Schooling has historically emphasized gender differences, with girls often disadvantaged because of the gendering of subjects, a lack of role models, sexist resources, and the way that classroom interaction operated to favour boys (Delamont, 1990). Formal education in many cultures has been available only to the privileged few until relatively recently.
Compulsory primary education was introduced in most western nations in the late nineteenth century, but well into the twentieth century even wealthy women usually had a much more limited education than their brothers (Woolf, 1929). For middle and working class girls, education was seen either as a threat to, or preparation for, their duties as wives and mothers (Delamont, 1978). Educational opportunities have considerably improved for women in the rich developed nations as will be discussed, but they are still limited for the majority of women in the world (see Chapter 1) and women in most nations are considerably more likely to be illiterate than men (UNICEF, 2006: 114). Even in nations where women do reach similar levels of education to men, the kind of education they have had is often quite different. Girls have continued to be less likely than men to take ‘hard sciences’ such as physics (for example, see Department of Education, Science and Training, 2005: 32; Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, 2006: 8; National Science Board, 2006).These curriculum choices have profound implications for the later career options of women. Many higher status and better-paid jobs require scientific knowledge. The lack of women in highly regarded and powerful social roles also means many girls see those roles as being for men, and do not aspire to them. The education sector itself does not provide many role models of powerful women for girls to identify with, as despite women occupying the majority of education jobs, men have continued to hold most of the senior positions (for example, see Engender, 2000: 8).As well as lacking role models, girls also have previously had to make do with learning resources that were not oriented to them and their experiences.
In the 1970s a considerable amount of research on gender issues in education focused on criticizing the negative way that readers and textbooks reinforced gender differences. Everything from early readers (see Lobban, 1975;Weitzmann et al., 1972), to maths and science textbooks (Berrill and Wallis, 1976; Taylor, 1979; Walford, 1981), were found to feature less women and to portray boys and girls in stereotyped ways. For example boys in early readers were often shown as active and strong leaders, while girls were mainly shown as inferior beings involved with nurturing or doing domestic work (Lobban, 1975). Schools also reinforced gender differences by other means.
Teachers appear to spend more time interacting with boys in the classroom, but the extent and effect of this are debated (Delamont, 1990: 11,86). Dale Spender (1982) argued that classroom interaction made girls invisible, with teachers both encouraging and yet devaluing ‘feminine’ behaviour in girls. Girls were encouraged to be quiet and good but boys more often needed disciplining and so even when teachers tried not to they devoted more attention to boys. Although much of this attention to boys was negative, it nevertheless meant that girls were being ignored.
Also, in order to try and prevent boys behaving badly teachers might tailor material so that it would appeal to the boys’ interests, which could make class work more boring and difficult to engage with for the girls. For example, when the football world cup is taking place, a maths teacher might design some problems based around the probability of each team winning. If many girls are uninterested in soccer this may make it harder for them to do the problem. However Spender’s argument is based on her observations of only a small number of lessons; not really enough to support her generalizations about women’s invisibility. Bossert (1981) suggests that overall the past research on classroom interaction showed that there are gender differences but it is not clear how much this affects the behaviour of students. While many of the classroom problems identified might still exist, girls and boys are not always aware of what is going on in the classroom and it is difficult to determine how much influence classroom interaction has on their gender identities (Delamont, 1990: 11, 86).There have also been changes in teaching practice and in other aspects of education, especially since the 1980s.
Changes in education appear to have altered how learning is gendered and girls in the West have for some time achieved better results at school than boys (for example, see Cortis and Newmarch, 2000; Freeman, 2004; Office for National Statistics, 2001b: 68). Some of these changes have been deliberately made as a result of feminist lobbying, which made use of some of the early research. Considerable change has occurred in relation to early reading books and other children’s texts and literature. These may have since become more balanced in the way they present girl and boy characters and there is more discussion of children’s ability to interpret this literature in varying ways (for example, Davies, 1993; Hubler, 2000). Various programmes, addressing classroom interaction and the other issues discussed above, were put in place from the 1970s to encourage girls in school. Although girls are still underrepresented in some subject areas such as physics, the programmes appear to have been effective.
Thus concern has shifted to why boys are performing relatively poorly at school (for example, see Cortis and Newmarch, 2000; Mac an Gahill, 1994). The need for male role models is much voiced, although previous research did not suggest that being taught by women necessarily helped girls. There have been explanations, fuelled by classic sociological studies such as Paul Willis’s (1977) Learning to Labour, proposing that boys — especially working class boys — perceive school as a feminine environment and academic learning as being for ‘cissies’. Despite Paul Willis’s determination to understand the part that the boys play in their own academic failure, many of these explanations again emphasize gender socialization as being established early and then firmly entrenched. Gender is thought to be imposed by the school system, or at least by a simple rejection of that system.
Since the 1980s others have proposed, based on their research with children, that femininity and masculinity are not just imposed on children within the classroom, but actively ‘done’ by them in more complex ways, there and within the playground (for example, see Francis, 1998; Prendergast and Forrest, 1998; Thorne, 1993). These criticisms of ideas about gender as imposed by social structures can be extended to socialization theories more generally.