为何巾帼胜须眉?非认知能力与大学生在校表现的性别差距

Why Females Outperform Males? The Role of Non-cognitive Ability in Explaining the Gender Gap in College Students’ School Performance

本文从非认知能力视角揭示了中国大学阶段日益明显的女生教育优势现象的成因。研究发现,女生在学业和非学业类表现上均领先于男生,该优势稳健地存在于不同专业和不同学校层级的样本中,文科专业和非重点高校样本中的女生优势尤其明显。女生尽责性、成就动机、外倾性和情绪稳定性四个维度非认知能力的发展水平高于男生,但自我效能感维度的发展水平较低;并且,改善尽责性、成就动机和自我效能感对女生在校表现的回报低于男生。非认知能力被证明对女生教育优势的形成起到了中介作用。Blinder-Oaxaca分解结果显示,男女大学生之间在非认知能力上的水平差异是导致女生在校表现,特别是非学业类表现上相对领先的主要原因。本文的发现有助于深化理解高等教育领域性别分层现象的根源,并为高校政策优化提供依据。

This paper attempts to explore the role of non-cognitive abilities in explaining the apparent phenomenon of female advantage in Chinese universities.The results showed that female students significantly outperformed their male counterparts in both academic and non-academic performance.This advantage is robustly present in samples among different majors or level-tiered universities,and especially large in samples from humanities and social majors as well as non-key universities.Compared to male students,female students have higher levels of non-cognitive ability in conscientiousness,achievement motivation,extroversion,and emotional stability;but they have lower levels of self-confidence and lower return rates of conscientiousness,achievement motivation,and self-confidence about educational achievement.Noncognitive abilities have been shown to play a mediating role in the formation of female dominance in school performance.The decomposition results suggest that higher levels of non-cognitive ability are the main cause of educational advantage for women,especially in terms of non-academic performance.The findings provide a new perspective on understanding the phenomenon of gender stratification in higher education and have practical implications for optimizing university policies.