Gender Gap in Examination Results and Beyond: Why?

Centre for Comparative and Public Law Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong

A Joint CCPL-WSRC Evening Lecture

Gender Gap in Examination Results and Beyond: Why?

Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart Distinguished Cheng Yu Tung Visiting Professor,The University of Hong Kong; Professor of Contract Law, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Fellow in Law (Merton College), Oxford University

Friday 23rd September 2016, 17:30 – 19:00 Small Moot Court, Room 723, 7/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong

While the gender gap in examination results are closing, this is not the case at Oxford and elsewhere, despite some improvements. Research shows that it is not because of: differential intelligence; differential mathematical ability; lowered efficiency of female selection at admissions; disadvantage for state school students; lower self-efficacy and confidence; anxiety; physical differences, or; pre-menstrual syndrome.

Researchers have mooted many other plausible explanations, some of which may have resonance in Hong Kong. These include stereotype threat theory; assessment environment; differential approach to learning; teaching styles; understanding of assessment criteria; differential approach to examinations; ‘sudden death’ examinations; examination anxiety; possibility of examiner ‘bias’; declining female academic self-concept; perfectionism; psycho-social factors.

Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart will discuss some of these, coupled with personal observations with the aim of stimulating discussion and reflection.

Mindy Chen-Wishart holds or has held a fractional professorship in law at the National University of Singapore, and visiting professorships at Hong Kong University, the National University of Taiwan, Otago University, Auckland University, Canterbury University and Gottingen University. She is author of Contract Law (5th ed, OUP, 2015), an editor of Chitty on Contracts (32nd ed), and a member of the Advisory Group on A Restatement of the English Law of Contract. Mindy has lectured to the Judicial College of England and Wales, and the Judicial Academies in Taiwan and Hong Kong. She delivered the Fourth Annual Lecture of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly. Most importantly, she is mother to three sons.