Gender and Education external factors - girls Flashcards
What are the three main reasons for the increased educational attainment in girls?
Changing ambitions, changing families and changing employment
What is the sociologists
for changing ambitions?
Sue Sharpe: carried out a longitudinal study by conducting interviews and observing magazines, found that in the 1970’s girls’ priorities were love and marriage- yet in the 1990’s this changed to careers and independence. Sue Sharpe argued that this change in ambitions led to an increase in female achievement.
How does the Change in Families affect the attainment of girls?
There has been changes in families, from 1950-1980 the marriage rate has halfed and a rise in cohabitation occurred. More women have been living on their own.
The Divorce act of 1969 led to a rise of matrifocal single parent households.
Due to the increase of more independent women in society, the idea of having a career and being a independent woman was normalised for girls. This made education more appealing to girls, leading to girls to apply themselves in education more.
The idea that lone parent matrifocal families being seen as empowering and beneficial for women is flawed, as the woman has to take on the triple shift, this drastically effects the life chances of the women.
Due to women not being married as much, and taking on a more breadwinner role in the home
How does Changing of Employment affect the attainment of girls?
Equal pay act of 1970, sex discrimination act 1975. Both of these policies made the work place more accessible to women, and allows women to take on a more bread winning role. This makes a career seem more realistic for girls to aspire to.
To evaluate this, you can argue that the pay gap is still influential.
How does Differential socialisation contribute to the attainment gap between boys and girls?
Fiona Norman in 1988 Found that most parents think the appropriate socialisation for a girl is to handle her very gently, and to encourage her in relatively passive, 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 and advantage girls in education.
Boys also read less with their parents than girls, this contributes to boys worse literacy.
Aucejo and James (2016) conducted a study which found that verbal skills were more important than maths skills in gaining a place at university, and females have significantly better verbal skills than males.
This can be evaluated as certain fields like STEM are less accessible to girls, as due to boys playing with more mechanical toys like Lego or playing games like mine-craft they have superior spatial awareness. This advantages boys in STEM subjects.
How has feminism effected girls in education?
Feminism has campaigned for equal rights and opportunities for women in education, the workplace and wider society more generally. Feminist sociologists argue that many of the above changes have been brought about by their attempts to highlight gender inequalities in society and their efforts to encourage the government, schools and teachers to actually combat patriarchy and provide genuine equality of opportunity which has lead to raising the expectations and self-esteem of girls.
This can be evaluated, as according to the schools health education unit, self esteem of girls was on the decline between 1990-1995. And 14-15 year old girls have not had a year where their self esteem is higher than men. Boys self esteem has never declined. So despite feminists claiming feminism lead to a rise in self esteem in girls, it appears to have not.
