Gender: External Factors

Question 1

What are the external factors? (5)

Answer 1

1. The impact of Feminism.
2. Changes in the Family.
3. Changes in women’s employment.
4. Girls changing Ambitions.
5. Social change and patterns of achievement, and social change and the effects on girls.

Question 2

1. The impact of Feminism. What is feminism?

Answer 2

A social movement that strives for equal rights for women in all areas of life.

Question 3

Since the1960s, how has the feminist movement challenged gender stereotypes?

Answer 3

It has challenged the traditional role and stereotype of women (a housewife and a mother) in a patriarchal nuclear family and inferior to men outside the home, work, education and the law.

Question 4

From the 1970s, what have feminists being trying to improve?

Answer 4

They attempted to improve women’s position in society by lobbying the government for legislative changes in order to bring more equality for women in all areas of life, and raise awareness of gender inequality.

Question 5

How did they try to do this in education?

Answer 5

• Education system more aware = more ‘girl-friendly’ education.
• Gender awareness reflected in teacher practices → avoidance of sexist gender-stereotyping, educational resources minimised sex bias and promoted more images of girls and women.

Question 6

What do feminists argue about their progress?

Answer 6

• Feminists argue that we have not yet achieved full equality between the sexes.
• However, the feminist movement has had considerable success in improving women’s rights and opportunities through changes in the law.
• Feminism has raised women’s expectations and self esteem.
• Changes encouraged by feminism may affect girls’ self image and ambitions with regard to family and careers.
• This may explain the improvements in their educational achievement → reforms in the education system and the raising or aspirations and expectations.

Question 7

Angela McRobbie (1994) studied girls’ magazines. What did she find?

Answer 7

• 1970s - they emphasised the importance of marriage and not being ‘left on the shelf’.
• However, nowadays, they contain images of assertive, independent women.

Question 8

2. Changes in the Family. What changes have occured in the family since the 1970s?

Answer 8

• Increase in divorce rate.
• Increase in cohabitation and decrease in no. of first marriages.
• Increase in no. of lone-parent families.
• Smaller families.

Question 9

What is example of these changes affecting girls’ attitudes towards education?

Answer 9

• Increased numbers of female-headed lone-parent families may mean more women need to take on a breadwinner role.
• This creates a new adult role model for girls - the financially independent women.

Question 10

How can girls achieve independence and what does increases in divorce rates suggest to them?

Answer 10

• To achieve this independence, women need well-paid jobs and good qualifications.
• Increases in divorce rates suggest to girls that it is unwise to rely on a husband to be their provider.
• Therefore, this encourages girls to look to themselves and their own qualifications to make a living.

Question 11

3. Changes in women’s employment. What are the important changes that have occured in women’s employment in the recent decades? (4)
   (Hint:
   - Equal value of work - 1970 and 1973 acts.
   - Pay gap.
   - Growth of opportunities.
   - Gaining more professional and managerial jobs.)

Answer 11

• 1970 Equal Pay Act → makes it illegal to pay women less than men for work of equal value, and the 1973 Discrimination Act outlaws discrimination at work.
• Since 1975, the pay gap between men and women halved from 30% to 15%.
  The proportion of women in employment has risen from 53% in 1971 to 67% in 2013. - The growth of the service sector and flexible part-time work has offered opportunities for women.
• Some women are now breaking through the ‘glass ceiling’ - the invisible barrier that keeps them out of high-level professional and managerial jobs.

Question 12

How have these changes impacted girls?

Answer 12

• These changes have encouraged girls to see their future in terms of paid work rather than housewives.
• Greater career opportunities and better pay for women, and the role models that successful career women offer, provide an incentive for girls to gain qualifications.

Question 13

4. Girls’ Changing Ambitions. How are changes in the family and employment affecting girls?

Answer 13

They are producing changes in girls’ ambitions.

Question 14

Sue Sharpe (1994) interviewed girls in the 1970s and 1990s. What did these interviews demonstrate?

Answer 14

• Show a major shift in the way girls see their future.
• In 1974, girls had low aspirations → they believed educational success was unfeminine and that appearing to be ambitious would be considered unattractive.
• Priorities for them were ‘love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs and careers, more or less in that order’.
• By the 1990s, girls’ ambitions had changed and they had a different order of priorities - careers and being able to support themselves.
• Sharpe found that girls were now more likely to see their future as an independent woman with a career, rather than as dependent on their husband and his income.

Question 15

What other study found that marriage and children weren’t a major part of girls’ life plans?

Answer 15

O’Connor’s (2006) study of 14-17 year olds.

Question 16

How did Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2001) link to individualisation in modern society?

Answer 16

• They link to the trend towards individualism in modern society, where independence is valued more than in the past.
• A career has become part of a woman’s life project because it promises recognition and economic self-sufficiency.

Question 17

What did Carol Fuller’s (2011) study show about girls’ ambition towards education?

Answer 17

• To achieve independence and self-sufficiency, many girls now recognise they need a good education.
• For some girls, educational success was a central aspect of their identity. They saw themselves as creators of their own future and had an individualised notion of self.
• They believed in meritocracy (equal opportunity for every individual to achieve) and aimed for a professional career that would enable them to support themselves. These aspirations require educational qualifications, whereas those of the 1970s girls didn’t.

Question 18

5. Social Change and patterns of achievement, and social change and the effects on girls. What is an introduction for this?

Answer 18

Many factors have been suggested as possible causes of changes in the relationship between gender and achievement. Many of these are linked to broad social, economic or cultural changes in the UK.

Question 19

How have some feminist sociologists, such as Helen Wilkinson, relate girls’ success?

Answer 19

In the past 30 years to post-industrialisation, which has transformed young women’s attitudes and depressed males’ expectations.

Question 20

What has occured in the last 30 years?

Answer 20

Feminisation of the economy and the workforce.
- Jobs for women in the service sector of the economy (financial services, retail, mass media, health, welfare and education) have expanded.
- As a result, girls may believe that the future offers them more choices.
- They’re provided with the incentive to seek economic independence, and careers are now a real possibility.

Question 21

What does Wilkinson argue about female aspirations undergoing a radical transformation in the 20th century’s last 2 decades? (‘genderquake’)

Answer 21

• She suggests young women experienced a ‘genderquake’ in terms of profound changes in their attitudes and expectations about their futures, compared with their mothers and grandmothers.
• Their aspirations are no longer restricted to family life.
• Most teenage girls are committed to education and qualifications, and aspire to careers and economic independence.

Question 22

How does Sue Sharpe’s surveys of young working-class females in London support Wilkinson?

Answer 22

• Her study of w.c. girls in London (Just like a girl, 1976) found most girls held traditional ideas about womanhood and prioritised ‘love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs and careers, more or less in that order’.
• The research was repeated in 1994 and she found the priorities had changed to job, career and being able to support themselves’ above all other priorities.
• Also shown in studies of primary and secondary school girls.

Question 23

What does Francis and Skelton (2005) state and what they find?

Answer 23

“The majority (of primary and secondary school female pupils) appear to see their chosen career as reflecting their identity and as a vehicle for future fulfilment, rather than as simply a stopgap before marriage”.
- The growth in employment opportunities and the rise in young women’s occupational ambitions have increased their incentives to gain educational qualifications.
- Studies of both primary and secondary school pupils show that many girls are now looking towards jobs that require degree-level qualifications (Francis and Skelton 2005).

Question 24

What did Wilkinson and Sharpe note about feminist ideas within the media, the education system and the family?

Answer 24

• Noted that feminist ideas were filtering down through the media and the education system and ultimately into family life, so that these movements (although not always recognised and supported by young women in the early 21st century) were partly responsible for increased opportunities for females in education and work.
• The work of female sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s led to a significantly greater emphasis on equal opportunities in schools than there had been before.

Question 25

Changes in employment and girls’ and women’s attitude have been accompanied by changes in the family. What are some examples of this?

Answer 25

• Long-term increases in divorce.
• Increased age at first marriage.
• Increased age of women at birth of their first child.
• The growth of lone parenthood.
• More individuals living alone.

Question 26

What does Ulrich Beck (1992) state about these changes?

Answer 26

• Beck sees these changes as part of the growth of risk and uncertainty, which leads to greater insecurity of males and females alike.
• Both relationships and jobs are insecure and cannot be relied on to last in the long-term.
• According to Beck, this creates a more individualised society → both men and women have to be self-reliant and financially independent.
• This increases the incentives for girls to achieve educational qualifications so they don’t risk reliance upon a husband and are well qualified to cope with the uncertainties of the labour market.