Education and Gender Equality: A Critical View
Loading...
Date
1985
Authors
Stockard, Jean
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
A number of authors have discussed how educational experiences influence
gender inequality. To combat these influences the popular media and
educators encourage women and girls to pursue advanced training if they
want to "get ahead," often stressing the importance of training in
mathematics. Educators design courses to help women overcome "math
anxiety" and to encourage promising young girls to pursue mathematics
training. Likewise, girls are encouraged to enter nontraditional vocations;
and counselors and teachers, as well as parents, are reminded to encourage
young women to enter fields typically seen as appropriate for men.
Researchers urge teachers and counselors to monitor their interactions with
male and female students so that males are not favored over females.
Writers of textbooks and tests are encouraged to use equal numbers ofexamples about males and females, to picture members of both groups in
equal numbers, and to avoid sex-typed descriptions of activities.
Much of this advice appears to be based on the assumption that if women
gain more education, train in typically male areas, increase their mathematical
skills, are properly encouraged by adult role models, and/or are
exposed to nongender-biased curricula, then gender inequality in the adult
occupational world should lessen. The evidence to support this assumption,
however, appears to be minimal. Each of these modifications may be
laudable in and of itself, and each may produce some level of change.
Nevertheless, I will show in what follows that the evidence suggests that it
would be unreasonable to expect alterations in these areas of education to
change segregation of males and females in the occupational world or to
lessen the gender gap in income in any marked way. In other words, the
linkage between gender differences in educational experiences and gender
inequalities in the adult occupational world is probably much more tenuous
than commonly believed.
In this paper I first briefly review literature typical of that on gender
• inequalities in education. Then I examine the research evidence regarding
gender differences in academic achievement, attention received in school,
educational attainment, and areas of study, and discuss how these
differences are related to gender inequalities in occupational status and
income in adulthood. Finally, I relate this discussion to theoretical
explanations of the persistence of male dominance and explore the
implications of the analysis. Because most of the arguments regarding the
relation between education and gender inequality have dealt with the
United States, the discussion will generally deal only with this country. In
addition, it will not involve differences in educational and occupational
experiences of men and women in various racial-ethnic groups (see
Stockard, 1980; Almquist, 1984 for discussions of aspects of this issue), for
the thesis of this paper probably applies to all such groups in this
country.
Description
28 pages
Keywords
gender inequality, educational experiences, academic achievement, gender typing