Differences in Educational Achievement By Gender
Differences in Educational Achievement By Gender
Gender: External Factors
Boys and girls may face difficulty in schools because they all have different expectations (eg. boys are expected to be naughty and rebellious, girls expect to be academic)
Gender subjects:
English (girls)
Science (boys)
Health and Social care (girls)
Childcare (girls)
PE + Sport Studies (boys)
Engineering (boys)
Single-sex schools may expect all single-sex students to achieve in a specific way. Boy schools may limit option subjects, more ‘boy’ subjects than ‘girl’ subjects and vice versa for girl schools. Values and ethos of school may be fit for stereotypical boys or girls.
Patterns of gender in education:
Data for gender and achievement is much easier to collect.
Girls outperform boys in all national curriculum tests (SATs etc.) including English and Science.
Girls outperform boys in GCSEs.
English = girls:boys A* - C is 70:54%
Overall 5 or more A* - C, including English and Maths = girls:boys is 66:56%
EBacc = girls more likely to be entered than boys.
Girls are more likely to stay on Post 16.
Girls are more likely to accumulate more UCAS points than boys for higher education.
More women than men apply for and get accepted for full time university degrees.
Girls are more likely to get a top 1st class or upper 2nd class.
On starting school:
Girls do better in all baseline tests.
Girls better at concentrating
More boys with SEN (two and a half times)
Key Stage 1-3:
Girls do much better in Maths, Science, and English
English gender gaps widens with age.
At GCSE:
Gender gap about 10 percentage points.
At AS and A-Level:
Girls more likely to pass and get A-B grades (46.8% vs. 42.2%)
Gap is narrower than at GCSE.
On vocational courses (BTEC):
More girls gain distinctions in every subject
This is even true in ‘male’ subjects.
External Factors:
Four factors that are specific to gender and achievement:
Impact of Feminism
Changes in the Family
Changes in Women’s Employment
Girls’ changing ambitions.
Impact of Feminism:
The feminist movement has improved the rights of women as well as rasing women’s expectations, self-esteem and motivation. Women are no longer strictly bound to the mother/housewife role.
Although feminists would argue that true equality with males has not been fully achieved, many would agree that the position of women has greatly improved (particulatly since the 1960s) and continues to do so.
McRobbie (1994): Magazines such as Jackie in the 1970s, emphasised the importance of getting married, whereas nowadays priorities have changed and women are faced with more positive role models in the media.
Changes in the Family:
Increase in divorce rate.
Increase in cohabitation.
Increase in lone-parent families (usually female headed).
Decline in marriage rates.
Decreasing family size.
Decline in birth rate.
Changes affect girls’ attitudes to education. Women may need to support their families.
Women are not willing to be supported by a man.
Changes in Women’s Employment:
The 1970 Equal Pay Act: Makes it illegal to pay one sex more than another for work of equal value - pay gap halved.
The 1975 Sex Discrimination Act: Prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. The number of women in employment went up from 53% in 1971 to 67% in 2013.
Some women are breaking through the ‘glass ceiling’.
Francis (2001) interviewed girls about their career aspirations and concluded that, due to increased employment opportunities, females have become extremely ambitious and aim for ‘high professions’ such as doctors and solicitors.
Girls’ changing ambitions
Girls’ ambitions are becoming more career-oriented.
Sharpe (1994): Study shows changes to girls’ aspirations from 1970s to 1990s.
O’Conner (2006): Marriage and children not major life plans.
Beck and Beck-Gernstein (2001): Individualism means value is placed on achievement and self-sufficiency.
Fuller (2011): Education central to identity.
Sue Sharpe’s Just like a Girl Study:
Sharpe studied girls’ ambitions in school and education and their plans in the future in her longitudinal study (1970 - 1990)
She found out that in the 70s girls were more inclined to not go to higher education and get a successful career, but rather find love, get married and have a family.
This significantly changed in the 90s where girls had more ambition to concentrate in school and seek higher education to get a successful career, though family and domestic labour was still a priority (especially in working-class girls).
Summary:
70s priority:
Love, Marriage, Children.
90s priority:
Gender quake: career and education.
A Crisis in Masculinity:
As for out-of-school for why boys might be underperforming:
The nature of the economy has led to what some call a crisis of masculinity.
The absence of traditional male employment has led to lack of certainty about what, particularly working-class boys might do in the future.
Gender: Internal Factors
Internal Factors:
The Feminisation of Education
Sewell (2006)
There are a greater number of female teachers in the profession.
More children are taught in a co-educational school rather than single-gender schools - meaning boys are taught by women for a longer period of time in their educational career.
It has been suggested that certain aspects of education, such as reading, are considered to be feminine as a result of mothers and female teachers predominantly taking on the responsibility, teaching children to read.
Also suggested that educational achievement has been increasingly measured against skills where girls excel more than boys - this point was made particularly about the high levels of coursework in GCSE, and later for A-Level.
Mitsos and Browne (1998)
Suggested that girls had better organisation skills and were more perfectionists, therefore, coursework suited them rather than boys, for whom exams were better suited.
It should be noted, however, that coursework has reduced at GCSE and A-Level.
Despite this, girls are still excelling.
Possibly due to more organised
Curriculum Changes
GIST, WISE, and the National Curriculum
There have also been a number of initiatives to support girls’ education.
GIST (Girls in Science and Technology) was a project in the early 1980s to try and address gender differences in subject choices, effectively trying to get more girls into the hard sciences (biology, etc.)
This was followed by the WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) campaign which still exists today.
These sorts of initiatives have encouraged more girls to study science and this in turn has led to more female pupils succeeding.
The arrival of the national curriculum means that all pupils must study the sciences so the gender divisions within the gendered subjects happens much less and later on in education today.
This in turn led to more girls aspiring to perform well in such subjects and go on to university or high-income occupations.
Crisis of Masculinity
Charles Murray
A loss of traditional working-class occupations results in boys lacking realistic aspirations and unsure of what to do after school.
Government welfare policies give boys the option of leaving school without qualification and having no aspirations beyond employment.
This can explain why boys do not achieve as high as girls.
However,
Logically boys would be more determined to get qualification as there is no longer a supply of jobs that don’t require them.
It can also be argued that welfare policies give girls the option of getting pregnant and being dependent on the state - this does not relate to educational achievement.
Linking Social Class and Gender - Intersectionality
In the past, girls may have been labelled negatively, however, in current society girls are often labelled as the ideal pupil whilst boys are labelled as more likely to cause trouble.
Whilst this can lead to misbehaving being seen as ‘double deviant’ - it helps create the situation where girls are positively labelled and respond with attention and hard work, although this can encourage boys to mess around.
Swann and Graddol
The majority of interactions between girls and teachers are educational.
Many of the interactions between teachers and boys are more likely concerned with discipline or crowd control.
It is also more likely that boys will form or join anti-school subcultures.
Willis
Studied a group of working-class boys with a negative and disruptive behaviour towards education.
Found that the boys preferred to gain praise from within the group for their misbehaviour rather than praise from the teacher for completing work.
A large amount of racism, sexism, and homophobia was found in the group.
It is argued that teachers may turn a blind eye to some ‘laddish’ behaviour as they believe it would be too hard to deal with, however, by doing this the education of the boys suffer.
Evaluation (AO3):
While GCSE and A-Level had a lot of coursework when they were first introduced, this has not been the case for some years now. There is now minimal coursework set in either qualification yet girls are still beating boys.
It would appear that girls are better at exams as well. This is potentially due to stereotypical female skills of organisation and attention to detail which can be useful in the preparation for exams as well as coursework.
Elwood (2005) found that even when there was more coursework in the qualification, exam performance was the primary indicator of final grades.
While there are concerns over boys’ education it is worth remembering that their achievement has been improving as well although not rapidly as girls. This may indicate that in-school factors that focus on why boys underachieve are misdirected.
Class and Gender
Hyper-heterosexual feminine identities:
Girls aim to be ‘desirable’ and ‘glamorous’.
Similar to the idea of ‘nike identities’.
Gain status from peers.
Conflict with schools.
Too much jewellery.
Wrong clothing.
Makeup.
Creates symbolic violence* - their culture is seen as worthless.
* Links to Bourdieu’s cultural capital
Girls are more likely to be excluded because of symbolic violence.
Boyfriends and being loud
Having a boyfriend earns symbolic capital:
Lower aspirations.
Lower interest in university.
Lower interest in ‘masculine’ subjects.
Desire to ‘settle down’
Being loud meant not conforming to stereotypes:
Conflict with teachers.
Further from ‘ideal pupil’ (Becker)
Wants to fit in but habitus doesn’t correlate.
AO3 - Assumes heteronormativity (ideology - everything is geared to heterosexuality)
‘Successful’ working-class girls
Some working-class girls do achieve and go to university:
Evans (2009):
Interviewed working-class girls in south London comprehensive. Girls wanted to go to university to earn more money to help their families.
Skeggs (1997):
Working-class girls’ identity focuses on ‘caring’.
Live at home - because of cost.
Archer (2010):
Working-class habitus - key feature is preference for staying local.
Prevents them attending elite universities - limits success.
What about the boys?
Boys and Literacy
DCSF (2007): The gender gap is the result of poor literacy among males.
Reading is ‘feminised’
Boys are socialised to be ‘active’, girls have ‘bedroom culture’.
Policies to raise boys’ achievement:
The National Literacy Strategy includes a focus on improving boys' reading.
Dads and Sons campaign encourages fathers to be more involved with their sons’ education.
Globalisation and the decline of traditional men’s jobs
Since the 1980s, ‘masculine’ jobs in manufacturing have moved abroad and thus male employment opportunities have been reduced.
Mitosis and Browne (1998) suggest that this has created a ‘crisis of masculinity’.
Many boys feel that they have little hope in finding work after school.
This creates poor self-esteem and no desire to gain qualifications.
Manual working-class jobs have declined. Would that have had a major impact on educational achievement?
No! The disappearance of jobs are mostly in working-class jobs that require no qualifications anyway.
Feminisation of Education
Sewell (2006) argues:
Education has become ‘feminised’.
Education does not nurture ‘masculine’ traits of competitiveness and leadership.
And the curriculum causes boys to underachieve:
Coursework is a cause of boys’ underachievement.
Need a greater focus on outdoor activity and more exams.
‘We have thrown the boy out with the bath water’ - Sewell
Shortage of male primary school teachers
Lack of positive male role models, 1.5 million female-headed lone parent families.
DfES (2012): 14% of primary school teachers are male.
YouGov (2007): 39% of 8-11 teachers have no male teachers.
42% of this group said the presence of a male teacher makes them work harder.
Some suggest boys need male teachers from an early age to impose strict discipline, and that education is feminised with women who can’t control boys’ behaviour.
Are more male teachers really needed?
Francis (2006): Two thirds of 7-8 year olds did not think gender of a teacher matters.
Read (2008): Two types of language/discourse:
1. Disciplinarian discourse - shouting, exasperation, sarcasm.
2. Liberal discourse - speaks to children as adults, child-centred.
First is associated with masculinity and second is associated with femininity.
Findings: Most teachers favoured disciplinarian.
Conclusion - Education is not feminised and female teachers are able to control boys’ behaviour.
AO3: Conducted with interviews, no knowledge of classroom settings.
Haase (2008): School is a ‘masculinised’ structure but is dominated by females.
Jones (2006): Leadership - 1 in 4 males, 1 in 13 females
Subject Choices
National Curriculum 1988
Reduced pupils’ freedom to choose/drop subjects, most being compulsory until 16.
Choices that should be made, such as GCSE options, identified clear gender differences.
A-Levels
Gendered choices became much clearer at post-16 education level.
Boys are more likely to pick maths/physics.
Girls are more likely to pick sociology/English.
This continues into options at university level.
Vocational courses
A vocational course is one which is directed at a particular occupation and its skills.
Gendered differences are even more evident in these types of courses.
2/100 construction apprentices are girls.
4 reasons why boys and girls choose different subjects
Gender role socialisation
Gendered subject images
Gender identity and pressure
Gendered career opportunities
Gender Role Socialisation:
Oakley (1973)
Gender is the learned cultural differences between males and females. This is shaped through primary socialisation.
Canalisation - parents ‘channelling’ children towards toys appropriate for the child’s gender.
Verbal appellation - language that has a gender emphasis such as ‘brave boy’, and ‘little princess’
Manipulation - praising or disapproving of gender specific behaviour.
Different activities - children are encouraged to do different things.
Norman (1988)
Girls and boys are dressed differently.
Girls and boys are given different toys.
Girls and boys are encouraged to take part in different activities.
Boys are rewarded for being active.
Girls are rewarded for being passive.
In School
Byrne (1979)
Teachers encourage boys to be tough and show initiative.
Girls are expected to be quiet and helpful (not physical strength).
Murphy and Elwood (1998)
Boys and girls develop different tastes in reading which inform subject choices.
Boys prefer hobby books/information text (science)
Girls prefer books on people (English)
Gender Domains
Browne and Ross (1991)
Childrens’ beliefs about ‘gender domains’ are shaped by their early experience and expectations of adults:
They see some tasks as part of male or female ‘territory’ and, therefore, as relevant or irrelevant to themselves.
Children are more confident in tasks they see as part of their own domain.
When set a mathematical task:
Girls are more confident if it is presented as a problem about food and nutrition.
Boys are more confident if it is presented as a problem about cars.
Murphy (1991)
Girls and boys pay attention to different details, even when they are tackling the same task:
Boys focus on how things work.
Girls focus more on people and how they feel.
This helps explain why girls choose to study humanities, and boys focus on science.
Gendered Subject Images:
The gender image of a subject can determine which pupils opt in to study it.
Kelly
Science teachers are more likely male.
Male teachers and textbooks use examples more suited to boys’ interests.
Boys have a tendency to dominate the class lab and monopolise apparatus (take over attention)
Colley (1998)
Argues that computer sciences/studies is seen as a masculine subject because:
It involves working with machines (part of the male domain).
The way it is taught is off putting to females (the tasks are abstract, too formal with little group work.).
Single-sex school:
There is plenty of evidence which suggests that gender stereotyping occurs much less often in single-sex schools.
Leonard (2006)
Girls are more likely to take maths and science at A-level (single-sex)
Boys take English and languages at A-level (single-sex)
Girls from single-sex schools are more likely to go on to university to study male-dominated subjects.
Gender Identity and Peer Pressure:
Subject choice can be influenced by peer pressure - boys will drop out of music/dance as it is not in their gender domain so may attract negatively.
Paechter (1998)
Girls in sport are often seen as masculine.
Girls are then more likely to drop out of sport or lose interest altogether.
Dewar (1990)
Sporty girls are seen as ‘butch’ and/or ‘lesbians’
Gendered Career Opportunities:
One of the biggest reasons for differences in subject choice is that the employment opportunities are highly gendered:
Jobs can be advertised solely for men and women.
Women’s jobs echo that of the private sphere - childcare, and nursing.
Over half of all women’s employment falls within 4 categories:
Clerical (admin, office)
Secretarial (personal assistants)
Personal Service (laundry, shops)
Cleaning
This is known as ‘sex-typing’ and affects the perception of job opportunities for both girls and boys.
This also explains why vocational courses are clearly gendered as they mostly end with employment at the end of the course.
Fuller (2011)
There is a social class dimension to gendered subjects.
Most of the working-class girls in her study had ambitions to go into childcare, or health and beauty.
This reflected their working-class habitus (background/identity).
Work experience is also heavily gendered and this was the case in the girls she studied.
She concludes that school is implicitly steering girls towards certain jobs through work experience, then subject choice and vocational aspirations.
Pupils’ Gender and Sexual identity
Debate: Do schools reproduce heteronormativity?
Boyfriends and being loud theory assumes heteronormativity.
Sex education is strictly for heterosexual people.
Teacher’s language → ‘boyfriends + girlfriends’ instead of partners.
School barriers restrict pupils from coming to their identity.
Heteronormativity:
Everyone is male or female.
Boys like girls, girls like boys.
Language teachers use: ‘my partner’
Cisnormativity:
Everyone identifies to the sex they were assigned at birth.
Language used by teachers: ‘boys and girls’.
Visibility of everyone.
Hegemonic Masculinity
Connell (1995)
Pupil’s experience of school help to construct and reinforce their gender and sexual identities.
The dominance of heterosexual masculine identity.
The subordination of female and gay identities (to be traditionally masculine is the ‘top of the hierarchy’)
The rejection of ‘other’ masculine identities.
Mac an Ghaill (1994)
Gender power based on hyper masculinity was the main source of identity of ‘macho lads’ who value the 3 Fs:
Football
Fighting
Fucking
Macho lads are dismissive of working-class boys who work hard and aspire to have middle-class careers, referring to them as ‘dickhead achievers’.
In contrast, middle-class ‘real English men’ projected as ‘effortless achievement’
Verbal Abuse on Girls
Lees (1993)
Boys call girls ‘slags’ if they’re sexually active.
Boys call girls ‘drags’ if not.
Reinforces gender norms and identities.
Impact of Teacher Discipline on Boys + Girls
Askew and Ross (1988)
Male teachers can subtly reinforce messages about gender.
Eg. Male teachers have a protective attitude towards female colleagues, coming into classes to ‘rescue’ them by threatening pupils who are disruptive.
Reinforces the idea that women can’t cope alone.
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