Women, Men, and Academic Performance in Science and Engineering: The Gender Difference in Undergraduate Grade Point Averages

Gender
Refer to the roles and responsibilities of men and women that are created in our families, our societies and our cultures.

The concept of gender also includes the expectations held about the characteristics, aptitudes and likely behaviours of both women and men (femininity and masculinity)

Sex
Decribes the biological differences between men and women, which are universal and determined at birth

Gender Equality Women and men have equal conditions for realizing their full human rights and contributing to and benefiting from, economic, social, cultural and political development.

Gender Equity The process of being fair to men and women.

Women, Men, and Academic Performance in Science and Engineering

 Science and engineering exert a major and ever-increasing influence on the very fabric of modern society, in areas ranging from energy, transportation, environmental controls, and health, to data banks and communication. Scientists and engineers, hence, play a pivotal role in the overall workforce, and the size, composition and talent.

 Science and engineering fields are also marked by notable gender disparities in participation, performance, and rewards. Men are more likely than women to be employed in science and engineering, and when employed, are more likely to have high ranking positions, higher salary, and to be located in research universities and other prestigious locations.

 Undergraduate education, specifically, is important to understanding and addressing the gender disparity in science and engineering because this educational stage strongly influences the composition of the future science and engineering workforce.

 Women have been pursuing undergraduate studies within science and engineering in growing numbers over the past decades, but they remain under-represented among majors and baccalaureate degree holders in fields outside the social, behavior, and life sciences.

The article focuses, specifically, upon a critical aspect of gender and performance: the undergraduate grade point averages (GPAs) of women, compared with mens, in science and engineering.

 GPAs are a key aspect of undergraduate education because, at this level, education is largely a classroom experience in which grades are the bottom line, and because grade point averages are widely accepted and consequential indicators of performance.

 GPAs differ between women and men, and GPA was found to be a particularly strong predictor of retention for women.

 Analyses of enrollment records from a large state-supported university indicated that those students who continued in engineering, compared with those who did not, had higher GPAs for all three years of undergraduate study that were examined.

 The relationship between grades and accomplishment are stronger when the content of academic performance is close to the demands of a field in which the individual works.

 The data on academic performance also point toward an anomalous pattern. Womens academic achievement is as high, or higher, than mens in science and engineering , but the out comes in workforce status (position, rank, salary) are not gender equitable. (Michelson, 1989)

 However, although women do not receive the same returns (workforce position, rank, salary) as men for their educational attainment/degrees earned, formal educational credentials are more important for women than for men throughout their working lives.

Hypothesis
Assumption that women, on average, may perceive science and engineering fields that contain relatively few women as non-traditional for their gender, and hence as potentially obstacle ridden or as particularly challenging.

 The hypothesis leads us to expect the percentage of women majors, in a particular department, to be inversely correlated with these womens GPA advantage, as a group.

 Faculty mentoring is associated with undergraduate students success. Participation (compared with non participation) in residential, living learning communities has been found to be associated with higher grades and satisfaction among undergraduates.

 Interaction with faculty, mentoring, and participation in learning communities may be consequences as well as causes of students success, and that the relationship between resources and success of women students may to some extent be reciprocal.