Gender and Education Flashcards
Gender
Refers to social or cultural distinctions associated with being male or female.
Sex
Refers to physical or physiological differences between males and females, including both primary sex characteristics (the reproductive system) and secondary characteristics such as height and muscularity.
Gender Gap in Education
- The gender gap in education refers to the difference in Education performance between the two genders
- Today girls get better GCSE and A level results than boys, in practically every subject, and women are much more likely to go to university than men.
History of Gender Education
- Until the early 1990s boys significantly outperformed girls in all levels of education, although girls had begun to improve their educational achievement in the 1980s. Not only were boys getting better results in many subjects, but they were also more dominant in the classroom and often expected to do better than girls.
- Today, the situation has completely reversed, and it is girls who now outperform in all areas
- Now significantly more females than males at university, on traditionally male subjects like Law and Medicine
- According to UCAS in 2017 30,000 more women started a degree than men. A 1/3 likely to attend University
- -At A-level, there is a 5.4% point gap in the A*-C achievement rate between girls and boys
- % oF students passing EBAC subjects at levels 9 to 5: 45.7% of Girls and 39.6% of boys
Introduction
- Differences between girls’ and boys’ achievement are complex, and girls and boys have changed in different ways.
- Two Ways that need to be investigated: Increased Attainment of Females and the Underachievement of Males.
Increased Attainment of Females: Changes in Primary Socialisation (External Factor)
-Traditionally socialisation of females tended to empathise preparation for traditional female roles like motherhood and caregiver
-Changes have occurred in areas like Toys, Activities, Parental Expectations
-Toys: Certain toys are aimed at certain genders that teach them different things. (Oakley: Canalisation-The ‘channelling’ of children towards toys and activities seen as normal for their sex). This has changed. Dolls v Trucks remain. The oldest toy store in the world Hamley’s in the U.K., which dates back to 1750—dropped gender labeling in 2012.
To mark this year’s International Women’s Day , Mattel announced 15 new dolls for its “Shero” and “Inspiring Women” collections, which are “role model” dolls crafted in the likeness of real iconic women.
-Activities: Feminism rising means that parents treat their children equally. Boys are getting more involved with Housework diminishing the Housewife role. (Oakley-Different Activities - Promoting different activities between boys and girls.)
-Parental Expectations: Now that more women work young girls have increasing numbers of role models to aspire to. And women want to see their children succeed in Education and consequently later life
-Supports LF
-Most parents think the appropriate socialisation for a girl is to handle her very gently and to encourage quiet activities. Parents are also more likely to read with girls than with boys. Gender stereotypes held by parents also mean that ‘typical boys’ need more time to run around and play and ‘let off steam’, and parents are more likely to be dismissive if their boys are in trouble at school often seeing this as just them being ‘typical boys’. These gender stereotypes and differences in gender socialisation disadvantage boys.
Increased Attainment of Females: Effort and Behaviour (External Factor)
- Attitudes Changed.
- In the 1990s girls were encouraged to do more homework and were more concerned with presentation making them better suited to coursework. Girls appear to mature earlier than boys. In the past, it was assumed that boys would catch up in secondary school but this no longer seems the case. It appears that girls work harder and are more motivated than boys. And they don’t catch up
- Burns and Bracey (2001) girls put more effort into homework and unlike boys are prepared to draft and redraft assignments.
- Reading: The trust found a significant drop in boys reading for enjoyment between the ages of 8-16 72% at 8-11 to 36% at ages 14-16 Girls dropped from 83% to 53%.
- Hannan (2000) suggests that while boys relate to peers by doing, girls relate to one another by talking. This starts from an early age and means that girls develop language skills which are essential for success in education much earlier than boys.
Increased Attainment of Females: Female Expectations (External Factors)
-Sharpe (1994) compared the attitudes of working-class girls in the 970s and 1990s. In the 1990s, girls were much more confident, assertive, ambitious and committed to greater gender equality. Sharpe asked the girls about their main priorities and found that they were ‘love, marriage, husbands and children’ for the 1970s girls. Had changed to ‘job, career and being able to support themselves’ with education being seen as the main route to a good job. Found that girls were increasingly more cautious about marriage. They had seen adult relationships break up around them, and had seen women coping alone in a ‘man’s world’. Girls’ aspirations were more focused on being more independent through becoming highly educated. -Francis and Skelton (2005) similarly found that the majority of pupils in both primary and secondary schools saw their future identity in terms of their careers, rather than seeing employment as simply a stopgap before marriage. Francis and Skelton also found that girls, especially in middle-class families, were under increasing pressure from parents to achieve exam success.
Increased Attainment of Females: Changes to Job Market (External Factors)
- In 1971 only 53% of working age women were in work compared to 71% in 2017
- The service industry has largely replaced traditional manual jobs, which were almost exclusively carried out by men. The economy today places high value on office-based jobs, presentational skills and interpersonal skills, which are often considered to be more typically female skills.
- Many girls now have positive role models in the form of mothers and other female adults who are full-time earners. Girls’ higher aspirations and concern for economic independence are also more realistic in view of the greater job opportunities for women
- Equality Legislation: Equality Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1974 and the Equality Act 2010
- ‘The feminisation of the labour market’ influenced females educational choices to pursue a wider range of careers. For many years until the Sixties fewer than 10 per cent of British doctors were female. Then things changed. For the past four decades about 60 per cent of students selected for training in UK medical schools have been female.By 2017, for the first time, there will be more female than male doctors in the United Kingdom.
Increased Attainment of Females: Feminism (External Factors)
- Changes in opportunities for women have come about partly because of campaigns by the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
- This led to improved legal rights for women such as the Equal Pay Act (1970) and Sex Discrimination Act (1974) and also meant that many women who would not consider themselves feminists today take for granted that they should expect equal rights with men.
- Arnot (1999) points to a growing number of female teachers in secondary schools who have disseminated feminist ideals to girls and acted as positive role models, dispelling girls’ fear of success and showing that being too clever would not make them unattractive to men.
- Liberal Feminists see this as a positive change/further change with more legislation and policies
Increased Attainment of Females: Changes to Education Organisation (Internal Factor)
-Since the 1980s there have also been deliberate attempts to boost the attainment of girls. For example schemes such as GIST (Girls into Science and Technology) and WISE (Women into Science and Engineering) have encouraged more girls to study male-dominated subjects. Most schools have adopted Equal Opportunities Policies which commit them to treat girls and boys equally.
-The introduction of GCSEs in 1988 put greater emphasis on coursework and it has been argued that this benefited girls
as they tend to be more organised and better at completing work by deadlines.
-Stanworth claimed that the biggest bias is the lack of female teachers leading them to not do well but this has changed.In 2010 statistics released by the General Teaching council showed that in a quarter of primary schools there were no male teachers while even in secondary schools female teachers now outnumber males. While many feminists argued that schools in the past were not ‘girl friendly’ it has been suggested that education is now geared much more to the needs of girls with boys lacking positive role models in the form of male teachers.
Evaluation Increased Attainment of Females
-Radical Feminists, on the other hand, are more critical. Education remains patriarchal. Sexual Harassment and despite there being more female teacher the majority of headteachers are male. Girlguiding’s Girls’ Attitudes Survey 2017 found 64% of girls aged 13-21 had experienced sexual violence or sexual harassment at school or college in the past year. This included 39% having their bra strap pulled by a boy and 27% having
their skirts pulled up within the last week.
-However, in recent years there has been a shift back to a greater emphasis on an assessment by final exams in both GCSEs and A levels and this does not seem to have greatly benefited boys.
-Gone to far and now boys underachieve
-It is difficult to measure the impact of Feminism – changes in the job market that lead to improved opportunities for women may be due to other technological and cultural changes.
-The socialisation girls does not explain why they started to overtake boys in the late 1980s if anything gender socialisation has become more gender neutral in recent years. Debate raging in media.
Boys Underachievement
Internal factors include the Feminisation of Education, shortage of male primary school teachers and Laddish Subcultures. External factors that may have an impact include poor literacy skills and decline of traditional jobs.
Boys Underachievement: Changes in the Job Market (External Factors)
- Mac a Ghaill (1994) argue that the decline of male jobs in the manufacturing industry has led to a crisis of masculinity.
- In the past working-class males found their identity and status as wage earners performing manual jobs which required physical strength.
- Such jobs have decreased in the last forty years and been replaced by more feminised jobs in the service sector.
- Traditional masculine roles are therefore under threat and many working-class boys feel uncertainty about their future roles, often perceiving qualifications as a waste of time. For some boys alternative ways of achieving masculinity have become more attractive, for example, laddish behaviour and anti-school subcultures.
- The New Right saw that society had gone ‘too far’. Masculinity became threatened; male underachievement in school is one example of the impact of a ‘feminisation’ of society.
Boys Underachievement: Literacy (External Factors)
-Findings by the DCSF (2007) found that the gender gap is mainly the result of poorer literacy and language skills.
-Parents may spend less time reading with their sons. This could then lead to boys associating reading with feminine behaviour.
-Boys leisure pursuits, such as football and computer games tend to do very little to develop communication skills. In contrast girls tend to have a “bedroom culture” centred around staying in and talking to friends.
McRobbie (1991) argues that the bedroom culture of girls, where girls can create their own subcultures and chat and read, actually contributes towards their communication skills which are now so important and valued within education. Boys, however, tend to carry out activities that are more physical and do not contribute towards their educational development. Boys’ subcultures in and outside of school tend to regard hard- working students negatively, placing significant pressure on them to maintain their image of doing the minimum amount of work possible.
-As language and listening skills are vital in most subjects, boys insufficient level in these skills leads to their poor achievement.
-The government has introduced a range of policies in an attempt to improve boys achievement. Recruitment campaigns aim to attract more males into primary school teaching.he best role models seem to be dads, sports coaches and athletes, men the boys aspire to be. If they experience these men reading and sharing their love of books
