Recent gender literature has highlighted that boys and girls devote their out-of-school time
in dissimilar ways, which may differentially influence their academic achievement.
Furthermore, this literature indicates that these gender differencesmay be rooted in society’s
gender stereotypes when using this time. To analyse this issue we employ longitudinal and
census data for the Spanish region of Andalusia, making use of recent methodological
innovations in the Oaxaca-Blinder gender decomposition technique. Our results have
shown that girls outperform boys in reading, whereas boys get better grades inmathematics.
We also found that there are no significant gender differences in the educational returns on
time devoted to homework and that the gender differences in the time devoted to watching
television and in the time devoted to playing video games and computer games narrow the
female advantage in reading and widen the male advantage in mathematics.
