Krittin “Krit” Chotnoparatpat

Mr. Abel Cadias

English 10 / 1004

June 5, 2019

The Correlation Between Gender and Diligence

The discrimination between gender and other subjects, for instance, career and education,

is arguably the most relevant subject in the twenty-first century around the world. History has

shown that equality between men and women has never quite equilibrated. The author speculates

that equality between genders can solve the problem of education. It is unfortunate that such

inequality exists in places around the world, including Thailand. For example, it is the case that

most people in Thailand assumes that girls take more time studying than boys (Gaudiano, 2017).

Gender should not be taken into consideration as a factor that affects the education of a young

mind at Mahidol University International Demonstration School.

The purpose of this research is to study whether girls study harder than boys. It is important

to our community because education affects career paths and people these days urge not to have

any gender dominated career. The author uses three academic articles from different sources to

relate the results and interpretation of the survey to other research studies.

Please note that the survey is responded to by grade 10 and 11 students of Mahidol

University International Demonstration School. Thus, the result may vary among other

environments. The objective was to ask how many hours the respondents study by themselves per

week and their choices were, in range of four, between zero and twenty or above hours. The result

has shown, out of 28 male responses, four or 14.3% answered zero hours, 14 or 50% answered one

to four hours, four or 14.3% answered five to eight hours, three or 10.7% answered nine to twelve
hours, zero answered thirteen to sixteen hours, one or 3.6% answered seventeen to twenty hours

and lastly two or 7.1% answered above twenty. For female responses, out of 46 responses which

are around 62% of all the responses, five or 10.9% answered zero hours, 23 or 50% answered one

to four hours, six or 13% answered five to eight hours, four or 8.7% answered nine to twelve hours,

four or 8.7% answered thirteen to sixteen hours, three or 6.5% answered seventeen to twenty hours

and lastly one or 2.2% answered above twenty. Half of the survey respondents self-study for one

hour to four hours per week but the estimated average value is 5.8 hours, 5.57 for boys and 5.97

for girls. The gap between the average hours of the self-studying time of boys and girls is only a

matter of fractions, or 0.4 to be exact. It shows that the trend of gender and diligence is inaccurate

in this condition although female students did have a higher average. Were the author to conduct

this survey on a much larger scale, the result would show more precision and could be interpreted

more validly.

Figure 1 Number of hours of self-studying comparing two genders

This study is influenced by a psychological theory of human motivation and personality

called “Self-determination Theory (SDT).” While male students are more likely to be motivated
through external goals, female students have a higher tendency to do it for their own sake, though,

some researches said otherwise (Vecchione, 2014; D’Lima, 2014). These gender researches

mentioned very little about how gender differ self-determination. Moreover, the conflict between

researches indicates that it is not certain but rather depends on age and the environment.

This research comes to the conclusion that gender does not affect the diligence of students

at MUIDS but ultimately since researches have shown conflicts in results, the author could assume

that it depends more on the condition they live in. The average hours of the self-studying time of

male and female are not that far off. Empirically, there is no actual evidence, it raises a question

of whether the author should even take this factor into consideration.

References

Gaudiano, P. (2017, January 30). Gender Study: Boys Think They Are Smarter, But Girls

Work Harder And Perform Better. Retrieved May 29, 2019 from https://www.forbes

.com/sites/gaudianohunt/2017/01/30/even-six-year-olds-know-it-working-hard-is-

better-than-being-smart/#6769bb743af0

Vecchione, M. (2014). Academic motivation predicts educational attainment:

Does gender make a difference?. Retrieved May 29, 2019 from https://www.science

direct.com/science/article/pii/S1041608014000168

D’Lima, G. (2014). Ethnic and Gender Differences in First-Year College Students’

Goal Orientation, Self-Efficacy, and Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation. Retrieved

May 29, 2019 from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220671.2013.

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