risk of finding sex differences where none exist (type I error). As mentioned earlier, type I error is a particular hazard of a theoretical “big data” analysis.

If we pursue sex difference analysis as a poorly considered mandate, a literature of contradiction will follow. The field of sex differences research risks discredit from unthinking and profligate enthusiasm. How, then, can we encourage sex differences research that is thoughtful, conservative, and consistent over time?

Prespecified hypothesis tests

In any subgroup analysis, including sex and gender, tests of interaction should be limited and prespecified in statistical analytic plans ( 129 ). Although this does not guarantee that tests of hypotheses will be well constructed, it does help to protect against post hoc fishing and data-derived hypothesis testing (themselves self-fulfilling prophecies). “Surprise” subgroup findings should be presented as such, and interpreted with caution—the basis for further study, not for instant translation to clinic or policy. There seems almost a reflexive tendency of researchers to view male and female as the fundamental dichotomy of the biologic world ( 24 ). We need to approach the question of sex differences with curiosity and skepticism, rather than unquestioning assumption.

In creating an a priori hypothesis, it is best practice to prespecify the expected direction and magnitude of the sex difference. Should there be subgroups within sex, such as nulliparous vs parous, or premenopausal vs postmenopausal? Careful a priori hypothesizing is important for observational studies, experiments, and trials, and it serves to maintain scientific transparency. In large studies, some statistically significant sex differences may arise by chance. Thus, prespecifying the form of the expected interaction helps guard against indiscriminate post hoc scrambling.

Accounting for confounding

“…Researchers will be collecting and analyzing data by sex, but the onus is on investigators to address this adequately and at all levels of basic, clinical, and population research.”

Variables on the pathway between sex or gender and outcome

Some variables may be intermediates between sex or gender and the outcomes under study, and their treatment in analysis deserves special consideration. For example, sex and gender are two of many factors that determine body size and composition. Not only are body size and adiposity determined by sex steroids, sex steroid receptors, adipokines, and other differences between males and females ( 134 ), but gender differences in physical activity also affect body size and composition ( 135 ). [Interestingly, there are also sex differences in the voluntary physical activity of rodents: females exercise more than males. ( 135 )]Whether to control for body size in studies of sex and gender effects is a nuanced decision.

For example, in a study of differences between men and women in the impact of Ambien and impaired driving, should the investigator adjust for body size in evaluating sex or gender differences? Alternatively, body size is (at least partially) a product of sex and gender, and adjusting for it might obscure the most important pathway (body size) through which sex and gender impact the metabolism of the drug. Additionally, adjustment for body size might reveal other mechanisms (some of which are discussed in “Sex and gender differences in drug exposures and metabolism” above) through which sex or gender affect drug clearance. Statistical methods can help segregate or ‘decompose’ the impact of such intermediate variables, also known as mediators ( 136 , 137 ).

Replication

The critical importance of replication has been addressed by others ( 78 ). This is particularly true in a scientific climate that encourages, or even mandates, subgroup analysis.

Interpretation

As with any study finding, apparent sex differences (or lack thereof) need to be interpreted with caution ( 138 ). The magnitude and direction of apparent sex effects need to be placed in the context of prior knowledge. Biological mechanisms, hopefully outlined a priori , need to be discussed. The adequacy of the study to rule out bias, confounding, and chance needs to be frankly addressed. Even statistically significant sex differences may be due to chance or bias, instead of true heterogeneity of exposure–disease associations or of treatment effects ( 129 ).

This is especially true when interpreting main effects stratified by sex, where a study lacks statistical power to test interaction by sex. In this case, the play of chance is often overlooked and findings are overinterpreted. As an example, Assman et al. ( 139 ) cite a subgroup analysis of a trial that followed myocardial infarction survivors ( 140 ). The investigators, laudably, considered the differential impact of treatment on the mortality of men and women, including both sexes and prespecifying stratification by sex in the analyses. However, they did not plan to test an interaction by sex. Their intervention had no overall impact on mortality. There was no association of treatment with cardiac mortality among men ( P = 0.94). However, in women, the authors observed what they interpreted as a “possible harmful impact of the intervention” on women’s cardiac mortality ( P = 0.06). Later, Assman et al. used their data to calculate a proper test of interaction by sex, which revealed no statistically significant evidence of an interaction between treatment and sex ( P for interaction = 0.21), indicating that chance could well explain the seeming sex effect. Thus, despite the disparate associations and P values in the two sex strata, the study was simply too small to test whether the impact of the treatment on cardiac mortality truly differed by sex.

Most importantly, surprise subgroup findings need to be acknowledged as such. Sex differences that were discovered as the result of post hoc poking around in the data need to be treated with caution until they are replicated as pre hoc tests in other studies. In this event, supplemental tables stratified by sex, data repositories, and meta-analyses may extend the impact of any single study. In other words, investigators can make available sex-stratified data to spur the generation of new hypotheses, without presenting sex-stratified analyses that overreach the intent and design of their original study.

New governmental mandates mean that researchers will be collecting and analyzing data by sex, but the onus is on investigators to address this adequately and at all levels of basic, clinical, and population research. If we fail, the “noise” created by multiple testing across all our datasets may drown out the signal of true sex differences. Furthermore, in human studies it is important to investigate the impact of both sex and gender to illuminate fundamental, modifiable causes of disease and avoid a reflexive attribution of seeming sex differences solely to biology. If we address these design and analytic issues skillfully, then we have the chance for new insights for men and women that will be critical for the next generation of scientific and therapeutic discoveries in this age of precision medicine.

Abbreviations

coronary heart disease

cardiovascular disease

estrogen receptor

National Institutes of Health

Disclosure Summary: The authors have nothing to disclose.

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Does writing style affect gender differences in the research performance of articles?: An empirical study of BERT-based textual sentiment analysis

• Published: 08 March 2023
• Volume 128 , pages 2105–2143, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Yongchao Ma 1 , 2 ,
• Ying Teng 2 ,
• Zhongzhun Deng   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7822-5064 3 ,
• Li Liu 4 &
• Yi Zhang 4  

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8 Citations

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“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” is essential to reduce gender disparity and improve the status of women. But it remains a challenge to narrow gender differences and improve gender equality in academic research. In this paper, we propose that the impact of articles is lower and writing style of articles is less positive when the article’s first author is female relative to male first authors, and writing style mediates this relationship. Focusing on the positive writing style, we attempt to contribute and explain the research on gender differences in research performance. We use BERT-based textual sentiment analysis to analyse 87 years of 9820 articles published in the top four marketing journals and prove our hypotheses. We also consider a set of control variables and conduct a set of robustness checks to ensure the robustness of our findings. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings for researchers.

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Introduction

As one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the SDG 5 (Gender Equality): “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” is essential to reduce gender disparity and improve the status of women (UnitedNations, 2015 ). On International Women’s Day in 2021, Elsevier, a renowned information services provider, and publisher, released a report titled “Researcher Journey Through a Gender Lens,” which shows that there are gender differences in scientific research (Elsevier, 2020 ). On the one hand, gender differences exist across various subject areas, but the extent of these differences varies. On the other hand, the gender differences between men and women vary between countries. Japan, for example, has larger gender differences in research performance than the United States and China (Elsevier, 2020 ).

Researchers have made considerable efforts to promote gender equality (Badar et al., 2014 ; Kou et al., 2019 ; Lopez & Pereira, 2021 ; Myers et al., 2020 ; Restrepo et al., 2021 ). However, previous studies on gender equality in academia have three limitations. First, we observe that academic achievement studies have primarily focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, while business disciplines receive relatively little attention (Gruber et al., 2021 ). Second, there has been extensive prior research on gender differences, but limited effort has been made to explain the underlying mechanisms. As of now, some factors have been suggested as contributing to these differences, including such as age, country, institution, productivity (Lopez & Pereira, 2021 ; Myers et al., 2020 ; Restrepo et al., 2021 ), as well as differences in language use (Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ; Newman et al., 2008 ; Urquhart-Cronish & Otto, 2019 ). Previous studies have also examined gender differences in research performance, but they tend to focus more on revealing the phenomenon than explaining its underlying mechanisms. Meanwhile, only a few of those studies have concentrated on writing style and have addressed the relationship between author gender and writing style. There are no studies that have examined the relationship between writing style and research performance. Based on those studies about gender differences in writing style (Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ), we address two research questions in this study in an attempt to explain the gender differences in research performance through writing style. Here are the research questions:

Research Question 1: Are there gender differences in the research performance of male and female academics in business?

Research Question 2: What role does article’s writing style play in explaining the gender differences in research performance?

The academic status of female authors in marketing is also inferior to that of their male counterparts (Elsevier, 2020 ). We propose that the articles with female first authors have a lower impact than the articles with male first authors. Academics of different genders exhibit different levels of confidence in their academic work (Heath et al., 2022 ; Hoops et al., 2019 ; Meyerson et al., 2017 ; Sawdon & Finn, 2014 ). According to (Ehrlinger & Dunning, 2003 ), women express significantly lower confidence than men, and we thus propose that writing style of articles with female first authors is less positive than that of articles with male first authors. Finally, female authors use fewer positive words in their academic writing, and their writing style is less positive. Combined with the “self-confidence effect”, self-confidence predicts success in the future (Meisha & Al-dabbagh, 2021 ). An article with a positive writing style reflects the writer's confidence, and one with a more confident expression is more likely to be approved by the reader. Therefore, we propose that the writing style mediates the positive effect of gender differences on research performance.

Using BERT-based textual sentiment analysis, an analysis of 86 years’ worth of 9,820 articles from the top four marketing journals addresses these research questions. The results prove our hypotheses. We control for factors related to the articles’ writing style and research impact, including many factors at the author level, article level, journal level, and affiliate level, and conduct a set of robustness checks, further ensuring the robustness of findings.

Literature review and hypotheses development

Gender inequalities in academia.

Due to gender differences, men develop their careers more rapidly than women (van den Besselaar & Sandstrom, 2016 ). Access to valuable resources is differentially distributed among male and female scientists (Shauman & Xie, 2003 ). Additionally, the increased participation of women in STEM fields has also led to larger gender differences relating to productivity and impact (Elsevier, 2017 ; Huang et al., 2020 ; van Arensbergen et al., 2012 ). Literature on gender differences in research performance suggests that men outperform women (Abramo et al., 2015 ).

In recent decades, the gender context of academic science has substantially changed, with more female scientists entering the field (Elsevier, 2017 ; Huang et al., 2020 ; Lariviere et al., 2013 ) and occupying high-level academic positions (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019 ; Zippel, 2020 ). However, gender imbalances are still evident in the production of knowledge (Dinu, 2021 ; Koseoglu et al., 2019 ). According to Paswan and Singh ( 2020 ), women’s representation varies by field, with biology (37%) having a relatively higher percentage of female authors compared with engineering (20%), information science (21%), and mathematics (22%). The degree of gender differences varies fundamentally by discipline. There is still a significant underrepresentation of women in academic medicine and life science (Ha et al., 2021 ; Lerchenmueller & Sorenson, 2018 ; Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ). Gender differences also persist in other disciplines. Ghiasi et al. ( 2015 ) report men produce 80% of all scientific production in engineering. Women in the biomedical field have fewer publications on COVID-19 (Muric et al., 2021 ). In addition, female authors and reviewers are underrepresented in entomology journals (Walker, 2020 ).

Bibliometric studies have focused on gender differences in academic performance. Despite this, these studies are rarely able to explain these phenomena in terms of their underlying mechanisms, sticking instead to revealing the characteristics of these phenomena. Additionally, these studies are focused primarily on engineering and medicine, with little emphasis on the business sector. This article focuses on the discipline of marketing in the business. The academic status of female authors in marketing is also inferior to that of their male counterparts (Elsevier, 2020 ). We propose that articles with female first authors have a lower impact than the articles with male first authors. Here is the hypothesis.

The impact of articles with female first authors is lower than that of articles with male first authors.

To eliminate these imbalances, we need first to explain the mechanism of this phenomenon. In this study, we focus on writing style and try to explain the research performance resulting from gender differences.

Gender differences and writing style

Multiple factors have been proposed as contributing to gender differences in research performance. The author’s characteristics, such as age, country, institution, productivity, country of origin, the field of study, and position in the academic system, can affect gender differences in research performance (Abramo et al., 2021 ; Lopez & Pereira, 2021 ; Myers et al., 2020 ; Restrepo et al., 2021 ; van Arensbergen et al., 2012 ). For example, women who work in research and those who have young children have had a significant decline in time devoted to research (Myers et al., 2020 ) and are less effective at technology development activities (Kou et al., 2019 ). Lopez and Pereira ( 2021 ) contend that female researchers are even less capable of transferring knowledge profitably and efficiently from a business standpoint. Researchers of male researchers (collaborating primarily with same-sex scientists) adhere to the principle of gender homophily, but females do not (Abramo et al., 2019b ; Jung et al., 2017 ; Kwiek & Roszka, 2021 ).

This paper focuses on the characteristics of the articles. Concerning the topic, Shang et al. ( 2022 ) explore gender balance and differences among first authors within the SDG 5-oriented research. Compared with the other 16 SDGs, the field of the SDG 5 produces relatively fewer scientific publications, with most of the first authors being female. Regarding the aim, Zhang et al., ( 2022a , 2022b ) find that male researchers more often value and engage in research geared mainly toward scientific progress, which is more cited. However, female researchers more often value and engage in research mainly aimed at contributing to societal progress, which has more abstract views (usage). Regarding language use, some researchers give considerable attention to writing style (Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ; Newman et al., 2008 ; Urquhart-Cronish & Otto, 2019 ). The writing style in academic articles is studied across a wide range of disciplines, including medical and life science (Cao et al., 2021 ; Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ; Wen & Lei, 2022b ), political science (Weidmann et al., 2018 ), and cross-cultural psychology (Holtz et al., 2017 ). For example, using sentiment analysis to examine the diachronic change in linguistic positivity, Yuan and Yao ( 2022 ) show that academic writing style in research articles in the journal science has become significantly more positive in the past 25 years.

Several earlier studies examine differences between the writing styles of male and female authors. According to some studies, gender differences exist in writing style, including levels of readability and concreteness (DeJesus et al., 2021 ; Joshi et al., 2020 ; Kolev et al., 2019 ), the extent of self-promotion (Cheng et al., 2017 ; Scharff, 2015 ), and the use of positive words (DeJesus et al., 2021 ; Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ). By examining how gender differences affect the presentation of scientific research in positive ways, Lerchenmueller et al. ( 2019 ) discover that authors use more positive words to describe their research in scientific titles and abstracts, including “novel,” “unique,” “unprecedented,” etc. Furthermore, Dehdarirad and Yaghtin ( 2022 ) report that women use fewer positive terms in citing research findings in papers. When citing papers, men were significantly more likely to use positive terms.

We summarize research on gender differences in research performance and writing style. Previous studies have also examined gender differences in research performance, but they tend to focus more on revealing the phenomenon than explaining its underlying mechanisms. In addition, although many studies have concentrated on writing style, very few have addressed the relationship between author gender and writing style. Meanwhile, no studies have examined the relationship between writing style and research performance. In this paper, we attempt to explain the gender differences in research performance through the writing style.

Confidence and gender differences

Academics of different genders exhibit varying degrees of confidence in their academic work. A gender-based “confidence gap” in medicine is characterized by differences between performance and self-concept (i.e., how an individual sees himself) (Heath et al., 2022 ). Despite similar performance metrics, women consistently self-assess themselves as lower than men (Hoops et al., 2019 ; Meyerson et al., 2017 ; Sawdon & Finn, 2014 ). Women in various fields, including science, engineering, economics, athletics, and academia, report low self-esteem and self-confidence regardless of their abilities or competencies (Hubble & Zhao, 2016 ; Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ). Females tend to have lower levels of confidence (Dunn et al., 2021a , 2021b ; Walker, 2020 ), and are also routinely less confident in their abilities and products than their male peers (Beyer & Bowden, 1997 ; Huang, 2013 ; Instone et al., 1983 ; Stankov & Lee, 2014 ) in math and science domains (Ehrlinger et al., 2018 ; Ellis et al., 2016 ; Else-Quest et al., 2010 ; Micari et al., 2007 ).

Across two preregistered studies with more than 900 active researchers in psychology, Dunn et al. ( 2021a , 2021b ) show that more self-confident researchers select larger prior means, in part due to gender differences in researcher self-confidence. Furthermore, women express significantly lower confidence than men, which leads to lower confidence in their work quality than their male peers (despite performing equally well on the test) (Ehrlinger & Dunning, 2003 ). Therefore, we propose that the writing style of articles with female first authors is less positive than that of articles with male first authors. Here is the hypothesis.

The writing style of articles with female first authors is less positive than that of articles with male first authors.

Writing style influences research impact (Morris et al., 2021 ; Parsons & Baglini, 2021 ). For example, using regression analysis and pairwise comparisons, Dehdarirad and Yaghtin ( 2022 ) show that male-authored papers receive a significantly higher positive sentiment compared with female-authored papers. Parsons and Baglini ( 2021 ) point out the importance of neutral language in peer review and provide examples of nonneutral linguistic and stylistic devices that emphasize a reviewer's personal response to the manuscript rather than their objective assessment. Back to writing style, female authors use fewer positive words in their academic writing, and their writing style is less positive. Referring to the “self-confidence effect”, self-confidence predicts success in the future (Meisha & Al-dabbagh, 2021 ). An article with a positive writing style reflects the writer's confidence, and one with a more confident expression is more likely to be approved by the reader. We, therefore, propose that writing style mediates the positive effect of gender differences on research performance. Here is the hypothesis.

The writing style of articles mediates the positive effect of gender differences on research performance.

Research methodology

The procedures of data processing are presented in Fig.  1 .

Framework for data collection and processing

Data collection

Top journals are more influential and representative, which means a high position in the research system (Mauleon & Bordons, 2006 ; Mayer & Rathmann, 2018 ; Nielsen, 2017 ). For our study, we select the top four journals in the marketing field. There have been no previous studies on the research performance of female scholars in leading journals. Although there are many high-quality marketing journals, four journals have been selected for this study: Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), Journal of Marketing (JM), Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), and Marketing Science (MS). Among the leading marketing journals in the world, these four are widely recognized (Bauerly & Johnson, 2005 ; Stremersch & Verhoef, 2005 ; Tellis et al., 1999 ; Yoo, 2009 ).

Through the years, bibliometric studies have designed several methodologies to analyse scholarly output (Halevi, 2019 ). The article information data is obtained from the Web of Science (WoS), including the article, author, journal, and affiliation. We collected articles from the four journals Footnote 1 founded throughout 84 years, from 1936 to 2021. Footnote 2 To minimize the potential effect of a time interval on measuring the impact of publications, all the data were collected once on October 16, 2021. The corpus consists of 9,820 research articles (see supplementary materials for the descriptive statistics). We download full text from EBSCO. Footnote 3

Data processing

Determining the first author researcher’s gender, why the first author.

According to Baerlocher et al. ( 2007 ), the order of the authors’ names appearing in a paper generally indicates the extent to which each author contributed to the work (Larivière et al., 2016 ). It is not easy to quantify the contributions of each author. Current studies examining the relationship between authorship characteristics and article impact tend to focus on specific author positions, such as first authors, last authors, corresponding authors, senior authors, and so on (Skitka et al., 2021 ).

The first author is typically the one who leads the research and writing process. Most bibliometric studies focus on the first author in the current literature (Decullier & Maisonneuve, 2021 ; Jemielniak et al., 2022 ; Liu et al., 2022 ; Nguyen et al., 2021 ; Thelwall & Maflahi, 2022 ; Thelwall & Mas-Bleda, 2020 ; Thelwall et al., 2019 ; Thelwall, 2018 , 2020a , 2020b ). Shang et al. ( 2022 ) explore gender balance and differences among first authors within the SDG5-oriented research during the first five years after the implementation of the SDG5 in 2016. According to Zhang et al. ( 2021 ), there is an upward trend in the number of articles with a Chinese first author in international journals. Considering female and male first authors, Fox and Paine ( 2019 ) test whether gender predicts the outcomes of editorial and peer review for > 23,000 research manuscripts submitted to six journals in ecology and evolution from 2010 to 2015. Zeina et al. ( 2020 ) analyze the relationship between the first author’s gender, ethnicity, and the chance of publication of rapid responses in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Besides, researchers have also considered authors in other positions when considering collaboration between genders. For example, the last author and the first author are often followed simultaneously (Sebo & Clair, 2023 ). Lerchenmueller et al., ( 2019 ) analyze whether men and women differ in how positively they frame their research findings and analyze whether the positive framing of research is associated with higher downstream citations. Specifically, they estimate the relative probability of positive framing as a function of the gender composition of the first and last authors. Andersen et al. ( 2020 ) report the results of an analysis that compares the gender distribution of authors in 1893 medical papers related to the pandemic with that papers published in the same journals in 2019, for papers with first authors and last authors from the United States. Research in pharmaceuticals and life sciences generally employs this approach.

In addition, some studies have also focused on other authors, such as corresponding authors (Edwards et al., 2018 ; Fox & Paine, 2019 ), senior authors (Polanco et al., 2020 ; Powell et al., 2022 ), solo authors (Nunkoo et al., 2020 ), middle authors, and mentee authors (Lopez-Padilla et al., 2021 ), co-first, senior, and co-senior authors (DeFilippis et al., 2021 ). While different types of other authors are taken into consideration, the first author is one that is emphasized by almost all authors. For example, Powell et al. ( 2022 ) investigated trends in female authorship in three journals over the past 25 years by using data for both first and senior authors. Lopez-Padilla et al. ( 2021 ) determine the changing patterns in gender differences and factors associated with the positioning of authors. They analyzed in four scenarios: first authors, last authors, middle authors, and mentee authors.

First authors play a significant role in bibliometric studies, and their importance cannot be overstated. In addition, since the sample articles in this study are mainly from marketing journals, the authors are not generally arranged alphabetically in the marketing field. In this study, we use the first authors to represent the gender attribute of a paper, considering those researchers make major contributions to scientific publications (Shang et al., 2022 ). We are concerned about articles with a female first author (AFFA).

Name disambiguation

Considering part of the authors’ names are abbreviated previously in WoS. To improve the quality of the authors’ names used in our study, we further conduct author disambiguation procedures. We obtain the authors’ full names from the Crossref Footnote 4 database using the DOI number of the article. After the name disambiguation, we get the first names of all authors. Code and a data demo are provided to demonstrate how we obtained this information at OSF: https://osf.io/bw8gx/ .

Gender identification

Gender identification is an enormous challenge, given that bibliographic data does not reveal it (Halevi, 2019 ). New bibliometric literature applying various gender-determination methods to authors and authorships (Elsevier, 2020 ; Halevi, 2019 ) provides new data-driven insights into gender disparities in science. Like other studies (Shang et al., 2022 ), the binary genders are considered and used in our analysis as well (Santamaría & Mihaljević, 2018 ). If no gender information could be inferred from an author, the gender was considered unknown (Shang et al., 2022 ).

A person’s first name can be a strong signal of his/her gender (Liu & Ruths, 2013 ). Zeina et al. ( 2020 ) analyze the relationship between the first author's gender estimated from the first name and the chance of publication of rapid responses in the British Medical Journal. For each author in our sample, we use a new model architecture to identify the author’s gender. The gender classifier is implemented using Character-level Multilayer long short-term memory (LSTM). It depends on NumPy, Scipy and, TensorFlow, Python packages for scientific computing. We use training data that a million names with gender annotation obtained from different countries. The architecture is as follows: Character Embedding Layer, 1st LSTM Layer, 2nd LSTM Layer, Pooling Layer, and Fully Connected Layer. The fully connected layer outputs the probability that a name is a male name. TensorFlow is used to build a character-level multi-layer LSTM neural network for machine learning, and a Python program is written for scholars’ gender prediction. This model predicts gender by importing the names of scholars without surnames, returning the probability estimates of their genders, and classifying the genders. The recall and precision rates are 94.0/93.5% for men and 91.8/97.8% for women, resulting in an F1 score of 0.95 for men and 0.93 for women. Given the high F1 score, the threshold of ≥ 0.85 (equivalent to a Gender Probability Score ≥ 1.735) is used to infer gender (Elsevier, 2020 ).

In addition, the gender of these individuals is determined by associating each author’s first name with the probability of the name being held by a man versus by a woman, using the Genderize database. Footnote 5 Researchers evaluate four gender assignment algorithms, using a control sample of gender-matched forenames from a U.S. government office, and find that the Genderize algorithm provided the most accurate gender assignment results. Applying a 90% probability threshold to the Genderize algorithm’s gender designation yields the same determination with which gender can be predicted in our dataset for analysis (Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ).

We conduct a random selection of 500 first authors to demonstrate the accuracy of our gender determination method. Using the authors’ e-mail addresses, we manually collect the gender of these 500 authors by visiting their websites (we show the screenshot of these websites in the supplementary materials). The results of this analysis are then compared with the results of gender prediction calculated using machine learning. The results show that the coefficient of Cohen’s Kappa is 0.881, indicating a good agreement (Zhu et al., 2020 ). This also confirms the reliability of the prediction approach.

• Research performance

Productivity and impact are the two most important indicators of research performance across institutions (Larivière & Costas, 2016 ). Usually, citation counts and the number of publications published in scholarly journals are used to evaluate the research performance (Ghiasi et al., 2015 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ). Research performance is often determined by the number of citations that are cited as a result of the findings being read, used, applied, built upon, and cited by other researchers (Harnad et al., 2008 ). We regard the number of citations to be a measure of research performance (Jiang et al., 2018 ; Zhu et al., 2021 ).

Positive writing style

We quantify the positive writing style based on the words in titles, abstracts, and full papers. To ensure that all data are full and available, the corpus consists of 5,431 research articles dating with a total of 72,971,482 words (see the descriptive statistics in Table 1 ). Titles and abstracts represent some of the most important text in research papers, as readers often use these to screen articles to determine which ones deserve further attention (Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ). We conduct the investigation on the full texts to gain a holistic understanding of academic writing, which yields more reliable and generalizable results than those studies analysing only abstracts (Yuan & Yao, 2022 ).

Considering the limitations of the small list of positive and negative words, many researchers adopt self-created dictionaries (Holtz et al., 2017 ), expand lists of positive and negative words (Bordignon et al., 2021 ), or use sentiment analysis with large lexicons in R (Wen & Lei, 2022a ) to triangulate the results based on the small list of positive and negative words (Vinkers et al., 2015 ). Besides, it is extremely difficult to map the trajectory of discrete emotions using traditional survey methods due to their intensity and transience (Barsade & Gibson, 2007 ). Due to the advancement of automated text mining technology, some recent studies have begun to use advanced sentiment analysis techniques (Min et al., 2021 ). Due to BERT’s exceptional understanding of the relationship between words and its ability to understand context, fine-tuning BERT is more accurate than traditional Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count based SVMs (EmoLex) (Min et al., 2021 ). To capture whether the articles’ writing style is positive, we deploy fine-tuned BERT algorithms (Kumar et al., 2020 ; Min et al., 2021 ). BERT is an open-source deep learning model that is designed to perform well in a variety of natural language processing tasks (Devlin & Billings, 2018 ).

We use deep learning-based classification models to predict each paper’s PWS. Formally, let \({x}_{i}\) be text content of article i, and \({f}^{e}({x}_{i})\) represents a binary classifier for PWS. Then, the predicted label of \({x}_{i}\) for the writing style e becomes:

The binary classifiers, \({f}^{e}\left({x}_{i}\right)\) are constructed by training the fine-tuned BERT models. The BERT base model has 12 layers of transformer blocks (see Fig.  2 ).

We train the fine-tuned BERT models with the open-sourced TensorFlow implementation for BERT Footnote 6 and the pre-trained weights from the PyTorch port built by Hugging Face. Footnote 7 We also open the complete code used in our study's data collection and processing framework at OSF: https://osf.io/bw8gx/ . The main components include code for training/inferencing the fine-tuned BERT models.

Control variables

In addition, to eliminate other factors that may affect the author’s writing style and authorial impact of the essay, we control for factors related to the articles' writing style and research impact, including many factors at the author level, article level, journal level, and affiliate level, that may influence articles’ research performance. Specifically, on the author level, publication productivity is a primary criterion for tenure and promotion in academia (Rigg et al., 2012 ). A more published author will be less pressured to create new articles and be more confident in their writing abilities. We control the author’s preview publications in these top journals. The collaboration influences the research impact (Abramo et al., 2019a ; Liu et al., 2022 ), and writing style of a manuscript is not only dependent on or determined by its first author, but also most likely by other authors. We, therefore, control the presence of men in the author team due to the influence of male authors.

On the article level, the length of the text influences the research impact (Arkin et al., 2019 ; Huang et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, the length of the text may dilute its stylistic features (dilution effect). We control the length of the abstract as well as the full article was controlled (Zeina et al., 2020 ). Compared to male authors, women tend to use fewer positive terms when citing research findings from papers composed of the same gender (Dehdarirad & Yaghtin, 2022 ). In general, the more references that are used, the greater the impact on the overall writing style. So, we also control the number of references used.

We also control variables on the journal level (Fernández et al., 2020 ; Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ; Zeina et al., 2020 ). An examination of the relationship between the impact of a journal and the citation of an article, with the impact of a journal varying from year to year. Accordingly, we use the journal’s impact factor for the corresponding year as a control variable. Moreover, different journals are positioned differently, and their articles are written differently. For example, Marketing Science focuses primarily on articles that answer important research questions in marketing using mathematical modeling. Footnote 8 The Journal of Consumer Research publishes scholarly research that describes and explains consumer behavior. Footnote 9 Finally, since journal style is difficult to quantify, as well as other characteristics of journals that may be overlooked, we add a journal fixed effect to the model.

We also control variables on the affiliate level (Fernández et al., 2020 ; Jiang et al., 2018 ; Liu et al., 2022 ). Research quality is affected by English language proficiency (Zhang et al., 2022a , 2022b ). In non-English-speaking countries, editorial services are becoming increasingly popular, which means that non-English-speaking authors are using these services more frequently. Editorial services obviously affect the language proficiency of the article, so we control the affiliate language.

Finally, since the dataset of this study covered a long period of time, and there has been a significant improvement in academic writing in the past 25 years (Yuan & Yao, 2022 ), it is necessary to add the year fixed effect. We summarize all variables used in Table 2 . Table 3 and Table 4 describe our samples with descriptive statistics and the correlation. It should be noted that because of the discrete lognormal distribution of data, we use the natural logarithms of some measurements as variables, including citations, publications, and so on.

Descriptive statistical analysis

This study examines gender inequalities in marketing between males and females. Referring to previous studies (Powell et al., 2022 ; Shang et al., 2022 ), we regard the number of female authors, the number of articles with female first authors, and the research performance of articles with female first authors.

The annual trend for the percentage of female author numbers

Firstly, we calculate the percentage of female authors in all articles published in the top four journals for each year. In the period 1936–2021, there was a rise in the number of authors publishing papers in the top four journals. The percentage of women authors is just 0.10 in 1936, and there is only one female for every nine authors. The percentage of women in 2021 is 0.40, and four women out of every ten authors are women. Figure  3 reveals that female researchers are increasingly publishing articles in leading marketing journals. By comparing the trend of female authors in the top four marketing journals between 1936 and 2021, we find that the proportion of female authors has grown. But in general, the number of female authors published in the top four marketing journals each year is still less than that of male authors. Consistent with previous studies, our study proves that gender differences between men and women still exist in marketing.

Percentage of female authors

The annual trend for the percentage of AFFA

We look at the trend in the percentage of AFFA. As a result, for each year, we calculate the percentage of AFFA among all authors who published articles in the top four journals. There is an increase in the annual trend for the percentage of the article with a female first author (AFFA) in the top four journals between 1936 and 2021. There was only one AFFA in every 20 articles in 1936, and the percentage of AFFA was 0.10. By 2021, the percentage of AFFA increased to 0.50, and there were 92 AFFA in 184 articles. Results show that, in marketing, more and more AFFA are published in top journals, as illustrated in Fig.  4 . The number of articles published in the top four marketing journals per year is lower for AFFA than for male first authors. Our study confirms the existence of gender differences in marketing, consistent with previous research. While our results show an increase in the annual trend for the percentage of AFFA in top marketing journals, these results are only indicative of the increase in female researchers’ research performance. It is interesting to compare the quality of the articles written by female researchers and the contribution made by female researchers. We further compare the research performances of AFFA.

Percentage of AFFA

Annual trend of the impact of AFFA

From 1936 to 2021, we compare the impact of AFFA in the four top marketing journals. We calculate the percentage of the citations of AFFA among the citations of all articles in the top four journals yearly. There has been an increase in the impact of AFFA papers published in the four top journals between 1936 and 2021. In 1936, there was a 0.00 percent of AFFA among the sum citations of all articles. Accordingly, the impact of AFFA in the sum citations of all articles increase to 0.32 in 2021. According to the results, the impact of AFFA published in top journals in marketing is increasing, see Fig.  5 . Qualitatively, this result indicates that the quality of the impact of AFFA is improving. This indicates that female researchers are performing better in their research. In the four top marketing journals, AFFAs receive fewer citations than articles with male first authors each year. Our study again demonstrates that gender differences still exist in marketing, consistent with previous research.

Percentage of AFFA citations

Regression analysis

It is necessary to disambiguate the authors according to their names, affiliations, publications, etc. To better understand the observed gender differences in the research performance of AFFA, we use Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions in STATA 17 to detect the differences in research performance after other variables are added to the models.

Regression models

To explore the relationship between the articles’ impact and the author's gender, we estimate the following baseline model:

where i represents the article, and t represents the year. \({Impact}_{it}\) represents the research of article ( i ) in the year ( t ). \({Gender}_{it}\) is a dummy variable coded 1 for the female author and 0 for the male author. Our control variables are based on the variables we analyzed above. As the dependent variable in our data is compressed at 0 for some observations, we employ the Tobit model (Zhu et al., 2022 ).

To examine the mechanism for the articles’ impact, we use a modified version of Baron & Kenny’s ( 1986 ) three-step mediation test proposed by Zhao et al. ( 2010 ), in which the Sobel test is replaced by bootstrap (Zhu et al., 2022 ). To enhance the diversity of analytical methods, we also use the Monte Carlo method (Li et al., 2021 ; Selig & Preacher, 2008 ) with 50,000 bootstrapping samples. The mediation effect model consists of the following components:

where \({WS}_{it}\) is the writing style of the article of article ( i ) in the year ( t ).

Baseline results

Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3 in Table 4 report regression results where the dependent variable is impact. Model 1 includes only gender. Model 2 adds control variables at the author level, article level, journal level, and affiliate level. Model 3 adds all control variables and includes the year, journal publisher, and country fixed effects.

In Table 5 , the coefficient on gender is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that gender is negatively associated with impact. For example, the coefficient on gender in Model 3 equals -0.0583 ( p =− 0.035). There is a significant negative correlation between full-text length, reference, and impact. However, there is no significant correlation between other control variables and impact. Baseline results supported H1.

In the next step, we analyse writing style of the articles in order to explain the reasons for the differences in impact between male and female authors.

The mediating effect of the writing style

The dependent t-test indicated that articles with a male first author had a more positive writing style than those with a female first author (M female = 0.52, SD = 0.63 vs. M male = 0.89, SD = 0.66, t (5430) = 3.693, p = 0.000). H2 is supported.

The next step will be directly verifying the mediating role of WS. The estimation results for anxiety are reported in Table 6 . Column (1) shows that the coefficient on gender is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that gender is negatively associated with impact ( β = -0.0583, p = 0.035). H1 is supported again. Columns (2) indicate that the coefficient on gender is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that gender is negatively associated with WS ( β = − 0.0294, p = 0.079), and H2 is supported again. In column (3), gender also has a significantly negative relationship with impact with less coefficient ( β = − 0.0313, p = 0.051), and WS has a positive effect ( β = 0.0787, p = 0.0016) on impact. The mediation effect of WS is significant for the articles’ impact. H3 is supported.

We used the Monte Carlo method (Li et al., 2021 ; Selig & Preacher, 2008 ) with 50,000 bootstrapping samples, and results supported the mediating effect of WS on the relationship between author gender and research impact (estimate = − 0.75, 95% CI [− 0.0280, − 0.0082]). Results supported the mediating effect of WS. H3 is supported again.

Robustness check

As a means of further enhancing the stability of this paper’s findings, we conduct a set of robustness checks.

Alternative measurement of gender

Based on our hypothetical derivation, the percentage of female authors (0–100%) was used as a proxy measure of gender, taking into account the role of authors on other positions. We predicate that the lower the gender ratio (0–100%) in the author team, the greater the impact of the article.

We determine the percentage of female authors based on the count of all authors in each article, and the female percentage is calculated as follows:

where Female percentage is the index of the article i ’s female authors percentage, and Female authors is the count of female authors in the article i . Total authors is the total number of authors in the article i .

To explore the relationship between the articles’ impact and the author’s gender, we use the same models (1), but we use the female percentage as the independent variable.

Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3 in Table 7 report regression results where the dependent variable is impact. Model 1 includes only the female percentage. Model 2 adds control variables at the author level, article level, journal level, and affiliate level. Model 3 adds all control variables and includes the year, journal publisher, and country fixed effects.

In Table 7 , the coefficient on the female percentage is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that the female percentage is negatively associated with the impact. For example, the coefficient on gender in Model 3 equals − 0.802 (p = 0.008). There is a significant negative correlation between the full-text length, the reference, and the impact. However, there is no significant correlation between other control variables and the impact. Baseline results support H1 again.

In the next step, we analyse the writing style of the articles in order to explain the reasons for the differences in impact between male and female authors.

The next step will be directly verifying the mediating role of WS. The estimation results for anxiety are reported in Table 8 . Column (1) shows that the coefficient on gender is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that gender is negatively associated with impact ( β = − 0.802, p = 0.008). H1 is supported again. Columns (2) indicate that the coefficient on gender is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that gender is negatively associated with WS ( β = − 0.494, p = 0.027), and H2 is supported again. In column (3), gender also has a significantly negative relationship with impact with less coefficient ( β = − 0.579, p = 0.011), and WS has a negative effect ( β =− 0.494, p = 0.027) on impact. The mediation effect of WS is significant for the articles’ impact. H3 is supported.

We used the Monte Carlo method (Li et al., 2021 ; Selig & Preacher, 2008 ) with 50,000 bootstrapping samples, and results supported the mediating effect of WS on the relationship between author gender and research impact (estimate = − 0.11, 95% CI [− 0.1201, − 0.0562]). Results supported the mediating effect of WS. H3 is supported again.

The moderating of masculinity and femininity

A lesser-known form of cultural bias called masculine defaults must be recognized to understand and remedy women’s underrepresentation in majority-male fields and occupations (Cheryan & Markus, 2020 ).

Masculinity and femininity oppose ego goals with social goals. While masculinity is characterized by competition, achievement, assertiveness, and success, femininity relates to cooperation, helping others, sharing, empathy, and solidarity. A feminist culture emphasizes modesty and subtlety, while a masculine culture emphasizes selfishness and competition (Hofstede, 2001 ). Regarded masculinity and femininity (Hofstede, 2001 ), we propose that masculinity and femininity influence the article’s impact. According to our conclusions, we predict that there is a significant difference between the impact of articles with different gender authors in the context of feminist culture and that of masculinist culture. The impact of articles with first authors from a feminine country is lower than that of articles with first authors from a masculine country.

Using a common approach to verification mediation through manipulation of conditioning in psychology and management (Fishbach et al., 2006 ; Huang et al., 2017 ; Salerno et al., 2019 ; Woolley & Risen, 2021 ; Yani-de-Soriano et al., 2019 ), people’s attitudes or behaviours are observed to change accordingly by affecting conditions related to psychological mechanisms using natural or experimental stimuli. A psychological mechanism is then indirectly validated. If our proposed psychological mechanism for writing style holds, then our prediction will be true. H1, H2, and H3 are supported.

Determining a researcher’s affiliation’s country

Using the author’s e-mail address, we acquired each researcher’s affiliation list and extracted corresponding country information. To determine the researcher’s affiliation country of origin where the institution is located, we adopt the method used by (Boekhout et al., 2021 ; Shang et al., 2022 ). Three steps were taken: (1) For researchers with affiliations from only one country, the country is marked as the researcher's country of origin. (2) For a researcher with affiliations from more than one country, if the country most often associated with the researcher in their publications coincided with the country associated with the researcher in their first publication, then this country is considered the researcher's country of origin. Otherwise, we regard the evidence as insufficient to determine a single country of origin (Shang et al., 2022 ). (3) Referring to Hofstede Insight, Footnote 10 we calculate the masculinity score for each country.

To explore the relationship between articles’ impact and masculinity scores for affiliates, we use the same models (1), but we use the masculinity scores (masculinity scores for the country of the author’s masculinity) as the independent variable.

Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3 in Table 10 report regression results where the dependent variable is impact. Model 1 includes only masculinity scores. Model 2 adds control variables at the author level, article level, journal level, and affiliate level. Model 3 adds all control variables and includes the year, journal publisher, and country fixed effects.

In Table 9 , the coefficient on the masculinity score is positive and significant across all three models, suggesting that the masculinity score is positively associated with impact. For example, the coefficient on gender in Model 3 equals 0.101 ( p = 0.031). There is a significant negative correlation between abstract, full-text length, reference, and impact. However, there is no significant correlation between other control variables and impact. Baseline results support H1.

In the next step, we analyse the writing style of the articles in order to explain this effect.

The dependent t-test indicated that articles with a first author from high masculinity country (masculinity scores > 50) had a more impact than those with a first author from low masculinity country (masculinity scores < 50) (M low masculinity scores = 0.82, SD = 0.63 vs. M high masculinity scores = 0.89, SD = 0.66, t (5430) = 3.693, p = 0.000). H1 is supported. The dependent t-test indicated that articles with a first author from high masculinity country have a more positive writing style than those with first author from low masculinity country (M low masculinity scores = 1.42, SD = 0.63 vs. M high masculinity scores = 2.76, SD = 0.66, t (5430) = 5.693, p = 0.000). H2 is supported.

The next step will be directly verifying the mediating role of WS. The estimation results for anxiety are reported in Table 10 . Column (1) shows that the coefficient on masculinity scores is positive and significant across all three models, suggesting that masculinity scores are positively associated with impact ( β = 0.101, p = 0.031). H1 is supported again. Column (2) indicates that the coefficient on masculinity scores is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that the masculinity score is positively associated with WS ( β = 0.117, p = 0.048), and H2 is supported again. In column (3), the masculinity score also has a significantly positive relationship with impact ( β = − 0.0831, p = 0.063), and WS has a positive effect ( β = 0.0747, p = 0.003) on impact. The mediation effect of WS is significant. H3 is supported.

We use the Monte Carlo method (Li et al., 2021 ; Selig & Preacher, 2008 ) with 50,000 bootstrapping samples, and results support the mediating effect of WS on the relationship between author masculinity scores and research impact (estimate = 0.14, 95% CI [1.0280, 1.7102]). Results support the mediating effect of WS. H3 is supported again.

Alternative analysis of the positive writing style

Several studies use a small list of predefined positive/negative words to examine the linguistic positivity bias (Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ; Vinkers et al., 2015 ; Weidmann et al., 2018 ). Following Lerchenmueller et al., ( 2019 ), we explore gender differences in the use of each of these 25 positive words that are used in life science (we show this all 25 positive words in the supplementary materials).

Percentage calculation of these 25 positive words

There is no doubt that titles and abstracts are among the most important text in research papers since readers often use this information to determine which articles deserve further investigation (Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ). We focus on the frequency of these 25 positive words that are used in all papers’ abstracts or titles. To ensure that all data are full and available, the corpus consists of 5,431 research articles (see Table 5 for the descriptive statistics).

To determine whether men and women differ in the positive presentation of their research, we use the percentage of these 25 positive words ( Positive words ) based on the count of words in each article. Due to the right-skewed nature of the data, this research transforms the data by taking the logarithm. The Positive words are calculated as follows:

where Positive words is the index of the article i ’s percentage of these 25 positive words, and Positive words is the count of these 25 positive keywords in the abstract or title of the article i . Total Words is the total number of words in the abstract or the title of the article i .

The mediating effect of positive words

To explore the relationship between the articles’ impact and the author's gender, we use the same models (2–4), but we use positive words as the mediator.

The dependent t-test indicated that articles with a male first author had a greater impact than those with a female first author (M female = 0.78, SD = 0.45 vs. M male = 0.91, SD = 0.71, t (5430) = 4.527, p = 0.000). H1 is supported. The dependent t-test indicated that articles with a male first author use more positive words than those with a female first author (M female = 1.26, SD = 0.69 vs. M male = 1.38, SD = 0.45, t (5430) = 3.693, p = 0.000). H2 is supported.

The next step will be directly verifying the mediating role of Positive words . The estimation results for anxiety are reported in Table 11 . Column (1) shows that the coefficient of gender is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that gender is negatively associated with the impact ( β = − 0.0583, p = 0.035). H1 is supported again. Columns (2) indicate that the coefficient on gender is negative and significant across all three models, suggesting that gender is negatively associated with Positive words ( β = − 0.0798, p = 0.076), and H2 is supported again. In column (3), gender also has a significantly negative relationship with impact with less coefficient ( β = − 0.0598, p = 0.018), and Positive words has a positive effect ( β = 0.186, p = 0.000) on impact. The mediation effect of Positive words is significant for the articles’ impact. H3 is supported.

We used the Monte Carlo method (Li et al., 2021 ; Selig & Preacher, 2008 ) with 50,000 bootstrapping samples, and results supported the mediating effect of Positive words on the relationship between author gender and research impact (estimate = − 0.88, 95% CI [− 0.0280, − 0.0102]). Results supported the mediating effect of Positive words . H3 is supported again.

In order to address gender disparities and improve women’s status, the UN proposes promoting “gender equality” as one of the SDGs. This study is piqued by an aim to underpin current global efforts to promote gender diversity in studies, which matters for the achievement of gender equality in research and society.

An analysis of the 86 year 9820 articles from the top four leading journals in marketing from 1936 to 2021 is presented in this study. Our conclusions are as follows. We draw four main conclusions from our analysis. Firstly, we find that female authors have an increasing academic status in marketing, as evidenced by their number, publications, and influence. However, there are still gender differences between men and women, which is in line with previous research (Elsevier, 2017 ; Huang et al., 2020 ; Lariviere et al., 2013 ). Secondly, by combining the study of writing style and assertiveness, we find that articles with female first authors have a more negative language style than those with male first authors. In addition, the positive writing style of the articles explains the gender differences in research performance. Thirdly, in the robustness check, we find that masculinist and feminist cultural traits moderate the effect. Compared to the articles whose first authors originate from feminist culture emphasizing modesty, the articles whose first authors originate from masculinist culture emphasizing competition have a greater impact.

Theoretical contributions

We make three contributions to the literature in this paper. Firstly, focusing on the top four marketing journals, we find that although female scholars are becoming more academically prominent, gender differences between men and women still exist. Previous studies have focused on STEM and medicine (Elsevier, 2017 ; Huang et al., 2020 ; van Arensbergen et al., 2012 ), and we complement the study of gender differences in research performance in marketing.

Furthermore, we explain the differences between male and female scholars on research performance by combining studies on confidence and writing style. On the one hand, these studies typically consider only descriptive variables such as age, country, institution, productivity, etc. (Lopez & Pereira, 2021 ; Myers et al., 2020 ; Restrepo et al., 2021 ). In this paper, we discuss the writing style and promote research in this area. On the other hand, previous studies have failed to investigate the underlying mechanisms of gender differences in research performance (Fox & Paine, 2019 ; Horbach et al., 2022 ), and we accounted for gender differences by examining the writing style.

Additionally, previous research on research performance differences has rarely focused on cultural differences (Cheryan & Markus, 2020 ; Khosrowjerdi & Bornmann, 2021 ). In a robustness check, we find the effects are moderated by the culture of masculinism and feminism. The authors’ articles have a greater impact in a masculinist culture than in a feminist culture. However, we find a correlation between Hofstede’s masculinity and femininity cultural dimension and research performance. We contribute to the study of research performance and cultural differences, but it needs to be further investigated.

Finally, we contribute to the method of analyzing writing style. The latest studies resort to larger dictionaries and lexicons to tackle the limitation of the small list of positive and negative words (Bordignon et al., 2021 ; Holtz et al., 2017 ; Vinkers et al., 2015 ; Wen & Lei, 2022a ). We use advanced sentiment analysis techniques (Min et al., 2021 ). Consistent with Min et al. ( 2021 ) in organizational behavior, we also find that fine-tuning BERT enhanced the extraordinary understanding of the relationship between words and BERT’s ability to understand the context of the original sentence in marketing. We share the data, code, and stimuli at OSF: https://osf.io/bw8gx/ . This article uses the latest deep learning algorithm to promote the research of big data analysis methods in marketing research and provides method guidelines and references for future research on the writing style of the article.

Managerial implications

The findings of this study are practical in nature. To achieve gender equality, academics must put forth a concerted effort. We find that, despite the persisting gaps in performance between men and women, the academic status of women has significantly improved. Based on these results, we offer theoretical insights to reduce gender differences. Despite the gender differences that have been identified by studies, we propose a method to boost the research performance of women researchers. Women can be more confident and active in writing articles, which helps increase the article's impact.

But it should be more cautious about the managerial implications (Cao et al., 2021 ; Millar et al., 2019 ; Yuan & Yao, 2022 ). Research is based on scientific evidence and rigorous logic to seek truth and facts. The best way to publish a paper with high impact is to improve the quality of this research. Our findings encourage authors to collaborate and express more actively while maintaining scientific rigor and accuracy.

Limitations and future research

In spite of the fact that all of our research hypotheses are confirmed, there are still some limitations to our study with robustness. First, we use the gender of the first author to represent the gender attribute of a paper (Decullier & Maisonneuve, 2021 ; Jemielniak et al., 2022 ; Liu et al., 2022 ; Nguyen et al., 2021 ; Thelwall & Maflahi, 2022 ; Thelwall & Mas-Bleda, 2020 ; Thelwall et al., 2019 ; Thelwall, 2018 , 2020a , 2020b ), a set of robustness check improve the robustness of findings. But it should be noted that a manuscript has also been edited/revised by other authors before it is submitted and published. That is, the writing style of a manuscript is not only dependent on or determined by its first author, but also most likely by other authors. There is also a need to consider the contribution and the impact of the authors in other positions in the article, such as the last authors (Andersen et al., 2020 ; Lerchenmueller et al., 2019 ; Sebo & Clair, 2022 ), corresponding authors (Edwards et al., 2018 ; Fox & Paine, 2019 ), senior authors (Polanco et al., 2020 ; Powell et al., 2022 ), solo authors (Nunkoo et al., 2020 ), middle authors, and mentee authors (Lopez-Padilla et al., 2021 ), co-first, senior, and co-senior authors (DeFilippis et al., 2021 ). Based on the foregoing point, we suggest more research needs to pay attention to this point in future research.

Moreover, although our research demonstrates that a positive writing style can have a positive impact on an article's impact, we ignore its negative “backfire”. It is detrimental to incorporate language associated with self-promotion and aggrandization into scientific writing (Morris et al., 2021 ). Our study aims to explain gender differences in academic performance from the perspective of the writing style, and we do not examine this negative “backfire”. Future research should, however, explore the limits and possible inflection points of the effects of the positive writing style. This might help to rectify the problem.

Besides, the correlation between positive words and research performance may be affected by other factors, such as an individual’s race (Palomo et al., 2017 ). The article’s unstructured data, in addition to the positive words, gives us additional information, such as the topic, the methodology, the subject, etc. This study is not able to investigate these factors due to the length of the article and the scope of our research. We intend to combine our findings with other databases to investigate these factors in the future.

Finally, we focus exclusively on marketing. To generalize our findings to other scientific fields, future studies should examine more journals in different fields of study. Meanwhile, please note that the articles used for this study are those published in leading journals with high scientific quality. Further research can determine whether this effect applies to general journals.

These four journals were founded in 1936 (JM), 1964 (JMR), 1974 (JCR), 1982 (MS).

The data of articles in 2021 were collected on October 16, 2021, when data collection was completed. This issue will not be repeated below.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the editor, the editorial assistant, and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. The authors thank Maikun Li, Nibing Zhu, Kexin Wu, and Shuai Jin for their assistance in this paper. The authors gratefully acknowledge the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (projects 72202149, 71672063 and 72072065), the grant from the Major Program of the National Social Science Fund Projects (project 19ZDA104), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (project 2022ZY-SX004) for financial support. The computation is completed in the HPC Platform of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

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Gender differences in academic performance of students studying Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects at the University of Ghana

Charlotte wrigley-asante.

1 Department of Geography and Resource Development/Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana

Charles Godfred Ackah

2 Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana

Louis Kusi Frimpong

3 Department of Geography and Earth Science, University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Somanya, Ghana

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Using a mixed-methods research design, this study compares academic performance of males and females studying STEM subjects or courses at the university level with that of the senior high school level performance. The factors contributing to the gender differences in academic performance at the two levels of the educational ladder were also explored. Overall, the results show that the academic performance of males was better than females at the senior high school level, whilst at the tertiary level, the academic performance of females appeared to have improved relative to that of males. Whilst gender stereotypes contributed greatly to differences in academic performance at the high school level, factors such as teaching methodologies and styles, motivation and support from parents, and advocacy campaigns on women’s empowerment accounted for the improved academic performance of females at the tertiary levels. On the other hand, males’ engagements in extra-curricular activities and other economic ventures, which are also linked to broader socio-economic influences such as economic hardship, financial constraints, and gendered ideologies tend to affect the academic performance of males at that level. We recommend that whilst emphasis is placed on getting more females in STEM disciplines and careers, it is equally important to focus on males. This requires continuous education and sensitisation of gender stereotypes and policy measures to sustain both males and females in STEM for overall national development.

Introduction

Gender differences in academic performance have engaged the attention of scholars for some time now (see Hung et al. 2012 ; Jackman and Morrain-Webb 2019 ; Morita et al. 2016 ; Sparks-Wallace 2007 ). Indeed, males in the past have had a higher enrolment in STEM subjects at the tertiary levels of education compared to females, and their overall academic performance was rated higher than females (Ullah and Ullah 2019 ). This situation often translated into employment opportunities for males in science and engineering professions, whilst also allowing them to occupy high-ranking positions in these professions (Maltese and Cooper 2017 ).

According to Sparks-Wallace ( 2007 ), males’ comparative advantage when it comes to academic performance in time past reinforced the notion of males’ intellectual superiority over females and often disregarded the structural impediments and stereotypes that inhibited females’ academic abilities, especially in the sciences. Recent studies in the developed world have shown a reversal in academic performance between males and females, with females outperforming males in almost all disciplines at various levels of the educational ladder (see Grant and Behrman 2010 ; Tshabalala and Ncube 2016 ; Morita et al. 2016 ; Perez-Felkner et al. 2012 ; Workman and Heyder 2020 ). Workman and Heyder ( 2020 ) argue that females seem to do better than males in language and the arts, as well in the natural sciences, despite the latter being a traditional area of male dominance. You and Sharkey ( 2012 ) further note that females improved academic performance at elementary and higher levels of education is not because they are enrolling in easier classes or courses, but rather reflects the competencies they possess in all educational fields.

Recent studies in developing countries have also shown marked improvement in female academic performance (Ullah and Ullah 2019 ), and this is against the backdrop of persistent challenges with access to education, and under-representation in STEM programmes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Further, the results from these studies challenge the notion that males perform better and are fit for science and maths subjects than females (Workman and Heyder 2020 ).

Contrary to recent studies from other parts of the world pointing to the improved academic performance of females, the majority of the studies conducted in Ghana show that males outperform females, especially in mathematics and science subjects (see Kyei and Benjamin 2011 ; Oppong 2011 ; Armah et al. 2021 ). Whilst the above studies from Ghana have been useful, and justify the need to pay attention to female students and provide them with the necessary support to enhance their studies in mathematics and science-related subjects, there are relatively unexplored areas that require research attention to better understand academic performance between males and females studying STEM educational programmes in Ghana. First, extant studies on academic performance between male and female students have focussed largely on performances at the high school levels, with little attention given to academic performance between male and female students at the university or tertiary levels. Focus on the tertiary level is important because at that stage there is a clear path towards a career that one may want to pursue and therefore it is expected that students will make much effort to excel academically at this level (Santiago et al. 2008 ). Second, comparative studies on the academic performance of male and female students at different stages of their education ladder are limited. Such a study is important given that academic performance does change as one progresses in their education (Walberg 2010 ; Johnson 2014 ).

Taking cognizance of these gaps, this study seeks to assess the academic performance of male and female university students studying STEM programmes and compare their performance to the STEM subjects or courses that they studied at the senior high school level. These subjects include core mathematics, integrated science, biology, physics, chemistry, and elective (advance) mathematics. The contributory factors explaining the gender differences, if there are, are also explored. Three research objectives are addressed in this study:

• To compare the academic performance of the STEM subjects or courses that male and female students pursued during their high school level education;
• To compare changes in academic performance in the STEM subjects or courses that male and female students pursue at the tertiary level;
• To explore factors accounting for the changes (if there are) in academic performance in the STEM subjects or courses that male and female students pursue at both the high school and tertiary levels.

After the introduction, we present some theoretical explanations of gender and academic performance. We then examine the research context and the methodology, followed by a discussion of the research findings. The final section draws some conclusions and policy recommendations.

Academic performance assessment in the Ghanaian context

Academic performance of students gives educational and vocational institutions the opportunity to determine whether the educational curriculum is having the desired impact on students in terms of teaching and learning. It also gives some indication of how well teachers and students have accomplished their targeted educational goals (Arshad et al. 2015 ; Caballero et al. 2007 ). Narad and Abdullah ( 2016 ) define academic performance as an evaluation of the knowledge students have acquired at school over a certain period of time. According to Chilca ( 2017 ) it is the level of knowledge acquired in a subject area and it is usually measured by grades obtained after an assessment.

Measures of academic performance involve continuous assessment and examination results or outcomes. Other measures used in measuring academic performance include class exercise, mock tests, field examinations, and external examinations. Depending on the level in the educational ladder, a combination of these measures is often used to test students' academic performance (Noemy et al. 2017 ). In most higher or secondary level education, assessment of academic performance is often a way of determining whether students who undertake an examination are qualified to enter the tertiary level. These are typically referred to as external examinations, and in order to be admitted to tertiary institutions, students' examination results or grades must reach the threshold standards specified by those institutions (Kis 2005 ). At the tertiary level, academic performance measured by grade point averages determines the depth of subject knowledge attained and the likelihood that a student would graduate with honours. Academic performance, for all intents and purposes, provides a good indication of the educational objectives attained following a learning process (Arshad et al. 2015 ).

The structure of Ghana's educational system is 6 + 3 + 3 + 4/3, beginning with primary school and continuing through to undergraduate study (NUFFIC 2015 ). This is equivalent to six years of primary education, three years of junior high school, and three years of senior high school, followed by four years of undergraduate study or three years of other higher level of study (such as a Higher National Diploma (HND), a certificate in nursing or midwifery, or a certificate in teacher preparation). Postgraduate education normally includes 1 or 2 years of a master's degree programme and a minimum of three years of a Ph.D.

The high school structure in Ghana includes junior high and senior high school. Children completing junior high school and expected to move to senior high school are required to write a national examination known as the basic education certificate examination (BECE). Amongst academic subjects that students are examined on in the BECE include core subjects such as English, mathematics, social studies, and integrated science. Other additional subjects include basic design and technology, religious and moral education, French, and information communication technology (ICT). At the senior high school level, students are expected to choose a total of four (4) electives that fall in either the sciences, humanities, business, agriculture or technical education. The elective subjects for science students at the senior high school are biology, physics, chemistry, and elective (advanced) mathematics. In addition to the four electives, all students are expected to take four additional core subjects which include English, basic mathematics, integrated science, and social studies. At the end of the three-year senior high school programme, students are expected to sit for an external examination known West African Senior School Certificate (WASSCE).

Admission to higher education, specifically undergraduate study depends on the total aggregate score in the WASSCE examination. For most Universities such as the University of Ghana, prospective undergraduate students are expected to obtain a maximum aggregate score of 24, or grades A1 to C6 in at least three core subjects and three elective subjects whose aggregate score does not exceed 36. Table ​ Table1 1 shows the WASSCE grades and their interpretation.

WASSCE grading system and description

(NUFFIC 2015 )

Students who gain admission to the University with WASSCE begin at the first year or level 100. For each year, students undergo two semesters of education or training in their areas of specialisation. At the end of each semester, students are required to undertake end of semester examination and are assessed based on the University assessment system. This, however, varies by University. At the University of Ghana, a grade point average (GPA) is used and ranges from 0 to 4. Table ​ Table2 2 shows the interpretation of grades used for students' assessment.

University of Ghana grading system and description

Source https://www.ug.edu.gh/aqau/sites/aqau/files/documents/DEFINITION%20OF%20GRADES%20AND%20GRADE%20POINTS-UG.pdf

With this background of academic assessment in Ghana at both the secondary and tertiary levels, the next section provides some theoretical basis on academic performances from the gender perspective.

Gender and academic performance: some theoretical perspectives

The literature highlights several theoretical explanations in the differences in academic performance of males and females. This paper highlights some perspectives that provide the basis for understanding the factors influencing the performance levels of males and females studying STEM subjects in Ghana.

Individual behavioural or personality traits and academic performance

Studies on academic performance in higher education have shown that personality traits play an important role in academic performance outcomes (Conrad and Petry 2012 ; Murray et al. 2014 ; Furnham and Moutafi 2012 ; DiPrete and Jennings 2012 ). Personality traits involve attitudes, behaviours, and lifestyle that has become part of an individual. These traits are formed over time through the interaction of temperament, character, and environment (Roberts et al. 2013 ). A personality trait identified to have a strong influence on academic performance is conscientiousness (see Conrad and Petry 2012 ). Defining conscientiousness is difficult, however, it encapsulates features such as industriousness and orderliness (Keiser et al. 2016 ; DeYoung et al. 2007 ). Conscientious people are predisposed to being diligent, purposeful, and organised (Witt et al. 2002 ). Studies have shown that there are gender differences in conscientiousness (see Schmitt et al. 2008 ; Kling et al. 2013 ; Keiser et al. 2016 ), with female students found to be more conscientious than their male counterparts. Pryer et al. ( 2009 ) argue that this has translated into an edge for female students who seem to be performing better than male students in the arts and sciences. In their study, Pryer et al. ( 2009 ) found that females study for more hours than males, ask more questions than males in class and seek feedback on assignments than males. This is corroborated by Lam et al. ( 2012 ) who argues that females’ achievement in academic performance is attributed to the greater effort they put into their studies compared to males. In the opinion of DiPrete and Jennings ( 2012 ), exerting greater efforts increases the learning process, improves attitude towards education, and increases academic performance. Thus, being conscientious or exerting greater efforts is important in good habit formation and increases one’s expectation in school, and is a sin-qua-non for higher academic performance.

The self-concept and academic performance

In addition to conscientiousness and effort, scholars have also put forward the argument of academic self-concept. Self-concept involves how people perceive themselves in terms of their behaviour, abilities, and unique characteristics (Huitt 2011 ). Academic self-concept involves peoples’ perception about their academic abilities or achievement in school (Erdogan and Sengul 2014 ; Kvedere 2014 ,). If students have a positive self-concept then it means they will approach their academic work with more seriousness, they are likely to make decisions that will positively influence their academic performance, and they are likely to increase their confidence in their abilities (Kvedere 2014 ). Self-concept is a continuous development, and therefore as people become aware of their abilities, they are likely to maintain or improve such abilities. In this respect, awareness of high academic self-concept will be a motivating factor to improve one’s academic performance. Studies have shown that academic self-concept does increase academic performance (see Ghazvini et al. 2011 ; Reyes 1984 ; Elbaum and Vaughn. 2001 ), but it is not clear whether there are differences between males and females on self-concept and how this translates into different academic performance.

Gender notions, identity, and stereotypes

Another issue of significance to academic performance and achievement is gender identity. According to Downey and Vogt Yuan ( 2005 ) certain traits and practices linked to or contrasted with masculinity or femininity can have a positive or negative impact on academic performance on both sexes. For instance, some studies have found that masculine stereotypes portray boys as dominant, competitive, and active, whilst girls are portrayed as conciliatory (Francis 2000 ; Legewie and DiPrete 2012 ). This attitude is likely to be an incentive for males to perform better knowing that they have an edge over females. On the other hand, it can be a challenge for females as they have to exert greater effort to bridge the gap between themselves and their male counterparts. Another stereotypical gender identity is that males are naturally gifted than females and as such females are expected to put in more effort in learning than males. These stereotypical gender identities if accepted and reinforced can negatively affect the academic performance of the two sexes.

Contextual/broader level influences

Several studies show that association with peer groups has an influential role on the academic performance of male and female students (Lashbrook 2000 ; Steinberg 2005 ; Adeyemi et al. 2019 ). In the opinion of Burke and Sass ( 2013 ), the effects of peers on student academic achievement can be greater than their teachers and school. Legewie and DiPrete ( 2012 ) explain that peers' influence is a result of the desire to belong to and to fit in a group. Cheng ( 2020 ) argues that association with peers and peer groups shapes a person's attitude, perception, and motivation because one has to conform to the subculture mostly identified with these peer groups. Adeyemi et al. ( 2019 ) explains that the effect of peer groups can have either positive or negative effects on the academic performance of male and female students depending on the subculture of the group. According to Legewie and DiPrete ( 2012 ), one of the subcultures of male peer groups which often have a negative effect on academic performance is the prioritisation of other activities and conducts over academic work.

Another contextual factor identified to have a significant impact on the academic performance of male and female students is economic hardship or financial constraints. Khan ( 2014 ), argues that the cost of education increases as one progresses through the academic ladder and as such places a huge burden on parents and family members. Khan ( 2014 ) notes that the difficulties in meeting financial obligations by parents put emotional and psychological stress on their wards and often lead to low academic performance or in the worst-case discontinuance of the education of their wards. Crage and Fairchild ( 2007 ) also argue that some students often end up doing other economic activities to meet the cost of their education. In a study conducted by Jha and Kelleher ( 2006 ) they found that boys' underperformance in school was due to the socio-economic and occupational practices they were engaged in which consequently reduced the amount of time needed to engage in academic work. Similarly, observations have been reported in the Philippines and Thailand concerning male academic underperformance (Jha et al. 2012 ).

Research methodology

Data used for this paper came from a pilot study that explored the nexus between academic programme choices, academic performance, and career aspirations of male and female students reading STEM-related programmes at the University of Ghana. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was used. This involved the collection and analysis of quantitative data at an initial stage of the research, followed by the collection and analysis of qualitative data at the second stage (Creswell 2014 ). This research design was appropriate in the context of this study because the quantitative data allowed the researchers to first assess differences in academic performance between male and female students, whilst the qualitative data which was collected and analysed subsequently was used to explain the observations.

Quantitative methods

The survey data was collected in 2020, using an online-based questionnaire survey developed using Google forms. This was deemed appropriate due to the ease of reaching the target population (as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic), the cost-effectiveness of the method, tracking of responses in real time, and assessment of the pattern of responses. The University of Ghana was conveniently sampled as the study area for this study. Two reasons informed this. First, it is the first public university in the country and has long-established STEM programmes with high enrolment for both sexes over the years. Second, the intent was to unravel what pertains at the University of Ghana with regard to gender differences in academic performance in STEM programmes, and then based on that broaden the scope to include other public universities. In view of this, students from five STEM departments (engineering, mathematics, statistics and actuarial science, biological sciences, and computer science) at the University of Ghana formed the target population for the sample survey. Permission was sought from the Dean and heads of the respective departments before carrying out the online survey. In all, 252 students responded to the survey, out of which 54% were males and 46% were females. Further, 82% were between the ages of 20–25 years, with 18% below 20 years.

On the survey instrument, there was a statement explaining the aim of the study, background information about the study, and assurance of confidentiality of the survey respondents. For this study, questions extracted from the survey data included demographic background of respondents, reported grades obtained in six subjects in the WASSCE exams, assessment of academic performance since enrolling in the University of Ghana, and current cumulative grade point average (CGPA).

The dataset were analysed using non-parametric tests such as chi-square test and Mann–Whitney U test. Chi-square test was used to ascertain whether there was a significant difference between male and female students grades obtained in the senior high school final examination on six subjects (i.e. core mathematics, integrated science, biology, physics, chemistry, and elective mathematics). Further, a chi-square test was used to assess the perceived differences in academic performance between male and female students pursuing STEM programmes at the University of Ghana. A Mann–Whitney U test was also used to assess differences in cumulative grade point average (CGPA) scores between male and female students pursuing STEM programmes at the University of Ghana. The Mann–Whitney U test, which is a non-parametric test was used because the CGPA scores were not normally distributed. Indeed, a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test performed showed that the cases did not follow a normal distribution ( D (251) = 0.000, p  > 0.005).

Qualitative methods

The qualitative data was gathered from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FDGs) with selected students who participated in the online survey. 1 Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with students conveniently sampled from the pool of respondents from the online survey. Ten (10) were males and the other 10 were females. In addition, three focus group discussions were held: all male, all female, and one mixed group. The in-depth interviews and FGDs provided deeper insights into motivations in studying and pursuing STEM courses and careers, the factors that influence academic performance levels at both the secondary and tertiary levels, and the gender differences. The main themes that were identified whilst analysing the interview transcripts include the differences in performance levels in specific STEM-related subjects at the secondary level and the reasons for the differences, the gender differences in the performance at the tertiary level, and the factors that were likely to influence these, from the respondents' perspectives. Statements or quotes were categorised under the themes and used in the discussion of the results together with the survey data.

Results and discussion

Performance assessment at senior secondary/high school level.

Table ​ Table3 3 is a cross-tabulation between grades obtained in six science subjects in the WASSCE exams and the sex of respondents. Comparing results for core mathematics between male and female students, the results show that 35.6% of males had A1, whilst 29.7% of females had A1. Approximately 94.7% of males obtained grades between A1 and B3, whilst for females this was 87.33%. Even though the percentage share of males who obtained between A1 and B3 were more than the percentage share of females, the chi-square test shows that there is no statistically significant difference between males and females regarding grades obtained in core mathematics. Essentially, the difference in grades is not so wide to make a case that being a male or a female played a significant role in the grades obtained in core mathematics. Even though this finding does support previous studies that show that male students do perform better than females in mathematics (see Kyei and Benjamin 2011 ; Oppong 2011 ), the non-significance of this finding indicates that the difference in performance in core mathematics between males and female students is not wide and that with support to females, there are prospects in closing in on this gap.

Assessment of grades obtained in WASSCE exams between male and female respondents

Regarding integrated science, the results showed that 40.1% of males obtained A1, whilst 33.6% of females obtained A1. Male respondents who obtained between A1 and B3 for integrated science were about 96.3%, whilst in the case of females, about 93.6% obtained similar grades. The result shows that the difference is not wide. Unsurprisingly, the chi-square test shows no significant difference between male and female students regarding grades obtained in integrated science. Essentially, both male and female students were at par, and therefore attribution of difference in grades is not due to sex differences.

The findings show that about 95.2% of male respondents compared to 88.2% of female respondents obtained grades between A1 and B3 in biology. In the case of elective mathematics, 83.9% of males compared to 79.8% of females obtain grades between A1 and B3. The chi-square tests show that the difference in biology and elective mathematics grades between male and female respondents are not statistically significant. Like the other subjects (i.e. core mathematics and integrated science), the difference reported for these two subjects (i.e. biology and elective mathematics) is not very wide between the two sexes. Even though the percentage share of male respondents who obtained A1 to B3 was more than the female respondents in the four subjects (i.e. core mathematics, integrated science, biology, and elective mathematics), they were too close to call, and thus we cannot say that males outperformed females in these four subjects.

In the case of physics, 3.6% of male respondents obtained A1, whilst 3.9% of female respondents obtained A1. The proportion of respondents who obtained grades between A1 and B3 for male respondents was about 78.4%, whilst that of female respondents was about 59.8%. The chi-square test shows a significant difference between male and female respondents in terms of grades obtained in physics. In essence, the difference was not close and thus, we can say that male respondents did appreciably better than females. Similarly, in chemistry, 89.3% of male respondents compared to 71.7% of female respondents obtained grades between A1 and B3. The Chi-square test shows a significant difference between the two sexes regarding grades obtained in chemistry. This shows that female students are lagging behind their male counterparts in physics and chemistry in particular, and some of the factors explaining this trend have been discussed in subsequent sections.

Academic performance assessment at tertiary level

This section of the paper presents results on differences in academic performance of male and female respondents at the tertiary level. Two statistical tests were used and include Mann Whitney U test (Table ​ (Table4) 4 ) and chi-square test (Table ​ (Table5). 5 ). Table ​ Table4 4 shows differences in CGPA scores between male and female respondents. The test statistic reported in Table ​ Table4 4 shows that the mean rank CGPA for male and female respondents were not significantly different. This can be interpreted to mean that even though in nominal terms the mean rank of CGPA for females was slightly higher than males, this is not a significant difference. In essence both groups are almost at par, despite the slight edge for females.

Mean rank differences in CGPA test scores for male and female students

Perceived academic performance of male and female respondents

Table ​ Table5 5 is a cross-tabulation of the sex of respondents and respondents’ subjective assessment of their academic performance since their enrolment in the University. The result shows that 29.5% of males compared to 18.9% of females opined that their academic performance was declining. Further, 21.2% of males as against 15.5% of females responded that their academic performance has remained the same. The result shows that 49.2% of males compared to 65.5% of females responded that their academic performance was improving. The result demonstrates that more females compared to males opined that their academic performance has improved. The chi-square test also shows a statistically significant difference between responses for males and that of females with regards to academic performance assessment. Essentially, the subjective assessment of academic performance suggests that females’ academic performance is improving compared to their male counterparts.

The results reported in Tables ​ Tables4 4 and ​ and5 5 are not contradictory. Rather, both results affirm in one way or the other that females are doing well. Female respondents’ subjective assessment of their academic performance indicates that they have improved, whilst their average CGPA score in nominal terms was higher than males, albeit the differences were not significant. Given that males have had the upper hand in academic performance at the high school level (see Table ​ Table3), 3 ), reported results from the two assessments (i.e. subjective assessment of academic performance and CGPA) suggest that females’ academic performance has improved. This result resonates with recent findings that show that female students’ performance in STEM subjects has improved remarkably (Workman and Heyder 2020 ).

In line with some of the theoretical perspectives, the next section highlights some of the factors that explains the performance levels of males and females at both the senior high school and tertiary levels.

Factors influencing academic performance at the senior high school level

Several factors explain the performance levels of males and females at both the senior high school and tertiary levels. Amongst others, these include the socialisation process and gender norms, nature of subject and learning styles and individual-level factors.

Socialisation and gendered perceptions

Whilst not ruling out the influential role of personality traits such as attitudes and behaviours of an individual on performance in a subject area, we found that some of the factors contributing to better performance of males as compared to females in certain STEM subjects particularly physics and chemistry, were centred around gender stereotypes and perceptions about science subjects in general. These stereotypes arise as a result of the socialisation process. The general view was that the gendered nature of society and how society is structured with females generally socialised not to take up perceived challenging tasks including STEM subjects in schools tend to have some negative impact on females as compared to males. For instance, some female students explained that STEM subjects are still considered as ‘ masculine subjects ’ amongst their peers and this perception creates a situation where females perceive these courses to be challenging and thus reduce their interest in the subjects resulting in lower performance levels as explained by a 21 year old female student:

“…right from the basic level, girls lack total interest in these core subjects because of the perception that they are difficult subjects. It appears the majority of girls are brought up with the idea that science is difficult and not necessarily for girls. This pushes many girls to move into more “softer subjects compared to males’’ because they feel they would perform better... even when it comes to choosing science subjects, many girls would opt for biology rather than physics or chemistry…so it’s all about the perception that science is for boys (21-year old female student)

Thus, the perception that science is the preserve of males (Workman and Heyder 2020 ) indirectly affect females’ interest and performance in the subject, especially at the senior high school level. It was explained that most females would opt for reading courses in the Arts rather than the science-oriented subjects. But even within the sciences, females would prefer biology to physics and chemistry since there is more reading in biology. In effect, females tend to be attracted to subjects that are perceived as less difficult and easily comprehensible. Again, discussions with informants revealed that the patriarchal nature of society where males are socialised to take up challenging tasks including subjects studied at school is an additional contributory factor. Males are expected to behave competitively and so they are more inclined to push and challenge themselves to pursue science subjects, which in turn reinforces these patriarchal ideologies as explained by these male respondents:

‘‘…all originate from how society has been structured and how we’ve been brought up. Males are expected to do well in certain subjects and females are also expected otherwise. I realised that some males do not necessarily like science but because of the perception that boys are expected to be intelligent, they put in a lot of effort to do these courses and end up performing better because they want to prove to their peers and society that they can do it…’’ (21 year old male student).

Similarly another male respondent noted:

…because of the perception that boys must succeed, they put in a lot of effort especially when exams is approaching …they become more aggressive with their studies because many boys feel hurt when girls beat them in exams and because they don’t want that, it drives many males to outperform females particularly in STEM related subjects (22 year old male student).

These notions as expressed point to the fact that gender ideologies and identities about males portray them as dominant and competitive as compared to females (Legewie and DiPrete 2012 ). These are inculcated in males’ right from the basic level, and pushes them to take up challenging tasks including ‘ perceived difficult subjects and work themselves out to outperform females’ as explained by a male student.

Gendered ideologies, teaching methods and styles

In the bid to encourage more girls to study science and pursue science careers, teachers generally play a major role in motivating females’ in-class and support them to excel in these STEM subjects (Wrigley-Asante et al. 2022 ). Whilst females are somehow ‘ pampered ’ by way of attention given to them, males more often than not do not receive such attention. The discussions revealed that in some cases females were provided with in-class notes and other teaching aids whilst males were challenged to study textbooks and often encouraged to study on their own. This could also be linked to some of the gender ideologies and perceptions that “ males should be able to do things on their own because they are males” as noted by one male respondent which somehow reflects in the teaching styles often used by teachers. This attitude towards males somehow pushes them to go beyond their boundaries and to develop strategies such as peer-learning discussion groups, which in-turn results in better performance. A male respondent explained the situation as follows:

“…I think the teachers’ pay particular attention to girls than boys…most at times the girls are encouraged and supported but the boys are told to study on their own, and because most boys also feel that they are [men] and have to succeed, they push hard to study on their own. In fact, most often we form study groups to discuss amongst ourselves and we go to the teachers, if need be, to explain the areas that we don’t understand. I think the teachers rather push us hard to study to make better grades…” (21 year old male student).

In effect, whilst encouraging and stirring up interest of females to take up science courses, teachers may be unconsciously challenging the males to go beyond what is being taught in class and to study on their own. This however, seem to impact positively on their performance in STEM subjects in general as males tend to support themselves in this context. This supports Cheng ( 2020 ) and Adeyemi et al. ( 2019 ) argument that peer groups can have either positive or negative effect on the academic performance of male and female students depending on the subculture of the group. It also shapes a person's attitude and motivation and impact on learning and performance. In this context, the subculture of the male peer group is to come together to support themselves in learning and understanding of the subjects which impacts positively on their academic performance. It also support the gender identity theoretical argument that academic achievement intersects with the conception of masculinity since it is reinforced by teachers and ends up as an incentive (Willis 1981).

Nature of subject and learning styles

Further, the nature of some STEM subjects (notably physics and chemistry) vis-a-vis the learning styles of males and females also affect performance levels, especially at the high school level. For instance, it was understood that both physics and chemistry (in particular) have certain principles and formulae which are fundamental. Males seem to challenge themselves and go a step further to learn these principles off-hand or memorise them, whilst many females would want to have a better understanding of these principles and sometimes the rationale before applying them. Whilst this may be a better learning style, it sometimes affects females academic performance in one way or the other as explained by a female respondent:

“…physics and chemistry in particular have formulas that one has to apply. While our male colleagues would accept everything as it is, most females would want to understand aformulae before applying…sometimes we girls tend to even challenge some of these and I believe that also affect our performance’’ (20 year old female student).

Whilst this may imply that there are differences in learning styles between males and females which also impacts on their performance levels, it is also embedded in the stereotypes surrounding STEM courses particularly on the part of females. This is one area that may require further research and explanations.

Individual-level factors

The respondents highlighted the fact that individual-level factors do influence academic performance levels for both females and males in addition to gender stereotypes. For instance, it was explained that students who perform well in class would want to maintain the status quo and would therefore put in extra effort to maintain their performance levels. Such individuals, most often would not want both their peers (whether male or female) to out-perform them so “they will go at all length to maintain their scores all the time to always stay at the top” as explained by one male respondent.

As noted by Conrad and Petry, ( 2012 ) and Murray et al, ( 2014 ), such personality traits play an important role in academic performance outcomes as it involves attitudes, behaviours, and lifestyle of that individual. In this context, such persons, most often males as explained in the FGDs, would want to maintain the status quo of always out-performing their peers. Such individuals may also possess positive self-concept and will approach their academic work with more seriousness (Ayodele 2011 ; Erdogan and Sengul 2014 ). This will continue to increase their confidence in their abilities (Kvedere 2014 ) and overall performance.

Factors contributing to performance at the tertiary level

As shown in Table ​ Table5, 5 , females compared to males opined that their academic performance has improved. Discussions with the students revealed that several factors contribute to the differences in the observed responses of males and females academic performance. These include the teaching style and methodology, economic factors vis-à-vis gendered ideologies, motivation, and self-efficacy.

Teaching style and methodology

A key factor accounting for females’ improved academic performance at the tertiary level was due to the teaching methodologies used at this level. These teaching methodologies allow students to explore, ask critical questions, analyse problems, and come up with one’s own ideas. This allows room for many females to explore, understand key challenging issues and proffer solutions based on their own understanding as explained by a 21 year old female:

“…I think studying at the tertiary level is different from the senior high school level… at this level, both males and females are encouraged to study on their own and come out with solutions and so it allows us [females] to explore better. This teaching method favours many females and helps improve on our academic performance. Most of the courses are more applied so we develop our own ideas and respond to issues based on our understanding...” (21 year old female)

The above assertion seem to be in line with Pryer et al. ( 2009 ) argument that female students seem to perform better than male students in the arts and sciences at the tertiary level ask more questions than males in class and seek feedback on assignment than males. This obviously allows them to express themselves better as compared to the high school level and a positive effect on overall performance.

Economic issues vis-à-vis gendered ideologies

The high unemployment rate and uncertainties in the job market came up as a major factor affecting academic performance in the sense that it is also linked to the issue of time management. The FGDs revealed that whilst females tend to spend more of their time effectively on their studies males were more likely to spend their time on extra-curricular activities such as seeking economic ventures, and exploring other job-related opportunities. Some also tend to engage themselves with part-time productive activities with the hope of being absorbed by such organisations immediately after school as explained by this male respondent:

“… these days it’s not easy to secure a job after school, there’s the fear that one will not be able to get a job because employers are looking out for particular skills which one can learn on the job…some of us [males]do part time jobs while in school so we can learn that skill as we move on. In the process, we spend time juggling between work and our studies. We are not able to put in that much efforts as compared to when we were in high school and this somehow affects our performance…” (22 year old male).

This narrative resonates with many of the male students and in line with Jha and Kelleher ( 2006 ) findings that boys underperformance in school is due to their socio-economic and occupational practices that they engage in which consequently reduced the amount of time needed to engage in academic work. It also shows that females tend to study for more hours than males (Pryer et al. 2009 ), Whilst male informants accepted the fact that these extra-curricular activities tend to affect their academic performance, they explained that it is to support themselves financially and to meet the cost of their education, a point which is corroborated by Craig and Fairchild ( 2007 ).

Whilst these are linked to the broader contextual and political economy issues, the discussion also revealed that they are embedded in the social ideology of perceptions about males and females. For instance, it was explained that some male students perceive themselves to be “breadwinners” in future and therefore have to be responsible even to their college ‘partners’. 2 This forces them to seek for alternative jobs in order to be financially secured so they could ‘ support themselves and their partners even whilst in school’ as explained by one male respondent.

In effect, gender ideologies imbibed as a result of the socialisation processes contributes to this perceptions and attitude amongst males, which in turn affect the time spent on their studies and overall performance.

Further, some also explained that parents do support females financially better than they do for males, thus they need to secure part-time jobs to support themselves. Subsequently, the engagement in economic ventures affect for their academic performance.

Another major factor for the improved performance of females is the education and sensitisation programmes undertaken over the years. This includes female empowerment programmes, and the awareness that science is not only for males but also for females particularly when one makes it to the tertiary level. The support received from parents and other role models and the advocacy campaigns provides some motivation for females at the tertiary level to perform better as explained:

“… at this level many of us girls are aware of what we want to do in life and therefore we become more focused. We also receive a lot of support from our parents and other women’s associations such as Women in Engineering (WiNE). They support us and motivate us to aspire to higher heights…” (20 year old female).

This also implies that motivation and self-efficacy plays an important role in all of these. Females thus tend to be more conscientious than their male counterparts (Pryer et al. 2009 ) at the tertiary level.

Concluding remarks

The aim of this paper was in three folds. First to compare academic performance between males and females in the STEM subjects or courses that they pursued during their high school level; to assess the performance in the STEM subjects or courses that male and female students pursue at the tertiary level and to explore the factors accounting for the changes (if there are) in the academic performances of males and females at both levels. The study proceeded from the premise that such comparative analysis of academic performances for male and female students at the different educational levels were limited especially in the Ghanaian context.

The results show that there are gender differences in the academic performance at the senior high school level for all six subjects, with much of the differences occurring in Chemistry and Physics subjects, where males performed better than females. However, we found that the gender performance gap in favour of males switches in favour of females by the time they get to the tertiary level. The qualitative interviews revealed that different factors may account for these differences. These include individual-level factors such as the perceptions about STEM subjects in general vis-a-vis the stereotypes surrounding them. These contribute to the lower performance of females as compared to males, particularly in Physics and Chemistry subjects at the senior high school level. Generally, these subjects are perceived as ‘male subjects’ and tend to influence attitude and approach in the learning styles of males and females. Again, the teaching methods and styles often used by teachers are somewhat influenced by these gendered ideologies, which rather play to the benefit of males and subsequently affect their overall performance.

Interestingly, the mean rank of CGPA for females was found to be bit higher than that of males at the tertiary level though the differences in the rank scores were not statistically significant. The chi-square test also shows a statistically significant difference between males and with regards to subjective assessment of academic performance, with majority of females indicating improved academic performance as compared to their male counterparts. We found that the teaching approach at this level which allows students to explore was favourable for females. Motivation and support from parents and the advocacy campaigns on women’s empowerment, all do have positive effects on females. On the other hand, whilst females tend to spend more of their time on studies, males often engage in extra-curricular activities and other economic ventures, which are also linked to wider broader and contextual level influences such as economic hardship or financial constraints as well as gendered ideologies. At this higher level, it appears that female students are more conscientious than their male colleagues as argued by Furnham and Moutafi 2012 and DiPrete and Jennings 2012 ) in the sense, females are more disciplined and committed to their studies as compared to males.

Whilst it is imperative to continue to encourage females to study STEM courses and pursue STEM field, it is equally important to develop policy measures to address males’ performance at the tertiary level. This should include sociocultural interventions especially intended to stimulate the motivation and interest of males lagging behind. We recommend that whilst emphasis is placed on getting more females in STEM disciplines and careers, it is also important to focus on the males. The chief aim must be to address the attitude of males towards substituting economic interest for academic interest at the tertiary level. This requires continuous education and sensitisation of the gender stereotypes and policy measures to sustain both males and females in STEM for overall national development.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Women and Science Chair, a Paris Dauphine-PSL University and its Foundation Chair, in partnership with Fondation l’Oréal, La Poste, Generali France, Safran and Talan. We would also like to thank all students who participated in the study.

Author contributions

CWA, CGA: conceptualization. CWA, LKF: data input and curation. CGA, LKF: formal analysis. CWA, LKF: literature review. CWA, LKF: methodology. CWA, CGA: supervision. CWA, LKF: initial draft. CWA, CGA, LKF: writing—review and editing.

Women and Science Chair, Paris Dauphine-PSL University and its Foundation Chair, in partnership with Fondation l’Oréal, La Poste, Generali France, Safran and Talan.

Data availability

Declarations.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This study is not verified or reviewed through any institutional review board.

Permission was sought from respondents as to whether they would like to participate in the study, and their participation was taken into consideration once they gave their consent.

Confirmation that all research was performed in accordance with relevant guidelines/regulations applicable when human participants are involved (e.g. Declaration of Helsinki, or similar); N/A.

1 Students were asked to provide personal details such as name, phone number, and email address at the end of the online survey form/questionnaire. The personal information provided was used to follow-up on respondents for further qualitative information.

2 Partners here refers to their colleagues of the opposite sex who they are dating or having amorous relationship with.

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• Published: 07 August 2024

The impact of gender, psychology, and cultural dimensions on leadership development in distance education

• Asma Khaleel Abdallah 1  

Scientific Reports volume  14 , Article number:  18309 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour

The research purpose is to evaluate the effectiveness of leadership in the process of distance learning from the perspective of the psychological theories of leadership, gender, and cross-cultural issues. The present research is based on such methods as surveys, testing, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and statistical data processing. The subjective (the experience of the respondents) and objective (machine calculation of clusters) assessments allowed the scholars to generate more arguments on leadership in the learning process. The sample consisted of 600 female and male students (300 from each sex, respectively) aged 18–20 years from Abu Dhabi University, American University in The Emirates, and the United Arab Emirates University. The research stated that the majority of students, regardless of gender, suppose that both sexes can develop similar leadership traits (80%). The research claims that female leaders have to be more dynamic and demonstrate higher intelligence (26% vs. 20%) and confidence (20% vs. 15%) than male leaders. Cultural and socio-demographic characteristics do not play a significant role in leadership development (10%). The main cause for the choice of a leader is behavioural and communication characteristics (50%) as well as personal qualities (35%). These results can be used for the online design of distance learning courses in universities (both group and individual), as well as for psychologists to study the aspect of individuals’ predisposition to leadership. It makes sense for further research to explore the issue of differences in the perception of educational leadership in Asian and Western European countries based on the cross-cultural aspect, that is, the influence of national culture on the choice of leader in the educational environment.

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Introduction.

In the twenty-first century, leadership is subjected to global processes, including the international political environment, the development of innovative technologies, globalisation, etc. 1 . These processes have significantly influenced the understanding of how to develop well-structured organisational models in modern society. The procedures significantly influence how leadership is perceived, thereby heightening its significance in attaining individual success. The research admits that the focus on communication has changed to less individualistic. Modern society experiences a high level of digitalisation, which cannot but affect the worldview and the development of character traits 2 .

Leadership concepts and culture are the most popular topics in the scientific literature on management and education. As part of leadership, gender stereotypes play a significant role, but they do not include gender expectations, based on implicit beliefs. However, early works by European scientists discussed that these concepts were considered by researchers separately in the context of leadership 3 . The analysis of the key concepts may have caused an incomplete understanding of leadership, paying no attention to important questions such as the role of leadership in modern society and its effectiveness for the educational system 4 .

Recently, insufficient information was collected on how national culture influenced leadership styles. Therefore, additional research is needed to evaluate the relationship and role of gender and leadership in the national context. The experimental data should be collected on the global leadership processes and their role in distance education faced by society in the past 5 years.

On the global scale, open online learning and distance learning requires innovation and updated strategies at all levels due to paradigm shifts and global trends towards increasing digitalisation in all sectors of society 5 . Education should focus on new trends in executive leadership, paradigm shifts, and innovative approaches to popularise leadership and management practices 6 .

Globally, humankind must reconsider leadership as part of open, online and distance learning, making it an innovative, redefined and re-evaluated process. The main topics discussed by modern researchers are the new vision of digitalisation, the solutions to emerging social problems, global open, online, and distance learning, and leadership of open online learning available to students on a global scale 7 .

Modern leaders are the individuals who embrace and promote teaching, research, governance and society to move towards in-person global open online learning. The present research focuses on the issue of leadership behaviour because a leader’s style or behaviour theory is one of the main theories of leadership used in cross-cultural research. Future research is needed to evaluate the differences in leadership processes between male and female leaders. It should be considered in terms of What leaders do and how they act 8 .

The proposed experiment is additional cross-cultural research that focuses on issues of gender, social status and leadership. The research goal is to discuss these concepts and fill a gap in the scientific literature on gender studies from the cross-cultural perspective and distance education. The research is the synthesis and the generalised conceptual model that supports gender, educational, and cultural studies.

Conducting research on evaluating leadership development in distance education with a focus on gender, psychology, and cultural dimensions is quite important because understanding gender dynamics in leadership development can help address and mitigate gender biases and disparities. Research would help identify specific needs and best practices, ensuring that leadership development programs are culturally sensitive and relevant. Leadership development is deeply intertwined with psychological constructs such as motivation, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, and resilience. Investigating these aspects can enhance the effectiveness of leadership training by tailoring approaches to individual psychological profiles.

Literature review

Distance learning as a communicative educational tool.

Globally, distance education has entered many spheres of life influenced by open universities and the latest computer technologies. In modern Europe, many educational institutions offer distance learning programmes, including well-known universities such as Dublin City University, EU Business School, and the University of Turin 9 . Similar universities are present in North and South America, along with Asia. An interest in technology education programmes, including satellite communications services and networking, has increased significantly over the past decades.

Previously unpopular, distance learning has been introduced to many industries and has become a major initiative for both for-profit and non-profit colleges and universities. Different factors increased the demand for distance education, including the need to occupy a niche in the market, competition between higher education institutions, increasing popularity, the development of new trends in digital technologies, and changing priorities in higher education 10 . All these factors supported the introduction and implementation of distance education programmes in higher education.

Distance learning is a promising new technology designed to involve students in independent learning 11 . The system is based on electronic communication technology that supports interaction between students and teachers from different locations (geographic places), time zones, or both factors 12 .

At the beginning of the last century, a group of American scholars researched the influence of command forces on human behaviour patterns and paid special attention to the concept of leadership. The research claims that the group can control the leader’s behaviour, managing the dominant style using time constraints 13 .

In distance education, the leader is a mentor who manages students’ behaviour at the administrative level 14 . In some cases, a team of leaders is formed to find the best ways and methods of training (including distance learning). Leadership is a decision-making process. Thus, management is a process of making optimal decisions, even if these decisions may not satisfy the interests of the majority of participants involved in the learning process 15 . A good leader encourages his colleagues to take on challenges at work being limited by different factors, helps employees progress unlocks their inner strength, and makes them feel comfortable about getting the job done. The students’ interest in selflessness, a sense of responsibility and pride in their team is crucial for effective team management.

Concepts of management and leadership in education

Management and leadership operate at different levels. Management helps scholars identify qualitative decisions and solve problems. Leadership stipulates what should be done for this. Leadership psychology views this process from the perspective of individual experience, focusing on factors such as gender, ability, potential, and social aspects 16 .

The Asian scholars analysed in detail the relations and co-dependence of gender and leadership qualities. Many scholars suppose that no direct relationships exist between the two concepts 17 . They pay special attention to the psychological theories of leadership. Researchers usually define leadership according to the goals of their research. Thus, many definitions of leadership exist and serve the needs of different research subjects. Leadership is a process in which an individual interacts with others to achieve goals 18 .

This research investigates the best environment for distance learning from the leadership theory perspective. Psychologists identified different styles of leadership. The theory of charismatic leadership defines a leader as an individual with unique personality traits. The leaders develop absolute trust in the group based on charisma and encourage others to follow 19 . Situational leadership suggests that leadership styles change in different circumstances. This theory successfully functions in the context of social and cultural factors that influenced the development of the team of students from different countries (when communication is based on different styles). The situational leader may demonstrate leadership qualities in one situation but omit them in another 18 . Situational leadership is flexible and allows a leader to use leadership qualities in turbulent times (i.e., educational, commercial, political, cultural, and gender spheres).

Relational leadership suggests that an individual focuses on unity and develops connections between group members 20 . This theory encompasses the configuration of the leader’s personality traits, duration of team engagement, and social-cultural dimensions. At the same time, leadership implies joint performance when each group member brings something new to the collective decision. Goals and objectives, rather than gender and cultural factors, are the key drivers of leadership. National researchers support this leadership theory.

Distance learning eliminates the need for teachers’ physical presence in the classroom. The development of a lesson, learning period, task completion, and assessment are separated in time. The scholars consider that the student is more focused and motivated as he learns the lesson in a convenient place and time 19 . The new approaches to learning allow teachers to track the progress through electronic systems that can be accessed from any electronic device 21 . Learning online, the student does not miss lessons but uses the free time more rationally to learn the main programme and concentrate on scientific areas of interest. The need to visit an educational institution each day limits the independence of students and prevents individuals from choosing free time (for example, the need to do homework). The student has limited opportunities to select a social environment and a way to interact with the outside world 17 . The physical distance between teachers and students reduces internal tension and communication barriers. Communication skills can be improved by both educators and students, including fewer stereotypes, social clichés and compliance.

The communication models described above allow students to recognise the stimuli and the new behaviour patterns but, at the same time, generate stereotypes. The experiment should focus on the attribution and distribution of social roles to overcome the contradictions between expectations based on stereotypes and the behaviour of individuals in a team 20 .

In distance learning, teamwork has acquired new features. For its successful functioning, a group needs a leader who can unite different types of individuals but overcome subjective factors of influence such as space, time and cultural differences. The experiment evaluated the role of the leader in this process and destroyed the social stereotypes that existed in society. The research purpose is to investigate the effectiveness of leadership in distance learning influenced by psychological theories of leadership, gender characteristics and cross-cultural factors. The following key tasks should be implemented within the framework of the experiment to achieve the research goal:

evaluate the influence of leadership qualities on teamwork;

evaluate the impact of leadership on distance learning;

determine the differences in the perception of leadership by males and females;

identify how cross-cultural factors influence leadership in distance learning.

Materials and methods

Research design.

The research aims to achieve the research goal, which is the development of leadership in distance learning. The proposed models and characteristics associated with management and leadership were identified. The scholars evaluated the distance learning environment to determine the presence or absence of possible problems and limitations. Using the formula Proof by Contradiction the research proved the possibility of developing leadership in distance learning 22 .

This research uses mixed methods of the research such as surveys, testing , quantitative and qualitative analysis , and statistical data processing . The wide and in-depth qualitative analysis of interview answers (the examples are given in the “ Results ” section) 23 allows us to understand the general nature of the research. The methods of subjective (the experience of the respondents) and objective (machine calculation of clusters) assessment allowed the scholars to apply more arguments to leadership in the learning process.

Induction methods helped the scholars identify the specifics of the direct implementation of distance learning. The synthesis is used to determine how distance learning approaches affect an educational institution in a society.

The sample involved 600 female and male students aged 18–20 years from Abu Dhabi University, American University in The Emirates, and the United Arab Emirates University. These universities were chosen for the experiment because they educated foreign students (4/5 of the total number of students). In such a way it became possible to investigate cultural concepts in the field of leadership education. The presence of both male and female students minimized the aspect of gender inequality and provided the possibility of gender leadership investigation.

This form of education requires distance learning to provide all students with the required learning materials. As part of this process, students should periodically interact and complete team projects to demonstrate leadership qualities. Communication involves interaction based on different genders as well as cross-cultural aspects. A focus group of 600 students included 50% males and 50% females tested to collect more accurate data during the research (Table 1 ).

This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, and the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.

The questionnaire on leadership stereotypes helped the scholars collect the data and determine the main leadership models in distance learning. The processing data are distributed according to t-correlation, which validates the processing data reliability. The questionnaire on leadership stereotypes includes two blocks of questions processed using the STATISTICS cluster analysis programme. Block 1 includes questions about leadership stereotypes, the role of a leader in a group, and the perception of leadership by females and males. Block 2 includes questions about social and cultural factors that influence interpersonal perceptions.

Research limitations

The main research limitation is that it collects data from one educational institution. The effectiveness of the experiment can be increased by using several private universities, proposing the distance learning format. If these universities are located in different countries (isolated geographical areas), the effectiveness of the survey will increase several times.

Ethical issues

All research participants followed the main principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and acted with the permission of the educational institution. The students were informed about the research objectives and signed personal consent to participate in the research. The ethical issues cover how to collect and disseminate personal data. This research does not involve animal studies.

Ethics approval

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board of United Arab Emirates University (protocol No. 003 of 12.08.2023).

Informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

The experiment claimed that participants working in groups of up to 20 students comfortably attended an online lesson: the teacher sees each of them, and the students can also see each other. Thus, socialisation is not excluded but supported in student chats.

In an online lesson, students work directly with each other on some tasks. This practice allows the student to test different communication strategies and ensure the same rapport with peers. The student develops leadership qualities through communication with new partners.

The Distribution of key factors influencing the perception of a leader (developed by the author).

A student survey confirms that the leader exhibits identification factors. Most students pay special attention to how other students perceive them, which is consistent with the theory of charismatic leadership. The key factors influencing how exactly a group member perceives someone as a leader are the following: behaviour (50%), open-mindedness and intelligence (35%), appearance (i.e. physical attractiveness, personal style, etc.) (15%) (Fig.  1 ).

Respondent 1: I think there are several key features that are essential for a good leader. First and foremost, a leader should have strong communication skills. This means not only being able to clearly articulate their vision and expectations but also being a good listener. It’s important that a leader listens to their team and considers their feedback. Respondent 4: Another important feature is open-mindedness. A leader should be open to new ideas and different perspectives. This means being willing to consider alternative approaches and being adaptable when circumstances change. Open-mindedness also involves recognizing and valuing the diverse backgrounds and experiences of team members. Respondent 38: In terms of behaviour, I think a leader should demonstrate integrity and honesty. They need to lead by example and act ethically in all situations. Trust is built when leaders are consistent in their actions and transparent in their decision-making.

The respondents admit that a leader possesses different qualities (Fig.  2 ) that form the image of an ideal leader. In many ways, this image may have changed and transformed from the native culture and educational environment that these respondents share. The table illustrates the differences in most leadership qualities but not significant. The research states that a female leader should have more intelligence (26%) and self-confidence (20%) as well as better communication skills (24%) to gain favour as a group leader than males. Male leaders need more rigidity (5%) and punctuality (15%). The rest of the indicators showed no significant difference.

Respondent 21: I think intelligence is crucial for female leaders. They often have to prove their capabilities more than their male counterparts. For example, in my last team, our female leader was incredibly knowledgeable and always on top of things. This really helped her earn our respect and trust. Respondent 12: For male leaders, punctuality stands out. In my team, our male leader’s punctuality set a standard for the rest of us. It showed he was serious about our work and respected our time.

The Distribution of the leadership qualities depending on gender (developed by the author).

After cluster analysis of the questionnaires, the following groups are formed for the Indicator Leaders:

Absolute leaders or individuals who achieve and maintain the status of both formal and informal leaders (35% of cases).

Instrumental leaders or accepted as leaders only for their goal-oriented behaviour (20%).

Expressive leaders or individuals selected as leaders for their ability to develop emotional strength (45%) (Fig.  3 ).

The Classification of Leadership in distance learning (developed by the author).

The research revealed well-developed leadership acquisition models relevant to distance learning. The test of twenty statements, according to the recommendations of Locatelli, was adapted to the research task and contained an understanding of the question: What am I, if I am a leader? The proposed statement helped more accurately determine the leader’s characteristics perceived by the respondents.

The leaders’ indicators were reflected in the statements about the personal qualities of a leader and related role models:

Leadership role or socio-demographic characteristics (10%).

Personal leadership qualities (clever, kind, etc.) (35%).

Appearance (appearance and style of clothing) (15%).

Behavioural and communication characteristics (50%).

The testing revealed a high homogeneity of responses among respondents (with a standard sampling error of 2.2%). The majority of respondents (80.5%) possessed a high level of personal qualities. These characteristics are supported by communicative behaviour patterns as well as appearance and leadership role characteristics. Regardless of gender, the key personal qualities are responsibility, kindness, intelligence, honesty, strong character, and willpower.

The research underlines that these characteristics influence the image of a leader in the survey. This signifies that the subjective assessment by respondents, based solely on personal experience, aligns with the machine-generated calculation of potential leadership models. This can serve as evidence of both a well-developed research process and a homogeneous sample as well as the fact that the questionnaire did not go beyond the cultural template, thereby creating a cross-section of Eastern culture.

The research illustrates that disability, serious illness, or unremarkable appearance cannot prevent a student from gaining leadership qualities. Therefore, distance learning provides conditions for inspiring leadership and directly increases the opportunities for winning it in small and large groups since such a learning format reduces the pressure of society on the formation of a personality. Students of distance learning programmes develop leadership qualities and use them in everyday life. Moreover, students increase their social status and improve their motivation for learning (learning always means a person’s desire for self-improvement).

Distance learning stimulates leadership and works for students, teachers, methodologists and educational institutions 24 . The proposed approach is found in cultural and social aspects, including the low cost of education for both students and teachers (since there is no need to rent a room, spend money on the travel to the place of education, etc.) and reduced time on the road. Moreover, the approach suggests the independent planning of time, place and lessons as well as training for a large number of individuals at the same time. The research supposes that the new model will help educators improve the quality of education, using modern tools and electronic libraries, and a unified educational environment (important for corporate training) 21 .

In contrast to the standardised approach, the average approach of schooling applied to distance learning in higher education caused a significant advantage. Distance learning uses interactive and hybrid or blended courses that offer flexible learning for students of all ages, including individual and team learning 25 . Both learning perspectives can be adapted to the needs and expectations of a specific group. This approach is a framework for successful leadership development and understanding social relations regardless of gender and country 26 . The research claims that gender is not the main issue in becoming a leader in a learning group. The attention is paid not to appearance (15%) but to the behavioural factor (50%) and mental abilities (35%) of a leader.

In different circumstances, males and females demonstrate leadership qualities in different ways, depending on how they acquired these qualities (whether they were nurtured, learnt or life experiences) 27 . Some Asian scholars describe the style of female leaders as democratic and flexible. The research underlines that empathy, sociability, adaptability, and less aggression are traits that are rarely found in females 28 . German scientists emphasize that male leaders dominate large groups, are less open and expansive and prefer old-fashioned communication patterns with staff 29 . American scientists do not distinguish between male and female leaders, evaluating common characteristics such as competence, pomposity, efficiency, and creativity 30 . In their opinion, these leaders possess high self-esteem, a clear sense of personal goals, self-awareness, coolness, and independence. The research claims that to be successful, a female leader must demonstrate more intelligence (26% and 20%, respectively) and more confidence (20% and 15%, respectively) than male leaders.

The research on gender in leadership covers six issues related to the relationship between leadership and gender, namely the number of males and females in leadership positions; behaviour patterns; leadership effectiveness; gender distribution in the group; desire for leadership; and gender identity of the leaders 31 . At the same time, the main issue is that the effectiveness of education should not be questioned if the research relies heavily on the stereotypes of gender co-dependence.

The cultural characteristics of the leader’s country of origin influence the national organisation and depend on the ability of the leader to manage organisations in terms of informal and formal communication, introduce a unified communication system, and access reliable and complete sources of information 27 . The research confirms that socio-demographic characteristics are not in the first place (10%) in the survey. Competences to address this issue are effectively formed through distance education, which explains the need for educational institutions 32 .

The findings from research on evaluating leadership development in distance education, considering gender, psychology, and cultural dimensions can lead to the creation of leadership development programs that are customised to meet the specific needs of different genders, cultural backgrounds, and psychological profiles. Different educational programs can be designed to be more inclusive, addressing gender biases and ensuring equitable participation and engagement for all learners. Policymakers can use research findings to develop regulations and standards that ensure leadership development programs are inclusive, effective, and culturally sensitive. Educational institutions can leverage findings to strategically plan and implement leadership development initiatives that are aligned with the diverse needs of their student population.

The research evaluates the problem that a student becomes a leader if he develops strong personal qualities and has similar features to the image of a leader formed in the views of the social group. However, leadership behaviour is formed before the inclusion of an individual to the team. Distance learning can be seen as an effective means of the leaders’ development. Leadership has become a significant feature of the modern world. An individual strives for and can achieve social success as well as change the educational world, closely connected with information technologies, allowing many students to access information and acquire new skills, regardless of their geographical location. Distance learning is becoming an effective way to achieve leadership without the influence of social stereotypes, clichés, gender inequality and other social and cultural barriers.

The research underlines that the majority of students, regardless of gender, suppose that both sexes can be leaders (80%). Factors influencing how one or another group member perceives the leader of the organisational structure (formal or informal) of the social group depend on the emotional dimension of intra-group relations. The collected data demonstrates the absence of limitations in stereotypical perceptions of leadership. At the same time, the research finds that to achieve success, a female leader has to show more intelligence (26% and 20%, respectively) and more confidence (20% and 15%, respectively) than male leaders. Cultural and socio-demographic characteristics do not play a key role in the development of a leader (10%). The key issues for this selection are behavioural and communication characteristics (50%) as well as leadership and personal qualities (35%).

These results can be used by educators to develop online distance learning courses in universities (both group and individual) as well as by psychologists who evaluate the personal qualities of individuals and the social environment to develop leadership skills. Educators are encouraged to cultivate and integrate curriculum content that encompasses a wide array of cultural perspectives and leadership practices, incorporating case studies, examples, and readings drawn from diverse cultural contexts. The results of this research would help to use a mix of teaching methods such as discussions, role-plays, and simulations that cater to different learning styles and cultural backgrounds. Further research is needed to assess the difference in the perception of leadership in learning in Asian and Western European countries from a cross-cultural perspective.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Linking gender differences with gender equality: a systematic-narrative literature review of basic skills and personality.

• Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

There is controversy regarding whether gender differences are smaller or larger in societies that promote gender equality highlighting the need for an integrated analysis. This review examines literature correlating, on a national level, gender differences in basic skills—mathematics, science (including attitudes and anxiety), and reading—as well as personality, to gender equality indicators. The aim is to assess the cross-national pattern of these differences when linked to measures of gender equality and explore new explanatory variables that can shed light on this linkage. The review was based on quantitative research relating country-level measures of gender differences to gender equality composite indices and specific indicators. The findings show that the mathematics gender gap from the PISA and TIMMS assessments, is not linked to composite indices and specific indicators, but gender differences are larger in gender-equal countries for reading, mathematics attitudes, and personality (Big Five, HEXACO, Basic Human Values, and Vocational Interests). Research on science and overall scores (mathematics, science, and reading considered together) is inconclusive. It is proposed that the paradox in reading results from the interrelation between basic skills and the attempt to increase girls’ mathematics abilities both acting simultaneously while the paradox in mathematics attitudes might be explained by girls being less exposed to mathematics than boys. On the other hand, a more nuanced understanding of the gender equality paradox in personality is advanced, in which a gene–environment-cultural interplay accounts for the phenomenon. Challenges for future cross-national research are discussed.

1. Introduction

Despite Western countries having considerably advanced in gender equality, gender horizontal segregation remains among the main drivers of economic gender inequality ( Cech, 2013 ). Women have entered the labor market at increasingly high rates since the 70s, nevertheless, they often still work in specific sectors with substantial effects on their income ( Cortes and Pan, 2018 ). Gender segregation is already visible at the educational level where girls are overrepresented in disciplines such as Social Sciences and Humanities; these subjects are characterized by lower labor market prospects and income ( van de Werfhorst, 2017 ). On the other hand, boys prefer STEM fields which offer high-salaried and more status-related careers ( Barone and Assirelli, 2020 ). To explain the phenomenon, scholars in sociology and psychology have been particularly interested in basic skills and personality gender variances due to their influence on gendered career choices and outcomes ( Rosenbloom et al., 2008 ; Dekhtyar et al., 2018 ; Stoet and Geary, 2018 ).

Regardless of doubts about their magnitude ( Hyde, 2005 ; Archer, 2019 ; Hirnstein et al., 2022 ), gender differences in basic skills and personality are well-established in the literature ( Halpern, 2000 ; Halpern et al., 2007 ; Geary, 2010 ; Weisberg et al., 2011 ). The gender gaps favoring boys in mathematics and science are close to zero on average but observable at the upper and lower tails of the distribution ( Halpern et al., 2007 ; Wai et al., 2018 ). Conversely, differences in reading skills (women > men) are more pronounced and already noticeable when comparing men’s and women’s statistical means ( Halpern, 2000 ; Moè et al., 2021 ). Regarding personality (Big Five, HEXACO, Basic Human Values, and Vocational Interests), gender variances, although small to medium, occur across models and share a similar pattern. On the one hand, women score higher in negative emotions and reciprocity as well as prefer to “work with people.” On the other hand, men have more realistic preferences and regard status-related values more ( Schwartz and Rubel, 2005 ; Schmitt et al., 2008 ; Su et al., 2009 ; Lee and Ashton, 2018 ). On a national level, however, the link between these gender differences and gender equality, measured using conventional indicators such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index (GGI), remains unclear with scholars making contrasting predictions.

Numerous social-role theories of gender differences expect that the gaps between men and women will decrease as equality between them is achieved ( Eagly and Mitchell, 2004 ; Else-Quest et al., 2010 ). These theories argue that cognitive and personality gender differences are derived from socially constructed gender identities based on erroneous essential beliefs (stereotypes) that men and women are intrinsically different ( Wood and Eagly, 2013 ). Gender stereotypes originate from the division of labor in ancient hunter-gatherer societies, in which greater strength allowed men to engage in more power-related activities, while women were tasked with nurturing duties because of their ability to breastfeed ( Eagly and Wood, 1999 ). Stereotypes would emerge early in life, with elementary school children already consistently engaging in gender essentialism, gender stereotyping, and implicit gender associations ( Meyer and Gelman, 2016 ). Parents, teachers, and friends are responsible for reinforcing them, rewarding children for behaving according to gendered expectations ( Gunderson et al., 2012 ), thereby making gender a “primary framing device for social relations” ( Ridgeway, 2006 ). As a result, boys and girls grow up into adults who have gender-specific roles in society and experience gender-conforming environments that shape their distinct skills and personalities ( Diekman and Schneider, 2010 ). The common assumption underlying these theories predicts that essentialist beliefs decrease in countries with higher gender equality. If this is true, empirical research will find smaller gender differences in more gender-equal nations.

Other studies have theorized an opposite trend, with men and women becoming increasingly dissimilar in gender-equal countries ( Charles and Bradley, 2009 ; Kaiser, 2019 ). Recently, Stoet and Geary (2018) labeled this phenomenon “the gender equality paradox.” Some have proposed that this paradox results from an emphasis on individualism and a societal system designed to accommodate women in what is perceived to be their gendered role ( Charles and Grusky, 2018 ). Others have applied an evolutionary approach and argued that in less unequal environments, men and women freely express their intrinsic differences as the privileged access to resources in “more prosperous and more egalitarian” societies favors the emergence of specific gender-evolved behaviors ( Schmitt et al., 2008 ).

Although the topic of gender difference has been widely discussed, whether men and women become progressively similar or different when greater equality between them has been achieved remains uncertain. This paper reviews several theories hypothesizing contrasting patterns, and then turns to the recent scientific debate on gender differences in basic skills from the PISA and TIMMS assessments, as well as personality (Big Five, HEXACO, Basic Human Values, and Vocational Interests) to consider how they relate to measures of gender equality on a national level. Several challenges for future cross-national research are also highlighted. Specifically, the present review indicates that the correlation between gender differences in mathematics and gender equality may derive from the lack of country-level effects in the models, while ecological stress (food consumption and historical levels of pathogen prevalence) may confound the results for personality. In addition, the paper examines explanations of the paradox in different domains and proposes a novel theory to explain the gender equality paradox in personality, where a “feedback-loop” effect (gene–environment-culture interplay) might account for the phenomenon.

The narrative approach was assessed to be the most suitable method for this study. Compared to more analytical methods, it allows for deeper insights into the ongoing debate ( Graham, 1995 ). However, issues may arise with this method due to bias in paper selection and interpretation ( Dijkers, 2009 ). To avoid these issues, the author implemented a systematic approach based on PRISMA guidelines together with the narrative method.

2.1. Eligibility criteria

To be eligible for inclusion, papers had to have been published between 2009 and 2022, and they had to describe quantitative cross-national research analyzing gender differences associated with measures of gender equality (composite indices or specific indicators) utilizing international data. The selected studies were divided into two groups—basic skills and personality—then further divided into multiple subgroups: mathematics, science (including attitudes and anxiety), reading, and overall scores for basic skills, as well as the Big Five, the HEXACO model, basic human values and vocational interests for personality factors. Since they had fewer available papers, the Big Five and HEXACO, as well as basic human values and vocational interests categories were combined.

2.2. Information sources

Published studies were selected from Scopus, Web of Science, Social Science Database, and Google Scholar. The final search was conducted on all databases in November 2022.

2.3. Search strategy

The research focused on gender differences in basic skills and personality due to their strong relationships with horizontal gender segregation. Thus, the main search words were “gender/sex differences in mathematics/reading/science,” “gender/sex differences in personality,” “gender/sex differences in basic human values” and “gender/sex differences in vocational interests.” The search was then refined using “gender equality/egalitarianism/inequality” as parameters.

2.4. Selection process

Only papers published in English were considered, and they were selected based on their titles, abstracts, and keywords. This study’s author was primarily responsible for the selection, although two other scholars supervised the process and ensured systematic application of the selection criteria.

Ninety-one papers were preselected; 35 were excluded after deeper screening because they did not match the selection criteria. An additional 25 studies were excluded because they studied gender differences outside the domains of interest. Consequently, 31 papers were included in the study.

3. Overview of gender differences in basic skills and personality and their possible relation to gender equality

3.1. gender differences.

On a national level, gender differences in basic skills and personality have been repeatedly described. Research has shown that boys slightly outperform girls in complex mathematical riddles ( Reilly et al., 2019 ); this difference has been associated with men’s overrepresentation in STEM fields ( Dekhtyar et al., 2018 ). Although the difference approaches zero, gaps are especially visible among the top and lower performers because of the higher variability in boys ( Lindberg et al., 2010 ; Wai et al., 2018 ). Stated otherwise, while there are barely any differences on average, the men’s distribution has a flatter curve, yielding higher values at both the lowest and highest ends. Similarly, men appear to have a small advantage over women in science, with differences particularly visible at the top end of the distribution; however, men are also overrepresented among the lowest performers ( Halpern, 2000 ).

Mathematics and science achievement is influenced not only by skills, but also by mathematics and science attitudes, test anxiety, and self-efficacy ( Ashcraft and Moore, 2009 ; Geary et al., 2019 ). These dimensions are believed to be strong determinants of STEM careers and contribute to the underrepresentation of women in these fields ( Moakler and Kim, 2014 ; Sax et al., 2015 ). Research has shown that men generally report more enjoyment and positive attitudes than women when engaging in mathematical activities ( Ganley and Vasilyeva, 2011 ; Devine et al., 2012 ).

By contrast, women perform substantially better than men on verbal tasks ( Moè et al., 2021 ), with girls using a broader vocabulary than boys on average by age two ( Halpern, 2000 ; van der Slik et al., 2015 ). Verbal abilities comprise various skills, and gender differences are most prominent in the reading dimension, where the girls’ advantage is three times wider than the boys’ advantage in mathematics ( Stoet and Geary, 2013 ). Nevertheless, Hirnstein et al. (2022) have cast some doubts on the magnitude of gender differences in verbal abilities claiming that publication bias might have influenced the results.

Cognitive abilities are largely interrelated. For example, high math skills predict higher reading scores and vice versa ( Bos et al., 2012 ; Reilly, 2012 ). Women’s mean overall scores considerably outperform men’s, even though the latter appears to be better positioned at the top and lower tails of the distribution, a finding that supports the higher men variability hypothesis ( Halpern et al., 2007 ; Bergold et al., 2017 ).

Turning to personality, gender differences are reported across the Big Five traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and the HEXACO model (honesty–humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness), suggesting small to moderate gaps depending on the test and dimension analyzed. Specifically, women score higher in both neuroticism and agreeableness ( Costa et al., 2001 ; Schmitt et al., 2008 ; Murphy et al., 2021 ), although findings have been inconclusive for openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness, with some studies showing women and others showing a men’s advantage ( Goodwin and Gotlib, 2004 ; Shokri et al., 2007 ). The HEXACO model displays a similar pattern, with emotionality and honesty–humility both substantially higher in women than men ( Lee and Ashton, 2004 , 2018 ).

Men and women also differ in value priority and vocational interests. According to Schwartz’s theory ( Schwartz, 1999 ), values define the motivations behind behaviors that regulate attraction in diverse fields. Although the variations are small to medium, research has consistently shown gender gaps, with men scoring higher in power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, and self-direction and women scoring higher in universalism and benevolence ( Schwartz and Rubel, 2005 ). On the other hand, vocational interests ( Holland, 1997 ) describe how personality interacts with career environments and are important determinants of gender-typed career trajectories ( Kuhn and Wolter, 2022 ). Previous studies have shown that men prefer to be employed in realistic fields, while women favor working with people ( Lippa, 2010a ), suggesting that men have more realistic and investigative interests, preferring careers in engineering, science, and mathematics. By contrast, women prefer “working with people” as they have more artistic, social, and conventional tendencies, which facilitate social science careers ( Su et al., 2009 ).

3.2. Theories predicting that gender equality is linked with smaller gender differences

The social role theory ( Eagly and Wood, 1999 ) posits that variations between men and women derive from the interaction, reinforced by socio-psychological processes, between evolved gender differences in physicality and the socio-cultural context in which these differences are expressed. Eagly and Wood (2012) have argued that, historically, men’s greater strength, endurance, and speed allowed them to conduct physically challenging duties. Conversely, women developed the ability to breastfeed, making them better suited for nurturing tasks. These evolved physical predispositions for specific activities shaped the domestic division of labor between men and women in ancient hunter-gatherer societies ( Eagly and Wood, 2012 ).

As societies developed, the division of labor began to be influenced by physical gender differences in interaction with the social environment ( Eagly and Wood, 1999 ). In modern countries, the socioeconomic setting dictates the relevance of those activities for which men and women have evolved peculiar physical predispositions. In this context, division of labor no longer relates solely to the domestic sphere but also encompasses paid labor, with men and women being segregated into different occupations. This gender segregation “derives in part from male and female biology—that is, mainly their evolved physical attributes, especially women’s reproductive activities and men’s size and strength, which can allow some activities to be more efficiently performed by one sex or the other depending on the socioeconomic and ecological context” ( Wood and Eagly, 2013 ). Thus, the interaction of evolved physical gender differences with the social environment in which they are expressed is likely to be the main process shaping gender segregation.

Within societies, social-psychological processes reinforce gender segregation and make it appear “natural and sensible” ( Wood and Eagly, 2013 ). Most people, when observing differential behaviors, assume that men and women are intrinsically dissimilar and construct specific “multifaceted” gender roles that include either essentially masculine or essentially feminine features ( Beckwith, 2005 ; Wood and Eagly, 2012 ). Individuals then internalize these roles through societal mechanisms that reward people who comply and penalize those who deviate, leading both men and women to develop specific skills and personality ( Friedman and Downey, 2002 ; Eagly and Wood, 2012 ). Consequently, gender differences in basic skills and personality are derived from the great effort that societies have undertaken to perpetuate gender segregation and comply with constructed gender roles ( Wood and Eagly, 2013 ). It follows that in countries where gender roles are relaxed, gender segregation and, as a result, gender differences in basic skills and personality will be smaller ( Eagly and Mitchell, 2004 ).

The gender stratification hypothesis ( Baker and Jones, 1993 ) is consistent with the theory presented above. Although originally formulated to explain gender gaps in mathematics, it has also been applied in other spheres. The theory suggests that essentialist gender beliefs interact with individual goals, thereby generating gender differences. These differences emerge because men in patriarchal societies can connect their skills with career outcomes, whereas women cannot do so due to unequal opportunities ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ). In sum, societies that exhibit more gender stratification offer fewer opportunities for women to experience and develop the same skills and personalities as men.

Drawing from expectancy-value theory ( Wigfield, 1994 ) and cognitive social learning theory ( Bussey and Bandura, 1999 ), the gender stratification hypothesis argues that people undertake a task only if they value it and expect success. Perceptions of a task’s value are shaped by socio-cultural stereotypes about characteristics assumed to be gender-essential. Thus, women, due to gender stereotypes, would not find it valuable to invest in domains perceived as “masculine” because they would not expect to succeed in them. Instead, they would prefer to develop more “feminine” skills, and this predilection generates gender variances ( Frome and Eccles, 1998 ).

The above process is ostensibly reinforced by environmental processes that highlight those behaviors that are generally linked to gender in a given cultural setting. In this context, environment relates to the social influences that could be imposed, selected, or contracted according to “levels of personal agency,” that is, the extent to which people feel they are in charge of their decisions ( Bandura and Walters, 1977 ). According to this perspective, the immediate environment provides gender-essentialist information through parents, friends, and the media. Individuals regulate their behaviors according to the social expectations conveyed by this information and, through “direct tuition,” inform others about how different behaviors are linked to gender ( Bussey and Bandura, 1999 ).

According to the above theories, gender differences derive from false essentialist beliefs that diminish opportunities for subjective growth, making differences the result of unequal social treatment ( Figure 1 ). Gender essentialism is conceived as a “powerful ideological” force that legitimates gendered choices and limits personal development ( West and Zimmerman, 1987 ). Stated otherwise, gender not only represents the lens through which people see the world, but it also constitutes the basis for categorizing individuals ( Bussey and Bandura, 1999 ). However, as the above theories emphasize, any visible variation between men and women results not from innate biological differences but from social impositions. If men and women were treated alike, gender stereotypes would fade, exposing them to similar stimuli and, consequently, eliminating gender differences in both basic skills and personality ( Baker and Jones, 1993 ; Eagly and Wood, 1999 ). Thus, gender equality is likely to be associated with reduced gender variation. As Else-Quest et al. (2010) claimed, “where there is greater gender equity, gender similarities … will be evident.” Eagly et al. (2004) argued in the same vein, maintaining that “the demise of many sex differences with increasing gender equality is a prediction of social role theory.”

Figure 1 . Overview of social-role theories of gender differences. Gender differences are generated by essentialist beliefs that men and women are intrinsically different which are in turn influenced by social norms in tandem with the division of labor derived from gender physical specialization.

3.3. Theories predicting that gender equality is linked with wider gender differences

Drawing on gender essentialism, Charles and Bradley (2009) theorized an opposite effect—that gaps might increase with greater gender equality. They posited that, even if societies are gender equal, gender stereotypes endure because of the emphasis on individualism and self-expression in these societies. Specifically, gender equality stresses the expression of subjective preferences; however, it does not question how that preference emerges—an emergence that, Charles and Bradley (2009) ascribe to societal mechanisms influencing individuals based on their gender. These mechanisms strengthen essentialist beliefs about differences between men and women, in turn reinforcing gender-related roles ( Levanon and Grusky, 2018 ).

According to the foregoing analysis, societal systems are characterized by internal structural diversification that is conceptualized to accommodate individual “expressive choices” but functions, instead, to increase stereotypes as people act out their internalized gender identities rather than their subjective preferences ( Rawlings, 2007 ; Charles et al., 2014 ). In addition, long periods of care leave and advanced family policies, which are generally found in gender-equal countries, tend to influence horizontal gender segregation and compel women to enter into roles typically considered more gender-appropriate ( Freiberg, 2019 ), widening even further the prevailing gender gaps. Thus, even when a society becomes more gender equal, “a preponderance of gender-typical choices” and an increase in gender variances can be expected ( Charles and Bradley, 2009 ). Supporting this statement, some scholars have argued that gender stereotypes increase in more gender-equal nations ( Breda et al., 2020 ; Napp and Breda, 2022 ). Others have stated that “cultural individualism” is often the strongest predictor of gender gaps in equal societies ( Bleidorn et al., 2016 ; Kaiser, 2019 ).

Evolutionary theorists claim that differences between men and women are magnified in more gender-equal environments because privileged access to resources allows them to freely express specific gender “ambitions and desires” ( Schmitt et al., 2008 ; Stoet and Geary, 2018 ). These theorists argue that from an evolutionary perspective, the possibility that men and women evolved with identical characteristics is a “theoretical impossibility” and maintain that gender differences are derived, in part, from innate predispositions ( Vandermassen, 2011 ). Specifically, variations are expected to be visible in those domains in which the evolutionary pressure, mainly sexual selection, has influenced men and women differently ( Schmitt, 2015 ). According to this view, the interplay between “sex-linked” genes and environmental stressors is responsible for the more pronounced gender dimorphism in modern nations ( Schmitt et al., 2008 ).

In ancient hunter-gatherer societies, men and women evolved specific, intrinsic differences as a result of evolutionary adaptation ( Mealey, 2000 ). Nevertheless, environmental conditions suppressed these innate differences that have subsequently re-emerged in developed societies characterized by reduced ecological pressure stemming from favorable economic circumstances. Gender differences in sensitivity to environmental change have played a key role in explaining this re-emergence. Generally, in the animal kingdom, the larger animal between the two sexes shows sharper fluctuations in behavior when ecological settings vary. The same appears to be true among humans, where men are more influenced by environmental changes ( Teder and Tammaru, 2005 ). It follows that both men and women, but especially men, are less affected by environmental components in resource-rich countries, where they are free to follow their intrinsic characteristics ( Schmitt et al., 2017 ). Conversely, in countries that offer fewer economic opportunities, choices are constrained, and reduced gender differences might be evident ( Stoet and Geary, 2018 ).

Thus, according to the evolutionary hypothesis, increased gender variations in more gender-equal societies are mainly a product of the sexual selection that men and women have undergone during evolution together with gender differences in sensitivity to environmental changes ( Schmitt et al., 2008 ). This interplay of gender-linked genes and environmental influences is relevant for some gender variances, such as height, since men in more developed societies are reported to be more sensitive to environmental changes ( Sohn, 2015 ).

4. Basic skills and gender equality

Most studies on gender differences in basic skills have focused on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). TIMMS targets fourth- and eighth-grade students worldwide and reports their academic achievements every 4 years. Similarly, PISA is a triennial test of mathematics and science administered to 15-year-old adolescents in several countries. The PISA and TIMMS tests have been related to only a few gender equality indices; the most commonly used are the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index (GGI) and the United Nations’ Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). Both indicators are based on sub-indices that assess gender equality in numerous domains, such as educational attainment, political empowerment, and health.

4.1. Mathematics

As Table 1 shows, the math gender gap does not usually relate to gender equality when analyzing TIMMS data; in the PISA data, however, the findings appear to be more divergent.

Table 1 . Correlations between mathematics gender differences (men > women) and both composite indices and specific indicators of gender equality.

Else-Quest et al. (2010) found that higher gender equality leads to slightly smaller differences between men and women in mathematics, although with variation across indices ( r  = 0.09–0.14). Similarly, Hyde and Mertz (2009) showed that more equitable index scores result in more women being among the top performers; however, their analysis used a small country sample and excluded Scandinavian nations (more on this below). Moreover, Gevrek et al. (2018) argued that moving toward gender equality predicts a reduced gender gap in mathematics in the part that cannot be explained by “observable characteristics,” that is, explained by elements that can be controlled for in statistical analyses.

However, the results appear to depend on the years that were considered in the analysis. For example, Stoet and Geary (2013 , 2015) found that only the 2003 PISA assessment was consistent with theories hypothesizing that gender equality is linked with smaller gender differences. For other years, gender-equal practices were unrelated to a mathematics gap. Additionally, the results are sensitive to the inclusion of Scandinavian and gender-segregated, Muslim countries as well as gender-equal nations in which boys considerably underperform girls ( Fryer and Levitt, 2010 ; Kane and Mertz, 2012 ; Stoet and Geary, 2015 ). However, some have raised doubts about including Muslim countries in the sample ( Kane and Mertz, 2012 ). Other scholars have proposed that the positive findings derive from a spurious correlation between the GGI and country-specific unobserved variances ( Anghel et al., 2019 ). Finally, as reported in Table 1 , Gevrek et al. (2020) recently reversed their findings, strengthening the evidence that gender equality, measured by composite indicators, is not linked to gender differences in mathematics achievement.

However, composite indices may fail to account for explicit factors influencing the mathematics gender gap while specific indicators may be more suitable for measuring how gender differences vary in relation to gender equality. As Table 1 shows, having more women in research, higher levels of female participation in economic activities, a higher ratio of women to men holding parliamentary seats, and greater educational equality seem to predict reduced gender variation ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ; Penner and Cadwallader Olsker, 2012 ). More recently, Gevrek et al. (2020) extended their research by decomposing the mathematics gender gap into that which could be explained by “observable characteristics” and that which could not. Their finding suggests that the men-to-women ratio in tertiary education and the lower gender wage gap are not related to the explainable part of the gender gap, although they predicted a reduction in the unexplained part.

As mentioned earlier, also the findings for specific indicators depend on the year and countries considered. For instance, the results for the “women in research” indicator are unreliable because they sharply fluctuate across PISA assessments ( r  = −0.16, r  = −0.68; Reilly, 2012 ; Stoet and Geary, 2015 ). The relation is mainly driven by countries that are, on average, less gender-equal but display lower gender discrepancies, such as Latvia, Serbia, Tunisia, and Thailand, as well as non-OECD nations ( Reilly, 2012 ; Stoet and Geary, 2015 ).

Regarding “women’s economic activity,” Stoet and Geary (2015) analyzed four PISA assessments (2000, 2003, 2006, and 2009) and concluded that only the 2000 and 2003 results were consistent with theories predicting that gender equality is linked to smaller gender differences. In addition, “females in parliamentary seats” never reached statistical significance; only in the 2003 assessment did a link appear by excluding either non-OECD or Nordic countries from the sample ( Stoet and Geary, 2015 ). Further, while Penner and Cadwallader Olsker (2012) showed that countries with more women participation in the labor force tended to have higher mathematics gender differences, the gender gap was not linked to gender equality in their analysis, contrary to the predictions. In sum, only “women in research” demonstrated a significant negative relationship with the gender gap in mathematics, although the magnitude of this relationship is in doubt. Additionally, the gender equality paradox had no empirical support when analyzing mathematics abilities. Girls outperformed boys in diverse socio-cultural environments, such as Finland and Qatar, demonstrating that egalitarian attitudes do not explain gender discrepancies in this dimension ( Stoet and Geary, 2015 ). However, more gender equality had a positive effect on individuals, with both men and women increasing their mathematics scores in this context, without any specific advantages for either group ( Kane and Mertz, 2012 ).

4.2. Mathematics attitudes and anxiety

In line with the gender equality paradox, mathematics attitudes and anxiety gender gaps are higher in gender-equal countries ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ; Stoet et al., 2016 ). Else-Quest et al. (2010) explained this phenomenon by arguing that mathematics anxiety is “a luxury, most often experienced by individuals who are not preoccupied with meeting more basic needs.” However, at the national level, both men and women tend to be less anxious about mathematics in equal societies, even though men benefit more from this lack of anxiety, enhancing gender differences as a consequence ( Stoet et al., 2016 ). Only Goldman and Penner (2016) showed contrary results to that of the above research, arguing that gender differences in mathematics attitudes remain stable, even in gender-equal countries. Recently, Marsh et al. (2021) proposed that the gender equality paradox in these dimensions is “illusory” as it vanishes when accounting for country-level academic achievements and socioeconomic status; however, further studies are needed to support their argument. According to the women’s political representation index, gender-equal nations also have wider self-efficacy and motivation gaps. By contrast, other specific indicators, such as “equality in wages” and “parity in secondary and tertiary education,” predict smaller gaps ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ; Gevrek et al., 2020 ). Similarly, anxiety differences decline when there is equal political representation between men and women because women gain more than men in politically equal environments ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ; Gevrek et al., 2020 ).

In conclusion, gender equality is negatively related to gender differences in mathematics attitudes when analyzing composite indices; however, specific indicators are either inversely or directly related. It appears that pursuing equal political representation counteracts the results achieved by parity in wages and education, putting the overall advantage into question. Moreover, although self-efficacy and motivational gender gaps increase as equality is achieved in political representation, parity in tertiary education and wages shows an opposite trend.

4.3. Science, reading, and overall scores

Table 2 shows the science gender gap’s mixed results for composite indicators. Analyzing the GGI, Reilly (2012) concluded that the gender gap in science achievement decreases as gender equality increases ( r  = 0.29); nevertheless, men are better represented among the top scorers. By contrast, Ireson (2017) failed to replicate any meaningful relationships. However, a recent meta-analysis reported that gender-equal societies are characterized by “a pattern of higher male achievement, while for nations with lower gender equality, we see a pattern of higher female achievement” ( Reilly et al., 2019 ).

Table 2 . Correlations between gender differences in science, reading, and overall scores (men–women) and both composite indices and specific indicators of gender equality.

As reported in Table 2 , also the specific indicators provide mixed results. No connection with the science gender gap is established for the “relative status of women,” whereas “women in research” is linked with increased gender differences ( r  = −0.39; Reilly, 2012 ).

These studies were based on inter-group comparisons, which may not have been appropriate for analyzing the relationship in question given the small mean gender gap in science. However, analyzing intra-individual strengths could move the debate forward because these are strongly related to career choices ( Wang and Degol, 2017 ). Studies have shown that men are more likely to have higher abilities in mathematics or science than in reading, generating a “math tilt,” whereas women generate a “verbal tilt,” with differences more visible at the distribution’s right tail ( Wai et al., 2018 ). In other words, although the mean gender variation in science approaches zero, an increasing number of men as compared to women have their top skill in science as opposed to reading, whereas the opposite trend holds true for women (see below). Analyzing 67 nations, Stoet and Geary (2018) pointed out that gender variances in science (and mathematics) intra-individual strength are higher in favor of boys in gender-equal nations. This trend among men could facilitate their preference for scientific careers because they would have the highest likelihood of success and especially so in gender-equal environments ( Dekhtyar et al., 2018 ).

Regarding attitudes, “almost everywhere” girls display a lower science self-concept than boys, even when their academic skills are equal to those of their male peers ( Sikora and Pokropek, 2012 ). Supporting the gender equality paradox, research has noted that gender differences in science self-efficacy, science enjoyment, and interest tend to be larger in gender-equal nations ( Stoet and Geary, 2018 ; Liou et al., 2022 ).

Table 2 shows that studies on reading differences, although few, have substantially converged, demonstrating an increased gender gap in favor of women when there is more equality between genders. Although no correlation is found for the GGI, gender equality results in higher women representation among top-performing students ( Reilly, 2012 ). Notably, the GGI has recently been linked to an increased reading gender gap in advanced societies ( Gevrek et al., 2020 ). Analyzing specific indicators, Reilly (2012) showed that “women in research” directly relates to gender differences in reading achievement, thus predicting progressively higher variations. Gevrek et al. (2020) reached similar conclusions, arguing that the reading gender gap is wider in favor of girls in countries where there is more gender equality in the labor market. Furthermore, studies on intra-individual strengths have also been consistent, showing that girls’ tilt in reading skills is larger than that of boys in gender-equal societies ( Stoet and Geary, 2018 ).

Few studies have focused on gender differences at the aggregate skills level, and those that exist have shown mixed results (see Table 2 ). Similar to the results for mathematics ability, Stoet and Geary (2015) found a significant increase in aggregate skill differences between boys and girls in nations with higher gender equality (GGI), although only in the 2003 PISA assessment. However, excluding either Iceland or Finland from the sample significantly weakened the link, and it disappeared when considering other years ( Stoet and Geary, 2015 ; Ireson, 2017 ). Recently, inspired by research on gender differences in gray and white matter, Stoet and Geary (2020) argued that the basic skills pattern should be considered as a whole to understand the full magnitude of gender variation. Assessing the overall pattern in mathematics, science, and reading performance, it appears that the gap is greater than previously measured, corresponding to a large statistical difference, and it widens in more gender-equal environments.

Some researchers have proposed that egalitarian values, have a “more pervasive influence” and might offer a better understanding of the topic ( Eriksson et al., 2020 ). An examination of these values suggests that “one standard deviation higher in gender equal values is on average 5.2 points more beneficial for boys” ( Eriksson et al., 2020 ). This observation holds true for the GGI.

Contrary to theories predicting that gender equality is linked with smaller gender differences, “male/female enrollment in tertiary education” is inversely related to gender differences in overall achievement in countries with gender-neutral enrollment rates that also have more men among the top performers ( r  = 0.19; Bergold et al., 2017 ). Conversely, “women’s labor market participation,” “women’s share of research positions,” and “the ratio of women to men with at least a secondary education” have medium-size negative correlations (from r  = 0.33–0.42), which may account for 28.7% of the gender variation ( Bergold et al., 2017 ).

In sum, few studies have examined the link between gender equality and gender differences in science, reading, and overall scores, making it difficult to draw any firm conclusions. The findings for science and overall scores are contradictory, while for reading, there is substantial agreement about there being a gender equality paradox favoring women. Furthermore, due to their interrelatedness, a communal pattern between these skills emerges when examining intra-individual strengths. This pattern is characterized by increasingly wider science/mathematics and reading tilts for boys and girls, respectively. The tilt for girls shows that when girls have a science or mathematics score similar to boys, they tend to have better grades in reading, a trend that is especially observed in gender-equal nations ( Stoet and Geary, 2018 ). However, scholars have only recently begun to consider intra-individual strengths, which represent a great opportunity for future studies on gender segregation.

5. Personality and gender equality

5.1. the big five and the hexaco model.

Evidence supporting a paradox emerged as early as 2001 when Costa et al. (2001) concluded that men’s and women’s personalities differ more in gender-equal countries. Schmitt et al. (2008) replicated these findings across 55 nations, again suggesting a positive correlation between gender differences and gender equality. More recently, larger gender differences in agreeableness favoring women have been found in gender-equal nations (see Table 3 ), mainly because of lower agreeableness in men in these nations with gender being the strongest predictor of individual levels ( Lippa, 2010b ). Conversely, the gender gap in neuroticism (women > men) has not been found to be affected by gender equality, even though the UN’s gender development and empowerment index predicts a decrease in negative emotions in both men and women ( Lippa, 2010b ).

Table 3 . Correlations between gender differences in personality (men–women) and composite indices of gender equality.

While these findings are illuminating, looking only at single dimensions may lead to counterintuitive results because personality is multifaceted ( Vianello et al., 2013 ). Although the average gender gap for a given personality trait is small, the overall variance is conventionally regarded as large, implying a significant difference between men and women ( Del Giudice, 2009 ). Based on the latter premise, Mac Giolla and Kajonius (2019) noted a strong relationship between gender personality differences and gender equality, with overall differences being broader in “gender-friendly” countries ( r  = 0.69). Other studies have supported these results, observing the same widening pattern ( Kaiser, 2019 ). Similarly, the emotionality gap from the HEXACO model displays a direct relationship with the GGI ( r  = 0.56), with women having an increasingly higher level than men in more gender-equal countries. However, honesty–humility fails to display any association with gender equality ( Lee and Ashton, 2020 ).

Further evidence for a gender equality paradox in personality emerges from the study by Falk and Hermle (2018) that, building upon the above personality models, related gender differences in economic preferences – positive reciprocity, patience, altruism, trust, risk-taking (higher in women), and negative reciprocity (higher in men) – to gender equality measures. They concluded that the differences are characterized by sharp increases in more gender-equal countries ( r  = 0.67).

5.2. Basic human values and vocational interests

Basic human values (see Table 3 ) of power, achievement and stimulation are generally considered more important for men, whereas benevolence and universalism are valued among women. Past research has found that these gender differences are broader when men and women are treated equally, even though both genders regard masculine values to be less significant ( Schwartz and Rubel-Lifschitz, 2009 ). More recently, Fors Connolly et al. (2020) extended the research on human values by adding a temporal dimension. Their analysis replicated the results cross-nationally, although temporal examination displayed a convergence between men and women in benevolence (over time, Cohen’s d −15%), with universalism and stimulation gaps remaining constant ( Fors Connolly et al., 2020 ). However, as the authors noted, this convergence resulted from factors not linked to gender equality, indicating that the correlation might be spurious and caused by confounding factors related to both gender equality and personality. This additional finding suggests that gender equality could not cause gender differences in values and that the gender equality paradox needs further exploration.

For vocational interests, few studies have examined how gender differences change with gender equality. Using the Brinkman Model of Interests, one study found that ‘gender differences in musical and persuasive interests decreased in countries with high gender egalitarianism; nevertheless, clerical and scientific interests were higher when gender egalitarianism was high’ ( Ott-Holland et al., 2013 ). However, most differences did not show any variance. More recently Tao et al. (2022) offered a more comprehensive overview highlighting that across all dimensions of vocational interest analyzed, increased gender equality was associated with wider gender differences. As Table 3 shows, gender personality differences generally increase in gender-equal countries. This finding is consistent across models and it appears to be valid also for dimensions not analyzed in this review (see Discussion for a more in-depth analysis).

6. Discussion

The systematic narrative literature review investigated recent studies on gender differences in basic skills and personality to determine whether cross-national relationships can be found with gender equality. The goal was to assess whether theories predicting that gender equality is linked with smaller gender differences have empirical support or whether a gender equality paradox has emerged in recent years. The general trend considers gender equality as either being connected to an increase in gender variations or having no relation with them, with a gender equality paradox occurring for gender gaps in some cognitive domains (attitudes toward mathematics, mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety, and reading) and personality.

6.1. Summary of the review

Based on the foregoing literature review, it can be seen that research supporting reduced gender differences in more gender-equal countries is scarce and inconsistent. A negative correlation is generally detected when analyzing gender differences in mathematics skills utilizing PISA data, although the correlation is influenced by either the year considered in the study or the sample country (see below). Moreover, “women in research” is the only specific indicator consistently negatively linked to the mathematics gender gap, albeit with disagreement about the strength of the association. Lastly, no connection between gender differences in mathematics and gender equality indicators is found when analyzing the TIMMS assessment. However, many studies have focused solely on mean differences in mathematics abilities, which are small or non-existent. Only Bergold et al. (2017) and Hyde and Mertz (2009) assessed the right tail of the distribution, where gender differences are more pronounced. This lack of studies on top performers highlights a gap in the research that needs to be filled. Also important is analyzing intra-individual strengths when studying the mathematics gender gap, as Stoet and Geary (2018) have emphasized.

Research supporting a positive link between gender variances and gender equality measures appears to be more robust and consistent. The literature on mathematics attitudes and anxiety shows that composite indicators predict a widening gender gap as equality between men and women advances. In addition, scholars agree that gender equality is connected with a larger advantage for women in reading and evidence further shows that gender personality differences are larger in more gender-equal nations. Men and women are less alike, especially in personality traits and basic human values, in countries that have invested the most in gender equality. Further support for a gender equality paradox in personality also emerges when examining other personality domains not included in this review. For example, wider gender gaps in self-esteem and narcissism (higher in men) exist in more gender-equal nations where women have more reproductive control, more executive positions, and their education is either similar to or higher than that of men ( Bleidorn et al., 2016 ; Jonason et al., 2020 ).

Specific indicators are either directly or inversely related to the mathematics gender gap, raising doubt about them being related to a general advantage ( Table 4 ). In addition, findings on science and overall scores are uncertain, even though both science anxiety and science intra-individual strengths follow a trend opposite to that anticipated by theories predicting a link between gender equality and smaller gender differences. Interestingly, other skills, such as episodic memory and visuospatial ability, show the same widening tendency, strengthening the case for a possible paradox in this area ( Lippa et al., 2010 ; Asperholm et al., 2019 ).

Table 4 . Summary of the papers included in the review.

6.2. Implications of the gender equality paradox

Understanding the possible reasons for the increase in gender differences in countries that promote gender equality is important and relevant since these countries may be leading men and women toward gendered trajectories, a path that is already observable in higher education. Charles and Bradley (2009) noted that the most advanced societies demonstrate more pronounced gender segregation in education. Stoet and Geary (2018) also observed that more gender-equal nations (measured by the GGI) have the widest gender gap among STEM graduates. Supporting these results, research has shown that gender differences using “interest in math careers” as a predictor of future major subjects are greater in countries with higher gender equality, with both men and women being, on average, less interested in mathematics than those in other countries ( Goldman and Penner, 2016 ; Charles, 2017 ; Breda et al., 2020 ). The same pattern is observed in the job market, where horizontal segregation is more pronounced in more gender-equal environments ( Blackburn and Jarman, 2006 ; Wong and Charles, 2020 ). Several investigations have documented this phenomenon and concluded that “Scandinavian countries are notable for their exceptionally high degrees of segregation” despite their advancement in gender equality ( Jarman et al., 2012 ). However, more recent findings have also detected desegregation patterns in more gender-equal nations ( Hustad et al., 2020 ).

6.3. The gender equality paradox: Possible explanations

The question of why gender differences are sometimes higher in more gender-equal countries remains. Some have proposed that the paradox in mathematics anxiety and attitudes might originate from the better economic conditions needed for these emotions to emerge. In countries where women are highly oppressed, these are more concerned about meeting more basic needs. Conversely, where economic, political, and educational circumstances are more favorable for women, anxiety toward mathematics activities is more likely to emerge ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ). However, at the national level, both men and women are less anxious about mathematics in developed, gender-equal countries, indicating that alternative explanations are needed ( Stoet et al., 2016 ). In fact, others have suggested that, in gender-equal nations, men and women set aside financial drives and follow more intrinsic career interests because of easier access to economic resources. Hence, women are less exposed than men to STEM activities, “giving them less opportunity to reduce their negative feelings about mathematics” ( Stoet et al., 2016 ).

With respect to reading abilities, the paradox might result from the interaction of two factors: the interrelation between basic skills and Western societies’ strong efforts to equalize boys’ and girls’ mathematics performance that has instead, paradoxically, increased reading skills in girls. Notably, where mathematics gender differences are reduced, the reduction is mainly due to an improvement in women’s reading ( Guiso et al., 2008 ). It follows that countries with smaller mathematics gender differences have the largest reading gaps ( Stoet and Geary, 2013 ). As mathematics is promoted in girls, their reading skills appear to benefit. However, because boys’ disadvantage in reading is, on average, less of a concern among policymakers, gender variations in this dimension have widened.

Some researchers have explained the gender equality paradox in personality by arguing that only differences in self-reported domains are increased ( Eagly and Wood, 2012 ). Here, the reference-group effect ( Heine et al., 2002 ) might conceal variances in less gender-equal countries, where men and women compare themselves with others of their own gender ( Guimond et al., 2007 ). If this explanation holds true, the gap in gender-equal nations would be a better estimate of personality differences between the genders because in these nations both women and men have a more accurate comparative term that includes the whole population rather than just a subset ( Schmitt et al., 2017 ).

Another explanation may be that personality is strongly culturally influenced. According to this view, individualism and self-expressive values act in tandem with gender stereotypes, promoting gender variance as individuals act out their “gendered self” ( Charles and Bradley, 2009 ; Breda et al., 2020 ). This explanation of the gender equality paradox corresponds to the findings in gender-equal nations that cultural mechanisms are at play accommodating women-typical roles, such as job flexibility and high parental care—roles that encourage women to embark on gendered paths and experience more communal traits ( Levanon and Grusky, 2018 ). Thus, it should not be surprising that, in gender-equal countries, men and women appear to differ more than in non-gender-equal countries and that this difference is expanding as women-typical roles are becoming more prevalent. Rather than expressing intrinsic gender differences, in these nations, there is a reinforcement of gender essentialist beliefs, which constitute an artifact of social expectations about how men and women should comply with gender stereotypes ( England, 2010 ).

While this argument is somewhat persuasive, research aiming at linking gender stereotypes with gender equality suffers from several theoretical and methodological limitations. Often scholars apply broad assumptions and rely on a limited, as well as unreliable, set of items to capture latent dimensions of implicit stereotypes hidden in survey data. For instance, in their recent article Napp and Breda (2022) used solely one item to grasp an alleged stereotype that girls lack talent by arguing that systematic gender difference in answering the question would highlight “the magnitude of the (internalized) stereotype associating talent with boys rather than girls.” In addition, several studies have argued that stereotypes about group features, when measured reliably, appear to be accurate ( Jussim et al., 2015 ; Moè et al., 2021 ). Löckenhoff et al. (2014) observed that perceived gender differences in personality substantially match those found in self- and observer-rated personality tests. The authors concluded that gender stereotypes constitute “valid social judgments about the size and direction of sex differences” that are more relevant than socialization processes and ascribed cultural gender roles ( Löckenhoff et al., 2014 ). This is not to say that culture plays no role in the emergence of gender differences, but that the social mechanisms amplifying gender variances—mechanisms that social-role theorists have identified—also capture intrinsic gender differences.

Evolutionary theorists propose a different explanation for the gender equality paradox. As they argue, some gender variations are sensitive to context-related fluctuations, demonstrating a gene–environment interplay. In societies in which conditions are favorable, gender-specific genes flourish due to a lower prevalence of diseases, lower ecological stressors, and lower starvation rates. Per this view, wider gender gaps in gender-equal nations most likely “reflect a more general biological trend toward greater dimorphism in resource-rich environments” ( Schmitt et al., 2008 ). If this explanation holds true, then heritability estimates will be higher in developed societies than in less-advanced cultures. Some evidence in this direction has recently emerged ( Selita and Kovas, 2019 ); however, the “WEIRD” gene problem—that nearly all twin studies have been conducted among Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies—represents an obstacle for generalizing results and making inferences about cross-cultural heritability differences ( Henrich et al., 2010 ).

6.4. A novel socio-cultural evolutionary account of the gender equality paradox in personality

The present review proposes that the evolutionary explanation for the gender equality paradox might be more complex than it appears due to the presence of socio-cultural elements in the evolutionary process. As previously noted, genetic effects depend on the environmental conditions (diseases and ecological stress) under which they occur, yet the environment is embedded into society. Thus, the gene–environment interplay is enclosed within a cultural context with specific social norms and, by itself, cannot encompass all involved elements ( Figure 2 ). Stated otherwise, the gene–environment interplay is a function of culture ( Uchiyama et al., 2022 ). Therefore, gender-specific genes can be expected to be emphasized in societies embracing cultural values that would favor the expression of these genes. Consider, for example, individualism and self-expression. It is unsurprising that these values are related to the gender equality paradox, as Charles and Bradley (2009) have highlighted. In resource-rich environments that also value individualism and self-expression, intrinsic gender differences are more likely to emerge. This thesis points toward interpretation of Kaiser (2019) , which states that both cultural individualism and pathogen levels confound the gender equality paradox in personality (see below). Also, Murphy et al. (2021) reached similar conclusions. A coherent, yet opposite, prediction might see gender differences as remaining stable or even decreasing in those resource-rich environments that culturally constrain self-expression. Accordingly, favorable cultural values would trump social mechanisms that amplify gender-based genes to emerge via a feedback-loop effect or “reciprocal causation” ( Dickens and Flynn, 2001 ) according to which social structures adjust to distinct gender traits and vice versa, thus increasing gender differences.

Figure 2 . Socio-cultural evolutionary explanation of the gender equality paradox. The gears show the interrelations between gender-specific genes, social structures, and environmental components mediated by cultural values.

6.5. Challenges for future cross-national research

While searching and analyzing the literature, this review also highlighted some challenges that researchers might face when conducting cross-national studies relating gender differences to gender equality measures. For mathematics ability, results could depend on outlier countries such as Scandinavian and gender-segregated, Muslim countries. In addition, the restricted country samples in international student assessments might be problematic. Despite the strong effort of PISA and TIMMS to be more inclusive, wealthy countries have traditionally been overrepresented, although the latest rounds have had very high coverage, including over 75 participating nations worldwide. Nevertheless, researchers, when assessing gender differences in mathematics abilities, should pay close attention to the countries included in their study because either the inclusion of outliers or a lack of heterogeneity might lead to biased estimations.

Another possible source of bias in research linking gender differences to gender equality on a cultural level is participant sample sizes, with some nations being overrepresented in comparison to others. How countries are clustered may also be problematic since countries are not independent data points and, “as such, they are like members of the same family or pupils of the same classroom” ( Kuppens and Pollet, 2015 ). Therefore, appropriate statistical methods, multilevel modeling, for example, should be utilized to account for both unbalanced sample sizes and data structure.

Correlations between mathematics gender differences and gender equality might originate from a lack of country-level effects in the models. Anghel et al. (2019) argued that when time-invariant country unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for, no association between the two variables is found. Moreover, the link between gender equality and the gender gap in mathematics attitudes might be confounded by country-level academic achievements and socioeconomic status ( Marsh et al., 2021 ).

Further, the gender equality paradox could be due to measurement error. Given that many international assessments and personality models have been developed in WEIRD countries, it is plausible that measurement error could be higher in non-WEIRD nations generating an illusory gender equality paradox. However, international assessments have been constructed to prevent such bias. For instance, PISA computes each student’s score based on a set of 5/10 plausible values designed to prevent measurement error and simplify secondary data analysis ( Marsh et al., 2021 ). Also, the gender equality paradox in personality appears to hold even after correcting for measurement error ( Kaiser, 2019 ; Fors Connolly et al., 2020 ; Tao et al., 2022 ). Nevertheless, when analyzing the link between gender differences in personality and gender equality, statistical procedures that control for measurement error should be applied (see for example Schmidt and Hunter, 2015 ).

Fors Connolly et al. (2020) highlighted the need for more temporal analyses of personality because an observed cross-national pattern may result from “a spurious relationship between gender equality and differences in personality” due to different country-level elements. Kaiser (2019) identified these elements as cultural individualism, food consumption, and historical pathogen prevalence levels. Other research has also agreed that cultural individualism could be a possible confounding factor as gender differences in personality are more pronounced in nations that highly regard individual self-expression ( Costa et al., 2001 ; Schmitt et al., 2008 ; Tao et al., 2022 ).

Some scholars have called attention to the misuse of composite indicators of gender equality, raising several concerns thereof and arguing that they might not be suitable for empirical research ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ; Hyde, 2012 ). One concern is that these indicators, which encompass various domains from politics to economics, do not measure opportunities ( Richardson et al., 2020 ). Another concern is that they are not interchangeable since they are differentially constructed. Thus, comparisons between research relying on different measures of gender equality might not be suitable. Some of the disparate findings concerning math ability might be driven by computational differences in the indices included in the analysis. Nevertheless, the gender equality composite indicators most commonly utilized (GGI, GEI, and GEM) show very high correlation coefficients ( r  ≥ 0.84), while other indicators substantially relate to one another, suggesting that, although some differences occur, these indices are similar in their ability to capture the general dimension of gender equality ( Else-Quest et al., 2010 ; van Staveren, 2013 ; Stoet and Geary, 2015 ). Lastly, composite indicators may present a biased view of society due to the way gender equality is understood in the models. Often, disadvantages pertaining mostly to men are not taken into account when computing the indicators ( Benatar, 2012 ). As an example of this bias, the GGI from the World Economic Forum assumes perfect gender equality in areas where women have an advantage over men. Specifically, values higher than 1, which would assume a men’s disadvantage, in each sub-index are capped. Thus, a more simplified approach to measuring national gender inequality is preferred ( Stoet and Geary, 2019 ).

In addition, methodological issues also arise when using these indices. Some scholars have pointed out that correlations between gender gaps and the indices of gender equality could be driven by the strong economic component in these indices ( Fors Connolly et al., 2020 ). Therefore, it is important to control for appropriate economic indicators, such as GDP per capita and the Human Development Index, when linking gender differences with gender equality ( Kuppens and Pollet, 2015 ). Another difficulty may arise when contrasting results between composite indices and specific indicators occur. For mathematics attitudes, for instance, although composite indices suggest a gender equality paradox, specific indicators are either positively or negatively related to the gender gap. This may suggest that composite indices either capture an overall influence of gender equality or are unsuitable for evaluating gender differences. However, evaluation may lie outside the scope of models using these indices. Research linking gender differences with gender equality indicators has not tried to explain the paradox emerging from the analysis on the basis of gender equality per se ; instead, it has just highlighted a paradoxical pattern that would otherwise have remained concealed. Since no theory has been put forward that fully unravels the paradox, further studies are needed.

Theories considered in this review that predict that gender equality is linked with smaller gender differences do not offer a valid explanation of gender differences in basic skills and personality. In addition, for some dimensions, the gender equality paradox raises further questions about how gender variation emerges, which calls for a new approach. Based on these premises, this review explored both social-role and evolutionary hypotheses and suggested new insights that combine these views, while also highlighting explanatory variables that might cause bias in the results. Thus, specific research that more closely examines the explanations proposed is needed, especially studies with an interdisciplinary focus. Notably, Fors Connolly et al. (2020) highlighted the importance of cross-temporal analyses of the gender equality paradox because these may reveal a different path. Since country comparisons may be insufficient for fully grasping the evolution of the paradox, future research should include a thorough cross-temporal examination for a more comprehensive understanding.

Lastly, the gender equality paradox is an emerging phenomenon that has gained substantial scientific support across subjects ( Falk and Hermle, 2018 ; Campbell et al., 2021 ; Block et al., 2022 ; Vishkin, 2022 ). It requires attention from both the scientific community and the public because attempting to close gender gaps following traditional social-role theories and applying conventional methods, might end up exacerbating gender variations. In addition, the general pattern of increased gender differences in more gender-equal countries might inform that achieving equal opportunities does not go hand in hand with a reduction of gender gaps. Thus, policymakers should consider this trend when justifying interventions attempting to achieve equality of outcome between men and women.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

The work was supported by the Finnish National Board for Education through a working grant.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: gender equality paradox, gender equality, gender differences, basic skills, personality

Citation: Balducci M (2023) Linking gender differences with gender equality: A systematic-narrative literature review of basic skills and personality. Front. Psychol . 14:1105234. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1105234

Received: 22 November 2022; Accepted: 27 January 2023; Published: 16 February 2023.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2023 Balducci. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Marco Balducci, ✉ [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Criminology, Sociology and Policing at Hull

Student research journal, gender differences and sentencing: a critical literature review.

This review focuses on various pieces of literature that surrounds the perceived differences in sentencing gender. Also, literature examining the reasons why these differences are taking place between genders, and theories that could be applied when explaining these differences, will be scrutinised in order to give an indication as to whether a reason for gender differences in sentencing has been identified. The two theories that will be focused are the Chivalry theory (including Selective Chivalry) and the Double Deviance/ Evil Woman theory. Some other factors effects on sentencing, and the literature surrounding them, were also looked at as it would be negligent to say that only one factor could cause the perceived disparity between male and female sentencing. This review mainly focused on bodies of work based in the United States of America. This is because a large amount of research has been done in this area in the United States. Therefore, any questions answered will mostly be only applicable to that country due to cultural and legal differences in other parts of the world. Throughout the review a lot of bodies of research can be seen to be relatively supportive of the ideas that Double Deviance and Selective Chivalry has on the sentencing process, less so for regular chivalry. This is because various other factors seem to have some sort of effect as well as gender. Therefore, it is perhaps inaccurate to point to gender being the factor that decisively affects the sentencing outcomes. More research should be done in this area to fully grasp the relationship between gender and sentencing outcomes, while taking into account a larger number of relevant factors (legal and extra-legal) in order to not over attribute the outcomes to gender.

Author: Kieran Malon, April 2020

BA (Hons) Criminology with Psychology

1.   Introduction

A question that has long been discussed in various forms of academic literature is why there seems to be a difference in how genders are treated during the sentencing phase of trials. Within the United States the male population in prisons massively outnumber the female population. This may suggest a difference in how genders are treated at some stage during the criminal justice process in the United States. The stage that will be focused on within this review will be the sentencing phase of the system. A focus will also be made on two theories that have been looked at in various pieces of academic literature as well as other factors that may be contributing to this disparity in treatment. The literature will then be reviewed, and its validity will be looked at in relevancy and ability to test and explain the differences between genders.

The sentencing phase of the criminal justice process was chosen because there is evidence to suggest that this area is where the most difference in how the differing genders are treated in relation to what they are sentenced to do. This is suggested by academic literature like authors such as Steffensmeier et, al (1998), who used the gender effect as one of the factors that affect how an individual is sentenced, and Gelsthorpe (2013) who also looked at this factor as well as whether that number is justified in the crimes the crimes they commit. The justifiability may come in the form of whether the different genders get the same treatment when it comes to being sentenced to a crime that is similar in nature. If after looking at that justifiability differences do appear, we will then begin the process of looking at why that may be. Some theories that have been hypothesised will be looked at in relation to any differences in treatment found and the literature surrounding these theories will be reviewed and scrutinised in order to find if they have any relevant effects on modern sentencing outcomes.

The two theories that will be focused on when it comes to this topic are the Double Deviance theory and the Chivalry theory. These two are theories that have been discussed frequently in literature when it comes to this area of the criminal justice system. The literature surrounding these theories will be further discussed later in the text and their relevance, or lack of, will also be discussed further on. Beyond these two theories however, I will also be briefly looking at further factors that have been hypothesised to affect this stage as well as the gender of a defendant. This may include popular factors in research in this area such as race and age of a defendant. Also, as these factors may interrelate with each other it is important to discuss how these may be advantageous to some groups of people and disadvantageous to other groups. This may lead to different sentencing being given to different groups of people depending on characteristics that may be out of their control.

Review Structure

Within this review, three studies have been chosen as the focus for each of the theories (Chivalry and Double Deviance/ Evil Woman). These studies will be analysed as well as various other forms literature on these theories and relevant studies will be mentioned in reference to whether they support the studies in focus. An attempt at looking at a variety of different crimes has been made to investigate whether the theories apply or not across a spectrum of different sentencing events. In order to take into account other factors that may contribute to any differences, other than gender, in sentencing, two legal and two extra-legal factors have been chosen for further discussion. However, it should be noted that there are a range of other factors that will not be discussed in as much detail due to the large amount. But it is noted that these other factors exist that may influence sentencing decisions. This will be finished with a discussion on future studies that could be conducted as well as the limitations of this review and a conclusion on what can be found from the reviewed literature.

2. Chivalry, Selective Chivalry, and Paternalism Theory

This is an idea that was put forward by Otto Pollak (1950) to suggest that women within the criminal justice system are treated much more leniently than men due to the idea of chivalry towards women. Later Paternalism would be identified as something that frequently follows the chivalry aspect. It is suggested under this theory that law officials/judges see women as child-like and defenceless in their behaviour (Herzog and Oreg, 2008) and therefore are in need of protection, this leads to said leniency I favour of women. It can be said that Pollak’s research could be seen as outdated, we look at whether elements of the theory can be seen in today’s criminal justice system when looking at sentencing. Paternalism has led to modifications to the Chivalry theory however, this has been called Selective Chivalry. It is suggested by Farnworth and Teske (1995) that the leniency that comes with this chivalry idea is only open to white women and those who have wealthy backgrounds (Jeffries and Bond, 2013). There have been studies conducted on a range of different crimes which then have looked at how chivalry could possibly influence how sentencing decisions turn out the way in which they do.

Holland and Prohaska (2018) conducted a study in which they looked at whether females were more likely than males to receive shorter sentences while also controlling for relevant factors that could possibly affect the sentences also. One factor that they did want to account for and investigate further, in addition to gender, was race. Racial effects will be discussed in more depth further in the review, however they did want to see, as well as if there are differences between men and women, whether there are differences in sentences between women of different racial groups. This would allow a view into whether just gender could possibly effect sentencing between the males and females, or if other factors also need to be present to effect sentencing. Therefore, a second hypothesis was that white women would receive more lenient sentences than women of colour, which would support the work of Farnworth and Teske (2008) who suggested chivalry would only apply to white women. They also took into account geography when making various assumptions about what the results may show in their hypotheses. They hypothesised that women in the south of the country will be sentenced differently from women in other regions. The data collected looks at all federal cases that spanned the year between the 1 st of October 2014 and 30 th of September 2015. Also, due to the database containing information on a range of controls for legal and extra-legal factors, it means that an in depth analysis can be done to measure the various factors influence on the sentencing process and seeing how they could interact with the gender factor to lead to a sentencing outcome.

From the results, they found that their first hypothesis was proven correct. Women in general did receive shorter sentence lengths in comparison to males. This is also with legal factors considered and supports the chivalry theory. This supports the various bodies of work that have shown similar results through various experiments they have conducted (Doerner and Demuth, 2010; Rodriguez et al., 2006). This supports the idea that women are not seen by law officials as being as culpable for the crimes they committed as men are. However, the results contradicted the selective chivalry claims that would suggest that white women would mostly benefit from the leniency hypothesised in the chivalry theory. Hispanic and black women got shorter sentences when sentenced for federal drug crimes. This is surprising as the reverse has been shown in respect to selective chivalry as white women have benefitted the least from the suggested leniency shown in the results of this study. However, that may be because they have been adjudged to have been more out of line with traditional gender roles leading them to punished as doubly deviant rather then being viewed as needing protection.

There are some limitations on this study even if it does cover a population across a large area (Across multiple states). This is a problem in itself as guidelines differ across different states. This means that some judges will have more discretion than others, allowing them more freedom in decision making on sentences. Therefore, that has to be taken into account when looking at the results. Therefore, this may need to be built upon by more studies looking on a state by state basis accounting for those guidelines and taking them into account. There are also multiple other variables that could be explored. These may explain any contradiction with other forms of research that show support for selective chivalry as it does not have any detail on if these other factors could have had a effect on the sentencing process.

Embry and Lyons (2012) focused their study on the discrepancies in the way that male and female sex offenders are sentenced and how chivalry theory could possibly have an influence in these sentencing decisions. They give an initial idea of what they expect to find, which is based upon previous literature (Jeffries, Fletcher and Newbold, 2003; Curry, Lee and Rodriguez, 2004), that females receive more lenience than males do when it comes to sentencing. For their study, they collected data from the National Corrections Reporting program in order to do secondary data analysis. The sample they used was spread over ten years but they originally had more than this. They used the most recent ten years in order to get the most relevant results. This gave them a more modernised picture of what is affecting the current sentencing process as values and views can change over time. Also, using a large time frame allowed them to offset another problem which is the low number of female offenders who have been sentenced on being a sex offender. Therefore, looking at a data set over a larger period allows them to have a large sample of female offenders in the data to look at and analyse.

From the study, the evidence showed that although there is no difference in sentencing rates between men and women who commit sexual offences, men do tend to get harsher sentences. This shows that although judges can see that women should be charged (because they have committed a crime), they may not believe that they are as perhaps dangerous as male sex offenders are. Embry and Lyons (2012) earlier talk about this stereotypical image of a sex offender, which is usually a male offender with victim coming to mind as a young female according to them. This could be proven to have some accuracy if you look at the perceived leniency that could be inferred from the results of this study. Due to women not fitting the stereotypical image of a sex offender, even if they have in fact committed the crime, they may still be deemed as less dangerous as a male sex offender. This shows that although the decision that all genders need to be punished for criminal offences is equal, the severity of the punishment across genders is not equal.

There are areas that could be developed in this study in order to perhaps improve its scope and relevancy to a broader population as well as limitations that can be identified in this study. Although the number of women that were included in these studies was a fairly even split, this may not always be a study that can be compared to real life. This is because although it was a fairly even numbers, compared to a lot of studies, the offending rates of women are way below the offending rates of males. Therefore, even if they did get a better idea how the factors and theories may affect a trial. Therefore, if you did want to investigate these discrepancies women will based on even figures, women will be sampled far more than they generally offend. These results may simply seem to point to one answer when it is simply just a question of numbers in terms of offending rates. There is also an issue with the fact that the study they conducted was built from basic figures taken from the data base they were sourced. Although we can assume from the studies that support the chivalry theory that sentence lengths were affected by the gender of the individual being sentenced, we can be certain due to the lack of specificity within the statistics. Therefore, we cannot rule out the fact that there was a higher percentage of males who had committed a more severe form of the crime that they had committed in comparison to the females who were being sentenced. A final limitation would be that although they would class this as a cautious generalization, they could only possibly say that it is a cautious generalization of the population in the United States, where it was based. The sample population that had been sentenced that they were looking at was entirely from the United States, if they broadened their sample to include statistics from various other countries a much larger cautious observation could be made.

Therefore, if they were going to look at doing a further study with this as the basis, a few steps should be taken to expand on this body of research. A more detailed data set would be needed in order to see more information about crimes committed or perhaps so we can find out more about the defendant being sentenced. We would hopefully be able to see whether Chivalry was in fact taking affect in the sentencing phase, if there were legitimate reasons for sentencing for one group being to harsher degree or if other theories and factors may be able to be more relevant in affecting the process. Finally, a sample of offenders that are from a range of different countries in order to give it the best chance of it being more generalizable to the rest of the world. Different countries have different views, values and offending rates. It would therefore be interesting to see if these theories can be applied across more than just one country.

Study Three

A final study that looks at the Chivalry theory is a study conducted by Spivak et al. (2014), who looked at an area that is unique from the other pieces of literature that were focussed upon. They looked at status offences committed by juvenile offenders. Status offences committed by juveniles include but not limited to, truancy, consumption of alcohol or tobacco or running away. This is an interesting area as previous literature done on this suggests that status offences are the only area in the juvenile system in which female offenders outnumber male offenders (Tracey et al., 2009). It is generally assumed that males do commit more crime than females (Messerschmidt, 2007) and so to find a category in which males do not outnumber females, and in fact females outnumber males, makes it an area for further study. The study was conducted in Oklahoma and the data was collected by a local agency that collects basic data on juvenile cases. They then cut down the cases to only look at the relevant cases in relation to the type of crime they were looking at (Status offences). In relation to this review, two of the hypotheses included looking at the cases as to whether the chivalry theory could apply to these cases. More specifically, they wanted to see if girls’ cases were filed for review, in comparison to boys. They suggest that if proven this may show a want to make sure girls’ cases are scrutinised to make sure they get a correct judgement.

From the results of the study conducted, both hypotheses relating to chivalry seem to be supported. The results show in this that girls were more likely then boys to have their cases further reviewed. An idea of why this could be explained by the chivalry theory is they want to try and protect girls from being guilty through further looking at their cases and the circumstances behind them. This perhaps leading to mitigating circumstances being shown on their behalf which could result in them receiving lesser sentences. Therefore, if chivalrous and paternalistic attitudes can be found even when it comes to looking at cases involving juveniles, it suggests that the want to protect females may start from juvenile court and be seen through most age groups once moved to be judged and sentenced as an adult. However, in this case it must be noted that although it was shown that girls did tend to get lesser sentences than boys, the relationship between gender and lesser sentences was very weak. Meaning that more studies must be done in this area as it is inconclusive when it comes to whether sentencing may differentiate between female and male juveniles, even if there is a slight relationship in favour leniency towards girls.

As is a regular problem when it comes to a lot of research in this area, a lot focus on one state for their research. This means that it cannot be generalisable as there are many differences in population and justice processes across the world and even in the United States. Therefore, more research in this area would be needed specially to help the more inconclusive aspects of this study. The database used is also quite dated for this study as they admit. This means that changes might be viewed if data was collected for juvenile cases now. If policies have been brought more recently, this may lead to a difference in results and lead to different hypotheses being drawn.

3.   Double Deviance / Evil Woman

Double Deviance is theory based on the point of view that certain women are punished under the view of doing two things wrong. They are viewed as having broken societal norms and expectations of how a woman behaves, as well as breaking the law. They are then judged upon the basis that they have done doubly wrong.  Murphy and Brown (2000) suggest that under this theory it creates a situation where women can either be demonised or can be shown more leniency depending on if they broke these societal norms on what is expected of women. Double Deviance theory which is sometimes referred to as the Evil Woman theory. Although this idea may seem like selective chivalry in the way in which some women may be treated more leniently. It differs greatly in the notion that women who break these societal ideas of gender norms are punished even greater than men do when they commit the same crime. Women who fit into this theory and are seen as doubly deviant are seen as more blame worthy in this case which leads to harsher sentences, even if the crime they have committed is the same (Herzog and Oreg, 2008; Tillyer, Hartley and Ward, 2015).

Tillyer et, al (2015) based their study on looking at the perceived unfairness that exists within the court systems. Although they noted various factors may contribute to these differing sentencing outcomes between various groups, they chose to focus this study on gender and the different theories surrounding the gender factor. The crime they chose to investigate was narcotic cases taken from a federal data base. Narcotic cases have been chosen because it is a crime that will be viewed as breaking traditional gender roles. Therefore, if the theory is to be accurate the results will show that women get a harsher punishment then men who commit the same crime. Some factors may effect this as well however such as criminal history as well as evidence showing that race may have an effect as well (Spohn and Holleran, 2006) therefore that also has to be taken into account when looking at the gender and sentencing differences. The dates taken from the database in order to be analysed has been specifically chosen due to it have the highest amount of women to have committed crime within this time frame, with females being most populous being sentenced for this crime than any other in the dates analysed. This should allow for a good comparison to be made between male and female sentencing cases as it gives more cases that will be analysed then other crimes and dates. According to the authors they look to answer two hypotheses. They want to test whether women with limited criminal history will get more lenient sentences and those with extensive criminal history get a harsher sentence then their male counterparts.

The results in this case showed support for both the hypotheses in their assumptions. The first hypothesis which suggested more lenient sentences for women who had limited criminal histories was correct. This can be assumed under the Double Deviance theory that it has led to those who are deemed to have acted in accordance with the image of how an idealised woman should act, which has led to them getting a more lenient sentence overall. The results gained from the database also suggested that the second hypothesis was also correct in it assumption that women who have been deemed to have broken the law and the norms of societal conduct for a women have been punished more severely than men who committed a similar offense. This assumption supports the hypothesis of Bontrager et, al (2013) and Herzog and Oreg (2008) that women are punished further for factors and occurrences that allow them to be viewed as doubly deviant. However, this could also show why there is a gap between the genders within the prison numbers. Although some women are overly punished for breaking a conceived notion of how a woman should act, some are also being given lesser sentences then men for committing similar crimes, which may explain some huge gaps in numbers between the genders in prisons. This study also shows the importance of how criminal history interacts with gender to influence the sentencing phase. That is a unique aspect about this study and has allowed it identify a key factor that has effected women who are being sentenced and may allow law officials to become more aware of factors that may be unconsciously effecting their decision making process. This sort of identification, if it increased awareness, could lead to more equal sentences in regards to these factors.

The limitations that have been noted does increasingly affect the ability to make this study generalizable. A large limitation that seems plague this study is the effect that new policy changes have on the sentencing phase. These policy changes may give judges more or less discretion when it comes to sentencing. For example, if a policy came in after this study was released that limited a judge’s discretion on sentencing for crimes like drug crimes, it may lead to a more equal distribution regardless of gender. This would be because a judge would then have less freedom when they are passing a sentence and may have to stick to more rigid guidelines when sentencing. If a policy such as this did come into law, then another study would have to be held in order to investigate how these changes may have affected sentencing and may lead to theories like the double deviance theory losing its validity. A further limitation is absence of a few different factors that may provide more information on the complexities when it comes to examining gender and sentencing. For example, they only limitedly consider factors such as family status and whether they are depended upon by others, which may include children. This is identified as a factor that could influence a sentencing decision and would be helpful if a more in depth study was done to look at how factors such as this could impact the findings and if they would give them a different look to lead to different findings.

The study conducted by Koons-Witt et, al (2012) had a smaller focus when it comes to population they focused on. They conducted their study on the state of South Carolina, whereas the previous study looked at sentences across the country. However, within this study they looked at various crimes to see how the effect of gender changes across the various crimes that are committed. As well as looking at how gender has an effect when it comes to sentencing, they consider various other factors and how they interact with interact with gender sentencing processes. These include race and gender which will be discussed later in the review. Within the study they expect to find that women are treated more leniently when it comes to sentencing, which is in line with chivalry theory. However, as mentioned within this study the environment they a basing this study in must be taken into account. According to Koons-Witt et, al (2012) the state of South Carolina historically has rather conservative views of women which means that there may be stronger view, than in most places, in the traditional gender role of women. Traditional crimes for women are often non-violent crimes such as fraud according to Rodriguez et, al (2006). Therefore, when women commit crimes that are not viewed as traditionally crimes women commit (violent crimes), the evil woman hypothesis may have a stronger effect then it may do in states or countries with less conservative views.  The data for this study was collected from a now disbanded commission within the state. They focused on the latest data set that was made by the commission which was from 2001. This was due to various reforms that made the data collected before problematic to use. Therefore, they had 12 months of data to study and analyse.

The results for this study again showed support for the double deviance hypothesis. Similarly Tillyer et, al (2015), shows that only women with very limited criminal history are shown leniency in this case. Koons-Witt et, al (2012) mentions how the effect of women having an extensive criminal history background makes the leniency that is shown to women completely vanishes which then leads to them being sentenced on the same level as men. A woman with an extensive criminal history seems to then lose the protection that is often shown when it comes to sentencing. This could be as the law officials view that as the criminal history builds up, they are viewed as increasingly culpable for their actions and lose leniency that they are perceived to have. As a result, they receive greater sentences than females with lesser criminal histories might have. The support for the evil woman theory is further shown by this study because it again shows that women are shown leniency up until a certain point within the criminal justice system. Although this study focuses just on one state, it still supports a pattern that has been shown in many different pieces of literature on this topic (Belknap, 2007; Franklin & Fearn, 2008). This can also explain why there is a clear difference in how women and men are treated in this study. They note that in the sample they looked at the average for women with no criminal history was lower than the average for males with no criminal history. Therefore, this would then lead to a lack of cases where the double deviance hypothesis would take place which would, if women did have a higher average criminal history, theoretically lead to more women being sentenced on a similar or more harsh level then the males.

There some limitations to this study and suggestions on how to further this line of research in the future, if it has not already been conducted. The focus of this study was on, as the author says, a rather conservative state in relation to how women are supposed to behave. Due to this being on juts the single state, it would be interesting to see how this would compare to other states that are viewed as conservative in a similar way to South Carolina. This would give a better idea of how the ideological in the environment may change how different genders are sentenced. If similar results are seen, then it can be ruled out as an outlier and helps with generalizability. It would also be interesting to see how a more liberal state would sentence with a focus on differences between genders. This would give information on whether the conservativeness of the environment may have an effect of sentencing between genders and if it does, how much of an effect does it have. Due to it being secondary data they are working from as well, they cannot control what was recorded and what was not recorded. This has led to various factors being excluded from the recorded data that may have had an influence on the sentencing process. Although this may not have necessarily affected what was learnt from the results, some information that may have allowed a further, more detailed analysis from taking place. This would have looked at how these factors interacted with gender and sentencing outcomes, due to some of these factors often being stereotypically thought of as female roles, such as whether there are dependent children or the role of the individual with a family. These may have an effect due to women often being thought of as the primary care giver when children are involved compared to males. Daly (1987) suggested that women are more likely to receive leniency due to them holding important familial roles. This therefore that accounts for some disparity in sentencing outcomes between genders. However, without data recorded on this factor we cannot tell if this influenced sentencing outcomes in this case.

Tasca et, al (2018) based their study upon analysing how parental status and sentence length interact with each other. The study was based in the state of Arizona with data collected through self-report and official data. The questions for their study were based around whether the parenthood factor, whether they have children that they care for, get affected by gender when sentencing. They also wanted to look at how sentencing lengths vary between offenders without children as well as parents who are involved with their children and those who are not involved. Various studies have already been done in this area on how familial status may affect sentencing outcomes (Daly, 1987; Freiburger, 2011). However, the unique aspect of this study is that it also considers how involved the offender may be with their children. This will give a more complex look into how the parenting dynamic affects sentencing outcome, while considering how gender plays into the dynamic. Within this study, they also look at various smaller factors within the parenting dynamic, such as how women incarcerated often tend to be single mothers with reliant children. Therefore, with factors like these in mind it may be easier to interpret the results as well as make initial predictions. Although within this study they are not necessarily looking into how the evil woman theory plays into this study, through the results it gives you an idea of how the theory’s ideas may have had a role in affecting the sentencing outcomes.

The results, if split between men and women parents, without breaking them down into the further categories could already suggest that women might be viewed as doubly deviant in the crimes they have committed. This is because the results show that female parents received longer sentences than fathers. Under the evil woman hypothesis, you could suggest that this may be because they have broken the traditional gender role of committing a crime when they are supposedly the primary caregiver in comparison males who are traditionally the economic support for the family. These initial results contradict previous research and hypothesis (Daly, 1987; Daly, 1989), however there may be other factors to be revealed that explain this further in the results section. Once the results were then further broken down, although it did show that women who lived with their children prior to arrest received more lenient sentences compared to mothers uninvolved with their children. However, it still shows that males still received less harsh sentences then the women. The fact that the results did show less lenient sentences on women who were uninvolved with their children could suggest that double deviance has an effect. It could be argued that the women who are uninvolved with their children are being more severely punished for not performing their motherly duties and are therefore being punished for more than just the crime they committed. It is also mentioned that the sample was drawn from offenders who are not new to being involved with the criminal justice system. Therefore, the criminal history factor also has to be taken into account as it has been earlier suggested that it can negate any leniency they may have been granted under the chivalry theory (Tillyer et al, 2015; Koons-Witt et al, 2012). Therefore, it could be argued that because this study was mainly populated by a sample of women who have a criminal history, most would lose the leniency effect that would be applied to those without a criminal history. Meaning that if the evil woman theory was applied here it could explain why the women had on average a higher length of sentence then the males did. As under the theory they would be treated more harshly for breaking traditional gender roles and committing the crime.

There are couple of limitations and suggestions for future studies that could be made based from this study. One limitation of this is the need for a larger sample. This is because varying court systems throughout the United States, as well as throughout the world, may show different results. It may have been more generalizable if they at least looked at various court judgements in different states within the country. Due to the different court systems between states giving judges varying degrees of discretion, that may prove to be a key factor in how sentencing patterns show in the results. Therefore, a larger more varied sample should be looked at in further research to see if the results and hypotheses drawn from the results are applicable to more than just Arizona. As the authors mentioned also, the majority of the sample had criminal backgrounds and that may have had a potential effect on the results. Therefore, a more varied sample in terms of whether they have a vast criminal history or not should be explored. This will allow a more balanced view on how much effect certain factors have on the sentencing process as it hard to measure the effect of factors such as criminal history when many of them have criminal histories.

4. Contradicting Literature

Although a lot of literature that has been analysed show a pattern that supports the hypotheses. There is going to be some literature that contradicts the pattern that is seen. This can be for various reasons and these reasons can be discussed later when looking at the literature. One piece of literature that was reviewed did seem to contradict the pattern of support and although there may be more, only one will be the focus here.

A study that contradicts the findings in support of the theory is one that looks at chivalry in relation to nonviolent offending. Specifically, the study undertaken by Koeppel (2012), looks at nonviolent property crime in rural areas in the state of Iowa, in the United States. This study is interesting as Rodriguez et, al (2006) mentioned that there are varying degrees of leniency in the sentencing process depending on the crime, but males do often receive harsher sentences. Rodriguez et, al (2006) and their body of work suggested that males were more likely to receive harsher sentence outcomes when it comes to property crime. This, if backed up by continuous research as well as the study of focus here, would look like it would be following a pattern on which females receive more lenient sentences across multiple types of crime. The author of this study (Koeppel, 2012) suggests that we may see differences because of the setting also, as the they are focussing on a rural setting. Steffensmeier et al. (1998) suggests that because of the volume of cases that an urban judge must get through, they succumb to using stereotypes and generalizations in order to make their decisions. Therefore, if this theory is correct, we should see a decline in the difference in sentences between male and female who commit the same crime. This could then show evidence against chivalry and suggest other factors may yet have a larger influence on sentencing.

The data was collected from five small rural counties that have similar demographics; this could then decrease the effect that different environments may have had on the process. The sample size in this case is a 507 split between 188 females and 319 males. Worth noting also was that 95% of the sample were white which will be a point brought up later when analysing this study. The presumed result for this study was based from previous research and that a clear pattern of leniency in favour of females would be present. However, the results of the study contradicted previous research and found that gender did not have a significant effect on the sentencing outcomes. This is surprising, if the Chivalry theory is to be believed, considering the nature of the crime itself. The crimes looked at were nonviolent crimes that would, in theory, be seen as crimes a woman would get more leniency under the Chivalry theory. Herzog and Oreg (2008) discuss how the judges would think of women as defenceless and weak under chivalry and paternalism. Therefore, because it is a white, female, nonviolent offender they fill that criteria in which chivalry/paternalism is suppose have an effect and lead to leniency in sentencing them. This may also give support to the idea that sentencing may vary between urban and rural with the idea of chivalry also having a different degree of effect. It also goes against Rodriguez et, al (2006) and their idea that chivalry can be seen across the entire spectrum of crime sentences and even if it does have an effect, that effect is negligible enough to not affect the results as much as it would compared to other crimes perhaps because of the non-violent nature of it. Also, due to there being no specific gender effect notable, the double deviance theory cannot be applied either as measures of traditional sex roles did not have any effect on sentencing length. Therefore, in this case the results suggest that no matter if they have broken traditional gender norms, they sentenced on equal basis with women who might not be viewed to have broken traditional gender norms.

There are some developments that could be made to this study that would allow researchers to develop a clearer and more real to life picture of this area of study. One such development would be to look at basing the study in more diverse areas or look at similar data from rural areas in different countries if they want to focus on the rural aspect of the study. This is because it has been suggested (Herzog and Oreg, 2008; Jeffries and Bond, 2013) that chivalry only really effectively applies to certain women who fit the ideal image of “womanhood” which according to Steffensmeier and Demuth (2006) is white and middle class. Therefore, because this study was done in an environment where there is a miniscule amount of individuals, compared to the sample population size, where from an ethnically diverse background, it makes it hard to be generalizable except from maybe to small counties with little ethnic diversity like the ones that have been researched in this study. Also, although it could show some partial evidence against general chivalry’s effects on sentencing for this crime, it would struggle with some other theories. It would struggle to show evidence against selective chivalry as it has very little diversity to show that certain women would get better treatment then others due to its lack of a diverse sample population. As previously referred, it would only be able to show evidence to support counties with similar populations to itself and it would struggle to provide evidence in other states and counties as the diversity varies around the country. Support for the generalization of the conclusions of these studies is very low as it would only apply to a very small group. They state themselves that the results may differ from rural counties in different states. A further limitation was the issue that for some cases they could not access their criminal background. Therefore, they were unable to take the factor of whether some may have a criminal history which would then affect the outcome. The resulting sentence could then be different because of this and would then have to be considered when looking at the results of this study. For example, the reason why in some of the cases women look like their sentence is just as long or harsh as their male counterparts is because they have a criminal history. If this was then it may be that women in this case may have only gotten similar judgements due to having a criminal history. Although, it may be unlikely that enough women had criminal histories that affected their sentence length to then affect the results and conclusion of this study, we cannot rule it out due there being no proof against this idea.

5. Other Factors

So far, the focus has been on how certain theories help explain the differences that may be seen during the sentencing phase of the criminal justice system. Various other factors have been mentioned when looking at the theories and how they may moderate and interact with gender and the theories surrounding differences in sentencing in relation to gender. However, this chapter will look more specifically at studies surrounding factors and how they may have an influence on the sentencing process. Four factors, legal and extra-legal, shall be looked at within this section, however there are many more factors that have been looked at in various research and are can be said to have some sort of effect. Each factor will look at how they interact with gender and sentencing, looking at whether they have a significant impact on how defendants are sentenced.

Racial Factor

Within this section the race of the defendant being sentenced will be looked at in reference to seeing if there are any differences to be seen between gender and race. There are substantial bodies of research that detail how race can affect how individuals may be sentenced, with white defendants often getting the more lenient sentence (Brennan & Spohn, 2008; Spohn, 2000). The focus for this however will be how race and gender can lead to differences in sentencing with a discussion on what those differences are and what they show about the sentencing system.

What is found through looking through various pieces of literature is that black women do not receive the same level of lenience from the court system as white women do (Koons-Witt et al., 2012; Brennan, 2006; Steffensmeier et al., 1993). Therefore, you can assume the leniency that is supposed to apply to women when it comes to sentencing only applies to certain women, which supports the theory of selective chivalry. This shows that there may be some king of racial stereotype in causing this and allows them to fall out of the archetype image of women that need this protection because they believe they are have a low risk to society. However, there are also studies that contend this theory that black females are treated less leniently then white females. Many of these studies still find differences in how people of different races are sentenced, however they find that the difference mostly occurs when it comes to black and white males as earlier mentioned (Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006; Spohn & Spears, 1997). It can also be suggested that the area that is picked to base the study may affect the outcome and results of these studies. It is suggested by Zatz (2000) that studies based in the United States seem to see a pattern of where race appears to be a larger factor in the sentencing phase and these states where you see it are in the south of the country. Therefore, you may assume that the study may vary from area to area depending on how strong traditional gender roles and views on women are valued. For example, the Koons-Witt et, al (2012) study is based in South Carolina which is in the south of the country. They mention how conservative views on women are held within the state and the results showed that black women and men appear to be on the receiving end of less lenient sentences. A lot of studies also seem to only consider black and white sentencing disparities. There are studies however, that show Hispanic defendants can often face even harsher punishment then both black and white defendants (Brennan & Spohn, 2008). Therefore, although race does seem to have a definite effect in relation to men on a general basis, it is less certain in its effect when women are the defendant. A future study could look at the effects of gender and race and compare them between various states or countries in order to determine whether there is any connection between the factors.

The factor of age has not yet been discussed in this review though it is often included as control within most literature. Most of these studies often focus on the age of male defendants rather than across the gender divide. This maybe perhaps due to it having more of an influence over male sentencing then female leading to a lack of need to test how the factor may influence sentencing of women.

Steffensmeier et al. (1998) hypothesised this when looking at how a range of different factors interact when sentencing. They found that younger males are often sentenced more harshly than older individuals. They also found that as the defendant got older, the race and gender differences diminished. This may be because they are deemed too old to be deemed as much of a threat to the general public. This was then further built upon by Spohn and Holleran (2000) who narrowed down the age in which an individual was most likely to be punished harshly. It also must be borne in mind that they looked at which ethnic groups were mostly likely to receive harsher punishment as well as the age range in which those groups would likely receive this punishment. They identified that black and Hispanic male defendants between the ages of 21 and 29 while being unemployed were most likely to receive the harshest punishments out of the different groups. Therefore, it must be noted that age can show various patterns, when interacting with other factors, that can lead to various other avenues of research and groups that can be focused on that lead to much groups being identified for further examination.

Crime Severity Factor

How serious an offence is may seem like a more obvious indicator into how a defendant may be sentenced with the idea that the more serious the crime, the harsher the sentence. However, this may be a key factor to explain the why there is a lot more males serving out more severe sentences. According to literature women are a lot less likely to commit serious crimes and violent crimes (Belkanp, 2007; Rodriguez et al., 2006). Non-violent crimes, as previously discussed, like fraud and theft are seen as crimes that traditionally women commit. However, this may result in women who commit violent crimes being affected by the views that are brought up in the theories above.

This is possibly the most key feature that can lessen the disparity between sentencing leniency. It is shown in research that a lot of the disparity disappears when it comes to violent crimes (Rodriguez el al., 2006; Boritch, 1992). This is because under the selective chivalry theory, this would fall out of its purview as it is crime that outside of the gender role expectations (Koons-Witt et al., 2012). They, therefore, lose the leniency that they would get under that paradigm as well as being judged as doubly deviant because of that breaking of the gender norms. Warren et al. (2011) suggest that as the seriousness of the offence increases the less discretion the judge then has when giving a sentence. This would then lead to this factor outweighing other key extra-legal factors, such as gender, because the seriousness of the crime has more influence over the sentence than any possible influence these extra-legal factors could possibly have on the outcome of the sentencing. This does mean that when the crime is less severe, the extra-legal factors can seem to have some measure of effect. Rodriguez et al. (2006) can support this view as they saw differences when it came to property crime in the way in which leniency was shown in favour of women when it came to sentence them.

Criminal History Factor

Criminal history is factor that was discussed in one of the studies that was focused on earlier in this review. The results for that study suggested, in the case of narcotics cases at least, that women do tend to get more lenient sentences if they have a lack of criminal history in comparison to males with a lack of criminal history (Tillyer et al., 2015). This can be further backed by Spohn (2000) and Koons-Witt et al. (2012) in relation to chance of being incarcerated.

From the various pieces of literature that have reviewed (Tillyer et al., 2015; Spohn, 2000; Koons-Witt et al., 2012; Daly & Tonry, 1997), there is a large amount that suggest that criminal history is very useful factor to use when predicting how a defendant may be sentenced. Daly and Tonry (1997) suggest that when judges are deciding on how to sentence an individual, when they have some discretion on how sentence a defendant, they look at criminal history as means of predicting future behaviour. They suggest that they use it as a means of testing how much they respect the law. A large criminal history would suggest a lack of respect and give the impression that they have no reservations about breaking the law. If the judges have doubt that that the defendant will not commit another crime, then they will be a lot less likely to give sentence that will be lenient. They may have a lack of belief that the offender would learn from committing their crime and that it would expose the wider public to harm. All these different issues stemming from a larger criminal record would leave a law official less inclined to be lenient to what in their view may be a veteran offender.

6. Conclusion and Discussion

In terms of volume of research in the area of sentencing disparities between genders, there is large amount, as shown above. However, there are a few interesting areas of future research that could be partaken in to further understanding with more specific factors. For example, an underlying factor in the United States may be what region the sentencing is taking place in (Zatz, 2000; Myers and Talarico, 1986). As mentioned earlier certain states seem to have conservative views regarding gender roles as well as Zatz (2000) mentioning that race effects can generally be seen to be stronger. A more recent investigation into the differences that can be seen across a variety of states would be an interesting area. As a detailed comparison between states that have historically been seen either conservative or liberal in their views would be able to give an idea how much of an effect the historical views of the state they are based in, is having. More studies in this area conducted outside of the United States would also be interesting. There is a very large body of work existing in this this area in the United States and not as many in other countries. Therefore, more studies done in other parts of the world may show if cultural differences still allow the ideas of the above theories to have a basis there. As well as how much the other extra-legal and legal factors have in relation to sentencing. This is a large limitation within this review as the most popular studies in this area are mostly conducted in the United States, making it harder to generalize it on continental or worldwide basis due to lack of a large body of research in other countries. Also due to there being so many different extra-legal factors that exist and could influence the sentencing process, more studies at looking into precisely how much each factor may influence a sentencing procedure. The current studies that have been conducted use databases that only give so much information on different factors. Therefore, a future study on the subject should try to address this issue which can be done by a range of measures. One such way could be creating a database that is more qualitive in its approach and includes more extra-legal factors with more information on the offender and their offences. This can allow the analysis of more than on factors, in order to establish their influence, they may have on decision, on the same sentencing cases. More research into race and gender sentencing outcomes may also be an avenue of further research as although there is research in this area a lot of them only investigate the black and white race comparison. This approach risks missing out on how other ethnic groups experience the sentencing process and if there can be witnessed differences in how they are treated in that phase of the justice system

Based from the evidence shown in the studies above and the results given. It can be suggested that Selective Chivalry and the Evil Woman/Double Deviance theories have some relevance in showing how sentencing decisions are made. Gender does appear to be a factor when determining how an offender is sentenced. It can be shown that a large body of work, in which I reviewed, shows a pattern that supports the idea that women are shown more leniency when it comes to sentencing. Yet are judged more harshly sometimes then men when other factors contribute that could break the traditional gender roles and traditional gender stereotypes such as committing violent crime, as opposed to non-violent crime. However, they also show that other factors may need to be taken into consideration in order for it to have a significant effect. Further research into how extra-legal may affect sentencing, due to the sheer number of factors that there is, and how they may be assisting the gender disparity when it comes to sentencing outcomes. Overall, the literature reviewed does generally point to the idea that gender does play a role in sentencing outcomes, but also that other factors are also considered in order to give sentence and not just gender. Chivalry, Selective Chivalry and Evil Woman/Double Deviance theories all cannot be discounted in having elements of the ideas within them being relevant to sentencing within the United States justice system.

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100 Gender Research Topics For Academic Papers

Gender research topics are very popular across the world. Students in different academic disciplines are often asked to write papers and essays about these topics. Some of the disciplines that require learners to write about gender topics include:

Sociology Psychology Gender studies Business studies

When pursuing higher education in these disciplines, learners can choose what to write about from a wide range of gender issues topics. However, the wide range of issues that learners can research and write about when it comes to gender makes choosing what to write about difficult. Here is a list of the top 100 gender and sexuality topics that students can consider.

Controversial Gender Research Topics

Do you like the idea of writing about something controversial? If yes, this category has some of the best gender topics to write about. They touch on issues like gender stereotypes and issues that are generally associated with members of a specific gender. Here are some of the best controversial gender topics that you can write about.

• How human behavior is affected by gender misconceptions
• How are straight marriages influenced by gay marriages
• Explain the most common sex-role stereotypes
• What are the effects of workplace stereotypes?
• What issues affect modern feminism?
• How sexuality affects sex-role stereotyping
• How does the media break sex-role stereotypes
• Explain the dual approach to equality between women and men
• What are the most outdated sex-role stereotypes
• Are men better than women?
• How equal are men and women?
• How do politics and sexuality relate?
• How can films defy gender-based stereotypes
• What are the advantages of being a woman?
• What are the disadvantages of being a woman?
• What are the advantages of being a man?
• Discuss the disadvantages of being a woman
• Should governments legalize prostitution?
• Explain how sexual orientation came about?
• Women communicate better than men
• Women are the stronger sex
• Explain how the world can be made better for women
• Discuss the future gender norms
• How important are sex roles in society
• Discuss the transgender and feminism theory
• How does feminism help in the creation of alternative women’s culture?
• Gender stereotypes in education and science
• Discuss racial variations when it comes to gender-related attitudes
• Women are better leaders
• Men can’t survive without women

This category also has some of the best gender debate topics. However, learners should be keen to pick topics they are interested in. This will enable them to ensure that they enjoy the research and writing process.

Interesting Gender Inequality Topics

Gender-based inequality is witnessed almost every day. As such, most learners are conversant with gender inequality research paper topics. However, it’s crucial to pick topics that are devoid of discrimination of members of a specific gender. Here are examples of gender inequality essay topics.

• Sex discrimination aspects in schools
• How to identify inequality between sexes
• Sex discrimination causes
• The inferior role played by women in relationships
• Discuss sex differences in the education system
• How can gender discrimination be identified in sports?
• Can inequality issues between men and women be solved through education?
• Why are professional opportunities for women in sports limited?
• Why are there fewer women in leadership positions?
• Discuss gender inequality when it comes to work-family balance
• How does gender-based discrimination affect early childhood development?
• Can sex discrimination be reduced by technology?
• How can sex discrimination be identified in a marriage?
• Explain where sex discrimination originates from
• Discuss segregation and motherhood in labor markets
• Explain classroom sex discrimination
• How can inequality in American history be justified?
• Discuss different types of sex discrimination in modern society
• Discuss various factors that cause gender-based inequality
• Discuss inequality in human resource practices and processes
• Why is inequality between women and men so rampant in developing countries?
• How can governments bridge gender gaps between women and men?
• Work-home conflict is a sign of inequality between women and men
• Explain why women are less wealthy than men
• How can workplace gender-based inequality be addressed?

After choosing the gender inequality essay topics they like, students should research, brainstorm ideas, and come up with an outline before they start writing. This will ensure that their essays have engaging introductions and convincing bodies, as well as, strong conclusions.

Amazing Gender Roles Topics for Academic Papers and Essays

This category has ideas that slightly differ from gender equality topics. That’s because equality or lack of it can be measured by considering the representation of both genders in different roles. As such, some gender roles essay topics might not require tiresome and extensive research to write about. Nevertheless, learners should take time to gather the necessary information required to write about these topics. Here are some of the best gender topics for discussion when it comes to the roles played by men and women in society.

• Describe gender identity
• Describe how a women-dominated society would be
• Compare gender development theories
• How equally important are maternity and paternity levees for babies?
• How can gender-parity be achieved when it comes to parenting?
• Discuss the issues faced by modern feminism
• How do men differ from women emotionally?
• Discuss gender identity and sexual orientation
• Is investing in the education of girls beneficial?
• Explain the adoption of gender-role stereotyped behaviors
• Discuss games and toys for boys and girls
• Describe patriarchal attitudes in families
• Explain patriarchal stereotypes in family relationships
• What roles do women and men play in politics?
• Discuss sex equity and academic careers
• Compare military career opportunities for both genders
• Discuss the perception of women in the military
• Describe feminine traits
• Discus gender-related issues faced by women in gaming
• Men should play major roles in the welfare of their children
• Explain how the aging population affects the economic welfare of women?
• What has historically determined modern differences in gender roles?
• Does society need stereotyped gender roles?
• Does nature have a role to play in stereotyped gender roles?
• The development and adoption of gender roles

The list of gender essay topics that are based on the roles of each sex can be quite extensive. Nevertheless, students should be keen to pick interesting gender topics in this category.

Important Gender Issues Topics for Research Paper

If you want to write a paper or essay on an important gender issue, this category has the best ideas for you. Students can write about different issues that affect individuals of different genders. For instance, this category can include gender wage gap essay topics. Wage variation is a common issue that affects women in different countries. Some of the best gender research paper topics in this category include:

• Discuss gender mainstreaming purpose
• Discuss the issue of gender-based violence
• Why is the wage gap so common in most countries?
• How can society promote equality in opportunities for women and men in sports?
• Explain what it means to be transgender
• Discuss the best practices of gender-neutral management
• What is women’s empowerment?
• Discuss how human trafficking affects women
• How problematic is gender-blindness for women?
• What does the glass ceiling mean in management?
• Why are women at a higher risk of sexual exploitation and violence?
• Why is STEM uptake low among women?
• How does ideology affect the determination of relations between genders
• How are sporting women fighting for equality?
• Discuss sports, women, and media institutions
• How can cities be made safer for girls and women?
• Discuss international trends in the empowerment of women
• How do women contribute to the world economy?
• Explain how feminism on different social relations unites men and women as groups
• Explain how gender diversity influence scientific discovery and innovation

This category has some of the most interesting women’s and gender studies paper topics. However, most of them require extensive research to come up with hard facts and figures that will make academic papers or essays more interesting.

Students in high schools and colleges can pick what to write about from a wide range of gender studies research topics. However, some gender studies topics might not be ideal for some learners based on the given essay prompt. Therefore, make sure that you have understood what the educator wants you to write about before you pick a topic. Our experts can help you choose a good thesis topic . Choosing the right gender studies topics enables learners to answer the asked questions properly. This impresses educators to award them top grades.

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101 Gender Differences Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best gender differences topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 most interesting gender differences topics to write about, 📌 simple & easy gender differences essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on gender differences.

• Gender difference Of course, it would be unwise to conclude that all men and women exhibit these qualities, as there are women who want to have all the authority and men who have profound insight but the […]
• Gender Differences and Consumer Behaviour The principal difference between male and female buyers in terms of the mentioned components is in the perception of ease of purchasing, which is lower by women.
• Impact of Culture on Gender Identity: How Differences in Genders Are Evident in the Behavior In the early centuries, there were always two genders, male and female and the heterosexual society and culture helped to shape the gender identity of countless people across the centuries.
• Gender Differences Across Cultures In Western cultures, the stress level of women is much higher than that of men and that of women in Eastern cultures.
• Gender Differences in Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Women tend to center on the person, deeper insight into the context and personality of the speaker and the general situation. Their communication is more personal, and is directed to the emotional side of the […]
• Impact of Gender Difference on Leadership Styles The difference which is realized in leadership along gender lines are a result of cultural instilled properties on women according to norms of societies.
• Sport’s Gender Differences Although they are aware of this fact as well as the role that sports play concerning the immune system of their bodies, they have neglected sports based on claims of issues of gender and racism […]
• Development of Psychopathology: Interaction of Sex, Gender, and Age Psychopathology developments involve the study of abnormal behaviours. There is a high interaction in the psychopathology development in relation to sex, gender and age.
• Gender Differences in Housekeeping in Estonia Traditional gender roles significantly impact the distribution of household chores in married couples and even the way of life of single people.
• Gender Differences in Puritan Writing There was an evident gender bias in the works of both male and female writers that connected to women’s roles in society.
• Gender and Racial Differences Understanding in Childhood It is extremely important to talk to young children about racial differences correctly to avoid the appearance of prejudices and misunderstandings.
• Gender Differences in Life Expectancy In general, the main reason for gender differences in terms of life expectancy is hormonal variations and susceptibility to chronic diseases.
• Leadership, Culture, Gender Difference and Ethics Janicijevic explains that the current notion of diversity and equality in workplaces is a reflection of a paradigm shift from the past.
• “Gender Differences in Work-Family Guilt in Parents of Young Children”: Quantitative Research Critique Most of the literature materials used on gender norms, work-family conflict, and guilt were of cultures very dissimilar to the study sample. The researchers used the Pomona Work and Family Assessment to assess the coder’s […]
• Gender Differences and Personal Social Development in 9-Year-Old Children The causes of gender disparities are clearly outlined in the paper as well as the gender roles concerning both boys and girls.
• Gender Differences in Their Core: Theories About Male and Female Differences And that also lives a mark on the moral way of women, so more the reason for a mental difference to exist.
• Evolutionary Explanation for Sex and Gender Differences The evolutionary explanation indicates that men’s uncertainty on their offspring is disappointing. The theory claims that men’s disappointment emanates from sexual disloyalty advanced by women.
• Person’s Individuality, Gender Differences and the Triune Brain When it comes to information dispensation men mostly rely on the higher level of thinking while women use both sides that is, the cortex and the limbic system.
• “Psychological Response to Athletic Injuries: Gender Differences”: Article Analysis As regards the methods, employed by the author, it should be pointed out that Vincent Granito gives preference to the qualitative approach, namely to the unstructured interview.
• Conflict Theory: Gender Differences in Cultural Capital and Educational Opportunities The purpose of the article is to compare and contrast gender differences in cultural capital and educational programs opportunities. The hypothesis is that gender and motivation are the main determinants of different achievements and outcomes […]
• Gender-Related Differences in Scores for Different Types of Cognitive Abilities The professionally administered and conducted tests showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the IQ of men and women.
• Gender Differences by Television According to Durkin, K, female especially between the age group 8 and 12 give more attention to the male characters than the female one, while boys are not ideally influenced by the sex of the […]
• Gender Differences in Verbal Communication Zimmerman and West found that men overlap women more than women overlap men and concluded that overlaps are similar to interruptions as a means of asserting dominance.
• Gender Differences in Help-Seeking Behaviors of Students Who Approach Help Desks With the help of the literature review and the following research, the researcher aims to aim to prove that the ratio of female students is greater than male students in seeking help and support.
• Sex and Gender-Related Differences in Infectious Disease Here are some instances of obvious differences in the course and symptoms of the deceases: Gonorrhea is reasoned by Neisseria gonorrhea, bacteria that raises and multiplies rapidly in humid, warm regions of the body such […]
• Unique Qualities in the Gender Differences This does not necessarily make the claims of the feminists wrong, but to ignore the fact that there are differences between the genders negates the special qualities that make individuals different and glosses over some […]
• Gender Differences in Coaching This paper discusses the differences between male and female coaching styles and argues that one is not better than the other, but they differ and, therefore, must be equally respected.
• Gender Differences in Emotions and Sexuality Today, one can observe the rise of the ideas of tolerance and equality that can be taken as one of the central forces directing the evolution of communities, shaping the international discourse, and preconditioning the […]
• Gender Differences in Social Behavior According to Maestripieri, several differences can be identified in the personality traits of men and women. Presently, however, research findings point to the existence of huge differences between men and women in terms of personality […]
• Gender Differences in Mental Disorder Prevalence The existing gender differences in the prevalence rates of a number of mental disorders have been found in many research studies.
• Gender Differences in James Bond Movies The validity of the suggestion can be well illustrated in regards to the recently produced ‘Bond movies’, which appear only slightly less sexist, as it used to be the case with the same category of […]
• Gender Differences in Messaging Application It is necessary to note that there is rather limited bulk of works on the use of emoticons in digital communication.
• “Gender Erasure to Gender Difference in China” by Yang The level of change and the difference brought by feminism in China as discussed by Mayfair Yang in the article Gender erasure to Gender Difference is so fascinating in the sense that it brings out […]
• An Invariant Dimensional Liability Model of Gender Differences in Mental Disorders The validity and reliability of research depend on the methodology that a study uses in the study of a given phenomenon.
• Gender Differences and Similarities: Main Perspectives The principal goal of this paper is to conduct the evaluation of the four main perspectives on gender while determining their primary weaknesses, strengths, and contribution to my understanding of the gender differences with the […]
• Gender Differences in the UAE Work-Related Communication The research paper was aimed at investigating the differences in communication exhibited by the Emirati men and women in their places of work.
• Gender Differences in Learning and Information Recall In the assessment of learning and memory recall, the study used the RAVLT instrument in testing the hypothesis that significant gender differences exist in various variables of learning and memory recall.
• Gender Communication Differences Between Men and Women The differences can be harmonized by empowering both male and female workers, availing the right communication tools to them, ensuring that the managers are available when they are needed by the junior workers, and constantly […]
• Union and Non-union Gender Difference The estimating result that shows of this gap different between men and women in wages is due to the fact that there are internal problems within the organization, which affects the employee’s behaviors and ability […]
• Cultural, Gender and Racial Differences in Sports The level of sports participation between males and females in the country is interestingly wide and the types of sporting activities the youth participate in have been deeply entrenched in the country’s cultural divide.
• The Gender Differences in Negotiation Styles In a negotiation process, there are several characteristics that would be required of a negotiator is they are to win the negotiation.
• Gender Difference in Hedging The position held by many language scholars about the existence of the differences in the usage of hedges based on the gender lured Dixon and Foster to carry out a study to establish the nature […]
• Gender Differences in Communication This shall be in a bid to accentuate on the communication differences that are inherent in men and women. However, the fact still remains that there are significant differences in how men and women communicate.
• Gender Differences in Leadership Styles Research has shown that just like there are similarities in the leadership styles of both men and women, there are also differences and they are all effective.
• The Importance of Understanding Cultural, Ethnic, and Gender Differences in the Business Setting The modern day business is faced with a multitude of cultural challenges for most managers and other professional, with Hooker noting that the main challenge is to comprehend and apply cultural, ethnic and gender diversity […]
• Gender Differences in Nursing The most stated reason for the differences in the population of men and women in nursing career is the children career breaks that are experienced by both men and women.
• Mrs. Hale: Different but Equal – Legitimate Gender Differences Her presence in the room is dismissed by the men and the stage directions “The women have come in slowly, and stand close to the door”.. In fact, the songbird in the play is one […]
• Sex/Gender Differences in Aggression This is the opposite of a woman as women tend to get past and forget physical transgressions than emotional transgressions. This is so as men tend to be more physically aggressive than indirectly while women […]
• The Effects of Gender Differences in Career Interruptions on the Gender Wage Gap in Spain
• The Origins of Gender Differences and Its Impact on the Actions, Thoughts and Physical Characteristics of People
• Sociological Explanations For Gender Differences
• The Implications of Gender Differences for Coaching Sports
• Why Managers Need Cultural, Ethnic, And Gender Differences
• The Problems of Sociolinguistic Studies of Gender Differences
• The Effect of Public Policy on Gender Differences in the Demand for Higher Education
• The Importance of Understanding Cultural, Ethnic, and Gender Differences by Managers and Professionals in a Business Setting
• Understanding Gender Differences in the Labor Market When Measures of Skill Are Available
• Inheritance Practices and Gender Differences in Poverty and Well-Being in Rural Ethiopia
• The Effects of Traditional Family and Gender Ideology on Earnings: Race and Gender Differences
• Racial, Ethnic and Gender Differences in Physical Activity
• Job Placement: Gender Differences and Consequences on Welfare
• Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Investment
• Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus Gender Differences In Communication
• Smog in Our Brains: Gender Differences in the Impact of Exposure to Air Pollution on Cognitive Performance
• Measuring Gender Differences in Wage Distributions for Five Countries
• The Gender Differences in Achievement as a Result of Changes in the Education System
• The Differences in Language Due to Gender Differences in Males and Females
• Social Learning And Gender Differences In Violent Crimes
• Understanding Gender Differences in Leadership
• Shattering Silence: Gender Differences In Northern Ireland
• The Determinants of Gender Differences in Income in Trinidad and Tobago
• Primed Social Roles On Gender Differences In Conformity
• How Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Tournaments Affect Gender Differences in Competitive Behavior
• Poverty Within Households: Measuring Gender Differences Using Nonmonetary Indicators
• Importance of Understanding Cultural, Ethnic, and Gender Differences
• The Lifecycle Wage Growth of Men and Women: Explaining Gender Differences in Wage Trajectories
• The Gender Differences And Effects Of Exercise On Positive And Negative Affect
• The Concept of Gender Differences in the Workplace: The Suppression of Women, the Men’s Viewpoint on Women in the Workplace, and the Leadership of Women
• Kids or Courses? Gender Differences in the Effects of Active Labor Market Policies
• The Predispositions for Social Gender Differences
• The Gender Differences In Particular Types Of Crime
• Understanding Cultural, Ethnic and Gender Differences by Managers and Professions
• Social Participation and Mortality Among Older Adults in Singapore: Does Ethnicity Explain Gender Differences
• The Challenges Faced by Females Growing Up in Gender Differences in Depression, an Article by Susan Nolan-Hoeksema
• Race and Gender Differences under Federal Sentencing Guidelines
• The Menstrual Cycle and Performance Feedback Alter Gender Differences in Competitive Choices
• The Gender Differences Between Men and Women in the Socity
• Selection of Partners, Cultural and Gender Differences
• Sociolinguistic Approaches Towards Gender Differences
• Social Influences Have Had a Major Impact on Gender Differences
• The Gender Differences in School Enrolment and Returns to Education in Pakistan
• Sex And Gender Differences Biological Masculine
• Special Rights Legislation Should Be Implemented to Bridge Gender Differences in US
• The Gender Differences in Communication and Their Impact on Relationships
• The Influence of the Neolithic Revolution on Religion and Gender Differences
• Peculiarities And Gender Differences In Language Usage In Informal E-Mail Messages
• Family Problems Questions
• Gender Stereotypes Essay Titles
• Transgender Paper Topics
• Feminism Questions
• Masculinity Topics
• Relationship Research Ideas
• Stereotype Topics
• Women’s Role Essay Topics
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IvyPanda . 2024. "101 Gender Differences Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 24, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/gender-differences-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "101 Gender Differences Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 24, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/gender-differences-essay-topics/.