Essay
evaluate the claim that although girls outperform boys in terms of achievement, the experience of schooling reinforces traditional gender identity.
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- AQA
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By: plumwarner • 6 months ago
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Gabrielle ObleaApplying material from Item A and your own knowledge, evaluate the claim that
although girls outperform boys in terms of achievement, the experience of
schooling reinforces traditional gender identity.
Within the education system, gender identity can be reinforced through factors that
sociologists identify as internal and external. Internal factors that can affect the
experience of schooling and reinforce traditional gender identity can include gender
discrimination and subject choice. External factors such as socialisation can also
interact with factors internal to schools and reinforce traditional gender identity. However
the recent increase in women in higher education challenges traditional gender identity.
Item A states that ‘Girls experience may be less positive than boys’, this can refer to the
gender discrimination that can affect the experience of schooling for girls which can
reinforce traditional gender identity. This means that the school environment may not
favour girls. Coffey and Delamont argue that schools have always been patriarchal and
the ethos of most schools, especially secondary schools, was still resolutely masculine -
authoritarian and sexist. For example this can be illustrated through language such as
sexist ‘banter’ which condones gender prejudice and becomes normalised if teachers
don’t challenge it. Therefore it can be determined that gender discrimination as part of
the experience for schooling can reinforce the traditional gender identity that girls are
docile to their male counterparts. However, Connolly’s research on the formation of
identity suggested that ethnicity also interacted with gender in identity formation, and
some of the black girls were willing to challenge the idea that boys would be dominant in
school.
Subject choice remains heavily gendered and this can be another factor as to how the
experience of schooling reinforces traditional gender identity. For example, males are
particularly likely to choose Physics and Economics while females predominate in
Biology and English. Colley sees this as a significant problem as she argues that such
choices mean that females more often end up in low-status professions compared with
males. This can be illustrated by boys regarding subject areas preferred by girls to be
inferior in status, thereby suffering deprivation in skills valuable in sustaining
relationships and in preparation for accepting parental responsibilities - reinforcing
hegemonic masculine identity. Therefore it can be determined that subject choice can
reinforce hegemonic gender identity as a result of conforming to the behavioural
prescriptions of their gender. However it should be considered that this may not be
applicable to single sex schools. For example the report by the Institute of Physics
reveals that half of mixed-sex state schools have no girls physics choosing as an
A-level subject but girls at single-sex schools were two and a half times more likely to
1.4 - Gender educational achievement and subject choice
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