gender and achievement Flashcards
impact of feminism
McRobbie - changes in content of women’s magazines - more independent
social media - encourage young girls to be independent and successful
- more ambition and raising expectations
changes in women’s employment
1970 - equal pay act - 30% to 9% in 2020
1975 - sex discrimination act
women in employment now 72% - men is 80%
service sector - women increasingly likely to be employed over men
- girls see future in paid work
changes in family structure
divorce rate and large increase in cohabitation
increase in single parent families - 90% mother
families getting smaller - more time to spend with children
more women in breadwinner role - positive role model
- more relevant for middle class
girls changing ambitions
Sharpe - 1970s - marriage and family - 1990s - career and have family later
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim - rise in individualism and independence
Postmodernity - no longer feel restricted by gender or historical structural patriarchy
girls mature faster
at 16 - girls estimated to be more mature than boys by up to two years
girls more likely to view exams in a responsible way and recognise the seriousness and importance of academic and career choices
girls mature faster limitation
feminists criticise - society infantilising men eg domestic responsibility - women bear burden of domestic and emotional labour
benevolent sexism - make an assumption about a gender identity - creating a characteristic - also hurts boys
gendered socialisation
Norman - parents think appropriate socialisation is to handle her gently - more likely to read
more likely to succeed in education in terms of behaviour and language skills
boys run around more
Becky Francis - gender codes within school media
McRobbie - bedroom culture
globalisation and employment opportunities and male identities
decline in traditionally male jobs - crisis of masculinity
Mac an Ghaill - w/c boys - crisis
Mitsos and Browne - little prospect of getting proper job
lack in motivation
white w/c boys - intersectionality
leisure patterns
McRobbie - boys play sport and play games to relate to peers, girls talk to them - bedroom culture
boys fail to develop linguistic and reasoning skills for many non-manual jobs
socialisation and different attitudes to reading
reading - feminised
- boys stop being interested in reading at 8
- elaborated speech code - Bernstein
external factors - strength
external factors link together different parts of society and show interdependence of each aspect of society
feminism - structural
external factors limitations
decline of manufacturing and crisis - only w/c when middle class girls outperform middle class boys
improved career opportunities do not explain trend fully - 9% pay gap despite girls overachieving
socialisation doesn’t explain why girls overtook boys in 1980s
interactionism - inschool processes for important than structural factors
radical feminists - emphasise importance of institutional sexism in schools
teacher labelling
Swann and Graddol - teachers tend to see boys as unruly and disruptive - likely to tell them off than helping - lower expectations
Abraham- teachers describe typical boy and girl
- boy — not bright, likes laugh and attention seeking
- girl — bright, hardworking, quiet
- self fulfilling prophecy
teachers stricter on girls not following gender domain
subcultures
w/c boys - anti-school subculture
willis - learning to labour - sewell - antischool black masculinity
fuller - black girls form pro-school subcultures
school work feminised - bullied and labelled as gay
national curriculum
before 1988 (new right) boys better than girls
GCSEs - girls overtook - coursework
Mitsos and Browne - girls benefit from coursework and work harder and spend more time on homework
GCSEs - oral exams - girls more likely to do well due to language skills
national curriculum strengths
good evidence coursework has an impact
- coursework dropped from maths GCSE in 2009 and girls achievement stayed same while boys rose to overtake girls for first time in 12 years
national curriculum limitations
coursework no longer exists in majority of GCSE subjects and gender gap in achievement still exists
exams have most influence on final grades so coursework cannot explain all of the gender gap in achievement
feminisation of teaching
more female teachers - role models
- teaching style appropriate for girls
Browne and Roff - girls see school as their gender domain
Sewell - schools do not nurture masculine traits and focus on feminine qualities
however - Francis - 2/3rd of 7-8 year olds believed gender of teacher does not matter
internal factor strengths
offer good counter-balance to structural explanations
explanations had major impact on social policy eg teacher training
interactionists - support internal explanations as micro-level interactions between groups of individuals
internal factor limitations
tendency in some of these approaches to end up blaming the teacher
some studies based on small-scale qualitative research - low in reliability and generalisability
wrong to exaggerate extent of male underachievement - boys still improving and catching up
