The objective of this study is to characterize academic plagiarism in male and female students from four universities in the city of Arequipa, Peru. The sample consisted of 1370 students, including 717 females (52.3%) and 653 males (47.7%). A questionnaire was distributed to the students with closed questions that evaluate the behaviours and perceptions about academic plagiarism from a multidimensional point of view. A quantitative approach to cross-sectional descriptive design was proposed. The results indicate that, regarding behaviour towards academic plagiarism, there are similarities in the answers given by both females and males, who stated that "once" they had behaviours related to plagiarism in the university. Regarding the perception of this phenomenon in basic processes of citation and referencing of the sources used, there were some differences between the genders. The survey concludes that both female and male students show similar behaviours and perceptions regarding situations related to acts of academic plagiarism.