Males have been at an advantage, historically speaking, in the educational system. Throughout history, girls and women have been denied access to educational opportunities and still experience some limitations in particular fields of study. For example, it was not until the 1980s that women attended college in near-equal numbers to men (National Women’s History Museum, 2007). That being said, in more recent years, boys appear to be falling behind academically. Voyer and Voyer (2014) noted that the female advantage in school performance has become a common finding in educational research for most course subjects.
Hartley and Suttons (2013) suggested that school has become a feminized experience, with there being more female than male teachers, along with expectations of feminine behavior (e.g., quiet and cooperative) and penalizing of masculine behavior (e.g., assertive and competitive) at least in the lower elementary grades, which may lead boys to disassociate from the learning process. Butler-Barnes et al. (2012) suggested that academic underachievement of boys is more complicated than just an effect of gender and might be more closely associated with factors such as educational utility valuing, cultural identity, and religiosity. Yet most of the educational initiatives put forward by schools in the past decade have focused on opportunities for helping girls break through barriers and stereotypes that prevent them from studying in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).