Gender

• Gender differences - official statistics

  
  

  • At key stages 1-3, girls do significantly better than boys
  • At GCSE, 3/4 of girls got above a pass compared to only 2/3 of boys
  • Girls have a 3.2% higher chance of getting grade A* - B at Alevel, even in 'male' subjects like science and maths
• Girl's achievement - impact of feminism

  
  

  • Has raised women's expectations and self-esteem
  • McRobbie - girls' magazines in the 1970s pushed marriage and not being 'left on the shelf', now they contain images of assertive, independent women
• Girl's achievement - changes in the family

  
  

  • Increase in divorces
  • Increase in cohabitation
  • Increase in lone parents
  • Smaller family sizes
  • leads to new role model for girls as it pushes idea of them being the breadwinner
• Girl's achievement - changes in women's employment

  
  

  • 1970 Equal Pay Act
  • Proportion of women in employment has risen from 53% in 1971, to 72% in 2020
  • Gives girls incentive to seek out higher paid jobs through educational success
• Girl's achievement - girl's changing ambitions (Sharpe)


  
  

  • Interview with 1974 girls showed low aspirations and that ambition was unattractive
  • Interview with 1990 girls wanted a life as an independent woman focused on their career
  • O'Connor - study of 14-17 year olds showed that marriage and children weren't part of their life plans
• Girl's achievement- equal opportunities policies

  
  

  • GIST (Girls into science and technology)
  • WISE (Women into science and engineering)
  • National Curriculum made both genders study almost all the same subjects in 1981
  • Boaler - girls work harder as the removal of barriers has led to a meritocracy
• Girl's achievement - female role models

  
  

  • Increase in female teachers and heads
  • Shows girls that women can achieve positions of importance and gives them non-traditional goals to aim for
  • Highlights the rewards of staying focused on education for a long time
• Girl's achievement - GCSEs and coursework

  
  

  • Gorard - differences were fairly consistent until the introduction of GCSEs in 1989
  • Mistos and Browne - girls achieve higher in coursework as they spend more time on it, take more care in the presentation, meet deadlines and bring the right equipment in
  • Counter - Elwood says it can't be the only influence as exams have a bigger impact on grades than coursework
• Girl's achievement- teacher attention

  
  

  • French and French - boys attract more attention because they attracted more reprimands
  • Francis - boys feel more picked on and targeted
  • Swann - boys dominate whole class discussions, whereas girls prefer pair work. Girls are better at listening and turn talking, compared to the loud and interruptive speech of boys
  • leads to teachers responding more positively to girls as they seem more cooperative
• Girl's achievement- stereotypical curriculum

  
  

  • Research in the 70s and 80s found that reading schemes portrayed women as housewives, and physics books showed them as frightened by science
  • Weiner - sexist images have since been removed, raising girl's achievement with positive goals
• Girl's achievement - league tables

  
  

  • Jackson - high achieving girls are attractive to schools, whereas low achieving boys are not, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy
  • Slee - boys are less attractive to schools because they suffer from more behavioural difficulties and are 4x more likely to be excluded, making them liabilities
• Girl's achievement - liberal feminist view


  
  

  • Celebrate the progress made so far
  • Believe further progress will be made
  • Done by developing opportunities policies, encouraging role models and overcoming stereotypes
• Girl's achievement - radical feminist view

  
  

  • Recognises progress made but still criticises patriarchal system
  • Sexual harassment in school continuing
  • Subject choices still limiting
  • Males more likely to become heads of secondary schools
  • Weiner - describes secondary school history curriculum as a 'woman free zone'
• Girl's achievement - symbolic capital (Archer)


  
  

  • By performing their working class feminine identities, girls gained symbolic capital from peers
  • However, this conflicted with their progress in school as it prevented them from acquiring better grades or getting middle class job
• Girl's achievement - hyper-heterosexual feminine identities (Archer)


  
  

  • Girls put time and money into being 'desirable' to gain status from girl peer groups and to avoid being labelled a 'tramp'
  • Effects education as they are punished for wrong uniform with jewellery and makeup
  • Bourdieu - links to his idea of symbolic violence, by defining a culture as worthless and denying them symbolic capital
• Girl's achievement - boyfriends (Archer)


  
  

  • Gets in the way of schoolwork and lowers aspirations
  • Results in loosing interest in university, not taking 'masculine' subjects like science, or gaining a professional career
  • Fuels ideas of settling down, having children and working low paid jobs like child care
  • One girl dropped out after getting pregnant
• Girl's achievement - being 'loud' (Archer)


  
  

  • WC girls adopt an outspoken, independent and assertive voice
  • Fails to conform to the schools ideal female pupil of being passive and submissive
  • Damages education as it brings further conflict with teachers
• Girl's achievement - successful WC girls

  
  

  • Evans - studied 21 WC girls and found they wanted to go to uni to increase their earning power for their families
  • Skeggs - caring is part of their identity, leading to want to succeed, yet it also limits them as they want to stay at home
  • Archer - preference for the local is a key feature of WC habitus
• Boy's achievement - globalisation

  
  

  • significant decline in heavy industries such as iron and steel, shipbuilding, mining and engineering
  • Mitsos and Browne - 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 job, this undermines their motivation and self-esteem and so they give up trying to get qualification
• Boy's achievement - feminisation of education (Sewell) 


  
  

  • Schools do not nurture 'masculine' traits such as competitiveness and leadership
  • Schools now celebrate qualities more closely associated with girls, such as methodical working and attentiveness
  • Argues coursework should be replaced with final exams and a greater emphasis on outdoor adventure
• Boy's achievement - male teachers

  
  

  • Yougov - 39% of 8-11 year old boys have no lessons whatsoever with male teachers
  • Male teachers may be more able to impose strict discipline on boy's behaviour
  • Also means boys have no role model in school and can't see themselves following an academic career
• Boy's achievement - are male teachers needed?

  
  

  • Francis - 2/3 of 7-8 year olds believe the gender of teachers is irrelevant
  • Read - studied teacher's language:
  • Disciplinarian discourse - teacher's authority made explicit and visible
  • Liberal discourse - teacher's authority is implicit and invisible
  • Female teachers were more likely to use disciplinarian discourse
  • Jones - male teachers have a 1/4 chance of gaining a headship, whereas females have a 1/13 chance
• Boy's achievement - laddish subcultures

  
  

  • Epstein - WC boys are likely to be harassed, labelled as sissies and be subject to homophobia if they conform to school values
  • Francis - boys are more concerned than girls about being labelled by peers because it threatens their masculinity
  • Spreading due to girls moving into traditionally masculine areas and boys respond by increasing their masculine appearance to not seem feminine
• Boy's achievement - moral panic

  
  

  • Ringrose - there's a fear that underachieving WC boys will grow up to become a dangerous, unemployable underclass that threatens social stability
  • Has led to a narrowing down on opportunities policies to help 'failing' boys, ignoring ethnic and WC groups, as well as problems girls face like sexual assault
  • Osler - the neglect of girl's underachievement is due to boys being louder in their conflict with school values
• Boy's achievement - with class and ethnicity

  
  

  • McVeigh - the class gap in achievement at GCSE is 3x larger than the gender gap
  • Conolly - certain combinations of gender, class and ethnicity have more effect than others, like being female raises performance for black Caribbeans than for whites
• Gender and subject choice - socialisation

  
  

  • Norman - boys and girls are dressed differently, given different toys and encouraged to take part in different activities
  • Byrne - teachers encourage boys to be tough and show initiative, whereas girls are taught to be quiet
  • Murphy and Elwood - boys read hobby books and information texts, while girls read stories about people, leads to differences in science and english
• Gender and subject choice - gender domains

  
  

  • Ross - kids beliefs on it are shaped by early experiences, mending a car seen as falling within the male domain, but looking after a sick child is not
  • Murphy - boys and girls pay attention to different details even when tracking the same task, girls focus on how people feel and boys focus on how things work
• Gender and subject choice - gendered subject images

  
  

  • Kelly - science is seen as a boy subject:
  • Science teachers likely to be male
  • textbook examples draw on male interests
  • Boys monopolise lab apparatus
  • Colley - ICT is seen as a boy subject:
  • Involves working machines (male domain)
  • Tasks are formal and individual, no group work
• Gender and subject choice - single sex schools

  
  

  • Leonard - interviews 13,000 individuals from same sex schools
  • girls in all girls schools were more likely to take maths and science A levels and boys in boys schools were more likely to pick English
• Gender and subject choice - peer pressure

  
  

  • Paechter - girls who are 'sporty' have to cope with an image that contradicts the conventual female stereotype
  • Dewar - boys called sporty girls 'lesbian'
• Gender and subject choice - career opportunities

  
  

  • Over 1/2 of all women's employment falls within:
  • Clerical
  • Secretarial
  • Personal services
  • Cleaning
  • Boys get the message that nursing roles are female, and will be less likely to opt for a course in childcare
• Gender identities - double standards

  
  

  • Lees - boys boast about their own sexual exploits, but call girls slags if she has a certain appearance or doesn't have a steady boyfriend
  • Sexual conquest is rewarded with status and ignored by male teachers, but female promiscuity attracts negative labels
  • Feminists - can be seen as a form of patriarchal social control as it reinforces gender inequality with subordination
• Gender identities - verbal abuse

  
  

  • Connell - boys use name calling to put girls down if they behave or dress in certain ways
  • Lees - boys call girls slags if they aren't sexually available and drags if they are
  • Paechter - maintains male power as 'gay' and 'queer' are are used to police a lack of masculine character
  • Parker - boys labelled as gay for simply being friends with girls or female teachers
• Gender identities - male gaze

  
  

  • The way male pupils and teachers look girls up and down, seeing them as sexual objects and making judgement on their appearance
  • Mac an Ghaill - its one of the ways boys prove their masculinity to peers, boys who do not display their heterosexuality in this manner are labelled as gay
• Gender identities - male peer groups

  
  

  • Mac an Ghaill - WC macho lads are dismissive of other WC boys who work hard and aspire to MC careers
  • MC 'real Englishmen' project an image of effortless achievement
  • Redman - shows a shift in definition throughout classes
• Gender identities - female peer groups

  
  

  • Ringrose - studied 13-14 year old girls and found that being popular was crucial to their identity. They struggled with having either an idealised feminine identity (staying loyal to other girls) or a sexualised identity (chasing boys)
  • Currie et al - girls are mocked either way, called sluts for chasing and frigid for not
  • Reay - girls have to present an asexual identity to achieve, meaning not being interested in anyone
• Gender identities - teachers

  
  

  • Haywood and Mac an Ghaill - male teachers tell boys off for behaving like girls and tease them when they get lower marks than girls
  • Askew and Ross - male teachers subtly reinforce gender identities, for example by coming into female teachers classes and saving them by threatening the disruptive students