Hegemonic Gender Norms and the Gender Gap in Achievement: The Case of Asian Americans

Amy Hsin

Sociological Science, December 3, 2018
10.15195/v5.a32


Many argue that hegemonic gender norms depress boys’ performance and account for the gender gap in achievement. I describe differences in the emergence of the gender gap in academic achievement between white and Asian American youth and explore how the immigrant experience and cultural differences in gender expectations might account for observed differences. For white students, boys are already underperforming girls in kindergarten, with the male disadvantage growing into high school. For Asian Americans, boys perform as well as girls throughout elementary school but begin underperforming relative to girls at the transition to adolescence. Additionally, I show that the Asian American gender gap is larger in schools with stronger male-centric sports cultures and where boys’ underachievement is normalized. I speculate that model-minority stereotypes, the immigrant experience, and standards of masculinity that promote pro-school behaviors in boys act as protective factors in early childhood but wane at the transition to adolescence during a period when the dominant peer culture plays a larger role in shaping gender identities. The study offers evidence that the gender gap in achievement is not an inevitable fact of biology but is shaped by social environment.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Amy Hsin: Department of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York
E-mail: amy.hsin@qc.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Yu Xie, Kate Choi, Sophia Catsambis, and Lizandra Friedland for commenting on earlier versions of this work. All remaining errors are strictly the responsibility of the author.

  • Citation: Hsin, Amy. 2018. “Hegemonic Gender Norms and the Gender Gap in Achievement: The Case of Asian Americans.” Sociological Science 5: 752-774.
  • Received: July 22, 2018
  • Accepted: October 23, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a32


, , , ,

No reactions yet.

Write a Reaction


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

SiteLock