education gender

• Official statistics show evidence of girls and boys performing differently in education

  Eg at GCSE, around 3/4 of girls scored a grade 4 and above, compared to on 2/3 of boys.
• Liberal feminists: Celebrate the progress made in improving achievement for girls. They believe that further progress is needed and will be made by developing more equal opportunity policies

  EG in tripartate system (1940s&50s) girls had a higher pass grade than boys for the 11+ exams.

  Now policies such as the national curriculum and GIST & WISE are good.

  Now girls outperform boys in education.
• Radical feminists: While they recognise girls are achieving more, they emphasise that the system remains patriachal.

  • Sexual harassment still continues at school. Demonstrated by 'everyones invited' list. SH is not treated as seriously in schools than other issues like bullying
  • Although there are more female head teachers in primary school, men are much more likely to become head teachers of secondary scools
  • Women are still unrepresented in many areas of the curriculum. For example, their contribution to history is largely ignored.
  • Hidden curriculum normalises marginalisation of women
• external factors:

  • Changes in womens employment & laws, such as the 1970 equal pay act & the 1975 sex discrimination act, encourage girls to see a future in paid work rather than as housewives. These higher career aspirations results in girls trying harder at education.

  Study conducted in both 1970 and 1990 interviewing girls about their family and career aspirations shows a major shift overtime.

  1970s: girls had low aspirations, believing educational success was unattractive and prioritised getting husbands and children.

  1990: prioritised careers and being able to support themselves
• external, changes in the family:

  Increased divorce rate saw the decrease of 1st marriages, increase of cohabitation, smaller families and increase of lone parent mothers

  The lone parent mother provides an independent breadwinner female role model. To achieve this women need well paid jobs which requires high qualifications . Gives girls motivation to succeed in education.
• external

  Impact of feminism due to waves of feminism raised womens self esteem and expectations from the traditonal housewife model
• Internal

  Introduction of coursework and oral exams (education reform act 1988) benefits girls and disadvantages boys.

  This is because girls are proven to be more organised and better at meeting deadlines, therefore they benefit largely from coursework.

  McRobbie: 'bedroom culture' girls are socialised into childhood play which requires speech, such as playing with dolls, so they benefit in schools, especially oral exams, as their language skills are better developed.

  Argue that this theory isn't relevant anymore as girls are increasingly taking part in more 'male' activities such as football.
• Internal: Equal opportunity policies

  GIST and WISE encourage girls to pursue careers in non-traditional subjects. This is done by having female scientists visit schools. These can act as role models, showing that women can achieve high positions of importance.

  Also done through the increase of female head teachers. The amount of female headteachers in primary and secondary schools have doubled since 1992.

  Policies such as the national curriculum have removed a source of gender inequality by making male and female pupils study the same subjects.
• Class

  Working class girls gain symbolic captial from their peers by performing their feminine identities. Archer identitifies this as adopting a 'hyper hetereosexual feminine identity'. created by:

  • Wearing 'sexy' makeup, branded clothing, and jewellery. Teachers see this appereance as a distraction, leading to the school othering them.
  • Getting boyfriends. This distracts girls from schoolwork and lowered their aspriations for going to university and studying 'masculine' subjects.
  • Being loud, outspoken, & assertive. eg questioning teachers authority
• The hyper sexualised feminine identity can cause underachievement: Far from the MC, de-sexualised, obediant 'ideal pupil'. Thus bringing conflict between them and teachers.
• Even though WC girls are likely to underachieve, some do go onto higher education. However, even with the grades to go onto higher education, many WC girls still choose not to. One reason for this is the fear of debt, which is especially significant with the cost of living crisis.

  Additionally, being local is a key feature of WC habitus, limiting them from choosing universities which may better suit them. This economic barrier and desire to be local to their families leads to their self exclusion from elite universities such as oxbridge.
• Male achievement: Shortage of male role models:

  There is an increasingly large number of boys being brought up in lone parent female headed families along with the majority of primary schools having a female head teacher means boys lack male role models to inspire them to achieve in education.

  A survey conducted found that 42% of young boys agree that the presence of a male teacher makes them work harder.
• external: From childhood, boys are socialised into lesiure activites which do little to develop language and communication skills (eg football). This effects boys literacy skills which can be detrimental to their performance across a wide range of subjects.
• internal: The feminisation of education

  Boys fall behind because education has become feminised. Schools dont value masculine traits such as competitiveness and leadership, but rather more 'female' traits like obedience and attentiveness.

  Because boys fall behind on coursework , some argue to replace coursework with final exams, and for the curriculum to have a greater emphasis on outdoor adventure.
• Internal

  In working class culture, masculinity is associated with being tough and doing manual work, so WC boys will often reject school work to avoid being negatively labelled as a 'swot' and 'gay' from their peers.
• The National curriculum gives students little choice over subjects by making them compulsory until the age of 16. After 16, 'gender roles' are shown in a level and vocation course choice. For example, boys are more likely to choose maths and physics, with girls opting more for social sciences and humanities.
• gender roles in subject choice:

  • Childhood socialisation: bedroom culture. Boys prefer hobby books and information texts which makes them more likely to prefer sciences, while girls prefer fiction stories leading them to subjects such as English.
  • Gendered subject images: Science teachers are more likely to be men & images in science textbooks are often males. This targets boys and deters girls. However, girls in single-sex schools are twice as likely to take physics, suggesting absence from peer pressure from the opposite sex as an explanation.
• gender roles in subject choice:

  • Students may face peer pressure when choosing subjects & avoid certain subjects in fear of obtaining a negative label from peers. For example, boys opt of from subjects like dance and music as they may be called 'gay', whereas girls may avoid sporty subjects which contradict the conventional feminine identity bc may be labelled as 'butch' and 'lesbian' - could suggest there is rather a deeper problem rooted in homophobia.
• Example of womens contribution to history being ignored:

  Feminist & female scientist Eunice Foote discovered the 'greenhouse effect' however her discovery has been credited to male scientist John Tyndall