Download Feminist Theories of Education

Feminist Theories of Education
 Feminist perspectives focus on gender inequalities in
society.
 Feminist research has revealed the extent of male
domination and the ways in which male supremacy
has been maintained.
 From a feminist viewpoint, one of the main roles of
education has been to maintain gender inequality.
Gender and education
 From the 1960s onwards, feminist sociologists
highlighted the following gender inequalities in
education.
1. Gendered language
2
Gendered roles
3
Gender stereotypes
Gendered language
 reflecting wider society, school
textbooks (and teachers) tend to use
gendered language – ‘he’, ‘him’, ‘his’,
‘man’ and ‘men’ when referring to a
person or people. This tends to
downgrade women and make them
invisible.
Gendered roles
school textbooks have tended to
present males and females in
traditional gender roles – for
example, women as mothers and
housewives. This is particularly
evident in reading schemes from
the 1960s and 1970s.
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Gender stereotypes
 reading schemes have also tended to present traditional gender
stereotypes. For example an analysis of six reading schemes from the
1960s and 1970s found that:
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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
Women in the 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 subject
of men http://womenshistory.about.com/libr
ary/bio/blbio_list.htm
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Subject choice
traditionally, female students have
tended to avoid maths, science and
technology. Certain subjects were
often seen as ‘boys’ subjects’ and
‘girls’ subjects. Often girls subjects
had lower status and lower market
value.
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 1940s, the
pass mark was set lower for boys than for girls to make
certain there roughly equal numbers of boys and girl sin
grammar schools. In other words girls were artificially
‘failed’ so boys could ‘succeed’.
 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 girls to
go to university (Stanworth, 1983).
Feminist perspectives – an
evaluation
 Feminist perspectives have been valuable for exposing
gender inequality in education. Partly as a result of
sociological research, a lot has changed – for example,
much of the sexism in reading schemes has now
disappeared.
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 Today, women have overtaken men on most measures of
educational attainment. Their grades at GCSE and A level
are significantly higher than those of male students. And
more women than men are going on to higher education.
The concern now is the underachievement of boys rather
than discrimination against girls.