To be published by Routledge

Girls as well as boys engage in bullying behavior. Bullying has been described as a gendered phenomenon (Rodkin & Berger, 2008) and a relationship problem (Pepler, Jiang, Craig, & Connolly, 2008). Understanding what these characterizations really means requires investigating how gender influences every aspect of bullying relationships: how children understand bullying, contexts in which children bully, forms that bullying might take, processes by which bullying may unfold, and whether and how children feel empowered to respond or even to intervene. Examining how gender influences bullying requires careful thinking about gender differences in frequency of bullying behaviors, but also moving beyond these mean differences to consider other ways in which gender might have an effect on the complex phenomenon of bullying (Espelage, Mebane, & Swearer, 2004). This review will briefly examine the empirical evidence for gender differences in children’s conceptions of bullying and the scant evidence for gender differences in the processes by which bullying unfolds, and then focus in some detail on gender differences in bullying through electronic communication. Cyber bullying is an important context in which to examine gender and bullying because gender differences in physical size and strength are less relevant, so this context may be especially important for girls, and because the vast majority of youth communicate with peer