442001 Dr. Kathryn Keller
Montclair University  
Education -  4/4/2001

Gendered Education

In addition to the explicit agenda of education, there is a hidden curriculum which reinforces sexist conceptions of women and men. This hidden curriculum consists of institutional organization, content, and teaching styles that reflect gender stereotypes and have the effect of sustaining gender inequities.

The Organization of  Schools

Educational institutions reflect the gender stratification of the culture at large and encourage us to see the unequal status and value assigned to women and men as normal. 

The actual organization of schools communicates strong messages about relationships among gender, identity, value, and opportunities.
Who are the teachers? Who are the principals?  Who are the aides, cafeteria workers, secretaries, and custodians?
From our earliest experiences in schools, we learn that males have authority - the principal is the primary authority  in elementary and secondary schools and the chancellor, president or provost is in charge at colleges and universities.  The head person is usually male, while most women are in subordinate positions - teachers and support staff.  Further, at higher levels of education where the position of the teacher has more status, the number of women decreases.

School athletics are also typically organized so that far more males than females have positions of higher status.  Ironically. Before passage of Title IX,  more than 90% of coaches of women's sports were women, yet today only about 48% of women's sports are coached by women.  At Division I colleges, only3% of athletic directors are women.  The different status accorded to male and female athletics is also reflected in salaries:  Coaches of women's teams earn only 59% of what coaches of men's teams make.

Schools Limit Career Aspirations -
Although most students are not consciously aware of the disproportionate number of men in positions of authority in schools they nonetheless pick up the gender message that men are authorities and women are subordinates.  1st graders perceptions of male and female principals.  They found that students were much more likely to think that both women and men could be principals when they had a woman principal than when they had a man principal.

At higher levels of education, gendered school organization continues to affect perceptions of career opportunities and appropriate roles for women and men.  At colleges and universities, faculty are predominately male especially at senior levels.  At the entry level of assistant professor, approximately 40% of faculty nationwide are female.  The percentage decreases to 26% at the level of associate professor, and it plummets to a mere 13% at the highest faculty level of full professor.  4% African Americans (roughly equally divided between women and men).

Several studies have confirmed the relationship between the presence of women and minorities in schools and minority and women students' career aspirations.  Female faculty are important role models for women students, providing concrete examples of the fact that women can hold positions of authority.  Not surprisingly, women students' levels of ambition and self-confidence are highest in women's high schools and colleges where women hold nearly all positions of status and authority.  Similarly African American faculty serve as role models, who influence the likelihood that African American students will pursue further education and ambitious professions. 

Persisting gender inequities in education lead some people to advocate single-sex education.
The facts on graduates of women's schools are persuasive:  although women's colleges produce less than 5% of all female college graduates, 25% of all women who are on boards of Fortune 500 companies and 50% of women in Congress graduated from women's colleges. 
David Sadler, does not for 2 reasons, it diverts attention from identifying and solving the problems that make coeducational schools less than equitable.  Second, single-sex schools are private and charge tuitions that most families can't afford.

Content of the curriculum -  A number of studies have shown that academic curricula that all educational levels are permeated by materials that communicate gender stereotypes. 
Misrepresentation of white men as standard -  First they represent males as standard by overrepresenting men and underrepresenting women.  Studies in the 70s showed that there were approximately 3 males for every female.
 
Study done again in the 90s - the numbers of male and female characters are more nearly equal now, other sex stereotypes persist.  Males are still featured in two-thirds of the pictures and photographs in books, so they still appear to be more standard than females. 
Both  sexes were portrayed in sex-stereotyped ways:  females were shown depending  on males to help and rescue them; males were portrayed as engaging in more adventurous activities than females and males continue to be depicted in a wider range of careers.

Other researchers also report gender biases in textbooks.  One study found a 3:1 ratio of male to female images in high school chemistry tests.  Yet another investigation revealed that in the 39 top-selling college psychology texts, males is significantly outnumbered females as authors and reviewers, as well as in the examples in the books.

The Invisibility of Women -
Sex-stereotypical portrayals of men as standard, active, and successful and women as invisible or marginal, passive, and dependent continue in books used at secondary and college levels.  ….The few women who are presented tend to be exceptional cases who distinguished themselves on men's terms and in men's contexts, while women who had an impact in settings less privileged in our culture remain hidden.

Misrepresentation of Human Experiences
what are the consequences of biases in curricular materials? 

This has three important implications:
First, we may come to assume that males and male experiences are the standard for society and that men have made the only significant contributions.
A second implication of curricular bias is that it restricts everyone's knowledge.
Third, on a more personal level, distortions and stereotypes in instructional content encourage men to see themselves as able to fulfill high ambitions and to affect the course of events, whereas these stereotypes discourage women from those self-perceptions.

Educational Process - A third dimension of the hidden curriculum consists of communication processes in educational settings that devalue women and their ways of learning and expressing knowledge.  Through inequitable expectations of and responses to male and female students, and through privileging masculine forms of communication, educators often unintentionally communicate that women students are inferior to male students.

Unequal attention to male and female students.  - From preschool through graduate education, teachers pay more attention to male students.  Research indicates that teachers actually give male students more individualized instruction and time than they devote to female students.

While teachers praise males for academic interest and achievement, they offer more support to female students for being quiet and compliant.  This pattern was first noticed in elementary classrooms, but later research has shown that it continues throughout all levels of education.

Not Taking Women Students Seriously - Women students are frequently praised for their appearance, personalities, and nurturing inclinations, while their academic abilities and achievements receive no comment.
 
How academic advisers and faculty mentors often counsel male and female students.  Consistently, more generous time, effort and encouragement are given to males than to females.

Sexual harassment .  Women faculty and staff report they are sexually harassed by colleagues and administrators.  Male students routinely harass women students with cheers, jeers, lewd suggestions and uninvited physical touches and this is apparently considered normal by many students.

Sexual harassment is not confined to peer interactions.  Some faculty treat women in classes as sex objects rather than as serious students.  - provocative remarks, offers of higher grades for sexual favors.  These create a climate of intimidation.

Classroom Communication
Gender biases in teachers' communication :
Professors are more likely to know the names of male students than female ones.
Professors maintain more eye contact and more attentive postures when talking to male students than when addressing female students.
Professors ask more challenging questions of male students.
Professors give longer and more significant verbal and nonverbal responses to males' comments than to those of females.  When male students cannot respond to a question, they tend to be given additional time along with encouragement and coaching until they come up with a good answer; when female students do not answer correctly, instructors frequently move on.
Faculty call on male students more often.
Faculty are more willing to make time and to devote longer periods of time to confer with male students than with female students.
Female students' contributions are interrupted, ignored, or dismissed more often than that those of males.
Faculty extend comments by male students more than those of female students.

Another way teachers communicate gender is by encouraging and discouraging gender stereotypical behaviors in male and female students.  Consistent with cultural views of femininity, teachers typically reward female students for being quiet, obedient, and cooperative.  Equally consistent with cultural views of masculinity, teachers often reward male students for accomplishments, assertion, and dominance in classrooms.  While teachers tend to accept answers that boys shout out, they routinely reprimand female students for "speaking out of turn."  Responses like these communicate to children that boys are expected to assert themselves, and girls are supposed to be quiet and polite.


Are there differences in male and female teachers' expectations and behaviors?  At least at higher education levels, there seems to be rather consistent differences.  Female university and college professors, compared with their male counterparts, tend to  be less biased against female students, are more able to recognize females' contributions and intellectual talents, are more generous in giving them academic and career encouragement.  In general, female students participate more actively and more equally with their male peers in classes taught by women than in ones instructed by men.

Communication among peers - also influences gender identity.  - peer pressure.  Males are much more insistent that boys do boy things than females are that girls do girl things, which continues the more rigid gender socialization imposed on males.

Although peers are important to both sexes, they seem more critical to boys' gender identity.  Male bonding tends to occur in adolescence and is extremely important to reinforcing and refining masculine identify. 

Instructional style.
Teaching processes also disadvantage women students by favoring a classroom climate more conducive to male modes of learning and achievement. 
In general male learn to use talk to assert themselves and compete, while females see talk as a way to build cooperative relationships with others. 
The expected and rewarded patterns of classroom participation are consistent with masculine rules of communication and inconsistent with feminine forms.  Given this, it is not surprising that males are more comfortable and find learning easier than females, since classroom climates so often employ masculine communication styles.  From grade school to graduate school, classroom climates typically emphasize assertion, competition, and individual initiative.  Students are encourage to compete with each other in class discussions, performances, and tests.

Teacher patterns in most classes including math and science favor masculine styles of learning and communicating. 



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