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In this chapter, I consider how and why gender continues to impact motivation, task engagement, self-regulation, and educational aspirations, choices, and outcomes among both boys and girls. How can motivation theory and research contribute to understanding gender differences in achievement at school, where girls now tend to do better than boys, especially in less advantaged social groups, and at work, where women still tend to achieve and earn less than similarly qualified men? In the first section of this chapter, I review evidence of gender-related motivational orientations whereby boys tend more to “prove and protect” and girls tend more to “doubt and try to improve” their abilities. I analyze the benefits and costs of these orientations, focusing on how they contribute to the superior school performance of girls, to spurring high-achieving boys to succeed more in later life than similarly able girls, and to placing lower-achieving boys, who often belong to minority groups, at particular risk for academic disengagement. I then consider how boys and girls construct and maintain motivating and motivated beliefs and strategies in interactions with parents, teachers, and peers within the social and educational contexts of their daily lives. In the final section, I first present some educational recommendations that follow from my analysis. I then engage directly with the overarching theme of this volume by considering some broad societal trends that present continuing challenges to educators concerned to promote optimal motivation for learning among both boys and girls in the twenty-first century.

The goal of this chapter is to both provide a sociological explanation for gender differences in risk-taking behavior and to explain how such gender differences in behavior may contribute to women’s underrepresentation at the top of hierarchies.

I synthesize relevant research findings from the fields of social psychology, economics, psychology, decisions science, and sociology.

I argue that risk-taking is a gendered action due to both prescriptive and descriptive gender stereotypes. The fact that risk-taking is a gendered action offers sociological insights as to why women take fewer risks than men. First, women may rationally choose to take fewer risks, given that risk-taking is less rewarding for them. Second, the aforementioned gender stereotypes may cause institutional gatekeepers to give women fewer opportunities to take risks.

Sociologists should care about this phenomenon because large rewards are attached to successful risk-taking behavior. Thus, if men as a group take more successful risks than women as a group – simply because they take more risks, and thus by chance experience more successful risks – then more men than women will experience upward mobility caused by risk-taking.

Gender differences in risk-taking behavior likely depress the upward mobility of women and are a contributing factor to the dearth of women in top positions. In this era of falling formal barriers and women’s educational gains, gender differences in risk-taking behavior are likely of increasing importance for understanding the inequalities in hierarchies in U.S. society.

Prior learning and prior knowledge are among the most dependable and consistent factors in predicting students’ success (Richardson et al., 2012). Although for UK Higher Education, the traditional A-level (advanced level qualification) remains the principal qualification students use to gain entry to University, there has been a small but significant rise in alternative qualifications, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) and vocational qualifications such as that from the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC). The multidisciplinary nature of Psychology means students enter the degree program with a range of qualifications in differing topic areas. The current case study aimed to assess if science qualifications aided student success in the University of Liverpool’s Psychology course. Ordinal regression and correlations were used to examine the impact of prior qualifications on three first-year cohort module scores (Psychobiology, Social psychology, and Research Methods) and the overall degree mark across three cohorts of Psychology students (n = 1,072). University entry grades showed a significant overall and subject specific effect of scientific prior knowledge. However, the effects of previous qualifications were not cumulative and did not persist beyond the first year of study. These findings were strongest for Chemistry in the Psychobiology module suggesting that scientific literacy – the understanding of scientific concepts, phenomena, and processes, as well as an individual’s ability to apply such knowledge to new or non-scientific situations (Schleicher, 2019) – rather than domain-specific knowledge is driving such increase in grades. A negative relationship was seen for those holding BTEC qualifications, suggesting that vocational qualifications, specifically for this Psychology program, were of less use than academic ones, even if topic areas were similar – a finding which may also apply to other academic based courses, and warrants further study. Although the advantage of prior qualifications diminishes across the course of study, this small but distinct advantage suggests that making a science qualification a requirement for a place on a Psychology degree course would be a beneficial step for admissions tutors to consider.

Corporate governance and its training in universities have become an essential addition to the educational curriculum. Despite its expansion, students still need help to grasp some concepts, affecting their academic performance. This paper examines the expected influence of gender and school libraries on comprehending corporate governance concepts in Ghanaian universities.

With the culturo-techno-contextual approach (CTCA) as the underlying theory, the study sampled 1050 undergraduate students from the selected Ghanaian public universities. The study adopted a quantitative approach, and the data were analysed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA.

The results show a statistically significant difference between male and female Ghanaian students in their understanding of corporate governance concepts, with the mean figures suggesting that males slightly understand corporate governance concepts more than females. The results also show a statistically significant difference among Ghanaian students studying using school libraries of varying quality in their understanding of corporate governance.

This study's novelty stems from examining the corporate governance curriculum in a developing country from the perspectives of gender and school library. Adopting the CTCA components in analysing school libraries and gender further evidences the study's novelty.

The purpose of this paper is to address the paradox that represents a shortage of women in management and senior leadership positions around the world, while research has consistently shown that having women in positions of influence leads to noteworthy organizational benefits, as guest editors for this special issue, the authors provide an overview of four key streams of cross-cultural research on gender – women in international management, anthropology and gender, women’s leadership, and women’s entrepreneurship – which have been fairly well-developed but remain underexplored.

Each author led the review of the scholarly literature stream that aligned most with personal research areas of expertise, while particularly focusing each literature review on the status of each body of work in relation to the topic of women and gender in international business and management.

The authors encourage future work on the role of women and gender (including gay, lesbian, and transgender) in cross-cultural management, and the influence of cross-cultural matters on gender. In addition to new research on obstacles and biases faced by women in management, the authors hope to see more scholarship on the benefits that women bring to their organizations.

New research could aim to provide specific evidence-based recommendations for: how organizations and individuals can work to develop more gender diversity in management and senior positions around the world, and encourage more women to start and grow bigger businesses.

Scholars can lead progress on important gender issues and contribute to quality information that guides politicians, organizational leaders, new entrants to the workforce.

This is the first paper to cover these topics and review the body of work on cross-cultural research on women in international business and management. The authors hope it serves as a useful launch pad for scholars conducting new research in this domain.

Gender inequalities in higher education have attracted interest in the academic literature. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The author uses standardized high school final exam results and probit regression analysis to contribute to this highly important discussion.

Based on secondary, non-survey data, female students tend to outperform males in subjects requiring creativity. Consistent with this comparative advantage, female students also tend to be more affected by their abilities in choosing and preferring the related field of humanities as a higher education. In line with female students’ choices, the results presented in the paper confirm that men are more inclined toward exact and natural sciences, even though they do not prove to have stronger abilities in related subjects. In addition, men are also more influenced by their abilities in obtaining a professional higher education. The choice of social sciences is quite similarly affected by the academic abilities of men and women. The paper also provides evidence that, on average, individuals choose their field of study according to their academic abilities.

For evidence, a data set that makes it possible to relate quantitative measures of very different academic abilities to all major academic disciplines is used in the paper. This unique approach has so far been lacking in the literature due to data limitations. In other words, instead of concentrating on a specific area, such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the author takes a broader view.

Competence-Based Management (CBM) theory and research suggest that a firm’s competence building and leveraging processes are key factors influencing its competitive success. To achieve sustained competitive success, a firm’s competence building processes must continuously renew and extend the competences a firm has and can leverage. However, the ability of a firm to sustain strategically adequate levels of competence building – while also maintaining strategically successful competence leveraging – may be limited by various self-reinforcing managerial and organizational mechanisms that can arise from competence leveraging processes. In this paper we focus on certain managerial behaviors that may create path dependencies that lead an organization to become “locked-in” to its current competence leveraging processes and to neglect essential competence building, resulting in an inability to renew competences at a strategically adequate level and eventually in competitive failure.

In order to avoid such consequences, the management literature suggests that organizations must cultivate dynamic capabilities to overcome tendencies toward lock-in and to sustain ongoing competence building. This study investigates ways in which firms can maintain healthy competence building processes by avoiding lock-ins, especially those resulting from self-reinforcing managerial behaviors. A case study of successful competence-renewing processes in a home improvement retailing company helps to amplify the components of dynamic capabilities and to illustrate the insights that emerge from our study.

Videogame play is more popular among young males compared with young females. The present study aims to investigate spatial visualization ability as an explanation for this gender gap. The premise is based on a well‐documented gender difference in spatial ability favoring males and assumes that spatial ability would be an advantage in playing videogames. Also, reports in the literature indicate improvement in spatial ability following videogame play, suggesting that play may specifically task spatial ability.

A convenience sample of 114 university students aged 18 to 24 answered questions on attitudes and videogame behavior and completed a psychometric test of spatial visualization ability.

Regression analysis indicated that interest in videogame play is significantly predicted by gender, interest in science fiction, and number of semesters of foreign language completed (with the latter having a negative influence). Mediation analysis suggested that neither of the latter two variables mediates the gender effect. Although spatial visualization ability was significantly correlated with videogame interest, this was found to be a spurious (non‐causal) association, due to both variables being influenced by gender.

Limitations include the narrow age range of subjects (18‐24) and the focus of the study on spatial visualization ability and a limited number of other variables.

The finding that semesters of foreign language completed and interest in science fiction significantly predict videogame interest is apparently novel. The former variable may be a proxy for preference for verbal (semantic) information processing over visual information processing, and this may explain the significant negative correlation between semesters of foreign language completed and videogame interest.