University Gender Gap

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Salaam and Greetings,

In today’s New Straits Times, they reported on the upcoming registration for universities in Malaysia. And that the gender gap is now 60:40, in favor of the ladies. In 1990, it was a milestone when it hit 50:50. Prior to that, it has always been more men that ladies. UKM reported, this year, they will be having a ratio of 70:30 for the ladies.

What brought upon this drastic gap? According to UKM Deputy Vice-Chancellor (student affairs and alumni) Prof Dr Othman A. Karim, “More female applicants had better academic results and performance, which explains the increase in the gender gap.”

Read more: University gender gap http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/Universitygendergap/Article/#ixzz1XJy2xJHM

However, the statement by Prof Dr Othman only begs the question, “why are the ladies having better academic results than their men counterpart?”

A few days ago, I wrote about the challenges many countries are facing on the education system, including Malaysia. A couple of people whom I respect, replied and gave their insights into the matter too.

Fortunate, or unfortunately, the challenges we are facing in our education system in not so many ways are the caused for the Gender gap in academic performance. In my previous writing, I basically touched on the content, curriculum and syllabus. However, this time I would like to touch on the delivery. How do we deliver the content so that our students can best receive them?

We can go into details, but generally speaking, girls are different from the boys. The manner they are. What and how they do things. What they like and don’t like.

Yet, our education system precludes all that and assumes both genders are the same. And if we get into specifics, even as individuals, regardless of gender and age, we have our learning styles. The teaching methodology in schools and even in universities mostly disregards the learning part, and only emphasizes the teaching part. Hence, it is mostly the teacher-lecturer centered rather than student centered. Of course, my caveat is that, there are teachers and lecturers who are becoming more attuned to the needs of the students. But, the numbers are small and growing slowly. Being student centered is not easy.

If you want to know what’s your learning style, do save the attached file on your computer, and answer the questions. I discovered this learning style profile Excel sheet almost 10 years ago, and whenever I can, I usually get my participants to take the tests before attending my training.(I can't attach the file. If you want it, do let me know and I will email it to you).

Coming back to the Gender Gap. Our schools are basically female centered. Students are literally ‘forced’ to sit still. Be quiet. Don’t move. Obey orders and instructions in a structured environment. If you have girls at home, you know, generally speaking, girls are better at all these requirements than boys. Boys love to tinker. They need to move around. They have lots of imagination. They are messy and their minds are generally in a state of chaos. They speak less than girls, who are generally more verbose. Unfortunately, schools are basically designed for girls to excel. And then we wondered why boys don’t.

Even in adult learning and corporate training, not many trainers take into account of the learning styles of the participants. More often, the training is so content centered, that, a lot of trainers disregard learning styles. That could also contribute to the lack of learning among participants – which leads to unsuccessful change in behavior and impact to the organization.

Do try the test. Have fun. Yes, you may forward the file to others. And please do not sell the file. I got it for free. Therefore it should be a not for profit sharing.

Next article, I shall write on how to manage your learning styles so that you can learn better and more effective.

Take care

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