Gender Inequality: Who Has It Harder? Shocking Research Analytics

AI in Education

9 min read

Gender Inequality: Who Has It Harder? Shocking Research Analytics

In this article, you will find reports from UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Health Organization, and the Education Policy Institute - all organized to answer the most common gender questions.

Written by

Catherine B.

Published on

Mar 26, 2025

Table of contents

Who Has It Harder? The Overlooked Truth about Gender Stereotypes
Representation: Teen Girls Are More Likely to Go to College Than Boys
Performance: Why Do Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys in High School?
Gender Issues and Socioeconomic Factors: The Hidden Gender Discrimination of Teen Boys
Focus Points: Do Girls and Boys Experience School Differently?
Is the Future Female? How Do School Experiences Impact Students' Future?
Do Girls Really Have It Easier? Sum Up

Table of contents

Who Has It Harder? The Overlooked Truth about Gender Stereotypes
Representation: Teen Girls Are More Likely to Go to College Than Boys
Performance: Why Do Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys in High School?
Gender Issues and Socioeconomic Factors: The Hidden Gender Discrimination of Teen Boys
Focus Points: Do Girls and Boys Experience School Differently?
Is the Future Female? How Do School Experiences Impact Students' Future?
Do Girls Really Have It Easier? Sum Up

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Who has it harder in high school, girls or boys? Are females better than males in academics? Do boys get STEM subjects better than girls?

Gender inequality questions concern both academic researchers and daily holy wars in social media comment sections. The gender divide in high school is indeed evident across many metrics of academic success, stress rates, and common issues. However, is there any evidence that benefits one gender and leaves the other behind?

In this article, you will find more than what the data says about gender in school. StudyPro has collected the data, sorted it out to answer the most common questions, and found some first-person perspectives on how it actually feels to be the number in these statistics.

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Who Has It Harder? The Overlooked Truth about Gender Stereotypes

The truth about teen boys vs. girls is that such comparisons are an intricate weave of different factors, often overlooked in one-pointed analytics charts.

The answer to who has it harder - boys or girls, must compile data on the following sets of criteria:

Criteria	Data collection points
Representation	Representation in graduating high school Representation in getting enrolled in college Representation in graduating college Access to basic human needs Access to education and technology
Performance	Performance in STEM subjects Reading and literacy skills Overall academic achievements Course completion and timeline rates Behavioral and disciplinary performance Extracurricular activities and leadership
Issues and struggles	Solely female issues (sexual harassment, gender pay gap, child marriage) Solely male issues (gender based violence, sexual orientation harassment, emotional restrictions) Issues common for both genders
Socioeconomic factors’ impact	Social status Income Community safety, social practices Country (developing countries vs. countries with more economic resources) Peer support Domestic violence, criminal record, substance abuse
Experiences and focus points	Worldview Motivation, career expectations, dreams Focus points and interests Biological factors
Future prospects	Career choices Percentage of landing a job after graduation Wage gaps, starting salaries, hiring discrimination Representation in leadership Access to promotions Workplace safety, legal protection

For the good or the bad, it’s not enough to say who performs better in reading and math to compare the two genders. So let’s analyze the available data to connect as many dots as possible.

Learn more: How Do You Balance Your Life Between Studies, Work, and Personal Life

Representation: Teen Girls Are More Likely to Go to College Than Boys

Is it true that girls are more likely to go to college than boys? Yes, it is.

Here is a quick summary of the findings from a few UNESCO reports:

In tertiary education, gender equality was achieved in 1998. Before that, for a few hundred years, girls either didn’t have access to education at all or were severely underrepresented - UNESCO 2024 “Global Education Monitoring Report.”
For the past two decades, the disparity started growing at the expense of men - UNESCO 2024 “Global Education Monitoring Report.” Both ways, access to education must be a fundamental human right.
A stable, long-lasting parity is impossible to achieve. Moreover, the percentage of representation for girls and boys receiving a quality education depends on the geographic, economic conditions, and access to fundamental human rights.
Overall safety for girls is not granted. In some countries, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Niger, and Mali, girls still have little to no access to education. There are still regions where many women are forced into early marriage and pregnancies and are denied even basic human rights. The practices such as child brides, unpaid domestic work, female genital mutation, and shut down of reproductive health access are still common worldwide.

Criterion	Who is in advantage?	Statistics finding	Source
Graduating high school	Girls	Boys are 10 percentage points more likely to drop out of school than girls (35% vs. 25% between Grades 10-12).	UNESCO Leave No Child Behind 2022 report
Getting enrolled in college	Girls	By 2020, there were 114 women enrolled in tertiary education for every 100 men.	UNESCO 2024 Global Education Monitoring Report
Graduating college	Girls	More girls than boys progress from primary to tertiary education (average: 14.3 years of schooling for girls vs. 13.4 for boys).	UNESCO Leave No Child Behind 2022 report
Access to education and technology	Boys	130 million fewer women than men own a mobile phone, and 244 million fewer women have internet access worldwide	UNESCO Global Education Monitoring 2024 Report

It’s worth noticing that according to the UNESCO “Leave No Child Behind” report, gender inequality in dropout rates and underperformance may result from societal pressure to be a breadwinner and enter the job market early, as well as peer violence and pressure factors.

💡Gender inequality is as much an issue for boys as for girls. Boys in school experience more gender-based violence, such as engaging in fights. Instead, girls are more subjected to sexual violence and unequal treatment in labor force.

Performance: Why Do Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys in High School?

Here are the key reasons why girls get better grades than boys:

Girls indeed get better grades than boys as they feel more academic and performance pressure and receive less school and family support, according to the World Health Organization.
Girls have higher academic engagement. Boys are more likely than girls to repeat grades, drop out, or struggle with learning - UNESCO “Leave No Child Behind” 2022 report.
Girls are better behaved. Boys are reported to have more fighting and rule-breaking activities than girls, with the tendency being true worldwide - UNESCO “School Violence and Bullying: Global Status Report”, 2017.
Yet, women and girls have less access to leadership roles despite their impressive performance and positive disciplinary records - UNICEF “Increasing Women’s Representation in School Leadership” 2022 report. Advancing gender equality means decreasing the gap between school and real life possibilities for female and male counterparts.

Data comes from public Reddit resources

Let’s see a short statistics overview comparing girls’ and boys’ performance:

Criterion	Who is in advantage?	Statistics findings	Source
Performance in STEM subjects	Boys	The average share of STEM graduates is 15% among young women and 35% among young men.	UNESCO 2024 Gender Report
Reading and literacy skills	Girls	At the end of lower secondary education, there are 88 proficient boys for every 100 girls in high-income countries.	UNESCO 2024 Gender Report
Overall academic achievements	Girls	Boys are at greater risk of repeating grades, failing to complete different education levels, and experiencing poorer learning outcomes.	UNESCO Leave No Child Behind 2022 Report
Behavior and discipline	Girls	Boys are more likely to engage in disciplinary issues, such as fighting and bullying.	UNESCO 2024 Global Education Monitoring Report
Leadership	Boys	Women are under-represented in leadership positions across multiple sectors, but less attention has been given to education.	UNICEF “Increasing Women’s"

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Gender Issues and Socioeconomic Factors: The Hidden Gender Discrimination of Teen Boys

Anxiety, depression, economic struggles, and peer approval are the issues that severely affect both genders. However, some common issues are a unique gender-related experience.

Here are short lists of things that teenage boys and girls experience differently and similarly:

Categories	Issues
Issues both genders experience similarly	Academic pressure and high expectations Mental health struggles (stress, anxiety, depression) Peer pressure Bullying and cyberbullying Identity, self-esteem issues Family expectations Unsafe domestic conditions Unsafe community places Balancing school, extracurriculars, and personal life Status and financial struggles, poverty Sexual orientation stigma
Issues specific to girls	Higher expectations for academic performance and behavior Gender discrimination in leadership and STEM fields Harassment or unsafe school environments Societal pressure regarding appearance and body image Emotional burden of caregiving responsibilities, domestic work Threat of sexual harassment and forced marriage Pressure to conform to traditional gender roles Eating disorders Gender wage gap, gender bias’ impact on labor market outcomes
Issues specific to boys	The cultural norm of boys’ fights and violence Gender based violence, physical harassment, gender norms of criminal activity Gender bias in showing emotions Greater risk of dropping out of school Pressure to conform to masculinity standards (aggression, dominance) Urge to risky behaviors Stigma around emotional expression and mental health support Stigma around close friendship in males Gender bias in social justice, issues of juvenile criminal system

So, is it possible to define who has it harder, boys or girls? According to the UNESCO 2017 Global Status Report, “Boys were at significantly greater risk of physical and verbal bullying, while girls experienced indirect and relational bullying”.

💡 In the matter of experienced issues, both teenage girls and boys have it hard.

Focus Points: Do Girls and Boys Experience School Differently?

Yes, boys and girls usually start to have slight differences in interests and behaviors as early as about 5 years old. How much of these differences are inflicted by social stereotypes and gender-based education? We lack data to answer that clearly.

For the lack of unambiguous reasons, we cannot also answer a list of common questions regarding girls’ and boys’ interests and preferences. Here are some examples of such questions with no clear answers:

❓Do girls like social studies and humanities more than STEM disciplines?

We cannot know if they LIKE these disciplines more as there is still a stigma around females in particular fields. Women held less than 25% of science, engineering and ICT jobs in 2022, according to UNESCO 2024 Global Education Monitoring Report.

So, we know for sure that women currently tend to pursue social studies more than STEM subjects. However, we cannot know whether women actually like this role distribution.

💡 It is not enough to track STEM and reading scores to achieve gender equality. Gender stereotypes go hand in hand with sexual violence, natural resources, reproductive rights, and labor force issues.

❓Do boys care less about studying than girls?

As shown by the UNESCO Leave No Child Behind report, “boys are 10 percentage points more likely to drop out of school than girls”. We can state that boys have lower overall performance rates, and higher dropouts rates. However, “caring” is a subjective factor that has not yet been measured in a comprehensive study.

Data comes from public Reddit resources

❓Are girls more ambitious than boys?

As shown in the statistics above, girls are more likely to enroll in college, get better grades, and show better disciplinary records, which positively affect their academic pursuits.

Yet, we still live in a world where the great majority of political, leadership, governmental and management roles belong to males. Therefore, the conclusion is that there may be approximately equal levels of ambitions in the two genders, although applied differently in educational and market environments.

Is the Future Female? How Do School Experiences Impact Students' Future?

The teen gender gap nobody talks about is that girls clearly show better results in academic settings, if given a chance to. Yet after graduation they find themselves underpaid and underrepresented in leadership roles, once again trapped in gender inequality. How come that woman empowerment does not work outside of education?

Here a few data entries that show how school experiences impact the future of teen boys and girls:

Gender experiences & performance	Impact on Future	Who is at a Disadvantage?
Girls achieve higher grades than boys across most subjects. (Education Policy Institute, 2023)	- Increased college enrollment - Greater career opportunities	Boys
Girls are underrepresented in leadership roles in schools and beyond. (UNICEF, 2022)	Continued gender disparity in high-ranking professional roles	Girls
Boys receive more disciplinary actions and suspensions than girls. (UNESCO, 2022)	Lower academic success Greater likelihood of dropping out Premature job market entering	Boys
Girls face higher social pressures related to academic perfectionism and self-image. (UNESCO, 2024)	- Inability to cope with perfectionistic tendencies Agreeing to lower income jobs Self-esteem issues, imposter syndrome, - Inability to use acquired education to their career advancement	Girls

💡 As the growth of psychological education, mentorships, and social lift possibilities for women expands, the future can become more female than it is now. However, gender equity is not about benefiting one side but ensuring that there is no longer any need for “sides” hostility at all.

Do Girls Really Have It Easier? Sum Up

In summary, girls really have it easier to graduate, get enrolled in college, and get better grades. However, this does not mean that girls are inherently better than boys; only that they face much more performance pressure and are commonly raised to be more responsible, caretaking, and empathic.

At the same time, boys have it easier to be assigned leadership roles, to be taken seriously at any domain, and to receive higher career opportunities regardless of their grades. Similarly to girls, these are not inherent qualities, but a result of societal expectations and shifted priorities in their households.

Gender equality is not yet accessible for both genders, as boys and girls still face gender discrimination, differences in domestic work and responsibilities, and unequal cultural practices.

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Frequently asked questions

No, there is no clear data that boys perform better in STEM than girls, although there is evidence that the average share of STEM is 15% among young female graduates and 35% among young male graduates.

Generally speaking, yes, girls achieve higher grades than boys across most subjects, and this gap has widened since 2019. In 16-19 education, female students outperformed males by around a grade and a half across their best three qualifications (Education Policy Institute, 2023).

However, it may be a reason for multiple mental well-being and societal factors on both parts rather than inherent performance preference.

Boys and girls act so differently because of gender inequality in societal expectations and assigned roles that shape their behaviors, interest, and even future prospects. Both genders feel pressure from family, educational institutions, and peers to develop a particular gender identity. This leads to gender stereotypes and differences in behavior in boys and girls.

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