Girls have been beating their male counterparts in the classroom for the last couple of decades and a new study has uncovered that the reason has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with attitude so why are we still falling behind in the workplace?
Economist Christopher Cornwell and his co-authors looked at the grades of school going children in the US, from kindergarten to the age of 10 and also looked at the results of tests which dealt with “approaches to learning” – skills like persistence, creativity, independence, concentration and ability to follow the rules.
They found that girls far outpaced boys on these “approaches to learning” and although boys did in fact out-perform girls in some areas including maths and science, girls performed better overall because their learning skills like attitude and ability to follow the rules are superior.
So what’s so important about being better behaved in the classroom? Is it all about impressing the teacher? The study also found that boys who misbehaved in their first and second year of secondary school ended up earning less in the future than their better-behaved classmates.
Are we stuck in a time warp in the workplace?
But although non-cognitive skills appear to be helping girls in school, they haven’t closed the wage gap between men and women or given women parity the same advantage in the work place. Psycholist Sian Beilock says institutional biases and other obstacles to women’s success may end up being more than their soft skills can overcome: it may be that “some of the roadblocks that women face in workplace are so strong that even if they are excelling in these areas, it’s not changing anything.”
Depressing or a just the harsh reality – do you think women will ever be able to achieve the same rights as men in the workplace?
