Gender bias and gender differences in two South African tests of academic literacy

Abstract

How much empirical evidence is there of gender bias in the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) and its Afrikaans counterpart, Toets van Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke (TAG)? This paper reports on meta-analyses of 24 academic tests, containing data of more than 60 000 first-year South African students. TALL appears to be gender-neutral, while for TAG some evidence was found that men slightly outperform women. This outcome can be attributed almost entirely to male students outperforming female students on the subtest requiring the interpretation of graphs and visual information. Women outperform men slightly on the subtest dealing with text types. These outcomes are presented in light of discussions on gender differences versus gender bias.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2009, 27(3): 277–290