Girls’ and Bullying: A Literature Review

Published On: March 2, 2019

Written By: Mira Gambhir and Alexandra Rodney

Girls and Bullying: A Literature Review

Overview

This research brief provides a synthesis of selected literature that focuses on girls’ experiences with bullying. It serves as a companion to our recently published study, Individual and Collective Well-being: A Ten-Year Study of Bullying Prevention Programming in an All-Girls’ School. The content is based on a review of the most recent literature on youth and bullying, specifically, literature produced between 2005 and 2017 based on research with students in Grades 4–12; however, it also includes a few relevant articles from prior to 2005. The research studies included in this brief are primarily from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia..

Introduction

The purpose of this literature review is to use a gender lens to understand girls’ experiences of bullying. To accomplish this, we first note that the findings reported in the literature about girls’ bullying are typically contrasted with the experience of boys’ bullying. Having identified this distinction, we include these findings because they reinforce the gendered experience of bullying and being bullied, and also the disproportionate effect of bullying on girls because they are more likely to be bullied than boys. To prepare this literature review we examined more than 70 books, book chapters, and journal articles. Of these, only five summarized research conducted in single-sex schools, and other research projects on girls’ experiences with bullying took place in publicly-funded schools.

We begin this literature review by defining bullying, and then we summarize the research literature on girls’ experiences of being a victim of bullying, a perpetrator, and a bully-victim. We then turn to research that has assessed (1) girls’ likelihood of intervening or reporting when they see others being bullied, and (2) the effect that bullying has on girls. Finally, we highlight empirical research designed to understand girls’ perspectives on bullying and strategies for prevention.

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