Chapter 9 & 10: Gender Inequalities at School

Question 1

In what ways do people believe there are biological differences between men and women?

Answer 1

Difference in aptitudes:
- IQ differences by gender; male being smarter
- Evolution: women are more nurturing
- Different innate abilities and interests which affects educational attainment
Different attitudes:
- Feminization of education; there are so many female teachers that innate female characteristics are being instilled and that is why females are doing better
- Cooperative vs. competition
Labour market signals
- Knowledge economy
- Service economy
- Professionalization

Question 2

What are some challenges to the biological explanation of gender differences? Do sociologists accept this theory?

Answer 2

Challenges and tensions:
- developments in neuroscience
- brain plasticity; our brains are very affected by our experiences
- social/biological interactions
Sociologists reject a biological perspective for gender differences

Question 3

How does Judith Butler describe gender in “Performative acts and gender constitution”?

Answer 3

Gender is instituted through stylized repetition of acts and of the body, this creates the illusion of a natural state of gender.
There is no truth to gender, no specific way to be a male or a female - it is an act of learned behaviours since birth.
There a social pressure to perform gender “right” which re-establishes gender norms and assumes there is a truth behind gender.

Question 4

How does Judith Butler’s “gender as performance” relate to school?

Answer 4

There is gender socialization at home and gender socialization at school.
Teachers create their own gender and gendered expectations which can result in labeling of students.
Peer interactions reinforce gender norms
Textbooks and curriculum are gendered; Jackson & Gee analyzed how gender is represented in books for young children and found that books strongly reinforce norms, ex. Dick and Jane. It has gotten better through time however, girls roles have changed more through time than boys, girls have become more masculine but boys are not being more feminine.
Parental roles have also stayed pretty static

Question 5

What are some gender stereotypes?

Answer 5

Boys: aggressive, dominant, competitive
Girls: submissive, cooperation

Question 6

What is the feminization of education argument?

Answer 6

Feminization of education (this claim is contested): focuses on teamwork and cooperation, curriculum changes over time, more women teachers
It is highly doubtful that the curriculum has become overly feminized; history classes, books read and textbooks still are largely male dominated
The possible result of feminization of education is a boy crisis

Question 7

What did Jones & Myhill find in their “Troublesome Boys and Compliant Girls” research?

Answer 7

Gender stereotypes and teacher perceptions affect the outcome of education based on gender
Underachieving boys are pushed to do better, while underachieving girls are ignored
They found achievement level (largely based on social class) is more important than gender

Question 8

What did Younger, Warrington and Williams find when studying gendered classroom interactions?

Answer 8

Boys receive more negative attention but teachers accept challenging behaviour from boys more frequently.
Girls receive more constructive and collaborative help when getting punished.

They found that more there are teacher-boy interactions
- reprimands were mostly directed at boys
- teachers directed more questions to boy
- boys more likely to respond to open questions posted to whole class.
However, girls are more likely to initiate questions in class. Girls interacted more inquisitive with the subject matter and participated more in the enquiry process. They showed more intellectual curiosity.

Question 9

Is there a boy crisis in universities?

Answer 9

No. Women are attending university more now than in 1991, but there is no boy crisis since boys are attending at a slightly higher rate than 1991, they are just not attending at a higher level than females.

Question 10

Where is thought that there is a boy crisis?

Answer 10

At school;

• trouble-making and withdrawal
• disinterest in reading and decline in literacy
• decline in overall educational achievement; debunked by previous stats
• higher dropout rates for boys

In post-secondary education;
- decline in enrollment and graduation rates

In the labour market;

• declining real incomes
• unprepared for knowledge and service economy

Question 11

What has been found in research on the boy crisis?

Answer 11

In a survey on high school engagement, girls and boys who graduates are found to have very similar outlooks on school
- ex. 40% of men and 37% of women thought what they learned in high school was useless, no big difference
Girls are more likely to be positively engaged but differences are not significant, and girls show a difference in amount of effort.
Girls perform at a high level but largest difference in achievement in humanities courses (english, language).
Boys are more likely to drop out but this is a steady statement through time, both rates of dropout has declined, suggesting no crisis.

Question 12

How does gender affect post-secondary attainment?

Answer 12

For post-secondary attainment in Canada:

• Undergraduate degrees overall: 60% women
• Master’s degrees overall: 56% women
• PhD degrees: 45% women

Fewer women in:

• Engineering and related (20% undergrad, 28% Master)
• Math/computing (27% undergrad, 42% Master)

High status professional degree graduates in 2008/09:

• Education: 76% women
• Law: 59% women
• Medicine (MD): 58% women
• Pharmacy: 66% women
• Dentistry (DDS / DMD ): 55% women

Question 13

How are gender differences represented in the labour market?

Answer 13

In the labour market:
- Boys are underprepared for knowledge and the service economy
- In the past employment opportunities for under-educated boys could be found in factories but few of these exist now
- Factory jobs have been replaced by the service economy, where emotional labour is keeping boys from entering in this field
McDowell (2003) says that there is a crisis of masculine identities in service economy, rather than a boy crisis in schools

Question 14

How can the boy crisis be considered sexist? What are some solutions offered for the “boy crisis?”

Answer 14

Boy underachievement or girl (over)achievement?
We should ask ourselves why the success of girls should be considered a crisis of boys. There’s no evidence for a boy crisis but they are implementing solutions anyways.

Solutions:

• make school more relevant for boys?
• curriculum guides for teachers to engage boys
• male role models (hiring more male elementary school teachers)

Question 15

Despite the high educational success of women, what challenges for them persist?

Answer 15

Evidence of hiring discrimination
Gender-typical employment patterns (between and within occupations)
Wage gap; slightly closing but still persists today
Lack of women in positions of power (the glass ceiling)

Question 16

What is the glass ceiling?

Answer 16

Despite high levels of formal education, few women are in positions of corporate power.
In 2013, only 14.6% of corporate positions were held by women. However, for the companies with the most women are board tend to do better than companies only lead by men.

Question 17

What did Warrington and Younger (2002) find when studying single-sex schooling?

Answer 17

Found single-sex classes increased participation and student confidence

Inconsistent findings for behaviour change

• boys becoming more polite
• girls became less polite
• however, some schools had a decline in classroom behaviours in all-male classes

Effective teacher/role model selection

• more able to relate to the problems of the boys
• but were entrenching the macho culture (using sport examples, less nurturing)

Question 18

What did Riordan find when studying single-sex schooling? What was the limitation of his study?

Answer 18

Found that single-sex schools create a pro-academic environment, and public co-ed schools create an anti-academic environment.
Problem: he compared private vs. public schools, rather than gender.

Question 19

What did Baker want to study?

Answer 19

Studies elite/private single-gender education.
Wants to know if there are intersections between class privilege and gender; do they reinforce or disrupt gendered norms and expectations?

Question 20

What research methods were used by Baker?

Answer 20

Ethnographic (observational) research in two elite single-gender private schools: one girls’ school; one boys’ school.

Question 21

What were the proposed potential benefits of single-sex education?

Answer 21

• confidence building for girls
• more room for physicality for boys
• less distraction, and more risk taking for both

Question 22

What were the findings for boys?

Answer 22

Boys High

• focus on being physically active and sports, popularity through athletics
• competitiveness between students rather than teamwork
• bonding through competition
• allowed to walk freely through the class, noise was the norm
• stereotypical forms of masculinity

Question 23

What were the finding for girls?

Answer 23

Girls High

• focus on relationship building, no competition
• helping others
• STEM through “feminine” interests, ex. looking at construction of high heel shoe to study physics, rather than a bridge
• de-emphasizing feminist concerns

Question 24

What was the overall conclusion of the study?

Answer 24

While academics are highly valued, these schools are strongly constructing and emphasizing gender norms.

Question 25

What was Kehler studying?

Answer 25

Studied masculinity in public schools, and how it isolates boys who are not “masculine” and “sporty”.

Question 26

What did Kehler find in his studies?

Answer 26

A counter-story to Boy High

• disadvantages of sports focus
• male bodies and anxiety
• perpetuation of hyper masculine ideals
• silencing of other forms of being a boy

Question 27

What were private schools for girls originally intended for?

Answer 27

Girls were taught to become helpmates of the powerful, but not be powerful themselves. They were taught how a wife of an upper-class man should act. The purpose of all girl elite schools was not for them to pursue PSE, but for them to be “Christian gentlewoman”.

Question 28

What was the contradiction in Girl High?

Answer 28

They are told to “Achieve your Dreams!” through the school motto and from their teachers almost on a daily basis; however, they are not taught about the inequalities they face as women. They are told there are inequalities but for other women, specifically in Third World countries. They are sheltered from the inequalities that exist around them.
Most of the students reject the motto.

Question 29

Define divisions.

Answer 29

Locker rooms are explicitly and implicitly boundaried by physical and social divisions. The participants described intimidation practices that created separate spaces between different groups of boys being positioned on the fringes or boundaries of the locker room. The assignment of boys to different places, particularly those marginalized in the locker room, was effectively done through verbal taunting and physically posing, taking up space to maintain separations among boys. Locker rooms like many social spaces can be mapped, reflecting power differentials cross the inhabitants in these spaces.

Question 30

Define ethnographic voyeurism.

Answer 30

This term is used to indicate the perception that ethnographers gaze upon participants in a voyeuristic maner. It is a term that is devoid of any evidentiary basis but rather heavily connected to stereotypes and assumptions. In this case the schools might, for example, assume boys do not have body image issues but girls typically would have these concerns. Additionally, schools might impose protective restrictions to researchers investigating issues associated with adolescent bodies suggesting that it is inappropriate to “look” at youths’ bodies. The implicit and explicit fear outside of the research community is translated into gatekeeping that restricts and limits access to participants, usually youth, particularly in school settings and often under the age of consent.

Question 31

Define surveillance.

Answer 31

As pertaining to school locker rooms, in particular, surveillance is a common practice among boys. The covert ways these young men, for example, would purposefully and strategically avoid the furtive glances of their peers reveals the level of surveillance. Boys expressed a discomfort in their locker room in which their peers took up space, imposing themselves through a physical as well as verbal dominance in these spaces. Boys monitor the actions of other boys to affirm they are suitably and appropriately masculine. Measures of harassment and bullying are often used to ensure boys conduct themselves as heteronormative boys.