Educational Attainment - Gender

Question 1

Trends in attainment and gender

Answer 1

• Girls do better than boys at every stage in National Curriculum Tests in English and Science and outperform boys in language and literacy.
• Girls are more successful than boys in most GCSE subjects, with a gap of around 10%.
• In 2017 boys outperformed girls in Maths, Physics, Economics and Statistics - girls outperform boys in English
• In 2017 achievement gap widened in English to 17.4%
• More girls than boys stay on in sixth form and further education and post-18 higher education.
• More females apply and get places at university.
• Females are more likely to get top 1st and upper 2nd class degrees
• In general, both sexes have improved their performance over the past 45 years
• Only some ‘working class’ boys could be described as ‘underachieving’ - difference in ethnicity need to be considered too

Question 2

Theoretical approaches to girls’ achievement

Answer 2

Liberal feminists:

• Progress has been positive and we should celebrate the achievement made by girls. This is shown in the equal opportunity policies in play and positive role models for girls.
• Similarities between this view and functionalists theory of meritocracy: Girls are able to overcome sexist attitudes and achieve if they work hard enough and have equal opportunity to achieve.

Radical feminists:

• Recognise the improvement in achievement but emphasise the fact that the system is still patriarchal.
• They cite evidence such as:
• Continued sexual harassment of girls in schools
• Limits on subject choices
• Most heads at secondary are still male
• There is still a bias in the curriculum towards men and their achievements.

Question 3

External Factors affecting girls’ achievement - The impact of feminism

Answer 3

• The feminist movement challenged stereotypes and improved women’s rights. McRobbie showed in her study of girls’ magazines, where in the 1970’s they emphasised the importance of getting married and not being ‘left on the shelf’ whereas in modern times they contain more images of assertive and independent women.
• Raised expectations and self-esteem leading to improvement in achievement, and also increasing ambition in relation to family and careers, which may explain the improvement in educational achievement, as this is seen as a gateway to securing this future.

Question 4

External Factors affecting girls’ achievement - Changes in family

Answer 4

• Because of increased divorce rates, cohabitation and lone-parent families, along with smaller families, paired with a decrease in marriage, the attitude towards education has changed. An increased amount of female-led lone families may require a breadwinner role from the woman, creating a new adult role model for them, a financially independent woman.
• To achieve this independence, women need well-paid jobs and therefore good education, resulting in more investment and achievement in education. Increases in divorce rates may also suggest to girls that it is unwise to rely on their husband to be a provider, encouraging girls to look to themselves and their own qualifications to make a living.

Question 5

External Factors affecting girls’ achievement - Changes in employment

Answer 5

• This is due to the 1970 Equal Pay Act made it illegal for women to be paid less than men for work of equal value, and the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act outlawed discrimination at work, and this has led to a 50% decrease in the pay gap since 1975 (reduced from 30% to 15%). The proportion of women in employment has also risen from 53% in 1971 to 67% in 2013, and this is due to the growth of the service sector and the flexibility of part-time work offering more opportunities for lone mothers.
• Other women are now breaking through the ‘glass ceiling’, increasing the amount of women in high-level professional and managerial roles.
• These changes have encouraged girls to see their future in terms of paid work rather than as housewives, with the existence of greater career opportunities and better pay for women, and the role models that successful career women offer provides incentive for girls to gain qualifications.

Question 6

External Factors affecting girls’ achievement - Changes in ambition

Answer 6

• Sharpes’ (1994) interviews with girls in the 1970s and 1990s show a major shift in the way girls view their future, with the 1974 interviews finding low aspirations in girls, who believed that education was unfeminine and that high ambition would be considered unattractive, giving priority to ‘love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs and careers, more or less in that order’.
• However, by the 1990’s girls’ ambitions had changed and the order of priorities was different, instead focusing on careers and being self-sufficient, with Sharpe finding that girls were now more likely to see their future as an independent woman with a career rather than as dependent on a husband and his income.
• Additionally, O’Connor’s (2006) study of 14-17 year olds found marriage and children were not a major part of their life plans.
• Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2001) linked this to the idea of individualisation identified in interactionist theory, where independence is valued much more than in the past, and so woman’s careers have become a bigger part of a woman’s life project as it promises recognition and economic self-sufficiency, and because of this prospect girls are more driven to work harder in school, increasing achievement, as in order to achieve this they need a good education.
• Carol Fuller’s (2011) study identified that educational success was a central aspect of their identity, seeing themselves as creators of their own future and individualised notion of self. They believed in meritocracy and aimed for a professional career that would enable them to support themselves, and these aspirations require educational qualifications in contrast to the aspirations of the 1970s girls, and so needing to do well in school is more important to girls.

Question 7

Internal Factors affecting girl’s achievement - Equal opportunity policies

Answer 7

• Feminist ideas have had a major impact; gender issues are now made more aware by policymakers and teachers are more sensitive to stereotyping. Mainstream thinking has developed to the belief that boys and girls are entitled to the same opportunities. Initiatives such as GIST and WISE which encourage girls to work in non-traditional areas. Female role models visiting schools; non-sexist careers advice; efforts on particularly science teachers of gender issues. Introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 made all subjects able to be studied by both genders.
• This allows for girls to have broader aspirations, due to non stereotypical teaching and equal rights, allowing for them to have more career options and a more diverse future/career path.
• Encouragement in achievement (Jo Boaler, 1998); girls are more likely to achieve well in subject they looked and they now have more choice on their subject choices.
• Due to schools becoming more meritocratic, girls are given recognition for their hard work, even if it is more recognition than boys.

Question 8

Internal Factors - Positive Role Models

Answer 8

• Increase in the proportion of female teachers and heads - these women in senior positions act as role models to girls.
• Likely to be an important role to have as a female teacher because as far as educational achievement is concerned, they must undertake a lengthy and successful education themselves.
• Women coming into positions of power show girls that women can achieve positions of importance and giving them non-traditional goals to aim for.
• Acts as encouragement for women to go into the roles that aspire to go into aa they have been given role models that have achieved their own roles.

Question 9

Internal Factors - GCSE and Coursework

Answer 9

• Changes in assessment have favoured girls over boys - Gorard (2005) found that the gender gap in achievement was fairly constant from 1975 until 1989 when it sharply increased, which was the year GCSEs were introduced.
• Mitsos and Browne (1998) supported this with their suggestion that girls are better with coursework than boys as they are more conscientious and organised, spending more time on their work, taking more care with its presentation, better at meeting deadlines and bring the right equipment and material to lessons.
• These characteristics are a result of gender socialisation.
• According to Gorard, this meant coursework was now a big part of GCSE subjects, and he concluded that the gender gap in achievement was a product of the changed system rather than the fault of the boys.
• Browne and Mistos argued that these factors helped girls benefit from the introduction of coursework to GCSE and A-Level studies.
• A greater use of oral exams is also said to benefit girls due to their generally better developed language skills.
  This all helps girls to achieve greater success than boys.

Counter - Elwood (2005) argued that coursework has some influence and is unlikely to be the cause of the gender gap because exams have much more influence on final grades. Also, the relevancy of coursework has greatly diminished - this factor therefore has even less influence.

Question 10

Internal Factors - Teacher Attention

Answer 10

• Interactions with teachers differ based on gender; French and French (1993) analysed classroom interaction, finding boys received more attention because they attracted more reprimands - Francis (2001) found that along with this increased attention, they were more harshly disciplined and felt picked on by teachers who had lower expectations of them.
• Swann (1998) found gender differences in communication styles - found that boys dominate whole-class discussion, whereas girls prefer group and pair work and are better at listening and co-operating, and they are more likely to have turn-taking speech, whereas boys have speech characterised by hostile interruption.
• This therefore creates a relationship of alienation between teachers and boys, and this results in decreased achievement as they do not spend the time in lessons gaining knowledge but instead being disciplined in class. - This causes lower achievement as they have a more disrupted education, and are more likely to become part of a retreatist subculture as a response to this labelling.
• This can explain why teachers respond more positively to girls, whom are seen as co-operative, than to boys who are potentially disruptive, which can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which successful interactions with teachers promote girl’s self-esteem and raise their achievement levels, having the adverse effects on boys.

Question 11

Internal Factors - Challenging stereotypes in the curriculum

Answer 11

• Research in the 1970s and 80s found that reading schemes portrayed women mainly as housewives and mothers, that physics books showed them as frightened by science, and that maths books depicted boys as move inventive.
• Sexist images have been removed from learning materials, which may have helped to raise girls’ achievements by presenting them with more positive images of what women can do. Using female empowerment role models in learning materials help to encourage young girls.

Question 12

Internal Factors - Selection and league tables

Answer 12

• The introduction of exam league tables has improved opportunities for girls, high achieving girls are attractive to schools, whereas low achieving boys are not
• Boys are less attractive to schools because they are more likely to suffer from behavioural difficulties and are four times more likely to be excluded.
• This creates a self fulfilling prophecy as girls are more likely to be recruited by good schools, so therefore they are more likely to do well.
• Boys may be seen as ‘liability students’, or obstacles to the school improving its league table scores.

Question 13

What do liberal feminists argue about girl’s achievement?

Answer 13

• Celebrate the progress made in improving achievement, believing that further progress can be made by continuing the development of equal opportunities policies, encouraging positive role models and overcoming sexist attitudes and stereotypes
• This is similar to functionalist ideas that education is meritocratic where all individuals, regardless of gender, ethnicity or class are given an equal opportunity to achieve

Question 14

What do radical feminists argue about girl’s achievement?

Answer 14

• Take a more critical view, recognising that whilst girls are achieving more they emphasise that the system remains patriarchal (male-dominated) and conveys the clear message that men are still in control
  For example:
• Sexual harassment of girls in school
• Education still limits girls’subject choices and career options
• Although there are now more female head teachers, male teachers are still more likely to be the heads of secondary schools
• Women are underrepresented in many areas of the curriculum, such as their contribution to history being largely ignored. Weiner (1993) describes the secondary school history curriculum as a ‘woman-free zone’

Question 15

What is ‘bedroom culture’?

Answer 15

Bedroom culture - where girls spend time talking, reading and doing other activities which improve literacy

Question 16

What is sex role theory?

Answer 16

• A theory of Talcott Parsons that discusses the instrumental and experimental roles
• In terms of educational achievement, it is suggested by functionalists as an explanation for achievement and subject choice between genders
• Because of their expressive role, girls can be considered to be less interested, and boys can be perceived to need more attention to achieve

Question 17

How is girl’s achievement affected by this theory?

Answer 17

• They have increased literacy skills; reading is feminised and as girls embrace it as their ‘bedroom culture’, along with mothers typically reading to children, it is seen as an expressive task, and so girls develop superior literacy skills that allow higher achievement and directs girls to more literacy based subjects
• Socialised to be passive and obedient, and so identify more with the ‘ideal pupil’ that teachers explain they prefer, and because of higher expectations, they are more motivated and engaged and so have higher achievement
• Canalisation - toys given to young children develop different skill sets that transfer to later life, such as boys being given toll boxes, which predisposes them to choosing more hard, scientific subjects
• Subject choice - girls are socialised into ‘softer’ humanities subjects rather than ‘complex’ science subjects

Question 18

Evidence of gender socialisation impacting achievement

Answer 18

• Many girls still enter humanities subjects over science
• Across all social classes and ethnic groups, girls achieve higher than their male counterparts; can argue that there is a correlation not causation of gender socialisation and higher achievement
• Boys still dominate subjects in male domains of STEM subjects, and a shift in female socialisation causes more girls to enter the male domain but there haven’t been changes to encourage men into female domains, which could cause differences

Question 19

Changes to gender socialisation impacting educational achievement

Answer 19

• Rise in feminism and changing career aspirations - Sharpe’s magazine study, more females working means more female role models in parents, and as girls see their mothers as working mothers and having successful careers and are socialised to want the same
• More initiatives promoting female empowerment have changed early socialisation - ‘This Girl Can’, GIST, WISE all attempt to change male dominance

Question 20

Evaluations of the impact of gender socialisation on educational achievement

Answer 20

1. Changing nature of socialisation in the 21st century; this suggests it is an important factor, as it is changing and girls are still highly achieving
2. Socialisation of girls going into the workplace - Francis and McRobbie shows more girls are socialised into career ambitions, emphasising the impact of gender socialisation on educational achievement
3. Still a gap, although narrowing in highest positions - gender pay gap, disparities in representation in top jobs and it will be 30 more years until this levels out, and so gender socialisation is still not impacting beyond education
4. Gender socialisation differs by cultural background, and so it is hard to generalise
5. It is an external factor, reinforced by in school factors, and so it is hard to determine if school impacts socialisation and makes it more constant across class an ethnicity

Question 21

Lack of achievement for boys - Literacy skills

Answer 21

• Literacy skills are a major factor in lower achievement, which can be due to parents spending less time reading to boys and mothers reading to young children making them more likely to associate reading as a feminine activity
• Boy’s leisure pursuits also do little to develop language and communication skills, in contrast to the high development of girls skills due to their ‘bedroom culture’
• Poor language and literacy skills likely affect performance in boys across a range of subjects, and in response the government has introduced a range of policies such as The Raising Boys Achievement (range of teaching strategies, including single-sex teaching) project and The National Literacy Strategy (focuses on boy’s reading skills)

Question 22

Lack of achievement in boys - Globalisation and decline in traditional men’s jobs

Answer 22

• Since the 1980s, there has been a significant decline in heavy industry, partly due to the globalisation of the economy that has caused many manufacturing companies to relocate to places where cheap labour is available
• These sectors of the economy traditionally employed men, and Mitsos and Browne claim the decline in male employment opportunity has led to an ‘identity crisis’ for men, with many boys believing they have little prospect of getting a proper job, and so this undermines their motivation and self-esteem and so they give up trying to get qualifications
• However, these jobs that have seen a decline are manual working-class jobs that required few qualifications, and so the disappearance of such jobs would be unlikely to impact boy’s motivation to obtain qualifications

Question 23

Lack of achievement in boys - Feminisation of education

Answer 23

• Sewell - boys have fallen behind because education has become ‘feminised’, with schools failing to nurture masculine traits such as competitiveness and leadership, instead celebrating qualities more closely associated with girls, such as methodical working and attentiveness in class
• Sewell sees coursework as a major factor in gender differences in achievement, arguing that some coursework should be replaced with final exams and a greater emphasis placed on outdoor adventure in the curriculum

Question 24

Lack of achievement in boys - shortage of male primary school teachers

Answer 24

• The lack of male role models in the home and school is said to be a cause of boy’s underachievement, with many boys being raised in the 1.5 million matrifocal single-parent households, and only 14% of primary school teachers being male
• A YouGov survey in 2007 identified that 39% of 8-11 year olds have no lessons whatsoever with a male teacher, yet most boys surveyed said the presence of a male teacher made them behave better and 42% said it made them work harder
• Some commentators argue that this is because of the feminine culture of education due to it being heavily staffed by female teachers, who are unable to control boys’ behaviour
• In this view, male teachers are better able to impose the strict discipline boys need in order to concentrate, suggesting primary schools need more male teachers

Question 25

Are more male teachers needed? - cont. of male role model factors

Answer 25

• Some research suggests a lack of male teachers does not impact achievement
• Francis (2006) - 2/3 of 7-8 year olds believed the gender of the teacher was unimportant
• Read (2008) - studied the type of language teachers used to express criticism or disapproval of pupils’ work and behaviour, and she is critical of the claims that primary schools have become feminised and that only male teachers can exert the firm discipline that boys need to achieve
  She identified two types of language or ‘discourse’:
  1. A disciplinarian discourse - the teacher’s authority is made explicit and visible, for example through shouting, an ‘exasperated’ tone of voice or sarcasm
  2. A liberal discourse - the teacher’s authority is implicit and invisible; this child-centered discourse involves ‘pseudo-adultification’ - the teacher speaks to the pupil as if they were an adult and expects them to be kind, sensible and respectful to the teacher
• The disciplinarian discourse is often associated with masculinity, and the liberal discourse with femininity, but in her study of 51 primary school teachers (26 female, 25 male) Read found that most teachers, female as well as male, used a supposedly ‘masculine’ disciplinarian discourse to control pupils’ behaviour - so the presence of male teachers is not necessary

Question 26

Read’s conclusions

Answer 26

1. The fact that most teachers favoured a ‘masculine’ disciplinarian discourse of control disproves the claim that the culture of primary school has become more feminised as Sewell claimed
2. The fact that female teachers were just as likely as males to use a ‘masculine’ discourse to control pupils’ behaviour disproves the claim that only male teachers can provide the stricter classroom culture in which boys are said to thrive
   - Malcolm Haase (2008) echoes Read’s first conclusion when he says that although women make up the majority of primary teachers, it is better to think of primary schools are male-dominated or ‘masculinised educational structure that is numerically dominated by women’, with Jones (2006) noting male teachers in the UK have a 1 in 4 chance of gaining headship, whereas female teachers only have one in 13

Question 27

Lack of achievement in boys - ‘Laddish’ subcultures

Answer 27

• Some sociologists argue the growth of this subculture has contributed to boys’ unachievement, with Debbie Epstein (1998) examining the way masculinity was constructed in schools
• She found W/C boys were more likely to be harassed, labelled as sissies and subjected to homophobic verbal abuse if they appear to be ‘swots’
• This supports the findings of Francis’ (2001) finding that boys were more concerned than girls about being labelled by their peers as swots as it is more of a threat to their masculinity than it is to femininity
• This is due to W/C cultures where masculinity is equated to being tough and engaging in manual work; non-manual work, and by extension schoolwork, is seen as effeminate and inferior, but as a result W/C boys tend to reject schoolwork to avoid being called ‘gay’
• Epstein observed that ‘real boys don’t work’ and if they do, they are bullied, and these findings parallel those of Willis
• According to Francis, laddish culture is becoming increasingly widespread, arguing that this is because as girls move into traditional masculine areas such as careers, boys respond by ‘becoming increasingly laddish in their effort to construct themselves as non-feminine’
• This affects their achievement, as doing well in school would create this negative environment socially

Question 28

The National Literacy Strategy - Detailed Social Policy that has aimed to increase boys’ achievement - Success

Answer 28

What this policy introduced -

• Introduced in 1998, it is a major initiative that aimed to tackle literacy problems in primary schools, particularly in Local Education Authorities
• It brought in a daily ‘literacy hour’ with a practical structure for time and class management and termly teaching objectives

The effectiveness of this policy -
- It has led to substantial improvement in attainment at a low cost, decreasing the ‘gender gap’ particularly helping boys
- The NLP (National Literacy Project) particularly aimed at improving low levels of reading and writing skills in many badly performing inner-city schools, and the this initiative effectively changed the content and structure of how literacy was taught, based in educational research, rather than focusing on free reading with little to no teacher intervention and too much time hearing individual pupils’ read - there was clear improvement where this change occurred
- The reading score increased by 2.1 percentile points in NLP school, with a relative pattern of improvement being seen in KS2 English, where the percentage of pupils attaining a Level 4 or above rises by more in NLP schools
GCSE results also increased after the introduction of the reading hour, and so this policy significantly raised pupil performance in primary schools exposed to it
- The literacy hour in particular raised male achievement, with effects for girls being considerably smaller or not statistically significant (boys = 2.4-3.5%
- This policy was cost-effective for time and resources, as it simply redirected the structure to be more effective rather than taking time away from other pursuits to prioritise it

Question 29

Problems with measuring gender differences

Answer 29

• Not monocausal - There are likely to be several factors involved
• Factors (internal and external) are linked - cannot be separated
• There are variations in achievement by subject
• Gender and achievement is more fluid. It appears to respond to social changes and to policy initiatives.
• It is no longer appropriate to talk in terms of two genders

Question 30

Is there simply a moral panic?

Answer 30

Moral panic - a widespread panic that something is morally wrong
- In 1998, the Labour government produced a ‘coordinated plan of action to take the underachievement of boys’
- There is an argument that policies to promote girls’ education are no longer needed, speaking of women taking men’s jobs, believing that girls have succeeded at the expense of boys who are now disadvantaged
- Feminists; Ringrose (2013) - these views have contributed to a moral panic about ‘failing boys’, reflecting a fear that underachieving W/C boys will grow up to become dangerous, unemployable underclass that will threaten social stability
- She argues that the moral panic has caused a shift in educational policy, which is now preoccupied in raising boys’ achievement
This has two negative effects:
1. By narrowing equal opportunities policy down to simply failing boys, it ignores the problem of disadvantaged W/C and minority ethnic pupils
2. By narrowing gender policy down solely to the issue of achievement gaps, it ignores other problems faced by girls in school, such as sexual harassment and bullying, self-esteem and identity issues and stereotyped subject choices
- Ousler (2006) noted that the focus on underachieving boys has led to the neglect of girls, partly because girls often disengage from school quietly, whereas boys’ disengagement takes the form of loud disruptiveness that is a more obvious problem

Question 31

Why do girls and boys pick different subjects?

Answer 31

• Gender role socialisation
• Gender domains
• Gendered subject image
• Single-sex schooling
• Gender identity and peer pressure
• Gendered career opportunities

Question 32

Initiatives introduced to reduce gender divisions in subject choice

Answer 32

• WISE
• Ministers have been told to prioritise curriculum funding for schools that will develop resources showcasing women in STEM, after a study found not a single women is mentioned in the GCSE science curriculum.
• These initiatives have encouraged more female role models to be present in the curriculum, thus causing more representation for girls ambitions in STEM subjects, and showing the ability of girls to gain a career in STEM.
• Therefore, girls are more likely to want to pursue these subjects at A-Level, with the compulsory choice of science at GCSE, because they have the motivation to achieve ambitions they can see are possible. In addition, because girls have the ability to choose these subjects and are encouraged to do so, they are more likely to feel welcome and engaged in STEM subjects.

Question 33

Factors in subject choice differences between genders - Gender role socialisation

Answer 33

• This is the process of learning the behaviour expected of males and females in society, with early socialisation shaping gender identity
• Norman (1988) - from an early age, boys and girls are dressed differently, given different toys and encouraged to take part in different activities (canalisation and bedroom culture)
• Byme (1979) - schools and teachers encourage boys to be tough and show initiative and not be weak and behave like ‘sissies’, with girls expected to be quiet, helpful, clean and tidy
• As a result of differences in socialisation, boys and girls develop different reading tastes, with Murphy and Elwood (1998) show how these lead to different subject choices with boys reading hobby books and information texts, and girls reading stories about people, explaining why boys prefer science and STEM subjects, and girls prefer humanities and art subjects based around people

Question 34

Factors in subject choice differences between genders - Gender Domains

Answer 34

• Brown and Ross (1991) argue that children’s beliefs about ‘gender domains’ are shaped by early experiences and expectations of adults
• Gender domains - the tasks and activities that boys and girls see as male or female ‘territory’ and therefore is relevant to themselves e.g. cars are seen as being in the male domain, but looking after a child is not
• Children are more confident when engaging in tasks they associate with their gender domain
• Murphy (1991) - boys and girls pay attention to different details even when tackling the same task; girls focus more on how people feel, whereas boys focus on how things are made and work, explaining subjects choices as girls are more likely to pick subjects that consider humans and boys pick ones that consider information

Question 35

Factors in subject choice differences between genders - Gendered subject images

Answer 35

• Sociologists have tried to explain why some subjects are seen as boys’ or girls’ subjects, with Kelly arguing that science is seen as a boys’ subject because science teachers are more likely to be men, the examples used by teachers and those in textbooks often draw on male, not female interests and in science lessons, boys monopolise the apparatus and dominate the laboratory, acting as though it is theirs
• Colley (1998) similarly notes that computer studies is seen as masculine because it involves working with machines, a part of the male gender domain, and the way it is taught is off-putting for females, with tasks being abstract and teaching styles formal giving few opportunities for group work that girls prefer

Question 36

Factors in subject choice differences between genders - Single-sex teaching

Answer 36

• Pupils who attend single sex schools tend to hold less stereotypical subject images and make less traditional subject choices
• Leonard (2006) - Data analysed on 13,000 individuals found that compared to pupils in mixed schools, girls in girls school were more likely to take maths and science, and boys in boys schools were more likely to take English and languages
• Girls from single-sex schools were also more likely to study male-dominated subjects at university
• Leonard’s findings are supported by a study from the Institute of Physics, which found that girls in single-sex schools were 2.4 times more likely to take A-Level physics than those in mixed schools, and the same study found perceptions of physics are formed outside as well as inside the classroom, such as the subject being negatively viewed due to a lack of female physicists in media
• This suggests that the presence of both gender domains creates conflict between them, and causes more stereotypical subject choosing

Question 37

Factors in subject choice differences between genders - Gender identity and peer pressure

Answer 37

• Other boys and girls may apply pressure to an individual if they disapprove of their choices, such as boys being afraid of attracting negative attention by picking an artistic subject like dance
• Carrie Peecher (1998) found that because pupils see sport as mainly within the male domain, girls who are ‘sporty’ have to cope with an image that contradicts the conventional female stereotype, explaining why they are more likely to opt out of sport
• Dewar (1990) - Studied American college students found that male students would call girls negative comments if they appeared to be interested in sport
• The same could be seen in science subjects, especially in mixed schools, with the Institute of Physics study noting that there was something ‘off-putting’ about being a girl doing physics in a mixed setting
• Peer pressure is a powerful influence on gender identity and how pupils see themselves in relation to particular subjects
• In mixed schools, peers police one another’s subjects choices so that girls and boys adopt an appropriate gender identity, with girls pressured to avoid subjects such as physics
• By contrast, the absence of peer pressure from the opposite sex may explain why girls in single-sex schools are more likely to choose boys’ subjects, as the absence of boys may mean there is less pressure to conform to restrictive stereotypes of what subjects they can study

Question 38

Factors in subject choice differences between genders - Gendered Career Opportunities

Answer 38

• An important reason for differences in subject choices is the fact that employment is highly gendered; jobs tends to be sex-typed
• Women’s jobs tend to be associated with work similar to that performed by housewives, childcare and nursing, with women being concentrated into a narrow range of occupations
• Over half of all women’s employment falls within only four categories; clinical, secretarial, personal services and occupations like cleaning
• This sex-typing of occupations affects boys’ and girls’ ideas about what kinds of jobs are possible or acceptable, and for example if boys get the message that nursery nurses are female, they will likely not opt for a childcare occupation because it is not seen as their job
• This also helps to explain why vocational courses are much more gender-specific than academic courses, since vocational studies are closely linked to student’s career paths

Question 39

Synoptic link - Gender, vocation and class

Answer 39

• There is also a social class dimension to choice of vocational course; W/C pupils may make decisions about vocational courses based on traditional senses of gender identity
• Fuller (2011) - Most W/C girls studied had ambitions to go into jobs such as care or hair and beauty, reflecting their working-class habitus, and sense of realistic expectation
• These ambitions may arise out of work experience placements, which are often gendered and classed, with Fuller finding that placements in feminine, W/C jobs such as nursing and retail wok were overwhelmingly the norm for the girls in her study
• Fuller concluded that the school was implicitly steering girls towards certain types of jobs, and hence certain vocational courses, through the work experience placements offered to them

Question 40

How do sexual and gender identities affect pupils’ experience of schooling?

Answer 40

• Double standards
• Verbal abuse
• Male gaze
• Male peer groups
• Female peer groups
• Teachers and discipline

Question 41

Double standards

Answer 41

• When one set of moral codes is applied to one group and a different one to another group.
• Lees (1993) Sexual morality, Social control, Patriarchal ideology
• Reinforces that girls and boys should expect to be treated differently. Reinforces how we are expected to behave due to gendered expectations. Justifies inequality
• Gendered bullying from all sides. May lead to absenteeism. Teacher may also use double standards leading to labelling and expectations of behaviour

Question 42

Verbal abuse

Answer 42

• Name calling is used to police sexual identity
• Correll - ‘a rich vocabulary of abuse’ is one way in which dominant gender and sexual identities are reinforced, such as name calling to put girls down in a certain way; Lees (1986) found that girls were called ‘slags’ if they were sexually active and ‘drags’ if they weren’t.
• Paechter saw name calling as helping to shape gender identity and maintain male power, with the use of negative labels ‘gay’, ‘queer’ and ‘lezzie’ are ways in which pupils police each other’s sexual identities.
• Parker (1996) - boys were labelled gay for simply being friendly with girls or female teachers, with both Lees and Paechter note that these labels often bear no relation to pupils actual sexual behaviour, but their function is to simply reinforce gender norms and identities
• Boys will fail to attempt to do well in school in order to protect their image with their peer group, which leads to lower achievement due to fear of social pressures. The verbal abuse reinforces gender expectations, and these expectations conflict with attempts to do well in school; this causes a negative schooling experience as they cannot have a positive experience in school whilst receiving this verbal abuse.

Question 43

The male gaze

Answer 43

• Male surveillance to reinforce dominant heterosexual masculinity
• Mac an Ghalil - how male pupils and teachers look at girls up and down, see them as sexual objects and make judgments on their appearance
• Reinforces male identity and devalues femininity, acting as one of the many ways in which boys prove their masculinity to their friends and is often combined with constant telling of sexual conquest stories, with boys who do not display their heterosexuality in this way risk being labelled as ‘gay’
• This causes females to feel uncomfortable in a schooling environment, possibly affecting their self-esteem and causing them to do less well in school; boys are demasculinized for wanting to do well, and not conforming to this identity would cause isolation, poor mental health and a lack of motivation to achieve. They would have a negative experience if they choose to not be hyper-masculine.

Question 44

Male peer groups

Answer 44

• Class-based masculine gender expectations of behaviour - Epstein and Willis’ studies show how anti-school subcultures accuse boys who want to do well in school as being gay
• Mac an Ghalil’s study of Parnell school shows how peer groups reproduce a large range of different class-based masculine gender identities, with ‘macho’ W/C lads being dismissive of hard working W/C boys who aspired to middle class careers, referring to them as ‘dickhead achievers’, and in contrast middle-class ‘real Englishmen’ project an image of ‘effortless achievement’
• Redman and Mac an Ghaill (1997) found that the dominant definition of masculine identity changes from that of macho lads in the lower school to rel Englishmen in sixth form.
• This represents a shift away from a W/C definition based on toughness to middle class expectations based on intellectual ability, reflecting the more middle class composition and atmosphere of sixth form. This shows how class subcultures reinforce perception of male identity and how the two factors intersect.
• Boys in W/C are expected to not want to do well in school, and this pressure from their subculture norms leads them to do worse in school for fear of alienation from their class culture; however, this changes when they adopt the M/C habitus of sixth form, allowing them to focus on school without fear of being villanised by their peers. This leads them to have a conflict in which they have to choose positive schooling or achieving a stable future.

Question 45

Female peer groups - policing identity

Answer 45

• Class and ethnicity gender expectations of behaviour
  Archer shows how W/C girls gain symbolic capital by performing a hyper-heterosexual image/feminine identity, which involves constructing a glamorous, ‘sexy’ Nike appearance using particular clothing brands and styles, with female peers policing this identity and girls risking unpopularity if they fail to conform.
• Idealised feminine identity - showing loyalty to peer group, being non-competitive and getting along with everyone in the culture
• Sexualised identity - involves competing for boys in the dating culture
• ‘Boffin identity’ - Girls who want to be educationally successful may feel the need to conform to the schools notion of the ideal feminine pupil identity
• Ringrose (2013) - study of 13-14 year old girls in a South Wales school found that popularity was crucial to female identity, and as they transitioned from female friendship culture to heterosexual dating culture, they face tension between an idealised feminine identity and a sexualised identity.
• Currie et al (2007) - relationships with boys can confer symbolic capital, it is high risk, as a balancing act is created between the identities - girls who view themselves as better than their peers risk ‘slut shaming’ and exclusion from the friendship culture, whilst those who don’t compete for boyfriends face ‘frigid shaming’ by other girls.
• Shaming becomes a social control device by which school girls police, regulate and discipline the identities of others.
• Reay (2001) - this involved girls having to perform an asexual identity,showing a lack of interest in boyfriends or popular fashion
• As a result, they risk being a boffin identity and excluded by both sexes, but Francis found that M/C female boffins respond by defining other W/C girls as ‘chavs’
• Girls who wish to do well in school risk isolation from peer groups and negative identities being placed on them by their peers; this causes them to have a poor schooling experience as they have to balance identities, which can be alienating and detrimental to self-esteem and mental health, and the loss of friendships causes negative experience and unhappiness, as well as competition causing negative tension in peer groups and retracting social support for girls in their schooling careers.

Question 46

Teachers and discipline

Answer 46

• Teachers expectations and use of language that reinforces gender expectations
• Haywood and Mac an Ghaill found that male teachers told boys off for behaving like girls, and teased them for performing worse in exams than girls. They tended to ignore verbal abuse of girls and even blamed them to attracting it.
• Askew and Ross - male teacher’s behaviour reinforces messages about gender, with male teachers having a protective attitude towards female colleagues by ‘rescuing’ them by threatening disruptive pupils. However, this reinforces negative power stereotypes and the idea girls cannot cope alone.
• Teachers act as role models for students, and their behaviour and attitude can negatively affect student’s engagement and enjoyment of school, which can further impact their achievement; the reinforcement of stereotypes is also negative for ambitions and expectations of girls and cause a lack of self-esteem when trying to break into male spaces.