Biased Behavior Assessments and the Gender Gap in School Grades

The behavioral explanation for the gender gap in school grades suggests that girls receive better grades than boys because of their behavior, which is often more school-conforming than boys’ school behavior. This well-established explanation in sociology implicitly assumes that students’ school behavior can be objectively assessed. However, in reality, students’ school behavior is assessed by teachers whose observations about students’ school behavior may be biased. For example, teachers may perceive the same school (mis)behavior more favorably when exhibited by a girl rather than a boy, leading to more positive evaluations of girls’ behavior even when girls and boys exhibit similar levels of school (mis)conduct. As a result, gender bias in behavior assessment, rather than actual differences in school behavior, could influence the gender gap in school grades.

Drawing on the theoretical frameworks provided by the halo effect and labeling theory, the study hypothesizes that students’ biased behavior assessments by their teachers correlate with—and potentially contribute to—the gender gap in their GPA. Data from 123 classrooms in rural Hungarian primary schools support this hypothesis. The study finds that classrooms where teachers give girls better behavior grades than boys for the same level of disruptive behavior, tend to exhibit a larger female-favoring gender gap in GPA from the key subjects. Furthermore, the study argues for a potential causal link between teachers’ biased behavior assessments and the GPA gap by leveraging quasi-random student allocation across classrooms in the sample and instrumental variable estimations. The results indicate that a significant portion of the gender gap in GPA is explained by teachers’ biased behavior ratings favoring girls. Thus, this study extends previous research by suggesting that the gender gap in GPA is influenced not only by behavioral differences between girls and boys but also by differential teacher assessments of their behavior.