Gender and Education

Gender Project
In this essay I am going to be talking about the ways in which gender stereotypes are reinforced through education. I am also going to assess the reasons why males and females choose different subjects. For example boys prefer to take more practical subjects such as maths, physics computing and ICT whereas girls prefer to take art subjects such as English and Humanities. Research has shown that there is a significant difference between males and females taking certain subjects, and I am going to discuss if this is an important factor as to why girls do better than boys, and explain the variation in entry numbers between males and females in a-level subjects. It has also been proven the girls do significantly better than boys in their a-levels and I am going to talk about whether it is because of their subject choices or if it is because of other things such as class and ethnicity. Also it has been said that males and females choose different subjects because they are likely to go into different careers, for example boys are more likely to choose subjects such as the sciences so they can go into higher paid careers such as medicine, whereas girls are more likely to choose subjects such as health and social care to go into careers such as nursing or other caring professions and I will be looking at whether this is true of BAB sixth form students. The hypotheses that will be tested are BAB sixth formers adhere to gender stereotypes in their subject choices, textbooks are stereotypical in their portrayal of gender and typically male subjects will have more pictures of males and vice versa. The questions that will be asked for the research is do textbooks reinforce stereotypes? And do BAB sixth formers adhere to gender stereotypes. Other sociologists have come up with different theories as to why girls outperform boys in education and why they tend to choose different subjects. For example studies by Fiona Norman show that girls are expected to play with different toys than boys therefore they develop different types of aptitudes which could explain why they choose different subjects. Also Sue Sharpe found that girls had set priorities that were unlikely to lead to high importance attached to education. These were ‘ 1. Love, 2. Marriage, 3. Husbands, 4. Children, 5. Jobs, 6. Careers (in that order) ‘. However a more recent study by nfhtfghnthntSharpe (1993) suggests that women no longer want to get married because they are seen as a liability to their career. This could be why girls are more motivated in school because they’re becoming more independent. Some other sociologists such as Connell (1986) argue that feminism has helped to bring radical changes in the way girls perceive themselves, so they can no longer construct their identity in domestic terms. Mitsos and Browne have an integrationist approach to the underachievement of boys. They suggest that teachers aren’t as strict with boys as they are with girls and they generally allow them to waste their time, which is what leads to them underachieving. Also the leisure boys take part in are less conducive to educational achievement compared to girls. For example boys are more likely to take part in more physical activity such as football and other sports which isn’t very academic, whereas girls would rather spend their time talking because that’s how they relate to one another. This puts girls at an advantage because school is essentially a language experience – most subjects require good writing skills. Also studies of both primary and secondary school pupils show that many girls are now looking forward to towards jobs that require degree-level qualifications ( Francis and Skelton 2005).

For the research we made a list of the subjects that are traditionally seen as male subjects, and subjects that are seen as traditionally female subjects.
We identified maths, physics, construction, ICT, law, geography, PE, chemistry, business and economics as typically male subjects. On the other hand sociology, English literature, biology, drama, psychology, childcare, food tech and history were identified as typically female subjects. We found out if BAB sixth formers adhered to these stereotypes by carrying out a questionnaire to find out what subjects they do, why they chose their subjects, and which subject was their favourite. The questionnaire involved both open and closed questions so the sixth formers answering can also have the opportunity to say why they chose their subjects. We also did a content analysis of textbooks to see if the textbooks had more males or females to appeal to males or females. For example a childcare textbook would generally have more females in it, doing things such as feeding a baby. The good things about asking sixth form students about which subjects they do and why they want to do it was we got useful information because we can find out why boys and girls do different subjects and how they could use these subjects in their future career. Some other advantages of using a questionnaire is that it can be used to compare and contrast other research and also large amounts of information is collected in a short period of time, and is easier to analyse. However there are some disadvantages of using questionnaires because it may lack validity therefore making the research unreliable and also there is no way to tell how much thought someone has put into answering the questions. Other disadvantages are questions might be misinterpreted by the person doing the questionnaire if the questions are not necessarily explained properly to them which could affect the results. The good thing about the content analysis is you could infer from the textbook whether the subject was aimed at a particular gender, because if there were more males in a textbook then it is more likely to be aimed at them. The disadvantages of finding out information using content analysis is that sometimes the information was meaningless because it was sometimes difficult to tell whether a textbook was aimed mostly at males or females.
From the data we found that text books are used to reinforce stereotypes. For example in a maths textbook, there were 5 pictures in total of males and females. Only one picture was of a female doing something a female would stereotypically do while the 4 other pictures were of males doing something males will stereotypically do. Another example is that in a childcare textbook from 10 pictures that we looked at there were 7 females compared to only 3 males, and while the females were doing things that were typically female in the book the males weren’t doing typically male things. This could suggest that although childcare is a subject predominantly chosen by females few males might also do it too. Also subjects like economics had more male pictures than female pictures. The data from the questionnaire showed that the reason a lot of people chose their subjects was because it was linked to their future career. For example one of the sixth formers that completed the questionnaire said that the reason they chose their subjects is because they wanted to become a doctor. The subjects this sixth form student chose were biology, chemistry, physics and psychology. He chose mainly sciences and this supports the view that boys are encouraged to choose science subjects so they can have a high earning career. However he did also choose psychology which is mostly chosen by girls because it is a social science. Another example is a female who studies health and social care, she said it’s her favourite subject because she likes caring for people which could be because of how she was socialised as a child. She also says she chose her subject because she wants to do a degree in nursing. However although some of the subject choices of sixth form students at BAB show that they do adhere to gender stereotypes, this is not true of all the students. For example from the questionnaire data one of the males that answered the questions said that they study drama, media and textiles which are all typically female subjects. This suggests that some of the students don’t mind doing subjects that isn’t stereotypical of their gender as long as they enjoy it. Also when looking at the registers of all the sixth form students the PE BTEC class had a majority of females in it even though it is seen as a macho subject. However the registers also revealed that males are more likely to take a-level maths because more girls are retaking the subject at GCSE, whereas more boys are retaking English which shows that girls are more likely to take English at a-level.
From the findings of our research it can be concluded that our hypotheses can be proven right because even though some males may take subjects that are typically female and vice versa, most stick to the gender stereotypes because it leads to a career they want to do due to socialisation.