Gender equity? Oh, yes, that was big a few years ago. Today, girls' home economics and boys' shop are gone.Girls get better grades. Girls are more likely to get into college, whereas boys are more likely to get into trouble. Why all this attention to girls? Boys are the ones in trouble.Title IX? Wasn't that repealed?
Many educators are confused about gender equity. Is it still a problem? Is it more about political correctness than about educational effectiveness? Wasn't that battle fought and won years ago? Until 1980, Ivy League schools such as Columbia University did not even admit women. Today, the majority of college students are women. Perhaps we should declare victory and move on.
Michael Kazin, in his forthcoming book Like a Civil War: The United States in the 1960s (Oxford University Press, in press), helps educators understand the cultural context surrounding educational equity. Kazin writes that in the war between liberals and conservatives that characterized the 1960s, the conservatives actually won most battles. Today's cultural landscape is littered with their mantras, now part of the national conventional wisdom: Government is too big, taxes are too high, affirmative action is unfair, business is overregulated, and school choice will improve education. But conservatives did not win all the battles. Kazin believes that the decade's most successful social crusade was feminism, a movement that restructured U.S. society.
Commentators now proclaim on the airwaves that gender bias no longer exists, except for the men who are victimized by feminists. Their efforts are not without success: Today the word feminist carries as many negative as positive connotations. So what is an educator to believe?
Those who believe in gender equity face an uphill struggle. Each time I begin a training program to help educators detect and eliminate bias from their classroom teaching, I am reminded of what some call gender blindness (Bailey, Scantlebury, & Letts, 1997, p. 29). Often I show a videotape with subtle, if pervasive, gender bias. Asked to evaluate the tape, most teachers miss the bias. After practicing some rudimentary coding of classroom interactions, we go back to the tape. Surprise, surprise! Now the gender bias is overwhelming. No longer political or personal, the bias has become a research reality, their reality, and the teachers are motivated to create equitable teaching strategies. But why the initial gender block?
In Failing at Fairness, Myra Sadker and I described "a syntax of sexism so elusive that most teachers and students were completely unaware of its influence" (1995, p. 2). Teacher education and staff development programs do little to prepare teachers to see the subtle, unintentional, but damaging gender bias that still characterizes classrooms.
But subtlety is not the only reason for the persistence of inequity. A false sense of accomplishment has also taken root. We have made wonderful advances, especially in the area of access to schools, courses, and careers. Although bias is less problematic today, it still permeates and influences our classrooms.
What is the salient and current research on gender progress and problems in schools? What are the disturbing cultural developments that have distorted and politicized educational equity? To answer these questions, I will borrow a device used by a late night television host: a top 10 list.
The Top 10 Gender Bias Updates
Update #10: Segregation still thrives in U.S. schools. Title IX has breached the walls of the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute, and females are now admitted to all tax-supported educational institutions. Too often, however, courses of study and careers remain gender-specific.
- The majority of females major in English, French, Spanish, music, drama, and dance, whereas males populate computer science, physics, and engineering programs.
- A recent study of 14 school-to-work programs revealed that over 90 percent of females cluster in a few traditional careers: allied health careers, teaching and education, graphic arts, and office technology (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998, p. 88).
- Although almost half of medical and law students are female, they are concentrated in a few "female friendly" (and lower-paying) specialties (Sadker & Sadker, 1995, p. 194).
Update #9: Public schools are now creating single-gender classes and schools. More than a century ago, most schools were gender-segregated. Some private schools still are. And the research on their effectiveness, at least for the girls, is compelling, if not universally accepted. In response to this research and to the pressures of assertive parents (usually of girls), public school districts have openly and sometimes surreptitiously created their own single-gender classes or schools. Is this a positive or a negative development?
If we were to carefully implement and research a limited trial of single-gender public schools and classes, the findings could improve public coed schools for boys as well as for girls. However, the current approach has the potential to fractionalize our society. In short, creating single-gender classes and schools is not a substitute for ensuring equitable public education for all our students.
Update #8: Gender-related safety and health concerns continue to plague females. One hundred years ago, the argument against female education centered on health. Doctors warned that education redirected blood initially destined for the ovaries to the brain. The result: Educated women would be less likely to reproduce and more likely to go insane. The doctors' prescription: Keep girls out of school. Bizarre, but a sign of how people viewed female health issues. Today, our attention turns to more genuine and pressing health risks.
- Twenty percent of school-age girls report being physically or sexually abused, and 80 percent report experiencing some form of sexual harassment.
- Although research shows that physical activity leads to higher self-esteem and lifelong health benefits, girls are only half as likely as boys to participate in physical education.
Update #7: The dropout rate is not what we think it is. Most educators know that boys repeat grades and drop out of school at higher rates than girls. However, few realize that girls who repeat a grade are more likely to drop out of school than male grade repeaters. When girls drop out of school, often because of pregnancy, they are less likely to return and complete school than boys. In 1995, for example, approximately one-third of Hispanic females between 16 and 24 had not completed school and had not passed a high school equivalency test. Boys drop out with a "crash," whereas girls drop out more quietly, more quickly, and more permanently.
Update #6: For girls, gifted programs are often "early in and early out." Elementary school gifted programs identify girls in equal or in greater numbers than boys. However, by 10th grade, girls begin to drop out of these programs at a higher rate than boys. Boys are more likely to take math and science gifted programs, whereas girls populate gifted programs that focus on language arts. For both girls and boys, gifted programs often reinforce gender segregation.
Update #5: Gender bias also affects males. Because men earn more money, manage most organizations, and dominate both government offices and sports arenas, many Americans assume that men are the victors in the great gender divide. In fact, sexism harms—and Title IX protects—both genders. Boys are stereotyped into gender roles earlier and more rigidly than females. Three out of four boys report that they were targets of sexual harassment—usually taunts challenging their masculinity. Males who express an interest in careers typically thought of as "feminine" also encounter social pressures. The percentage of males in elementary teaching, for instance, is smaller today than when Title IX came out a quarter of a century ago.
Although females receive lower grades on many high-stakes tests, males receive lower course grades (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998, pp. 27–33). Males are less likely to have close friends and are more likely to endure alienation and loneliness throughout life. Males, after all, experience higher mortality rates through accidents, violence, and suicide. From schoolyard shootings to low humanities enrollments, boys act according to negative male stereotypes, and educators need to discourage this influence.
Update #4: Classroom interactions between teachers and students put males in the spotlight and relegate females to the sidelines. Studies of teacher discourse underscore male dominance in the classroom. Teachers unconsciously make males the center of instruction and give them more frequent and focused attention. Although some boys do not want this attention, and some girls may not notice or may even desire this lack of attention (Feldhusen & Willard-Holt, 1993), the impact on both genders can be costly. Increased teacher attention contributes to enhanced student performance. Girls lose out in this equation. African American girls, for example, are assertive and outgoing when they enter school, yet they grow more passive and quiet through the school years (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998, p. 49). Boys reap the benefits of a more intense educational climate.
Update #3: The math and science gender gap is getting smaller. The idea that boys outperform girls in math and science has received national attention, and that attention is paying off.
- During the 1990s, female enrollment increased in many math and science courses. Honors as well as advanced placement courses showed enrollment gains.
- Girls are now more likely than boys to take biology and chemistry courses, whereas physics is still a male domain. Boys, however, are more likely to take all three core sciences—physics, chemistry, and biology (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998, p. 13).
- Tests continue to reflect a gender gap, particularly high-stakes tests like the SAT. Although the gap has decreased in recent years, males continue to outscore females on both the math and verbal sections of the SAT. Boys outscore girls on math and science achievement tests, whereas females outscore males on the verbal section of the ACT. Although girls take more advanced placement exams in all courses except math, science, and computers, boys earn higher advanced placement scores and are more likely to receive college credit (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998, pp. 35-41).
Update #2: A new gender gap exists in technology. Certainly, the greatest change in education in recent years is the technology explosion, with the majority of U.S. schools now connected to the Internet. But boys are more wired into this revolution than girls are.
- Boys enter school with more computer experience than girls, and girls know it. Girls rate themselves significantly lower on computer ability.
- Stereotyping is alive and well in the tech world. Girls are more likely to enroll in word processing and clerical courses, whereas boys are more likely to enroll in advanced computer science and computer design classes. Both print and Internet resources continue to promote sex stereotyping, with males portrayed in powerful and prestigious technological positions (Knupfer, 1998).
Update #1: Some political forces are intent on reversing many gains in educational equity made during the past decade. Thirty years ago, when Myra and I first began to research gender bias, we thought that the task was pretty straightforward. First we would objectively analyze schools to see whether bias really existed. If we found bias, we would then document the inequities and work on solutions. We thought that armed with knowledge, people would want to change. Not so simple.
Educational equity is a political issue. Ultraconservatives have created "educational research" to discredit the decades of studies documenting gender bias in schools. The Women's Freedom Network is one such group that sponsors attacks not only on the research but also on the integrity and motivations of the researchers. With generous private funding and contracts with talk show hosts, news commentators, and even mainline periodicals, these "media experts" launch their attacks.
In the past, the enemies of equity spoke more openly about their beliefs: the "natural" roles of men and women, the "biological destinies" of each, even biblical references to explain the "second-class" status of females. A new day requires new tactics. The Internet and the media do not evaluate the qualifications of researchers. As a result, individuals who make up in colorful commentary what they lack in research qualifications attack the lifework of competent researchers. I regret the ultimate cost that such tactics have on the lives of children.
Cultural Support of Sexism
After practicing techniques to identify the subtle gender bias embedded in her classroom behavior, a teacher education student at the University of Wisconsin wrote: I really didn't think [gender bias] was very prevalent, particularly because it can be so subtle. I especially didn't think I would ever do it. But . . . I had also called on the boys more, not realizing. They were being quiet, instead of noisy, and I called on them to reward them they could pick out the next book. Yet the girls had been good the entire time, yet I hadn't called on them, at all. (Lundeberg, 1997, p. 59)
What is unusual about the story is not that the student could not see the bias; rather, it is that she was enrolled in a teacher education program that included such fundamental research in her training.
In a recent national study of mathematics and science methods professors, Campbell and Sanders (1997) found that two-thirds of education professors spent less than two hours teaching about gender equity and that they rarely provided practical classroom strategies to neutralize bias. More than half the professors were satisfied with this limited treatment. Why has teacher education been so slow to teach about and respond to gender bias?
One explanation may be the social resistance to feminism, female concerns, and even gender studies. In one study, students taking 17 different courses received a Sociology of Gender course syllabus developed and taught by a fictitious Wendy Barker. The students rated the syllabus. Many students indicated that the course was imbued with bias, promoted a political agenda, and contained exams and papers that were too subjective. Although all students showed a bias against the female instructor, the bias was strongest among male students. When a similar group of students received the same syllabus, this time developed and taught by William Barker, a fictitious male, the evaluations were more positive. Now the course was rated as less biased, the work appeared fair and reasonable, and the instructor was credible and available to students. Taught by a male, the same course seemed more comprehensive and attractive to students (Moore & Trahan, 1997).
Many female administrators, teachers, professors, and counselors share similar experiences, believing that they must work harder simply to be considered equal. Males have an unspoken, often unconscious, sense of entitlement, which is reflected in their belief that they influence school policy. Female teachers do not express similar feelings of power and influence (Lee, Loeb, & Marks, 1995). No wonder, then, that political forces can exploit female alienation and cultural resistance to feminism to promote their social agenda.
What are educators to do? Individual educators, teachers, and administrators need to ensure that instructional strategies and curricular innovations benefit all our children. Twenty-five years after Title IX, we must celebrate our progress and recommit ourselves to finishing the job.
