Feminist Perspectives On Education.

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Gender and Education

From the 1960’s onwards, feminist sociologists highlighter the following gender inequalities in education.

1. Gendered language – Reflecting the wider society, school textbooks (and teachers) tended to use gendered language – ‘he’, ‘him’, ‘his’, ‘man’ and ‘men’ when referring to a person or people. This tended to downgrade women and make them invisible.

2. Gendered roles – School textbooks have tended to present males and females in traditional gender roles – for example, women and mothers as housewives. This is particularly evident in reading schemes from the 1960s and 1970’s.

3. Gender stereotypes – Reading schemes have also tended to present traditional gender stereotypes. For example, an analysis of six reading schemes from the 1960’s and 70 have found that:

  • Boys are presented as more adventurous than girls
  • As physically stronger
  • As having more choices
  • Girls are presented as more caring than boys
  • As more interested in domestic matters
  • As followers rather than leaders (Lobban, 1974)

4. Women in curriculum – In terms of what’s taught in schools – the curriculum – women tend to be missing, in the background, or in second place. Feminists often argue that women have been ‘hidden from history’ – history has been the history of men.

5. Subject choice – Traditionally, female students have tended to avoid maths, science and technology. Certain subjects were seen as ‘boys’ subjects’ and ‘girls’ subjects’. Often girl’s subjects had lower status and lower market value.

6. Discrimination – There is evidence of discrimination against girls in education simply because of their gender. For example, when the 11 plus exam was introduced in the 1940’s, the pass mark for boys was set lower than the mark for girls in order to make sure there were roughly equal numbers of boys and girls in grammar schools. In other words girls were artificially ‘failed’ so boys could ‘succeed’.

7. Further and Higher Education – Traditionally, the number of female students going on to further and higher education has been lower than for boys. There is evidence that teachers often gave boys more encouragement than girl to go on to university (Stanworth, 1983).

An understanding of both the class and gender aspects of women’s education can be drawn out from what has been called the 'domestic ideology'. This ideology structured particular ideals of 'femininity'. Clearly 'femininity' has to be understood as a 'socially constructed' category.

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During the period from the late 18th to the mid 19th century it has been argued that a domestic ideology became established within the dominant bourgeois culture. The ideal location for women was seen as within the private sphere of the family as full-time wives and mothers. Men inhabited the public sphere of waged work. Women and children came to be seen as economic dependants.

Few records exist expressing the views of members of the working class on this matter, although there is some evidence that working class men began to take up the domestic ideology through the organization of the trade ...

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