External factors (gender) Flashcards
What are the external factors affecting gender and educational achievement?
The impact of feminism
Changes in the family
Changes in women’s employment
Girls’ changing ambitions
What has the feminist movement done?
Challenged the traditional stereotype of a woman’s role as solely that of mother and housewife in patriarchal nuclear family and inferior to men outside the home, in work, education and law.
How has the impact of feminism changed media messages and magazines?
McRobbie’s study of girls’ magazines shows how in the 1970s they emphasised the importance of getting married whereas now they contain images of assertive, independent women.
What has happened as a result of feminism?
The changes encouraged by feminism may affect girls’ self-image and ambitions with regard to the family and careers. This may explain improvements in their educational achievement.
What are the major changes in the family since the 1970s?
- an increase in the divorce rate
- an increase in cohabitation and a decrease in the number of marriages
- an increase in the number of lone-parent families
- smaller families
How are changes in the family affecting girls’ attitudes towards education?
Increased numbers of female-headed lone-parent families means more women need to take on a breadwinner role. This creates a new role model for girls - the financial independent woman.
To achieve this independence, women need well-paid jobs and therefore qualifications.
In addition, increases in the divorce rate suggest to girls that it is unwise to rely on a husband to be their provider = encourages girls to gain qualifications to make a living.
What important changes have there been in women’s employment?
- the 1970 equal pay act (makes it illegal to pay woman less than men for work of equal pay)
- the sex discrimination act 1975
What have important changes in women’s employment meant?
- some women are now breaking through the glass ceiling
- the proportion of women in employment has risen
- the growth of service sector and flexible part-time work has offered opportunities for women
- since 1975, the pay gap between men and women has halved from 30% to 15%
- greater career opportunities and better pay for women
- encourage girls to see their future in terms of paid work rather than as housewives.
What did Sue Sharpe find about changing expectations?
In the 1970s girls’ main priorities was love, marriage, husbands, children.
By the 1990s girls’ ambitions were careers and being able to support themselves.
What did Reay find about working class girl’s educational aspirations?
Their limited aspirations reflect the limited job opportunities they perceive as being available to them.
What did Biggart find about working class girl’s educational aspirations?
They see motherhood as the only viable option for their futures. Therefore, they see less point in achieving in education.
How do Beck and Beck explain the trends seen in Sharpe’s study?
Individualisation in modern society - independence is valued much more strongly than in the past. A career has become part of a woman’s life project because it promises recognition and economic self-sufficiency.
