Gender neutral education: can our kids go gender free?
Children as young as seven think that boys and women are fundamentally different and that
these differences will define the lives they live as adults.
Dr Javid Abdelmoneim is convinced that biology alone can not explain this, the answer lies
in the society we live in.
Experiment: treating the children of a class of seven year olds (in a local primary school on
the Isle of Wight) the same for five weeks, regardless of their gender. The same toilets, no
pink versus blue colours,... → to guarantee they will have the same opportunities when they
are adults. The other class at the school of the same age will be used as a control group.
What do the children in the class think about how different or similar they are, at the start of
the experiment?
- Riley: men are better because they are stronger and they get more jobs
- Bradley: men are more successful because they can have more harder jobs and they
would earn more
- Louis: boys are smarter because there are more male presidents
- Kara: pretty, lipstick, dresses, lovehearts
- Only boys can do football because they are fitter and stronger
- Grace boys are stronger because they can fight lots of people
The headmaster acknowledges that the children are aware of gender but are stuck on these
set differences society prescribes.
There are general biological differences, but do these explain the way children think → Javid
visits Professor Gina Rippon (leading expert in neuroimaging) to find out if there is
something about how the children’s brains work that could explain it.
What are the anatomical differences?
- There are very few, the structure is the same. The brain is moldable and isn’t fixed,
brain development is entangled with your experiences, upbringing,... The influence
of, for example, using blue for boys and pink for girls can change the brain.
→ With the experiment, Javid should be able to reduce the differences between the boys
and girls.
Dr. Stella Machiaveli(?) conducts a test in the class to measure the differences between the
boys and girls. The test is about their levels of self-esteem, how clever they think they are
(=perceived intelligence), their understanding and levels of empathy, assertiveness, how
good they are at resisting impulses to act (which is linked to aggression, bad behaviour and
lying) and how much vocabulary they have to describe their different emotions.
Their teacher Mr Graham also scored them on their classroom behaviour, poor conduct and
hyperactivity.
The results:
- the girls underestimate how clever they are + have less self-esteem and
self-confidence + they use words to do with looks to describe themselves
- the boys are bad at expressing their emotions, except for anger
- 50% of the boys described themselves as ‘the best’, but only 10% of the girls
described themselves as ‘the best’
, Intervention by Javid: addressing the differences the children told him about themselves →
everywhere they look, they must be faced with things that highlight their similarities and not
their differences.
- Putting up boards that say ‘boys are strong’, ‘girls are strong’, ‘believe in yourself’,
‘boys are sensitive’, ‘girls are clever’, girls are sensitive’, ‘you can be anything you
want to be’,...
- Mr Graham asks more boys for an answer than girls → has to use bingo balls with
the children’s names on them so it’s fair
- He uses ‘love’ a lot for the girls and ‘mate’ for the boys → a board so every time he
uses those words, the children can call him out and a sad smiley will be put on the
board
What do children want to be when they grow up?
- Very stereotypical answers → the children are very certain of their answers
Intervention by Javid: four people are brought in: female magician and mechanic, male
dancer and make-up artist → role models for the children, big influence, facing the children
with their assumptions
The girls scored 30% lower in self-confidence in maths. Less than 10%-20% of jobs like
engineer, architects,... are occupied by women. Why are men better at spatial awareness?
- Boys have more experience with it by for example playing with lego or reading a lego
instruction book
- A study found that girls who played Tetris intensively for three months → structures in
the brain changed and spatial skills improved
- The better you are at doing something, the more you like doing it and the more
confident you are
Intervention by Javid: tangram puzzle → boys who regularly play with Lego or Minecraft are
better at this. Mr Graham will try this exercise more often with the children so the girls will
become better at it.
Experiment: a baby boy and girl swap clothes and get placed in a room with toys. Adult
volunteers interact with the babies → because they think it’s a girl, they try to get him to play
with dolls
→ has more long lasting consequences than we think
What the children think about strength → they link it to boys
- Right up until puberty, there is no physical difference between boys and girls
- Strength isn’t just about biology, the results showed that the boys link being strong
with not showing how they feel
Intervention by Javid: the children have to hit a high striker (strength test thing with bell, like
at a fair).
- They have to rank themselves and stand in line from strongest to weakest → most of
the boys think they are the strongest and even argue for the strongest position
- The children have to say how high they think they are going to score → the girls don’t
think they will be strong
- Almost all of the children scored better than they thought they would. Riley was
overconfident and thought he would get a 10 but he missed three times and got very
upset and threw a tantrum
