How Are Gender and Learning Disabilities in Dyslexia Related?

Boys are more likely than girls to be diagnosed with a learning disability, especially in reading. For example, in 2004, 10% of boys (ages 3-17) had a learning disability, whereas only 6% of their female counterparts carried the same label. This discrepancy has baffled researchers, who have accordingly come up with several plausible theories.

The main theory of gender and learning disabilities focuses on the ways that boys and girls learn. Boys often are more kinesthetic learners; they learn through doing. Girls, on the other hand, are often more auditory learners, who learn through talking through ideas. Because the type of learning often found in Western classrooms mostly includes verbal learning, with a reduced emphasis on physical interaction with materials, many girls excel in academics and leave their male counterparts behind. Therefore, more males are diagnosed with learning disabilities than females.

Some less mainstream groups – mostly those aligned with stronger feminist doctrines, believe that boys are more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities than girls because of gender inequality. The Equality Resource Center, for example, hypothesizes that the inequality between diagnosing boys and girls with learning disabilities can be chalked up to the difference in societal expectations for males and females. According to this view, because society expects boys to be more competent, they will be labeled as learning disabled much more easily, with the same deficiencies as girls who are not labeled as learning disabled.

A more traditional approach, albeit not supported currently by much evidence, is that boys tend to mature more slowly, which causes them to be more easily labeled as learning disabled. While this is true physically, and it can be true in other ways at a young age, it is not necessarily proven that the connection between gender and learning disabilities is due mainly – or even partially – to this factor.