The Influence of Gender on Academic Performance and Psychological Resilience, and the Relationship Between Both: Understanding the Differences Through Gender Stereotypes

ORIGINAL ARTICLE Trends in Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-024-00370-7 Abstract Numerous studies have shown that psychological resilience is a key capability for students to succeed in an academic setting, but few of them have analyzed this connection from the perspective of gender. With the hypothesis that resilience and academic performance correlations are displayed differently across genders, we used the RESI-M questionnaire and academic grades to analyze this assumption. The results showed that there are gender differences in terms of the relationship between psychological resilience and academic performance. While we found that for women some factors of psychological resilience did correlate with their grades, no relationship between any of the factors and academic performance was found in men. As gender theory has claimed, men and women show differences in their behavior due to gender socialization and through the influence of gender stereotypes. Concerning these differences, our results demonstrate that while women make use of their resilience capacity in the form of planning skills and social support to perform better in higher education, men do not. Using our theoretical framework, these results are consistent with how women are socialized to make more effort in the academic setting. Men, on the other hand, tend to be less involved, since trying academically would make them “less of a man”. These results have some important implications for gender equality. Keywords Psychological resilience · Higher education · Gender differences · Gender stereotypes · Academic performance Accepted: 25 March 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 The Influence of Gender on Academic Performance and Psychological Resilience, and the Relationship Between Both: Understanding the Differences Through Gender Stereotypes SaraVera Gil1 Sara Vera Gil [email protected] 1 Department of Social Psychology, University of Seville, Seville, Spain 1 3 Trends in Psychology Introduction Over the many years where psychological research has been taking place, and since the incorporation of women as research subjects, researchers have identified gender differences in a huge variety of behavioral domains. The first explanations about gender differences were based on fixed attributes related to biological differences, but, from the late 1960s onward, a new approach was developed which considered that social factors were key to understanding gender differences (Zosuls et al., 2011). Social psychology has provided relevant theoretical models to explain the reason why women and men tend to behave differently in some domains (García Leiva, 2005). Social learning theories (Bandura, 1977; Lott, 1994), for example, consider that several agents of socialization such as family, media, schools, or peers serve as models of reference from which children start constructing their gender identity through vicarious experiences. Vicarious learning refers to being able to incorporate behaviors to own repertoire by observing social role models (Bandura, 1986). Social role theory (Eagly, 1987) explains gender differences by considering how societies are structured. From this point of view, to guarantee resources and means of subsistence, human groups are divided into social roles assigned to different members of the community. In this case, women and men would assume reproductive and productive roles, respectively. Another explanation for gender differences in behavior comes from social identity theory (Swan & Wyer Jr., 1997; Tajfel & Turner, 2004). According to this theory, human beings develop their social identity from the social groups they belong to. Regarding gender, men and women categorize themselves as belonging to the male social category or the female social category, with different attributes associated with each of them. These theoretical proposals are not incompatible. Rather, they complement each other to explain how gender identity is constructed by several psychosocial mechanisms at the same time. Taking this psychosocial approach, gender stereotypes play an important role as a factor in socialization (Gonzalez Gabaldon, 1999) since they are assumptions about personality traits and behaviors of men and women (Kite, 2001). Working as group categories as social identity theory claims and coming from the roles that each sex plays in society in line with social roles theory, gender stereotypes prescribe and proscribe gendered behaviors. Kite et al. (2008) synthesized years of research about the content of gender stereotypes and find that some of the traits associated with each of them remain stable, especially regarding two dimensions: Expressive and Communal vs. Instrumental and Agentic. Thus, traits associated with women and related to their presupposed Expressive and Communal interests are “emotional”, “gentle”, “understanding”, or “devoted”. On the other hand, men, in line with the Instrumental and Agentic dimension, are perceived as “active”, “independent”, and “self-confident”. Gender stereotypes apply to different domains, so they prescribe not only personality traits but also occupations, role behaviors, appearance, and more (Six & Eckes, 1991). All these gender characteristics linked to each sex become an integrated part of individuals’ identities. 1 3 Trends in Psychology In the context of education, gender stereotypes also have an important impact on the way girls and boys deal with their academic tasks. Over the last thirty years, in line with the progression of women’s rights in several countries, there has been a reversal in gender status in this particular setting (Sicard et al., 2021). As Sicard et al. demonstrate, today, it is well recognized that women and girls do better in educational contexts and that men and boys are more likely to experience academic failure and abandonment. Although other explanations are available – Allan et al. (2014), for example, suggest that the academic setting is not adapted to male students’ needs – the real problem is rooted in the way traditional masculinity is built. Understanding the roots of gender differences based on gender stereotypes is a more productive way to equalize gender status in every setting. Although gender identity theories have been well-established for years, many studies still lack gender perspective in the explanation and analysis of women’s and men’s differences found in their results. The way authors interpret these differences may have social implications (Bailey & Graves, 2016; Glasser & Smith, 2008; Jakubowska et al., 2023). One of the biggest risks in not making explicit clarification about the social origin of gender differences is that they may be interpreted as fixed characteristics, as the earliest research works did, and thus contribute to maintaining the status quo. We argue that these explanations are relevant to help combat preconceived expectations for each gender that affect people’s behavior and constrain them into narrow actions with severe consequences for their lives. In the educational context, helping students to balance their gendered behaviors may be beneficial, especially for men. The main goal of this paper is to offer an analysis based on how gender stereotypes affect men’s and women’s behavior in the context of academic performance and psychological resilience. By doing this, we think we are contributing to bringing back the gender perspective to a field that, following Vantieghem et al. (2014), seems to have lost it. Gender Differences in Psychological Resilience Psychological resilience describes a phenomenon observed for the first time in childhood within the clinical context. This phenomenon refers to the human capacity to overcome difficulties, allowing optimal adaptation despite adverse conditions. There have been different proposed models of resilience but no consensus in a unique definition have been reached. Some authors propose a resilience model based on personal characteristics (e.g. Ahern et al., 2009; Connor & Davidson, 2003; Hu et al., 2015; Werner, 2005), while others claim for a process-based definition (e.g. Curtis & Cicchetti, 2007; Luthar et al., 2000; Lyons & Schatzberg, 2020; Patel et al., 2017; Ungar, 2018). In this article, we assume a model of resilience based on personal and contextual factors; as authors such as Fergus & Zimmerman (2005) or, more recently, Liu et al. (2020), have proposed, resilience comes from a combination of different factors which allow human beings adapt to challenges. Although the term was used for the first time in extreme life situations, subsequent research has allowed its use to be extended to the general population (Davis et al., 2009). Thus, resilience is no longer understood exclusively in the context of clinical 1 3 Trends in Psychology psychology to describe the optimal adaptation of people exposed to traumatic events, but now also applies to everyday life, with the understanding that resilient capacity is inherent in human beings (Davis et al., 2009; Ong & Leger, 2022). On the other hand, also derived from years of research in this regard, resilience has become a multifaceted concept. Now it is possible to apply it separately to different developmental contexts, such as family, community, or, in the case that concerns us, the academic field. As will be explained in the relevant section of this article, in the school context, some research has been related to this capacity for bettering academic results. Concerning gender differences, several authors from different countries have found that females are more resilient than males, such as the well-known longitudinal study of Emmy Werner (Werner, 1996, 2005) on the island of Kauai or the classic study of Rutter (1970). Morales (2008a) and Camacho-Valadez et al. (2015) offer data in this direction as well in Latin American population. Other studies did not find significant differences between men and women in terms of resilience (Arı & Çarkıt, 2020; Sánchez-Teruel & Robles-Bello, 2015). And finally, we also can find results showing that men are more resilient than women (Oktan, 2013; Uygur et al., 2023). Considering the disparity of the results, some authors have claimed that more research has to be done to analyze gender differences in resilience (Friborg et al., 2005; Morales, 2008b; Werner, 2005). One thing that has been clearly shown in studies on this topic is that each gender tends to display resilience differently (Bonanno et al., 2007; Wilson et al., 2019). Interpreting psychological resilience as the sum of different factors, some research has found that in women, factors that have to do with relationships as a means of social support prevail. In men, on the contrary, those that are of an individual type are more present (Camacho-Valadez et al., 2015; Friborg et al., 2003). Rangel et al. (2019), for example, using the RESI-M scale (Palomar-Lever & Valdez, 2010) in a Mexican sample found that women had better scores in “social support”, whereas, in men, the significant differences compared to women were in “structure” and “strength and self-confidence”. In this regard, Jordan (2013) drew attention to the research in the area that ignored the different ways of dealing with stressful events that men and women had. Jordan claims, in line with the aforementioned, that women display what she called relational resilience, as they make use of their personal relationships to overcome stressful situations. In line with this idea but focusing on men, Pollack (2005) claims that there is a false resilience detected in men, since, ruled by gender expectations, they must be cold, confident and strong when dealing with difficult moments. This author draws attention to this fact and considers the strength often shown by many men to be a pseudoresilience. This argument was also supported more recently by Yiarlmaz Kog & Gök Uslu (2021). Considering coping mechanisms as cognitive and behavioral efforts to deal with internal or external challenges (Lazarus & Monat, 1991), indeed, according to previous literature, males and females tend to use different strategies when facing stressful situations. Certainly, the fact that women score higher in social and relational factors and men score higher in personal ones is not surprising when taking gender theories as an explanatory framework. These two ways of manifesting resilience are coherent 1 3 Trends in Psychology with the two dimensions – expressive and communal vs. instrumental and agentic – that remain stable regarding gender expectations. Gender Differences in Academic Performance Regarding academic performance, European and global reports reflect a gender gap in favor of women at different levels of education (European Education and Culture Executive Agency, 2012; OECD, 2019). Related research has also shown a female advantage in education in many cases (Delaney & Devereux, 2020; Duckworth & Seligman, 2006; Fergusson, 1997). At a British university, Naylor & Smith (2001) found that 53.4% of women obtain good grades in their studies compared to 45% of men. Voyer and Voyer (2014) carried out a rigorous meta-analysis to verify if the general differences in grades between men and women were significant. The results of this meta-analysis verified that the differences in performance between women and men are significant and in favor of women in all cases, including mathematics and sciences. The magnitude of these differences, however, seems to vary according to certain moderators. According to this study, these are the content of the subject, race, nationality, and also gender composition of classes, that is, the ratio of women to men in each class. Oberleiter et al. (2023) analyzed reading literacy, mathematics, and science academic performance across 16 cohorts from 1995 to 2019 and in 90 different countries. They found that female students outperformed male students in all three domains, although for mathematics and science, the female advantage depended, once again, on some factors, such as gender equality levels and economic indicators of the country. Although historically women were excluded for a long time from formal education due to their roles as caregivers in the private setting, once they were integrated, they showed themselves to be better adapted than men in this context. This gender gap in education was spotted during the 1990s when boys’ underachievement became an international concern (Cohen, 1998; Spinath et al., 2014). To analyze gender differences in academic performance and understand why women outperform men, researchers have carried out several studies. Spinath et al. (2014) found that girls score higher in self-discipline, domain-specific ability selfconcept, and intrinsic motivation, all of these being factors that have been related to academic success. On the contrary, boys have higher work-avoidance goals, meaning they tend to invest less effort in school tasks. But why do girls tend to have higher scores than boys in these areas related to academic performance? Campbell and Henry (1999) studied the gender differences in self-attribution of academic success in a sample of college students. Regarding specific explanations about their performance, these authors found that women tended to more frequently use explanations based on effort, while men were more prone to attribute their success in the course to ability. In line with the above, Butler and Hasenfratz (2017) demonstrated that girls and women are more prone to doubt their abilities and hence try to do better to overcome their supposed limitations. These results also make sense in terms of gender socialization, since historically and for many centuries, women’s intellect has been questioned. This prejudice may have affected the way they think about their success, and consequently, how they face 1 3 Trends in Psychology academic challenges. On the other hand, since men’s intelligence has not been systematically doubted at any time, it is a quality that men can rely on. This apparent self-reliance of males on their own intelligence makes them overestimate their own abilities (Meece et al., 2006). In this sense, it is proven that women invest more effort than men when it comes to academic tasks (Richardson et al., 2012; Schneider & Preckel, 2017). Differences can also be found in the literature on learning strategies. Self-regu- lated learning is another skill that has been proven to be related to academic success (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011). According to Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons’ (1990) study on schools from New York, female students tend to more frequently use self-regulated strategies in a variety of learning contexts. Some of these strategies are planning and setting goals, keeping records, and monitoring themselves. Van Houtte (2004) in her study with Belgian students about academic culture detected that while girls’ culture was study-oriented, for boys the situation was the opposite. This difference in academic culture seems to affect the differences in academic achievement. According to Van Houtte, the former could mean that boys’ underachievement comes from the male groups’ dynamic. In this regard, it has been reported that males are 1.74 times more likely than females to be unpopular and made fun of for making efforts to have good performance in school (Workman & Heyder, 2020). Indeed, according to research, boys are more likely to be bullied when they are perceived as good performers (Bergold et al., 2020; Epstein, 1998). Gender theorists have explained men’s underachievement through the lens of the constriction of gender stereotypes. From this perspective, it has been argued that “effortless achievement” is a constituted part of masculine identity, and consequently, seeking positive outcomes in school would cause a male to be considered “effeminate” (Cohen, 1998, p. 29). In this sense, as Epstein (1998) claims, by accepting a particular idea of what masculinity is, many boys and men sabotage their own academic success. Psychological Resilience and Academic Performance in Higher Education As mentioned, in the last few years, psychological resilience has been shown to relate to academic performance. Several studies have tried to analyze how resilience is connected to academic performance, to know if some part of academic success comes from the capability to resist difficulties in an academic setting. Among these studies, Allan et al. (2014) found in UK university a relationship between total resilience, measured with the CD-RISC questionnaire (Connor & Davidson, 2003), and academic achievement in terms of final grades. In addition, in the analysis by subscales, academic achievement had a positive correlation with two resilience subscales, Competence,1 and Change2. Despite that, the positive correlation between these two variables was only found in the female group of students. Academic outcomes in 1 Having high standards, and tenacity (Connor & Davidson, 2003). 2 Accepting change and having secure relationships. 1 3 Trends in Psychology women were related to four subscales: Competence, Trust3, Change, and Control4. While for female students, higher resilience levels were also linked to higher academic performance, the contrary was found for male students: the higher the level of resilience, the lower the academic performance. When analyzing resilience factors alone, gender resulted in no significant differences in this study, but the authors found a prevalence of Control and Spirit5 in the female group and Competence and Trust in the male one. Although gender analysis was carried out by these authors, we cannot identify a gender-related explanation for these results. On the contrary, this study, in particular, seems to be gender-blind to some extent, since the study authors argue that, “The convoluted nature of males’ resilience suggests that support staff may help males further by becoming more male-friendly, while also providing equitable practices to accommodate females’ strengths” (Allan et al., 2014, p. 20). However, this perspective assumes that the nature of males’ and females’ resilience comes from fixed personality traits, rather than being a social construction based on biological differences – and therefore susceptible to being changed. Similarly, the study of Ayala and Manzano-García (2018) in Spanish University students shows that two of the three factors of the resilience scale used – Hardiness6 and Resourcefulness7– had a role in academic performance. Gender differences were also found with different weights of these two factors in males’ and females’ performance but again, the explanation for these differences was not developed in terms of a gender perspective. In other more recent studies in tertiary education, the results indicated a relationship between academic performance and psychological resilience. Bittman (2021), for example, found that German resilient students had significantly more positive academic outcomes, although gender differences were not tested. Oliva et al. (2020) also found that high grades were associated with high levels of resilience in a Colombian sample, but once again, they did not carry out a gender analysis. As we can see, several research works have been carried out to find out the relationship, if any, between psychological resilience and academic performance. Although some of them did test gender differences, they do not seem to have taken the gender perspective into account, since their interpretation framework does not seem to be rooted explicitly in any gender theoretical model. Considering the lack of a real gender perspective on previous research about gender differences in psychological resilience, academic performance, and the possible correlation between these two elements, the main objective of this study is to analyze these differences under the paradigm of gender theory. The specific objectives of this article are: (1) To offer more evidence about the differences in academic performance across genders. (2) To study whether women and men perform differently in terms of psychological resilience. (3) To analyze gender differences in the relationship between academic performance and resilience factors. 3 Trusting in one’s instincts. 4 Having a realistic sense of control in life. 5 Having faith in something. 6 Representative item: “I can make unpopular or difficult decisions.” (Ayala & Manzano, 2018, p. 1326). 7 Representative item: “I know where to turn for help.” (Ayala & Manzano, 2018, p. 1326). 1 3 Trends in Psychology Method Participants We determined the sample size by using the formula for finite populations, given that the target population is delimited and that it is less than 100,000 subjects and for a confidence level of 97.7%. Considering the population variability is unknown (so p = q), the sample size of 529 gives us a margin of error of 4.33%, which is below 5% and represents an acceptable level. Thus, the sample involved 529 full-time students from different degree programs in a public Spanish university. Since the sampling method used was by conglomerates of disciplines, we had students from five branches of knowledge in our sample: Arts and Humanities (9.3% females; 9.7% males), Engineering and Architecture (11.5% females; 38.9% males), Health Sciences (28.1% females; 15.7% males), Social Sciences and Law (33.5% females; 18.5% males) and Science (17.6% females; 17.1% males). The students also came from different levels, from the first year to the last year of their degrees, with the average being 2.32 years (SD = 1.49; range: 0–9) for females and 2.48 years (SD = 1.51; range: 0–8) for males. The sample was comprised of 59.2% females (N = 308) and 40.8% males (N = 215). On average, the female respondents were 20.52 years old (SD = 2.95; range: 18–45) and the male respondents were 21.20 years old (SD = 4.79; range: 17–51). Their degree grade was on average 6.83 (SD = 1.21; range: 0-9.60) for female students and 6.55 (SD = 1.66; range: 0-9.80) for male students. Procedure The study was approved by the Ethical Commission of the local government and by the faculties in which the questionnaires were implemented. The information needed for the analysis was collected in the form of an online questionnaire using the platform Google Forms. The link to the questionnaire was provided by the researchers and completed by the students in class, during class time, and in the presence of the teacher and the researchers. No time limit was established. All students were informed about the purpose of the study and the anonymity of their answers. Instruments Psychological Resilience To measure psychological resilience, we used the Mexican Resilience Scale (RESI- M) (Palomar-Lever & Valdez, 2010), constructed from the combination of two other resilience scales: the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003) and the Resilience Scale for adults (Friborg et al., 2003). The RESI-M is one of the few resilience scales that are available in the Spanish language and has optimal psychometric qualities. This scale is based on five factors supporting a multidimensional concept of resilience. These factors are Strength and Self-Confidence (e.g., 1 3 Trends in Psychology “I’m proud of my achievements”), Social Competence (e.g., “I feel comfortable with people”), Family Support (e.g., “In our family we enjoy doing activities together”), Social Support (e.g., “I have friends/family members that support me”) and Structure (e.g., “Rules and routines make my life easier”), with a total explained variance of 43.609% and a total Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93. The psychometric characteristics of the RESI-M have also been analyzed in a sample of Spanish adolescents (Iraurgi et al., 2012), confirming the structure of five factors with good internal consistency. The RESI-M has 43 items and is scored based on a Likert scale with four choices from 1 (Completely disagree) to 4 (Completely agree). Academic Performance Academic performance was measured by asking each participant about his/her average grade in the degree he/she is pursuing. This information was included in the questionnaire we provided to the students. Data Analysis To determine the possible differences in psychological resilience and academic performance across genders, we used mathematical means as a statistical comparison between the two groups. Regarding the statistical significance of the comparisons, we used the Student’s T-test, as the variables fulfilled the conditions: that is, sample size ≥ 30, normality, variables of quantitative type, and homogeneity of variations. To interpret the size effect in every comparison, we used Valentine and Cooper’s criterion (2007). These authors consider it problematic to use Cohen’s (1988) numbers to analyze the magnitude of the differences when comparing groups in disciplines related to psychology and personality. This is because of the characteristics of the constructs that are measured, as the differences frequently turn out to be small. Thus, in line with Valentine and Cooper, we considered values around 0.30 to be of practical relevance. To study the possible connections between resilience factors and academic performance, we first tried multiple linear regression. Since the model did not offer any conclusions, we carried out bivariate correlations with Pearson’s r between the variables under study. For all the analyses, we used the statistics software SPSS, version 23. Results Academic Outcomes by Gender A two-sample t-test was performed to compare the average grade reported by female and male students. 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