Does the disproportion of LGBTQ2S+ community members among the female sample (3:1 over males) help to explain disparity in social-emotional ratings between male and female students?
“Across almost all measures of substance use, experiences of violence, mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, female students are faring more poorly than male students. These differences, and the rates at which female students are reporting such negative experiences, are stark” – from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011-2021
Female students have long been noted to struggle more greatly with their mental health and social-emotional well-being, compared to male students. Over a period of almost 30 years, our work has highlighted the importance of identifying such distinctions to understand variability in educational experiences, particularly among teens.
Our 2022 Community and Belonging Survey sampled 22,297 Grade 9-12 students across 96 American and Canadian independent schools. Students were asked to respond to 42 closed-ended measures, including a small number of demographic items. The focuses of the survey were emotional safety, sense of belonging, and relationships at school. We found that female students reported sleeping less on school nights than their male counterparts, feeling less capable of handling the day-to-day academic workload, feeling a lesser sense of belonging and emotional safety at school, and reported lesser self-appraised preparedness for: conducting themselves with confidence, coping with peer pressure, handling stressful situations, and making choices that support their emotional well-being. These distinctions are consistent with our results from well over 100 more-comprehensive surveys of students.
Distinctions for students (both male and female) who identify as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community are even more stark.
“Close to 70% of LGBQ+ students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and more than 50% had poor mental health during the past 30 days. Almost 25% attempted suicide during the past year” – from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011-2021
In our 2022 survey, we found that students who identified as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community, in comparison to the counterpart, reported that they sleep less on school nights, feel a lesser sense of belonging and emotional safety at school, and report lesser self-appraised preparedness for conducting themselves with confidence, coping with peer pressure, handling stressful situations, making choices that support their emotional well-being, and organizing time effectively. They were also considerably more likely to report having been affected personally by experiences of discrimination at school.
From the 2022 survey, female students were more than three times as likely as male students to identify as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community (22.6% vs. 7.0%). This significant distinction prompted the enquiry that follows.
Recognizing the distinctions for female students (in contrast with male students) and for those students who identify as LBGTQ2S+ (compared to those who do not), our exchanges with project partners, John Gulla and Steve Piltch, led us to wonder:
Does the disproportion of LGBTQ2S+ community members among the female sample (3:1 over males) explain the disparity in ratings between male and female students, overall?
The discussion that follows reflects analyses of data from the November 2022 survey, sampling 11,323 male and 9,979 female independent school students enrolled in Grades 9-12. This comparison excludes 995 respondents who did not identify as either male or female. 3041 respondents identified as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community (788 male; 2,253 female).
Separating data for LBGTQ2S+ community members from data for non-members, we ran analyses to determine whether the differences in ratings between male and female respondents (generally) were meaningfully influenced by membership in this community. We analyzed the data using t-tests, factorial ANOVAs, and z-tests for comparisons of proportions. Differences in ratings between males and females with p-values < .05 (i.e., statistically significant) are italicized in the tables below. While interactions between identity as male/female and LGBTQ2S+ identity were statistically significant throughout the analyses – likely due to the very large sample size – the effect sizes were prohibitively small. Only one variable, experiences of discrimination based on sexual orientation, offers support for the interaction between male identity and LGBTQ2S+ identity, as detailed later in this article.
On the whole, we found that male and female students who identify as LGBTQ2S+ are much more alike in their ratings of social-emotional well-being, in comparison to male and female students who are not members of this community.
Measures for which differences in ratings between male and female students were meaningfully greater among non-LGBTQ2S+ students include: time spent on social media; sense of belonging at school; sense of emotional safety at school; and self-appraised preparedness for conducting themselves with confidence, coping with peer pressure, and handling stressful situations.
LGBTQ2S+ students, generally, reported numerous lower scores compared to their non-LGBTQ2S+ counterparts. At the same time, female students – compared to males – reported significantly lower scores if they were NOT a member of the LGBTQ2S+ community.
Here’s what we found:
Sense of Emotional Safety at School (5-point Likert scale)
Female students who are not members of the LGBTQ2S+ community reported lesser feelings of emotional safety while at school, compared to males (3.68 versus 3.97). The gap between female and male students who identify as LGBTQ2S+ was not nearly as large (3.34 versus 3.43).
Sense of Belonging at School (5-point Likert scale)
Similarly, female students who are not members of the LGBTQ2S+ community reported lesser feelings of belonging while at school, compared to males. There was no statistically significant gap for this measure between male and female students who identify as LGBTQ2S+.
Handling Stressful Situations (5-point Likert scale)
Male students (LGBTQ2S+ members and non-members) consistently reported greater self-appraised preparedness for handling stressful situations, compared to the female counterpart, but the gap was more pronounced and statistically significant among those who do not identify as a member of the LGBTQ2S+ community.
Conducting Oneself with Confidence (5-point Likert scale)
Ratings for self-appraised preparedness for conducting oneself with confidence and coping with peer pressure are expectedly similar. While they measure distinct constructs, they often correlate strongly with one another because of their conceptual likeness and related covariates. Both measures demonstrated that the gap between male and female students is considerably larger among non-LGBTQ2S+ individuals, in favour of males.
Coping with Peer Pressure (5-point Likert scale)
Time Spent Daily on Social Media (in Hours)
While female students consistently reported more time spent on social media on school nights, the gap between males and females was meaningfully narrowed (and not statistically significant) for LGBTQ2S+ respondents.
To further explore this “time on social media” comparison, we decided to disaggregate the data by grade. Looking to the chart, below, we see that the differences between male and female students are not consistent through the grades. Specifically, we see slight increases with progression through the grades in time spent on social media by males, both those who identify and do not identify as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community. Moreover, male LGBTQ2S+ community members consistently reported more time on social media than male non-members. The same is not true for females. Female respondent ratings do not change meaningfully with progression through the grades and do not display consistent directionality in comparisons between LGBTQ2S+ members and non-members. For time spent on social media, the gaps between males and females narrow with progression through the grades. Other than for Grade 9 students, female and male LGBTQ2S+ students (the “A” figures below) do not meaningfully differ in time spent on social media.
Note: “A” represents respondents who identified as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community. “B” represents those who did not.
Experiences of Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation (%)
One measure for which differences between male and female students were meaningfully greater among LGBTQ2S+ students is the reported experience of discrimination based on sexual orientation at school. In this comparison, LGBTQ2S+ membership has a much greater negative impact on male students. Specifically, looking at the table vertically, 28.4% of male LGBTQ2S+ members report experiences of discrimination based on sexual orientation. This is 23.67 times the rate reported among non-member males (just 1.2%). In comparison, 19.0% of female LGBTQ2S+ members report experiences of discrimination based on sexual orientation. This is 6.13 times the rate reported among non-member females (3.1%).
Additionally, looking at the table horizontally, LGBTQ2S+ males reported experiencing discrimination based on sexual orientation at 1.50 times the rate of LGBTQ2S+ females. Conversely, for non-members, female students report having experienced discrimination based on sexual orientation at 2.58 times the rate of males. This is a small statistical interaction between male/female identity and membership in the LGBTQ2S+ community. Perhaps these findings relate to the greater LGBTQ2S+ stigma experienced among males, compared to females (see Diefendorf & Bridges, 2020).
To answer the original question that led to this effort: No, it does not appear that LGBTQ2S+ membership explains why we see a number of lower ratings among female students. While intersectionality (see Kimberlé Crenshaw for NAIS) remains an important lens through which to understand social identities, it seems more likely that the differences we see between male and female students across these mental health and social-emotional dimensions are explained by (conformity to) gendered norms and expectations for males and females.
Female students typically feel more pressure to perform well academically (see Stentiford et al., 2021 for detail), which is likely why we find that they attain less sleep, spend more time on homework, and are more stressed about academics. In the era of social media and rapid changes in fashion trends (“fast fashion”), the extent to which girls feel social pressure (e.g., physical appearance and interpersonal behaviour) has been magnified. In turn, this may significantly contribute to the disparity we see between male and female students’ social-emotional well-being at school (Thompson, 2017; Helfert & Warschburger, 2013).
Perhaps males and females who identify as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community are more alike than non-member males and females because their identities “free” them from conforming to traditional gendered norms that present men and women as fundamentally different (e.g., “men are from Mars, women are from Venus”). That is, students who feel comfortable enough to “come out” at school may also feel less pressure to conform to rigid binary gender roles (see Browne, 2019). This said, it is clear that coming out places individuals at greater risk of discrimination and that the negative effects related to identifying as LGBTQ2S+ are significant.
Although our “wondering hypothesis” was not supported, this exploration underscores the importance of assessing data for nuance, particularly in the realm of intersectional group identities. From this very brief summary of data, it is clear that both female and LGBTQ2S+ students carry special burdens. We will certainly re-visit this topic, as one of many, with our analysis of the 2024 Community and Belonging Survey of Students, coming in November. Understanding the key factors that influence the well-being of students can only help us – as educators, family members, and friends – to support them more effectively.
Alana Graham (she/her)
M.Sc. student, Western University
Stigma, Objectification, Bodies, and Resistance (SOBR) Lab (Department of Psychology)
Research and Culture Chair, Western EDI-GP Committee
Research Associate, Lookout Management Inc.
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