Gender Differences and the Writing Achievement of University Fresh Students: A study of Federal University of Technology Owerri

Abstract

Gender differences have often been identified as being manifest in the performance and achievement of students in their academic activities. Male students are said to be more productive in science and technology courses, while female students are said to be better than the males in humanities and non-numerate disciplines. Therefore, in this paper, the gender similarities hypothesis (Hyde, 2005) was used to examine whether gender would make any significant difference between the writing achievements of newly admitted university undergraduates in Federal University of Technology Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. The pre-test, post-test, control group quasi-experimental method was employed, using a total number of 425 students in three experimental groups and one control group. At the end of the treatment of the experimental groups, the pre-test and post-test scores of male and female students were analyzed as data. It was found that there was no significant difference between the achievement of male and female participants. Therefore, it was concluded that there are no gender differences found in the writing achievement of male and female undergraduates but that students who apply themselves to their studies would excel irrespective of their gender.