Gender In Education And The Workplace Flashcards
What is one way education may create and reinforce gender identities?
Through boys and girls being labelled differently by teachers and forming appropriate subcultures
What did Mitsos and Browne suggest?
Teachers tend to be less strict with boys giving them more leeway and allowing them to underachieve by failing to push to their potential
What are teachers more likely to label boys as?
Disruptive
What are culture are boys most likely to have?
Culture of masculinity
What does the culture of masculinity not value?
Educational achievement
What did Willis research?
- Lads end up in manual labour jobs
- formed anti-school subculture based on ‘having a laff’
- subculture matched that of men working in the factories on the shop floor
What is ethnographic research?
- immersive, getting involved with the group being researched to fully understand and maintain empathy
What is ethnographic research high in?
Validity
What type of approach is an ethnographic research?
Interpretivist approach
What are some criticisms about Willis research?
- time consuming
- difficult to repeat research
What is another way education may create and reinforce gender identities?
Through the hidden curriculum
What is the hidden curriculum?
- Things that are taught and learnt in school that aren’t part of the national curriculum
- eg. Punctuality, hard work, stereotypes
What is the national curriculum?
- core subjects and topics that all students in state controlled schools must follow
- eg. English, maths, ICT
What does Skelton argue?
Hidden curriculum is responsible for perpetuating gender differences in subject choices
What do feminists argue?
Hidden curriculum is patriarchal
How is the curriculum and the organisation of school dominated by men?
- learning about history of men and male achievements
- focus on literature by men
- boys dominate in classroom and receive more focus from teachers
- girls encouraged to take subjects that don’t lead them to highly paid jobs
What does Kelly suggest?
- there are 2 reasons why science is seen as a masculine subject
- packaged as boys subject with textbooks containing pictures of boys and d examples that would interest boys
- boys dominate classrooms by shouting out answers and grabbing equipment first
- invisible women
What does Colley argue?
- school subject choices are affected by 3 things
- perception of gender roles, subject preferences, learning environment
How does perception of gender roles affect subject choices?
Depends on the extent to which they have been socialised into typically masculine or feminine identity
How does subject preferences affect subject choices?
- Based on the type of tasks and activities required in the subject
- eg. Girls put off ICT due to dominance of independent work but attracted to sociology due to more opportunities of discussion
How does learning environment affect subject choices?
Influenced by whether or not the school is single sex or mixed
What is one way the workplace may create and reinforce gender identities?
Through the workplace being the dominant source of identity for masculine identity
What did Willis find?
- for both boys and their father, their jobs were a key source of identity
- defined themselves as manual workers
- adapted to laddish culture in work and school
What did Mac an Ghail find?
- working class men face a crisis of masculinity
- lost their traditional jobs and are unprepared for other jobs
- Workplace becomes feminised
What is horizontal segregation?
- Where workforce of a specific industry or sector is mostly made up of one particular gender
- eg. Men make up majority of construction industry
What is vertical segregation?
- opportunities of career progression for a particular gender within a company or sector are limited
- eg. Gender pay gap
What did Adkin’s look at?
Employers at theme parks
What did Adkin’s find?
- male and female staff were given different roles
- attractive female staff were made to work in bars whereas males given jobs as fairground ride operators
