Feminist Theories of Education

1
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.

2
Gender and education

• From the 1960s onwards, feminist sociologists
  highlighted the following gender inequalities in
  education.
• Gendered language
• 2 Gendered roles
• 3 Gender stereotypes

3
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.

4
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.
•  

5
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
•  
• 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

6
Women in the curriculum

• in terms of whats 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/library/bio/blbio_l
  ist.htm

7
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.

8
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).

9
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.
•  
• 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.