AQA AS sociology Unit 2- gender and achievement

Impact of feminism -

• feminism has been increasing since 1960s
• feminism aims to improve womens' image in society by challenging the female sterotype
• McRobbie compared some magazine in 1970s and 1990s. In 1970s, magazines showed importance of marriage & family. In 1990s magazines showed images of independent women.

Changes in womens' employment -

• 1970 Equal Pay Act - allowed men and women to be payed the same for the same job
• 1975 Sex Discrimination Act - prevents sex discrimination at work
• since 1975, the pay gap between men and women fell from 30% to 17%
• some women are breaking through the 'glass barrier' - an invisible barrier that prevents women entering professional jobs

Changes in the family -

• since 1970s, increase in; divorce rates, cohabitation, single-parent families and smaller family size
• these changes have an affect of girls attitudes towards education. Eg. more single-parent families becoming female headed means women take breadwinner and homemaker role. Girls therefore have a role model to look up to
• also, increase in divorce rates gives girls the impression that they cannot rely on men being their provider, hence they go and get their own qualifications

Girls changing ambitions -

• the changes in the family and changes in womens employment influences girls ambitions
• Sue Sharpe interviewed girls in 1970s about future plans. She found their plans were not career orientated and they would marry and raise a family. She interviewed girls in 1990s and found girls now were prioritising their careers more

GCSE and Coursework -

• Mitsos and Browne found girls are achieveing because they are better organised; taking care on presentation, listening etc..
• Elwood believes exams has more influence on achievement over coursework

Positive role models -

• the increase in female teachers and headteachers at school gives girls role models to look up to, playing a huge role in girls achievement
• this is because having a career in tecahing is a long and successful path

Educational Polices -

• the education system is aware of gender issues. The influence of educational polices comes from both genders being intitled to same educational polices
• Examples- Girls Into Science and Technology (GIST) and Women Into Science and Engineering (WISE)
• these polices encouraged girls to study subjects outside the 'female subjects'
• National Curriculum (1998) meant boys and girls study the same subjects
• Kelly believes making science a compulsory subject helped bring equality between girls and boys in education

Teacher attention -

• in 1983, Spender found tecahers were spending more time with boys than girls
• Swann and Graddol found boys were more boisterous and got more opportunites to speak than girls
• Swann also found boys were dominating class discussions whereas girls preferred listening and doing group work

Selection and league tables -

• marketisation polices raise competition between schools --> better exam results
• Jackson introduced league tables in 1998, a way to improve girls opportunities-> girls attracted to high achieveing schools creating self-fufilling prophecy
• Slee believes boys are less attracted to school because they are more likely to be excluded and have behaviour difficulties

Challenging sterotypes in the curriculum -

• removal of educational materials eg. textbooks removed barrier to girls achievement
• in 1970s/1980s portrayed women as housewives and mothers.

Boys and literacy -

• boys have poor literacy and language skills, a reason could be that parents are spending less time reading and doing educational activites with them
• also, boys hobbies eg. football will do little to improve these required skills. However girls hobbies includes listening eg. talking to friends
• boys poor literacy skills will affect their performance at school, however the government has introduced some polices to improve these skills

Decline in mens' jobs -

• since 1980s decline in mens' manual jobs due to worldwide growth of economy. This has lead to industries moving to other countries for cheap labour
• Mitsos and Browne state this led to low self-esteem and men believing they have little prospect of getting another job
• however a decline in mens working class jobs doesnt have much of an impact on boys motivation to obtain qualifications

Feminisation of education -

• Sewell believes education has become feminised & schools are not encouraging masculinity. Sewell sees coursework as benefiting girls than boys. He believes some coursework should be replaced by exams

Shortage of male role models -

• decline in the no. of male role models in the home and primary school teachers at school
• In 2007, DfES found men make 16% of primary school teachers only
• Yougov found 39% of 8-11 year old boys had no lessons with male teacher. 42% said presence of a male teacher made them work harder
• Becky Francis found 2/3 of 7-8 year olds believed gender of their teachers did not matter

Laddish Subcultures -

• there has been a growth in the number of laddish subcultures
• Epstein found working class boys were more likely to be harassed if they appeared to be 'swots'
• Francis found boys were more concerned about being labelled than girls. Labels were a threatt to their masculinity
• Boys believe masculinity involves being tough, therefore working class boys reject school to avoid being bullied