Gender – Gender and Subject Choice

REASONS FOR GENDER DIFFERENCE IN SUBJECT CHOICE:

• Gender role socialisation: Teachers encourage boys to be tough and show initiative and not to be weak and behave like ‘sissies’. Girls are expected to be quiet, helpful, clean and tidy.

• Gender domains: Boys and girls pay attention to different details even when tackling the same task. Girls focus more on how people feel, whereas boys focus on how things are made and work. This helps to explain why girls choose humanities and arts subjects, while boys choose science.

• Gendered subject images: Science is a boys’ subject – the teachers are more likely to be men, examples given by teachers and textbooks draw on male interests, boys monopolise the equipment in the lab acting as if it’s theirs.

• Single-sex schooling: Girls in all girls’ schools are more likely to take maths and science, and boys in all boys’ schools are more likely to take English and languages.

• Gendered career opportunities: Over half of women’s employment falls within only four categories: clerical, secretarial, personnel services and occupations such as cleaning. Sex-typing of occupations affects boys’ and girls’ ideas about what kind of jobs are possible or accessible.

GENDER ROLE SOCIALISATION:

• Early socialisation shapes gender identity.

• Norman – from an early age boys and girls are dressed differently and encouraged to take part in different activities.

• Due to this boys and girls develop different tastes in reading.

• Elwood – boys read hobby books and informations texts while girls read stories about people.

• Helps explain why boys prefer science subjects and girls prefer subjects like English.

GENDER DOMAINS:

• Browne and Ross – children’s ideas about gender domains are shaped by early experiences and the expectations of adults.

• Gender domains = tasks or activities that are seen as male or female ‘territory’, e.g mending a car is male, looking after a sick child isn’t.

• Children are more confident in engaging in tasks from their gender domain.

• When set the same mathematical task, girls are more confident if it’s presented as food and nutrition, and boys if it’s bout cars.

SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLING:

• Pupils who attend these schools tend to hold less stereotyped gender images and make less traditional subject choices.

• Leonard – girls from single-sex schools were more likely to study male-dominated subjects at university.

• Institute of Physics study found that girls in single-sex state schools were 2.4 times more likely to take A-Level physics.

• Same study found that there were influences outside the classroom too, e.g a lack of female physicists on the TV.

EVALUATION – FEMINISM:

• Teachers are busy controlling boys so can’t devote time to girls.

• Failure to celebrate girls’ achievement is merely part of a backlash against female success.

• Oster believes one priority should be reducing exclusions among boys and certain ethnic minorities. She believes that it’s masking a serious problem of underachievement and exclusion in boys, which is increasing at a faster rate than in girls.

• There’s a very open problem amongst boys – self-exclusion, withdrawal from learning and truancy.

UNREALISTIC ATTITUDES:

• Boys are overconfident, whereas girls are more realistic and self-doubting.

• 1970s and 80s: boys considered themselves more able than girls, this is no longer the case.

• Boys tend to have aspirations like ‘professional footballer’ whereas girls have ones like ‘doctor’.

  • Boys therefore blinded to what is really needed for educational success.

  • When they fail they believe it’s bad luck rather than effort.

SOCIAL CONTROL DIFFERENCES:

• Primary schools are female dominated environments with an emphasis on neatness and tidiness.

• Teachers aren’t as critical of boys as they are of girls, and may have lower expectations of them.

  • Boys aren’t positively influenced by the school environment.

  • Late, rushed and untidy work is often accepted from boys as is disruptive behaviour.

EXPLANATIONS FOR THE PROBLEMS OF BOYS:

• ‘Poor boys’:

  • Epstein – schools should understand boys’ masculinity, especially during primary school.

  • Resources should be directed from girls to boys.

  • Recent research by Carrington et al suggests that the gender of the teacher has little or no impact on boys’ or girls’ learning.

• ‘Boys will be boys’:

  • Boys may be naturally clever but also tend to be lazy, difficult to motivate, slap-dash, noisy, competitive and demanding.

  • Need to be set clear targets and disciplined strongly whilst respecting their masculinity.

• ‘Problem boys’:

  • Boys are to blame for their own underachievement.

  • Get involved in behaviour that’s troublesome to themselves in society.

  • Solution lies within strong discipline and more social control.

• ‘Boys at risk’:

  • Boys are vulnerable, confused, insecure and with low self-esteem.

  • May appear tough on the outside and seek to boost their self-image.

  • Schools need to be sensitive to this and provide opportunities for them to build their sense of worth.