It’s a Monday morning in October, 7:55 a.m., and it’s 76 degrees in Florida, but it will soon be upwards of 85 by the time recess rolls around at 1:30 p.m. For lunch, you have mac ‘n’ cheese, and for snack, you either have clementine oranges or Goldfish. You hope your mom included a Capri-Sun instead of your regular Disney princess water bottle—you didn’t have time to check the inside of your lunchbox before leaving the house. It’s math, and we’re doing our times tables, but you drew butterflies and flowers within the margins of your paper instead. For this, your third-grade teacher would write “distracted” and “space cadet” on your quarterly report card.
For girls, the terms “easily distracted” and “struggles to focus” are schoolhouse critiques that their male counterparts are less likely to receive. Instead, boys are more likely to be described as “rambunctious” or “rebellious,” but not often termed as “on cloud 9.”
There is no widely accepted definition for “procrastination” amongst researchers, but a commonality amongst all concepts for the term includes the “delay component.” In academic settings with an agenda across multiple subjects, the propensity for delayed behavior in the completion of tasks is called academic procrastination. Statistically, 78% of university students procrastinate, with about 46% struggling when writing term papers, 30% when completing reading assignments, and 28% when preparing for an exam.
While there is still an open debate about the gender specific likelihood to procrastinate, multiple studies show that men are more likely to demonstrate conventional procrastination, whereas women’s procrastination is more so rooted in the fear of failure. With that, women are also more likely to struggle with self-oriented perfectionism compared to men.
Perfectionism is a “multidimensional construct” where individuals are hyper-fixated on making mistakes, parental approval/criticism, and high personal standards.
With respect to classroom settings, boys are associated with externalizing behaviors (being noisy, creating in-class disturbances), while girls are associated with internalizing behaviors (passive reactions, doodling, daydreaming, etc.). This, in turn, results in gender specific consequences and punishments for identical behaviors.
Similar behaviors in boys and girls, where girls may be harshly criticized during constructive class periods, may not translate over for boys. For example, a young female student who is more reserved in class may be labeled as disengaging, while her male counterpart may be described as well-behaved and quiet during instruction. Similarly, the same pattern appears in procrastination-typed behaviors, where girls who struggle with academic delay may stall by withdrawing from class settings, hence the “daydreaming” and “cloud nine” descriptions. Boys, on the other hand, typically exhibit procrastination-typed behaviors more externally, hence the “boys will be boys” excuse for rowdiness. These stereotypes that surround girls are critiques that only contribute to the researched statistical increase in self oriented perfectionism found in women.