Gender Parity in “Critical Thinking Proficiency” Among Undergraduate Business Majors: An Empirical Validation of Across Academic Achievement Levels

There is an abundance of literature on gender differences in a wide variety of everyday life and despite this plentitude, there is proportionately a dearth of research on gender differences among undergraduate business students when it comes to “critical thinking proficiency.” Even within the few research studies on gender and educational programs, many were done several years ago before the onslaught of Internet, and their focus has been generally on the correlation between gender and broader performance metrics such as retention, graduation rates, etc. Furthermore, they do not address the interaction effects of gender with other covariates that influence the more specific educational outcomes such as “critical thinking proficiency.” Our study fills this gap in extant knowledge by investigating the main effects of gender and its “critical thinking proficiency.” Based on a sample of 27 undergraduate business students who have taken the ETS test, our research results empirically show that gender parity has been achieved in “critical thinking proficiency,” and more interestingly the gender parity persists across various levels of academic performance (GPA). We conclude the paper with limitations of the study with implications for future research.