Gender Differences in Academic Performance: A Case of Psychology Students at the University of Zambia

O.C. Mwaba Sidney, T. Kusanthan and J. Anitha Menon

Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities, 2015, vol. 3, issue 3, 131-138

Abstract: Gender disparity in academic performance and general access to educational *opportunities globally and particularly in Zambia has been evident for a long time. This led to the Zambian Government coming up with affirmative action policies to enable more females’ access equal educational opportunities. However, the dynamics of the specific academic performance of each sex, especially at tertiary level has not received much attention in terms of research. Hence it was the aim of this *paper to examine the academic performance through a thorough review of literature. *An example of the academic performance of the psychology degree students at the University of Zambia (UNZA) has been used to discuss the literature. Through the comprehensive analysis of literature, we found four factors emerged that can influence performance, namely: socio- economic factors, course of study, innate differences and Psychological factors. It was also found that over a period of *five years from 2009 to 2013 female psychology students at UNZA consistently obtained a better classification of degrees than the males in psychology. It is possible to speculate that the female students gravitate towards registering for psychology because of their intrinsic liking for the Psychology courses. It is therefore possible to present the argument that the affinity of female students for psychology courses would make them study psychology more than their male counterparts and therefore perhaps achieve better results.

Date: 2015
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