Women outpace men in their receipt of tertiary degrees in nearly every industrialized country in the world; in the last decade, they have also become the majority of doctoral and professional degree recipients in many nations. 

This lecture provides an overview of the data on gender gaps in education, with a focus on the U.S. and German contexts. Using Boudon’s concept of primary and secondary effects, I consider gender differences in educational performance (primary effects) and those in educational decisions (secondary effects) and present data on each of these facets as they pertain to boy’s underachievement in both countries. Plausible sources of the male lag in many educational outcomes include masculinity norms, the brilliance bias, parental expectations, and the “feminization” of education more generally.

The diverging educational pathways of men and women in industrialized societies have far-reaching impacts. Declining fertility rates, diverging political views of men and women, and deteriorating quality of life among less-educated men are just a few of the plausible consequences of boys falling behind.