Effects of Gender Differences in Achievement Orientation on Academic Preference and Acquisition

Abstract

Review of the relevant literature indicates that girls, relative to boys, have less confidence in their ability to succeed in challenging and difficult intellectual tasks. Moreover, the results of many studies show that girls are more likely than boys to show the helpless pattern of achievement-related beliefs and behaviors. It is indicated that girls are more likely than boys to use insufficient ability as an explanation for failure, but are less likely than boys to use ability as an explanation for their success. Girls show a stronger tendency than boys to view their successes as due to the external and uncontrollable factors such as luck, which implies some uncertainty about their ability to succeed in the future. Furthermore, it is argued that since girls attribute their failures to factors that are stable and beyond their control (particularly insufficient ability), in the face of difficulty, they tend to lower their expectations for future successes. Girls' lowering of their expectations results in avoidance of difficult and complex task situations that hold the threat of failure. Culturally defined sex-role stereotypes, gender-based parental expectations and orientation along with the early childhood experiences are indicated to be the basic environmental social factors contributing to the girls’ lower level of self confidence. Such social and cultural factors, as associated with the teachers by given negative feedback and treatment in the classroom, will in turn contribute to the girls’ failure to develop the achievement orientations necessary to succeed later on in really challenging intellectual areas. Mathematics constitutes the best example of such challenging intellectual areas. Beginning in the late elementary school years, mathematics appears to be an area, where, regardless of one’s aptitudes, one is likely to confront novel and confusing material. To enjoy and perform in mathematics well one must be able to maintain one’s confidence and concentration in the face of novelty and in the face of failure. This is precisely the kind ofsituation which is not suitable for the confidence level and achievement orientations of girls, but rather for those of boys. In this case, girls tend to orientate towards the verbal areas, where once the basic skills, such as reading, writing, spelling and vocabulary have been acquired, increments in difficulty tend to be gradual. Furthermore, the clarity of the correctness criterion in mathematics is indicated to make that area attractive andfacilitative to boys but not to girls. All these factors act together to make mathematics more compatible with the achievement orientations of boys, and verbal areas more compatible with the achievement orientations of girls. As a result of this early intellectual ability differentiation between boys and girls, it is seen that during the subsequent years of education most of the mathematics-based science and technical options of the academic world are being occupied by the men. In a cultural context, wherever the parents and teachers themselves are probably unaware of their own expectations, orientations and behaviors that sustain and reinforce conformity to sex-role stereotypes, it is quite difficult to eliminate the differences between the self-confidence, achievement orientation, intellectual ability and academic achievement levels of boys and girls, since these differences are encouraged and developed by such sex-role stereotypes.