Out-of-School Use of Time and Its Association with Gender Differences in Educational Outcomes

Recent gender literature has highlighted that boys and girls devote their out-of-school time in dissimilar ways, which may differentially influence their academic achievement. Furthermore, this literature indicates that these gender differences may be rooted in society’s gender stereotypes when using this time. To analyse this issue we employ longitudinal and census data for the Spanish region of Andalusia, making use of recent methodological innovations in the Oaxaca-Blinder gender decomposition technique. Our results have shown that girls outperform boys in reading, whereas boys get better grades in mathematics. We also found that there are no significant gender differences in the educational returns on time devoted to homework and that the gender differences in the time devoted to watching television and in the time devoted to playing video games and computer games narrow the female advantage in reading and widen the male advantage in mathematics.