Gender differences: Girls Achievement

Question 1

How has feminism impacted girls’ achievement?

Answer 1

The spread and ideas of feminist ideas over time have encouraged girls to be ambitious for themselves.

> Girls growing up in society today are much less likely to desire to become a wide and mother alone. Instead, girls grow up wanting careers for themselves, they want to become economically independent and they have a greater aspiration to succeed.
This has been helped by changes in society including:
- The introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970
- Sex Discrimination Acts, from the 1970s

Changes in laws such as these reflect society’s changing values and attitudes toward women. The number of women in the workplace has steadily grown over time and the number of women in managerial roles has also grown.

Question 2

Sue Sharpe (1976)
Just like a girl

Answer 2

Sharpe interviewed girls at school in the 1970s and found that girls’ priorities were love, marriage, husband, kids, jobs, and careers, more or less in that order.

When she repeated her research in the 1990s she found out that these priorities had changed to job and career being one of the main reasons.

Sharpe believes that the spread of feminism in society can be thanked for these changes. Girls are now more ambitious to get more out of their lives. They succeed a lot more in school now as a result of this.

EVALUATION:
> Sharpe is guilty of class bias, while her research may well apply to middle-class girls in school, her work overlooks the fact that there has been relatively little progress in the achievement of working-class girls in school. They are much less likely to be ambitious and hold a determined attitude. This limits Sharpe’s research.

Question 3

How have changes in the workplace had a positive impact on girls’ achievement?

Answer 3

> 1970 equal pay act - illegal to pay women less than men for the same job.
1975 sex discrimination act
proportion of women employment has increased from 47% in 1959 to over 70% in 2007
women are beginning to break through the “glass ceiling”

Question 4

positive role models in school
INTERNAL

Answer 4

increasingly positive models for girls to follow within the school.
> female teachers have increased over the years.
> this shows girls that hard work can pay off
EVAL - despite positive trends female headteachers still fall below the number of male headteachers
EVAL - females still outnumber males in cleaning staff roles etc.

Question 5

GCES AND COURSEWORK
Mitsos and Browne (1998)
INTERNAL

Answer 5

there is evidence that girls work harder than boys
> girls spend more time on work and homework than boys
> the average 14-year-old girl can concentrate for 3 to 4 times as long as male students.
EVAL - coursework was asked to be removed due to possible cheating etc

Question 6

Challenging Stereotypes in Curriculum
INTERNAL

Answer 6

thanks to feminists, there has been a lot of effort to remove stereotypes from the curriculum
> Science textbooks tended to focus on boy’s experiences
> Pre-school books used to see women as subservient roles - snow white cleaning up for seven male dwarf

Question 7

Louise Archer (2008)
fem\le identity

Answer 7

found that underachieving girls in working-class backgrounds embraced a feminine identity that was at odds with culture, values and ethos at schools.
> Girls’ priorities focused on maximising what she calls “symbolic capital” - respect and recognition from peers.
> Education was not as important as appearance and having a desirable boyfriend in these girls’ eyes.
> exaggeration of their femininity is referred to as “hyper-sexual feminine identity”
> conflict that existed between the girls and the school was referred to as “symbolic violence”
> These girls “persistently underachieved” as they prioritised female identities
EVAL - Archer’s research shows that girls do not always achieve in the education system, contrary to the impression other research gives.