Sex differences in education in the United States refers to the specific issues, such as gender-based discrimination related to coursework and use of disciplinary action, that American students of all genders encounter. Furthermore, while sex differences in education explains the prevalence of gender-based differences in education on a global scale, the American education system includes specific forms of gender discrimination dissimilar to other countries.
Statistics
Girls and boys have very different developmental trajectories. It has been found that boys are the most likely to delay entry into kindergarten (60% of the children are boys), meaning they do not attend until they are at least 6 years old. Boys are also more likely than girls to repeat a grade or more during their time in elementary school (66% of children who repeat kindergarten are boys). On average, girls perform significantly better in school and earn better grades. But, girls and boys do have different strengths. On average, girls perform better in writing and boys are ahead of girls in mathematics.
Men and women workers in the United States have the same mean numbers of years of education which is 12.2 years. But there are some discrepancies across gender when it comes to education. When it comes to terminating an educational career, men are more likely to terminate their education either before achieving a high school diploma or at the college level (5,779), whereas women are more likely to terminate their education after having achieved a high school diploma. When it comes to amount of education, working class girls tended to have the shortest academic career. Middle-class boys have the longest academic careers. The sex gap for education was wider between the working class children and the middle class children. Girls had a wider gap when it came to the class gap then boys.
The American School System and Male Students
Male students, like their female counterparts, experience discrimination in academic settings. Several scholars argue this discrimination focuses on teachers’ discipline of their male students as well as on the attitudes of other male peers. Educational scholars and other sociologists use these claims to support their theories regarding male enrollment in specific academic subjects.
Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson examine the ways in which boys’ earlier experiences with education impact their later relationships with schooling. For example, they write of a male patient whose struggles in middle school were traced back to his history of disciplinary violations. The authors go on to state that boys’ typical behaviors—such as their propensity for physical action—are a “problem” when they enter American schools, institutions that prioritize obedience and self-control. Furthermore, Kindlon and Thompson explain the detriment of stereotypes surrounding boys, explaining how teachers often ascribe their own biases to male students.
Authors like Myra Sadker and David Sadker provide a history to the argument that schools are “feminine” spaces—a critique these authors challenge. In this overview, they explain how women’s entrance into the teaching profession at the time of the Civil War eventually enabled women to lead the field. This large number of female teachers in American schools thus created a fear among men that boys would learn (and perform) traits that were socially coded as feminine. Shifting from this history, Sadker and Sadker write how heteronormative standards, which American schools reinforce through activities, such as sports, affect boys’ ideas of themselves and their female peers.
DiPrete and Buchmann synthesize other scholars’ work concerning conceptions of “masculinity” and its influence on male performance in American high schools. They use examples, such as survey data and student interviews, to highlight the fact that peer groups may be partially responsible for explaining male patterns of achievement. For example, they highlight research that suggests male students “gender” good academic performance.
While studies have demonstrated the disparities between male and female students in STEM, a study by the American Association of University Women shows the unequal distribution of male students in subjects like English and the Arts. Notably, male students enroll in “remedial” English classes more often than their female counterparts. The authors posit that educators in these fields (especially in literature) may use learning techniques that girls prefer. This disparity between male-female enrollments in literature classes may also reflect the gendered ideas of students, as students enroll in classes most in line with their expressed gender identity.