This document discusses gender equity in testing and assessment. It notes that gender equity aims to be fair to both women and men by recognizing their different life experiences and needs. It also examines how males and females perform differently on various types of assessment tasks and tests. Several factors can influence test performance differently for males and females, such as test format, test-taking styles, anxiety, and stereotype threat. For example, males tend to perform better on multiple-choice questions and speeded tests while females may perform better on essays and benefit from more time. The document also discusses findings related to admissions testing, scholarships, and achievement gaps between genders in different subject areas.

1. Gender Equity in Testing & Assesment
Gender Equity
• Gender equity is the process of being fair to women and men.
• The concept of gender equity recognizes that men and women have
different life experiences, different needs, different levels of power and
access to decision-making levels in our society, differing expectations by
others and different ways of expressing illness.
• Gender equity strategies recognize that gender leads to different social
economic and political opportunities for women and men.
• Gender Equity is a set of actions, attitude, and assumptions that provide
opportunities and create expectations about individuals.
It offers a framework for educational reforminwhich all females and males:
Are engaged, reflective learners, regardless of the subject.
•Are prepared for futureeducation, jobs , careers, and civic participation.
•Set and meet expectations for themselves and others.
•Develop as respectful friends, family members , workers and citizen.
•Receive equitable treatment and achieve equitable outcomes in schooland
beyond.
Test and Assessment
• This topic examines how males and females perform on different types
of assessmenttasks thatindicate students’ levels of achievement in the
academic disciplines taught in school: reading/language arts,
mathematics, science and socialstudies.
Test performance
• A considerablebody of evidence suggested that an individual’s test
performancemay be impacted by a wide rangeof personal, societal and
assessmentfactors such as
• Personaltest taking style
• Internalized societal expectations
• Characteristics of test
• Some of these factors seem differently impact on male and female and
may be account for someof the observed group differences. Factors that
influence test performancehavebeen characterized as:
• Test characteristics
• Test taker characteristics
Test characteristics
• Test format or item type has been found to relate to gender differences
in test performance. Willingham et al. (1997) found in looking at gender
differences in advanced placement (AP) test (from morerestricted
samples of high-performing students)

2. • They found An (inconsistent) tendency for females to perform better on
free-responseor essay questions
• Male tended to performbetter on a multiple-choice format.
• Male seem to do better than females in terms of speeded tests such as
the SATmathematics test
• In a small scale study by Benjamin-Kelly and Rosser in 1989, 40 New York
City high schooljuniors wereinterviewed to see how they solveSAT
mathematics problems; these students were retested on the SATand
given all the time they required, to see whether time pressureaffected
the sexes differently
•
•Most of them took more time than
actual test
Males
• The males were more likely
to use test taking strategies
such as substituting answer
choices in the problem to see
which one worked or noticed
answer choice that was
different from all others
(usually correct one)
• Increased time was not
associated with the
improvements for male; they
answered fewer questions
correctly despite the
expanded time frame
Females
• Females were more
likely to work math’s
problem as they had
been taught in the
classroom (in a step by
step manner)
• Giving time to female
seemed to work in their
favor because it
allowed them to do the
required mathematics
Females and males havedifferent test taking styles
• Females tend to leave more questions unanswered than males on test
such as SAT
• Females were less likely to be risk takers and thereforeguess less than
males
• Girls think that SATmeasures their intelligence and they mustn’tcheat
• Boys are more competitive they play it like a pin ball game(Gilligan &
attanucci)
• Anxiety may also be a factor in test performance
• Females who said that they were highly anxious scored lower on the
mathematics SAT than ‘somewhat’ anxious females
• Faigel (1991) found outstudents suffered from un usualanxiety, have
difficulty thinking ‘an hour later they not only remember the questions
but also the rightanswers’

3. • Test sophistication may also be a factor related to gender; males have
more gaming strategies towards test females showed lack of test
wiseness by using a strategy
• The males were more likely to know the tricks of the test
• Stereotype threat
• Stelle found that on an AP calculus exam , when females ; stereotype
threat was activated by their being told to write down their sex
beforehand, they did worsethan males but when they were told ‘this is
a test you will do better on even though females generally do worse
than males’ ;they did better than males
• Research Findings……!
• More women are now taking college admission test more than men. And
the mostcomplicating factor is that boys and men of all ethnic group
have shown increasing disengagementwith academic work at all level
• Admissions,Testing,Scholarships…
• Researchers of 1980’s and 90’s said thatin this area also men had been
scoring higher and had been receiving many moreof the scholarships. It
is said that men had been given favor in the admissions, tests and
scholarships. Butaccording to Lee(2006) girls proportion of scholarship
raised from 28 to 52%. Grandy reported in 1999 thatthere are some
differences found in test/assessmentof both gender as the following
• Verbal scoreaveragefor male over 30 remained essentially the same as
scoreaverages for male under 30. Whereas average of older female
examinee were higher than the young female examinee.
• On all graduate admission tests, males performed better than females in
mathematical ability.
• Since 1972, femaleverbal scoreaverages have ranged from 2 to 15
points lower than males. Males Mathematics scoreaverages points
higher than rangefrom 30 to 52 than females. In 2004 college board
reported that females scoreaveraged 504 on verbalsection and 501 on
the mathematics section, while males averaged 512 on the verbaland
537 on the mathematics.( RapportTalk and Report Talk).
Achievement Gap
• Historically and according to achievement gap males perform better in
mathematics and science area. And females perform better in
reading/language and arts.
• “Researchers also says that it is Men’s world in the field of Vocational
Interests and Aptitude Testing.”