Gender Inequality in the UK Education System - Essay Example

Gender Inequality in UK Education System College: Introduction The positive association between gender equality in education and economic development has led to adoption of policies and strategies that will help to curb gender inequality in education (World Bank, 2003, p.4). Gender inequality in education, employment opportunities, pay difference, race, class and health has been exhibited in many countries for a long time. The inequality in the education system is of much concern due to the quick and almost successful revolutions that have took place in the system for the few decades. The education system in the UK has enhanced the aspect of gender parity since early 1990s when boys and girls aged 5-11 received some form of education up to at least 14 years of age. This change has contributed to the increase in number of girls enrolment in schools at all levels to approximately 49 t o 52 percent (UNESCO International Bureau of Education, 2002, p.26). Supporting the girl child education has helped in bridging the gap that used to exists where girls used to perform poorly and in respect; females students are starting to outperform the male students. For instance, today the proportion of girls and boys who achieve top grades in schools is almost equal and this has led to similar qualification level to females and males students under the age of 25 (EOC, 2001, p.2). Study conducted on the performance of students during their A’ level revealed that 35% of females achieved Bs at their A’ level compared to 29% of male students. The Gender Structure, which was proposed by Risman, encompasses the institutional enactment, individual and interactional of the inequality and gender differences. The gender structure theory integrates the gendered selves, interactional contexts and socio-structural perspectives that help in understanding sex and gender in terms of inequality and gender differences in every social setting especially in schools. The sociological research that concerns the gender inequality amongst student’s points out that inequality is attributed to the individual characteristics as well as behavioural tendencies of both sexes. Generally, male students receive more attention and appreciation for their aggressiveness as compared to ladies even today (EOC, 2001b, p.11). In 1972, amendments were done on the Title IX education policy in order to do away with inequality in the education system and ensure that both males and females receive the same and best treatment when it comes to education. However, in the contemporary world, this is not the case as the boy child is favoured compared to the female student. This shows that female students are overcoming the gender stereotypes and choosing to perform much better in schools (DfES, 2003, p.9). In the 1950s and 60s, boys outperformed girls in schools by about 5% and policies that the government put in place was successful in enhancing the performance of female students. The girl students have been able to cross several gender gaps to reach to this new point where they can manage to compete with boys in different disciplines. In the late 80s and early 90s, the performance of girls had highly improved making boys to loss the competitive advantage an aspect that has forced the male students to struggle in order to keep up with the success rate of girl’s. Females students are competing strongly in male dominated subjects such as mathematics and sciences an effort that is bearing fruits slowly. In essence, female students have been found to be having strong verbal and non verbal, reading and mathematics reasoning when compared to boys. The new under achievement of boys in their performance in modern age is due to the failure of boys to improve at the same rate to those of girls. Girls have been considered to maintain and sustain their reading capabilities throughout their school life. Furthermore, boys have lost their overall competitiveness when compared to girls in terms of school qualification since the females are performing pretty well in language related subjects such as English. These outstanding performances of females in academics reveal the significant transformations taking place in the history of gender inequality in the UK education system. This surpasses the transformations that have taken place in the social class inequality and ethnic differences. The pressure from performance oriented schooling as well as social class differences in respect to educational achievements is deem to increase the ethnic differences lest efforts are taken to combat the gender gap nationally (Miller and Brickman, 2004, p. 24). The disadvantages faced by the girl child are being hidden in the educational system and this leads to masking of the professional and elite middle class son’s success hence, promoting class and race inequality amongst the genders. The transformation of female’s education in the UK is attributed to several factors including; gender equality reformers, the government and schools in initiating policy reforms that are geared at improving the girl child education. In addition, the political, economic and cultural have played a hand in enhancing these improvements. Revolutions in the cultural practices following the end of the Second World War pave way for women to be engaged in labour market. “Of all the educational inequalities which form the terrain of policy-making since the Second World War, gender has shown the most dramatic shift. Specifically, in England and Wales, the closure of the gender gap up to age sixteen and changing patterns of achievement in post-compulsory education and training stands as a testimony to this transformation (Arnot et al, 1990, p. 30). As the demand for women workforce increased, efforts were initiated to ensure that the educational expectations and qualification of women has been raised and with these, women’s movements were fuelled. The increase in demand for women movements led to the introduction of new school leaving examinations in 1984 and another compulsory curriculum in 1988 that fostered redistribution of educational credentials which ended up favouring female education. The industrial revolution called for increased demand for labour force in the engineering and other scientific related professions and this spurred the government to come up with education policies that will encourage longer educational careers as well as more vocationally courses in schools. Efforts are being undertaken to increase the participation and representation of women in science, technology and engineering fields, a move this is geared at fostering economic progress (DTI, 2000, p. 23). The UK government have increased its spending in education since 1999 after the importance of education to the economy is evidenced. For instance, 4.7% of the UK GDP was spending on education in 1999. During the 1990s, the labour market was majorly represented by the male population. Men accounted for at least 70% of the UK labour force, however, the breakdown of gender barriers have seen women positioning themselves in the labour market at an increasing rate. Today, gender parity is evident in the labour force as almost 50% percent of the labour market is comprised of women. The upsurge of part-time flexible work has been on the rise in recent times and women have been taking the advantage of this in order to support their family (UNESCO, 2002, p. 3). The absence of adequate childcare by the UK government presents various economic demands and complexities in balancing family work and in effect, 43% of females are working in part-time jobs whereas only 9% of men were part-time employees in 2002. The economic restructuring that saw the destruction of industrial employment based communities and dismantling of manufacturing economies that was dominated by men, while increasing the service sector industries eased women employment. The service sector created over 15 million jobs which accounts for over 70% of UK employment. Furthermore, the high levels of male unemployment and increased rate of divorce called for the need of women to support their family financially. The restructuring in the public sector, redundancies and bankruptcies among the middle class propelled the move towards dual career families (EOC, 2001b, p. 1). The breaking of the men tradition in transition from school to work and boyhood to manhood increases insecurity and different economic environment to the male population. Career advancement in women is aimed at promoting economic and financial independence among women. This has led women to be more advanced sexually at earlier ages and with the availability of contraception and legalized abortion; women have been offered with more choices in respect to their sexual life. This has seen most of women in UK designing their way of life as they explore their sexuality as the transformations in the family change the status and shifts in life expectations of women in the society. The cultural shifts in female lifestyles and values has gave women more power of control over their fertility leading to lower rates of births. However, by women taking control over their fertility has led to the increase in lifetime childlessness. The increase in the number of marriage for instance in UK has been characterized by high rate of divorce. In 1997, the population comprised of 8% of the divorced groups as compared to 1% in 1971 posing considerable consequences to the lives of women in the society. The weakened demarcation on the roles of men and women as a result of family influence has made more men and women to look for means of caring for the increased responsibilities. According to the EOC reports, 67% of women between age 16-64 are employed a number that has been increasing once women get married and get children (2003, p. 1). More opportunities have pop up that allows women to combine their profession careers with family commitments. The changes in women position in the domestic spheres and the rise in single parent responsibility of ensuring economic welfare of their children are met propels the development of the market for women’s labour. The move is intended to break the Victorian values of separate spheres by first affecting the schooling system. The state schooling system does not comply with the Victorian values that called for division of labour between sexes that placed women to be concerned with house chores while men to be soul breadwinners in the family. In essence, gender differences reveal that as girls have been encouraged to break from the stereotype on gender inequality in UK (EOC, 2001b, p. 5), lesser efforts has been developed to enlighten boys on the need of rethinking on the understanding of masculinity. As more women are more concerned about the future, while focusing on economic independence so as to avoid overreliance on men to support their family financially or engaged in effective childcare. Many middle class women encourage their daughters to pursue academic excellence so as to ensure their social mobility or those of their community especially in the African Caribbean population. Thus, the academic performance of ladies is mostly affected by the cultural and economic changes taking place in the society today. The number of females seeking autonomy and be able to determine their sexual partners and preferences while breaking the traditional way of family life is crucial in enhancing career advancement of women in this modern age (Arnot et al, 1999, p. 41). Political reforms have played significant roles in bridging the gender gaps in accessing education and career achievement. Although the policies cannot be directly linked to increased representation of women in education and public life in UK; the legislative and policy developments had much impact on the formal education on gender parity. The Education Act of 1944 and the amendments that were done on it ensured girls are accorded equal opportunities alongside boys in the free secondary education. In 1972, amendments were done on the education policy to see to it that the age for leaving school was raised to 16 thus removing the discrimination that used to make girls to stay longer than boys in schools. The gender inequality was dealt with when the contradiction between domestic education and the new jobs opportunities for females in schools, work and family was increased. Moreover, the Women Movements focused at fighting for gender equality in the education system, focus was laid in highlighting discrimination directed towards women in schools and work places. The movement succeeded in curbing discriminatory access to educational institutions and courses, promoting equality policies in schools and colleges, educational agencies and the local government (UNESCO, 2002, p. 34). Enhancing this was an effective approach for the movement given that on its own it could not have succeeded in handling prejudices, stereotyped curriculum content and indirect forms of sexual discriminations that was rampant in the informal schools culture. The inception of common examination system following the implementation of the compulsory National Curriculum in the Education Reform Act of 1988 as well as the standardization of the tests of pupil’s abilities in core subjects at various ages helped in addressing the problem of gender inequality. The differentiation of subject’s choices in secondary schools to be in line with gender had to be done away with and this made boys to study modern language and girls to study science, mathematics and technology compulsorily. The new free market agenda proposed by the 1988 Education Act in education has fired-up the existing social inequalities. Educational feminism developed to enhance social democracy during the post-war era (Lorbes, 2010, p. 8). The devolved control of the curriculum enhanced the top-down central government reforms in the school system where the grassroots teacher-led movements are used to bridge the gender reforms. Feminism was effective in the 1980s in creating gender awareness in education. Given that feminism was highly politicised, teachers were the pioneers in propagating girl friendly and anti-sexist education, however the efforts played by the feminists curriculum reforms need to be mobilised further. Teachers encouraged curriculum and school subject networks by activating gender equality policies first in the teacher unions, schools and educational authorities. The feminist’s activities encouraged girl friendly schooling practices as it supported socialism gender equality and more awareness was raised through in-service courses for teachers, use of legislation, provision of guidance materials, managers and policy makers and through collection of relevant evidence on discrimination. As teacher’s educational courses took gender issue into account, the patterns of gender performance were monitored when inspecting school cultures regimes. In effect, new careers in equal opportunities were encouraged to enhance gender equality responsibility even in post schools. Come to 1996, the new wave of equal opportunities policies in reference to gender were enacted to strengthen the educational wing of women movement as teachers in primary and secondary schools were triggered to be committed in embracing education feminism (Lorbes, 2010, p. 5). The centralised education system in the UK favoured the development of education feminism as the ideology of ‘equal opportunity for all’ made social movements to demand full female entitlement to education that is similar to that received by males as well as the rights of females to make their own choices without restrictions. As the ideal was to remove barriers and restrictions that limit the girl child in education, the educational cum social movement was able to enhance gender equality and gender equity in the society. In essence, feminism encouraged ladies to develop positive independent approach to their schooling and future lives. The aspect of formal gender parity in the UK education system shows that gender inequalities among women is still on the rise both in schools and in the society at large and that the underachievement of boy calls for attention from all members of the society (Skelton, 1998, p.221). Even though the educational admission and achievement have experienced gender parity in the UK, gender stereotypes is being in subjects that reflects gaining of qualification. Females are still choosing sex stereotyped subjects as well as vocational and academic courses and this is reflected in the education system (Arnot et al 1999, p.19). As men are heavily represented in engineering, technology, mathematical sciences, and agriculture; females are more likely to study medicine, creative arts, social sciences, humanities and education courses thus pointing the existence of heavy gender stereotyped education system. Most women have found in traditionally considered women’s work as in 2002, 69% of women were engaged in administrative and secretarial, sales and customer care service occupations, personal service whereas more than 69% of men were senior officials, managers, skilled traders and operation of plant and machine. The differences in roles leads to modern inequality in respect to remuneration as the job’s of women attracts low wage compared to those of men. On average, full-time employed females earn on average 19% than what their counterparts males earn on full-time jobs (EOC, 2003a, p.1). The underachievement of boys has raised more concerns in recent time. Since the literacy gaps of boys and girls is established by age 7; girls are usually ahead of boys by the time they reach secondary schools. The literacy gender gap is mostly reflected in writing than in reading and this for instance explains the reason as to why boys four times as many as girls were excluded from school in 1996 an aspect that is being referred to as crisis in masculinity. Feminisation of the primary school workforce and culture has seen increase in number of female staff in primary schools (Skelton, 1998, p.219). The underachievement of boys is attributed to biased primary teaching environments that are feminine in style in practice and routine as it offers low expectations to the boy child. Furthermore, the decrease in number of male teachers in primary schools makes boys to lack male role models and this limits the delivery and assessment of curriculum. The UK government aims at recruit more male teachers in primary schools in order to tackle the crisis of masculinity in education. Furthermore, the teaching styles has been in favour of girls as it calls for attention, being process-based and open-ended sustained tasks unlike boys who find the timed end-of-course examination to be congenial. Boys on the other hand will sacrifice deep understanding for speed correct answers making them to do better in multiple choice questions and on unambiguous facts that has to be acquired quickly as presented in the traditional teaching approaches. In respect to the Department of Education and Skills in addressing the underachievement of boys; differential gender interactions between teachers, the success of the equal opportunities program, peer pressure towards work ethic, avoidance of culture failure, difference in attitudes towards work and future orientation goals and aspirations contributes to boys underachievement (DfES, 2003, p.3). To combat this problem, effective efforts should be embraced in investigating the differences and similarities of learning styles of boys and girls in order to come up with a nice and fruitful strategy. The treatment of behaviours of boys calls for adjustment in order to curb the increased number of black and white working class boys which has been on the rise in the UK (Gillborn and Mirza, 2000, p.14). Innovative measures are required to improve the performance of boys without affecting the improved performance of females through implantation of approaches that targets boys, promotion of equal opportunities and the pastoral approach. Adopting individual, organizational, pedagogic and socio-cultural strategies will help in addressing the boy issue. The forces of socialization play a great role in determining the content and orientation of individuals towards the future. The traditional gender role stereotypes still plays a big role in the life of female students as it determines the course that they take in schools, how they socialize and their future orientations. This is experienced in the low number of women taking courses that deals with science and technology such as engineering, information communication and technology, mathematics, and statistics (Greene and DeBacker, 2004, p.92). Interventions need to be developed to increase motivation of female students in schools. The UK media considers the girl education performance as being a stepping stone to ladies in gaining strength in their economic and social position as it gives them access to the higher status of male subjects in the society. Gender inequality cannot be seen in the formal schooling structures as it is hidden within the individualising processes of learning. This explains the reasons as to why gender inequality is still intact despite the progress made by female in fighting inequality in the population (Kanbur, 2002, p.2). The gender role expectations have been in the forefront in the position of female students in schools and society at large. There are several theoretical orientations to gender differences including: future time orientation, expectancy value, social cognitive, achievement motivation and possible selves. Schools have been identified as the most powerful socio-cultural context that is capable of encouraging students to envision their future especially the ones that are not constrained by race, gender among other stereotypes. Furthermore, the educators developed unequal standards for classrooms behaviours that encouraged different areas of specialization in respect to gender. With gender socialization at work, females from white middle class increases their qualifications and this enabled to earn higher status, better pay compared to females from other ethnicity. The improved performance of female population has facilitated women to attain success in their respective careers. Success in careers is pointed by the horizontal or upward mobility within an organization in the national context. Today, women are achieving and succeeding in higher positions including the one’s that was dominated by men. This brings about satisfaction as women have been propagating for reforms that will help them to achieve what they were denied by restrictive culture. The career aspirations that are characterized by the values, motives and interests of an individual towards own career in the work environment with respect to their capabilities, significance and worth (German, 2003, p.1). Career aspirations of women has future orientation and this propels them to work extra hard in order to attain their expectations. Most females overlook the gender stereotypes that have been restrictive towards their achievement and opt to work and take more responsibilities that will direct them towards their career of choice (Hall, 2002). To achieve this, the choice of subjects will play a big role in anchoring career decisions even when faced with numerous barriers. A well grounded career anchor will determine the career aspirations, career choices and lastly career success all of which develop from within an individual. According to Danziger and Eden, career aspiration is the construct that surrounds the desired career goals of an individual as well as the occupational identity of individuals (Hall, 2002, p.115). The presence of career aspirations will help in exploring and sharpening the career journey of individuals. The level of education, gender, socio-economic status and occupations plays a major role in defining the career aspirations of individuals. An effective career aspiration of an individual will lead to positive outcome in an individual’s career as it propels one to achieve specific and desirable work related results leading to career success. As career aspirations are internal; career success are the external attributes of one’s profession that is publicly accessible which can be either horizontal or hierarchical factors that are verifiable or measurable such as income, position, upward progress, promotion and improved performance. The motivation of women towards academic success and career attainment is depicted by whether they consider their intellectual achievement to be appropriate to women or not (Greene and DeBacker, 2004, p.94). According to Horner, women are considered to show greater fear for success when compared to men. Furthermore, women were considered to perform more poorly in situations where they were to compete with men due to increased pressure and fear for failure (Horner, 1974, p.192). Focusing on the long term plans of individuals, gender differences was evidenced as more women opted for humanities courses leaving science oriented courses in the hands of men. The main focus of men is attainment of prestige and more money while women are concerned with personal comfort and altruistic. This difference in motivation has led to increased cases of underrepresentation of women in the science and technology careers today (Wigfield and Eccles, 1993, p.47). Traditionally, women considered education success to be inappropriate to women thus leaving achievement motivation to lie on men (Greene and DeBacker, 2004, Pp 95). The future time perspective is instrumental in defining how current endeavours will define attainment of a desired goal in future thus calling for persistence. The number of women avoiding science, mathematics and technological courses is in order to avoid failure in the future since females are susceptible to negative performance that stems out of motivation (Halvari and Thomassen, 1997, p.32). The students coming from poor backgrounds will be less motivated to choose challenging careers as they are focused on careers that will help them to improve the living standards of their family. However, females from middle class families will engage in more challenging careers as they are concerned solely on their career attainment as well as academic excellence. The ethnic differences instil different reaction and perception concerning their careers and life goals. A more Westernized community will be concerned about their academic success and career attainment, while the non-Westernized ethnicities will focus on family issues and marriage as they claim that career attainment and academic success is inappropriate goals for women (Kanbur, 2002, p.3). In essence, women in the Western culture are concerned majorly with autonomy and this makes them to work extra harder in order to attain autonomy than men; whereas men are focused on wealth and money acquisitions. The cross-cultural constraint shapes the performance of its genders in the society in respect to academic success and career attainment. The representation of students in the future is attributed to the gender, race and ethnicity of an individual (Wigfield and Eccles, 1993). Lastly, the expected success and value derived from the achievement reveals a stereotype sex role in the society level. The higher expectancy of males for success as to females reflects how gender role is attached to the achievement domain. In the 70s, females used to have a lower expectancy towards achievement an aspect that has change with time as today females too have a higher expectancy for achievement domains which are female stereotyped such as English and biological sciences while male have higher expectancy on male-stereotyped achievement domains (Greene and DeBacker, 2004, p. 99; and Miller, et al 2004). The concern of the future makes men and women to behave differently as they strive towards attaining their life goals, academic or career wise. The expectations in the labour market which keeps on changing, the family structure and responsibilities, New Rights Policies and expectations of parents have coined forces in influencing the career and lifestyles of individuals. The new rights policies have led to increased social class differences in education today given that a more elite student’s population exhibit hegemonic class and traditional gender positions. In conclusion, gender inequality does not work in isolation as the ethnic and social class cultures also contributes in impacting the educational performances of either sexes (Gillborn and Mirza, 2000). To overcome gender inequalities, parents and the society at large offer much support and encouragement to female children; in so doing the barriers to achievements have been broken thus enhancing success in curbing gender inequality. The cultural practices in the society limited the female gender from participating in various activities such as voting and employment before the 20th century. Male dominant society, even though it has faced a number of revolutions, adjustments and reforms, masculinity is still alive in the modern age on defensive foundations. Gender is the sociological construct that determines our way of life in respect to male and female society. Understanding and acknowledging the existence of gender differences is essential in our walk to towards achievement of motivation and goals in life. References Arnot, M, David, M. and Weiner, G. (1999). Closing the Gender Gap: Post-war Education and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. 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