Gender and Attainment: Out of School Flashcards
McRobbie
Increase in divorce rate, lone-parent families, and smaller families (less children). These changes are reflected in McRobbie’s study of media images and messages.
She compared girls magazines in the 1970s and the 1990s. 1970s they emphasised the importance of getting married, ‘not being left on the shelf’ but now they contain independent, assertive young women.
Equal Pay Act 1970
Sex Discrimination Act 1975
Lots of important changes to women’s employment in recent decades, including:
1970 Equal Pay Act and 1975 Sex Discrimination Act.
Proportion of women working is rising and pay gap is decreasing. Some women are breaking through glass ceiling.
These changes are likely to encourage women to see their futures in terms of paid work rather than full time housewives.
Sharpe
Changes in the family and employment are producing changes in girls’ ambitions.
Sharpe compared the results of interviews in the 1970s and 1990s that she conducted with girls. In 1970s, girls had low aspirations, felt educational success was unfeminine and believed it would make them unattractive.
McRobbie Evaluation
However, if this is the reason then why have boys not always performed better than girls considering they are usually the breadwinners.
Sharpe Evaluation
GIST and WISE and other social policies reveal how the changing aspirations of girls is both true and taken into account by the government.
Mitsos and Browne
Boys are very good at ‘revision binges’ but girls are better at working over longer periods of time.
Mitsos and Browne argue that that because of this, girls have benefited from the introduction of coursework in GCSE and A Levels. They also mature earlier than boys, are able to concentrate for longer and have better developed language skills so benefit from oral exams.
Mitsos and Browne Evaluation
However, Gove has reduced the amount of coursework in both GCSE and A-Levels- but still girls are doing better so this cannot be the only cause.
