Sex Differences in Reading: An Evaluation and a Critique of Current Theories

Abstract

It has been a common research finding that girls are generally better readers than boys, and that the magnitude of sex differences in reading is usually found to be greater than for sex differences in other measures of verbal abilities. Girls characteristically learn to read earlier, achieve higher scores on standardized reading tests (more markedly so in the primary grades), and account for a lower percentage of the pupils referred for remedial reading work than do boys. The question of sex differences in reading has received wide attention from researchers and educators since the thirties. Perhaps the scope of this attention is related to the direction of the sex difference. It is possible that sex differences in reading might not be as widely investigated if the difference were in the other direction-if boys were superior to girls. This would imply a tacit assumption among educators and researchers that boys should be superior to girls in everything that counts. Awareness of this possibility is important to the interpretation of much of the research in the area of sex differences.

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