In 1976, a mere 50 years ago, men earned the majority of undergraduate degrees, the majority of master’s degrees, and over 75 percent of all doctoral degrees across the United States. By 1990, these numbers evened out, and men and women were earning roughly equal percentages of bachelor’s and master’s degrees. But today, the 1976 statistics are essentially reversed: Women now receive over three-fifths of all bachelor’s degrees, and higher education rates are lower amongst men of all races. The Washington Post and many others have even reported that attacks on DEI in selective universities across America will actually hurt young men; these schools admit a larger percentage of men than women in their respective pools of qualified applicants, primarily to ensure balanced gender ratios in incoming classes.
This gender gap is not confined to enrollment and performance in places of higher education. From elementary school on up, girls outperform boys in reading level, grades, and likelihood to intend on attending a four-year college or university. Experts have proposed many explanations for these widening gaps—biological differences, variations in maturity level and behavior, disparities in rates of learning disabilities, among other theories. There is an additional factor, however, that receives surprisingly little attention: Boys simply read far less than girls do during their primary and secondary schooling years.
Research from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicates that girls outperform boys in literacy achievement and reading comprehension at every grade level. By the time these cohorts of students reach twelfth grade, girls are roughly an entire year ahead in reading level compared to their male counterparts. Reading, like most activities, is a skill that one improves through repeated practice. Thus, higher literacy rates among girls can be attributed to the fact that girls are more likely to read on average.
Surveys of reading habits among students support this hypothesis. In a 2020 study of 9-year-old students, girls were more likely to report reading “for fun” outside of school (46 percent) compared to boys (38 percent). This disparity continues with age: 13-year-old girls are 6 percent more likely than boys their age to read for pleasure daily. This difference in propensity to read outside of school does not seem to derive from variability in maturity levels or physiology alone; rather, there are additional cultural or sociological factors at play that correlate with this stark divergence in reading habits.
Reading itself is often perceived as a quiet, solitary activity, which conflicts with traditional masculine ideals of physicality and competition—characteristics featured heavily in sports and video games, where men far outnumber women. Research from Stanford University suggests that the territorial and aggressive components of many video games are significant factors as to why young men are more attracted to them.
The cultural expectations and pressures toward young men, however, can also help explain the disparity in reading habits. Michael Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm’s Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys and William Brozo’s To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader both grapple with the idea that reading is viewed by young men as a feminine or even irrelevant activity that is fundamentally disconnected from their lives and interests. Social pressure to be perceived as more masculine has led men to adopt an indifferent attitude towards their education for fear of being described as “try-hards.” This is similar to the prominent “nerds” versus “jocks” dynamic, in which the two archetypes are typically portrayed as mutually exclusive. A high school try-hard could be a stereotypical jock who overtly endeavors to succeed academically, or a nerdy kid who makes an immense effort in gym class. This term has since become somewhat antiquated, but the former connotation has been replaced with a new, similarly pejorative, label: being “performative.”
An archetype popularized on social media in 2025, one of the core elements of the performative male aesthetic is carrying a book and reading in public spaces, like park benches or coffee shops. The media often portrays the “performative male” as a satirical aesthetic, which reinforces the underlying connotation: Reading for pleasure, as a man, can be done only for appearance’s sake. “Performativity” insinuates that the desire to read in men is disingenuous. Attitudes towards men who engage in sedentary activity like reading has deepened from 2000s movie ridicule to genuine disbelief and media satire.
While this cultural stigma toward men reading may appear trivial, reading habits can have a profound impact on academic development and professional success. Reading has been shown to be an instrumental aspect of a child’s early development; those who grow up reading in some form exhibit a myriad of benefits, including better problem-solving skills and stronger cognitive processes. Moreover, there is an indirect (but nonetheless, important) link between reading and academic performance. The background knowledge and skills gained from reading or prior instruction have a significant influence on the ability to grasp and comprehend new information.
Reading builds the vocabulary, knowledge, and facilities that underpin academic performance. Fourth-graders who engage in regular reading have been shown to have more developed vocabularies. Once these students reach high school and the subjects become more rigorous and complex, those with preexisting knowledge and skills are at an advantage. An obvious example is, of course, an English class, but the same mechanism applies to other fields, even STEM. Reading instruction allows students to become more confident problem solvers and marry “reasoning” with “creativity” in subjects outside the humanities, too.
The implications of this theory are closely related to the psychological phenomenon dubbed the “Matthew Effect.” This theory posits that children who experience academic advantages (largely based on socioeconomic status and wealth) early in their literacy career tend to be more successful compared to those without these advantages. In terms of literacy specifically, students who initially fall behind on reading, either in skill or in practice, tend to read less overall going forward. Suggestions for bridging this gap include regular assessment of reading skills, supplemental reading instruction, and reading remediation programs. These programming recommendations highlight the importance of reading skills and habits in early education. Students who read more have been shown to develop small advantages in literacy and comprehension that compound over time. Thus, students who consistently read develop the skill set to excel in their classes, whereas those who do not tend to fall further backward.
This phenomenon produces staggering disparities in achievement, functioning as a “rich get richer” and “poor get poorer” scheme in literary and academic development. By the time these students reach high school, these gaps influence grades, standardized test scores, and college preparedness. This maps directly onto high school achievement statistics: Seven in 10 high school valedictorians are women, and women in general earn higher grades, take harder classes, and graduate at higher rates. The contemporary disparities in higher education that have garnered attention from the media appear to also have roots in reading habit differences, in addition to frequently cited institutional deficiencies or biological differences.
Of course, reading habits alone cannot be purported as the sole cause of these gender gaps in education. Differences in maturity level, mental health, neurological disorders, social expectations, and a host of other factors all play a role in inducing such disparities. Girls, for example, develop impulse control and self-management skills earlier on average compared to boys. Young men also struggle more with disciplinary issues compared to young women. Making a casual claim about any one factor as it relates to academic success and higher education is essentially impossible. Still, the easily-cultivated habit of reading is an overlooked factor in the equation, despite being one of the earliest and most persistent divides between women and men from early to higher education.
By the end of high school, girls, simply by reading more, have often gained a substantial advantage in literacy skills, which translates into better grades, higher test scores, and increased preparedness for college coursework on average. The gender gap in higher education might begin years before college applications are ever submitted. Reading is by no measure the only contributing factor to this phenomenon—but it is one of the most overlooked. These findings have significant implications for modern conversations about gender disparities in higher education. The prevailing debate seems to hone in on admissions policies and institutional biases in our school systems to explain the ratio of men and women applying and entering universities. And while these, among others, are factors we must look into, there may be a simpler question to begin with: What if boys simply read more books?