GENDER DIFFERENCES Flashcards
1
Q
Angela McRobbie (The impact of Feminism, external)
A
- Since the 1960s, the feminist movement has challenged the traditional stereotype of a woman’s role as solely that of a mother and housewife in a patriarchal nuclear family and inferior to men outside the home, in work, education and the law.
- the feminist movement has had considerable success in improving woman’s rights and opportunities through changes in the law (e.g. 1970 equal pay age).
- More broadly, feminism has raised woman’s expectations and self-esteem.
- These changes are partly reflected in media images and messages. McRobbie’s study of girls’ magazines in the 1970s found that they used to emphasise the importance of getting married and not being ‘left on the shelf’, whereas nowadays, they contain images of assertive, independent woman.
- encouraged by feminism may affect girls’ self-image and ambition with regard to family and careers, which explains improvements in their educational achievement.
2
Q
Eval (Changes in woman’s employment)
A
- Changes in woman’s employment, such as the 1970 equal pay act which, by 1975, saw the pay gap between men and woman halve from 30% to 15%, meant that girls were now encouraged to see their future in terms of paid work rather than as housewives.
- Greater career opportunities and better pay for woman, and the role models that successful career woman offer, provides an incentive for girls to gain qualifications.
3
Q
Sue Sharpe (Girls’ changing ambitions, external)
A
- Her interviews with girls in the 1970s and 1990s show a major shift in the way girls see their future.
- In 1974, the girls had low aspirations; they believed educational success was unfeminine and that appearing to be ambitious would be considered unattractive.
- They gave their priorities as ‘love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs and careers, in that order’.
- By the 1990s, girls’ ambitions had changed and they had different orders of priorities, careers and being able to supply themselves. - – Sharpe found that girls were now more likely to see their future as an independent woman with a career rather than as dependant on their husband and his income.
4
Q
Eval (Carol Fuller, postmodernism)
A
- Girls now recognise that they need a good education.
- Some girls in Fuller’s study found educational success was a central aspect of their identity, and that they now saw themselves as creators of their own future and have an individualised notion of self.
- Woman now need jobs to provide for themselves, in a postmodern society.
5
Q
Jo Boaler (Equal opportunities policies, internal)
A
- Feminist ideas have had a major impact on the education system.
- Policymakers are now much more aware of gender issues and teachers are more sensitive to the need to avoid stereotyping. The belief that boys and girls are entitled to the same opportunities is now part of mainstream thinking and it influences educational policies.
- For example, policies such as GIST (girls into science and technology) and WISE (woman into science and engineering) encourage girls to pursue careers in these non-traditional areas.
- Female scientists have visited schools, acting as role models; efforts have been made to raise science teachers’ awareness of gender issues; non-sexist careers advice has been provided and learning materials in science reflecting girls’ interests have been developed.
- Similarly, the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 removed one source of gender inequality by making girls and boys study mostly the same subjects, which was often not the case previously. Boaler sees the impact of equal opportunities policies as a key reason for the changes in girls’ achievement.
- Many of the barriers have been removed and schooling has become more meritocratic, so that girls who generally work harder than boys, achieve more.
6
Q
Eval (Joan Swann)
A
- Found that it may actually be as a result of teachers responding more positively to girls- gender differences in communication styles see boys dominating whole-class discussions, whereas girls prefer pair-work and group-work and are better at listening and cooperating.
- When working in groups, girls’ speech involves turn taking, and not the hostile interruptions that often characterises boys’ speech.
- Teachers therefore respond more positively to girls than boys, which can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy and causing better achievement for girls.
7
Q
Gaby Weiner (Challenging stereotypes in the curriculum, internal)
A
- Some sociologists argue that the removal of gender stereotypes from textbooks, reading schemes and other learning materials in recent years has removed a barrier to girls’ achievement.
- Research in the 1970s and 80s found that reading schemes portrayed woman mainly as housewives and mothers, that physics books showed them as frightened by science, and that maths books depicted boys as more inventive.
- Weiner argues that since the 1980s, teachers have challenged such stereotypes. Also, in general, sexist images have been removed from learning materials.
- This may have helped to raise girls’ achievement by presenting them with more positive images of what woman can do.
- She also described education as a ‘woman-free zone’, as their contribution to history is largely ignored.
8
Q
Eval (David Jackson)
A
- Jackson however argues that selection and league tables is what attracts good schools to girls, which improves their opportunities and boosts their achievement.
- The introduction of exam league tables has improved opportunities for girls: high-achieving girls are attractive to schools, whereas low-achieving boys are not.
- This tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, because girls are more likely to be recruited by good schools, they are more likely to be excluded.
9
Q
Tony Sewell (Feminisation of education)
A
- He claimed that boys fall behind because education has become ‘feminised’ (BBC, 2006). That is, schools do not nurture ‘masculine’ traits such as competitiveness and leadership.
- Instead, they celebrate qualities more closely associated with girls, such as methodical working and attentiveness in class.
- Sewell sees coursework as a major cause of gender differences in achievement.
- He argues that some coursework should be replaced with final exams and a greater emphasis placed on outdoor adventure in the curriculum.
10
Q
Eval (Eirene Mitsos and Ken Browne)
A
- However, since the 1980s, there’s been a significant decline in heavy industries such as iron and steel, shipbuilding, mining and engineering.
- These sectors of the economy mainly employed men.
- They claim that this decline in male employment opportunities has led to an ‘identity crisis for men’.
- Many boys now believe that they have little prospect of getting a proper job.
- This undermines their motivation and self-esteem and so they give up trying to get qualifications.
11
Q
(Extra) Browne and Ross (Gender domains)
A
- They argue that children’s beliefs about ‘gender domains’ are shaped by their early experiences and the expectations of adults.
- Gender domains are the tasks and activities that boys and girls see as male or female ‘territory’ and therefore as relevant to themselves.
- For example, mending a car is seen as falling with the male gender domain, but looking after a sick child is not.
- Children are more confident when engaging in tasks that they see as part of their own gender domain.
- For example, when they are set the same mathematical task, girls are more confident in tackling it when it is presented as being about food and nutrition, whereas boys are more confident if its about cars.
- This can help to explain why girls often choose humanities and boys choose stem, especially as a result of gendered subject images.
12
Q
Eval (Norman)
A
- This is actually a result of gender role socialisation.
- From an early age, boys and girls are dressed differently, given different toys and encouraged to take part in different activities.
- This pushes pupils into gender domains.
13
Q
(Extra) Jessica Ringrose (Female peer groups: policing identity)
A
- Female peers often police this ‘glamourous’/ ‘sexy’ appearance within their peers, and those girls who don’t conform risk making themselves unpopular and being called a ‘tramp’ if they fail to conform.
- Ringrose’s small-scale study of 13–14-year-old working-class girls’ peer groups in a South Wales school found that being popular was crucial to the girls’ identity.
- As the girls made a transition from a girls’ friendship culture into a heterosexual dating culture, they faced tensions between an idealised feminine identity (of showing loyalty to the female peer group, being non-competitive and getting along with everyone in the friendship culture), and a sexualised identity (that involved competing for boys in the dating culture).
- Girls are often forced to perform a balancing act
- between two identities: girls who are too competitive and/or think themselves better than their peers risk ‘slut shaming’ and being excluded from friendship culture,
- girls who don’t compete for boyfriends may face ‘frigid shaming’ by other’s identities.
- Shaming is thus a social control device by which schoolgirls police, regulate and discipline each other’s identities.
14
Q
Eval ( Haywood Nd Ghaill)
A
- Enforcing gender stereotypes is not a cause of peer policing, but also teachers and disciplining.
- They found that male teachers told boys off for ‘behaving like girls’ and teased them when they gained lower marks in tests than girls.
- Teachers tended to ignore boys’ verbal abuse of girls and even blamed girls for attracting it, which served to reinforce gender differences.
