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Making the Grade
Women and Girls Gain in Education
By Barbara Stahura
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result
in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.—Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate and leader of Burma’s democracy movement.
In 1719, Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, said “I have often thought of it as one
of the most barbarous customs in the world—that we deny the advantages of learning
to women.
“And herein it is that I take upon me to make such a bold assertion,” he continued, “That
all the world are mistaken in their practice about women. For I cannot think that God
Almighty ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such
charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments
with men: and all, to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves.”
Women, of course, have made tremendous strides since Defoe expressed his revolutionary
ideas, and now recent surveys have revealed a stunning reversal of age-old patterns. In
all developed countries, females are now outpacing their male counterparts with respect to
educational achievements. And girls, armed with a renewed optimism about their futures,
are entering college in record numbers.
One of the surveys was conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) www.oecd.org. Headquartered in France and made up to 30 member countries, the OECD provides education research that assists governments in understanding and implementing education’s links to national economic well-being and social progress. In its 2008 report, Gender and Sustainable Development, the OECD stated that “girls now do better at school than boys in almost all countries.”
In international assessments of 15-year-old students, girls out performed boys in reading by a wide margin. The gender differential is especially large in Iceland, Norway, Austria and Finland and less apparent in countries such as Korea and the Netherlands.
Raising the education levels and literacy rates of women, the report continues, is one of “the most effective investments for increasing female productivity as well as enhancing the well-being of families and children.”
Cultural Stereotypes
As Daniel Defoe pointed out in his essay, for most of history women and girls have been
denied education and relegated to subservient domestic positions. Social, religious, and cultural
stereotypes arising from patriarchal societies enforced rigid views of male and female
roles and abilities. In his “Treatise on the Education of Girls,” for instance, 17th-centuryFrench educator and philosopher
François Fénelon held that girls should
be educated just enough to become cultivated
housewives. Women and girls
were considered too delicate or feeble
to bear the intellectual rigors of being
educated beyond the most basic levels,
if at all.
As social perceptions and attitudes
changed, it became acceptable and even
desirable that girls become educated
(at least in developed countries). The
factors behind the current flip in the
gender gap, however, are numerous
and complex.
“Research does not provide a clear
reason why girls outpace boys,” says
Charles Ungerleider, professor at the
University of British Columbia in
Vancouver. “Like most issues in education,
the research challenge is to disentangle
multiple influences of the opportunities
provided to students and the
outcomes they achieve.”
Many theories have been expressed
about why boys and girls in general perform
so differently in school, even in the
same classroom. These differences exist
everywhere, including countries such as
Finland, which has a long history of
equal education for both genders and
whose students significantly surpass students
of all other countries in reading literacy
skills. “Some people say that the
nature of teaching and the goals of education
better fit the girls,” says Matti
Kyro of Finland’s National Board of
Education. “And some [teachers] give
more attention to the nice girls who are
easy to teach.”
Cultural (and perhaps biological)
norms come into play as well. Girls typically
enjoy working in groups to solve
problems, are more verbal about their
concerns and needs, and find it easier to
stay motivated, listen, maintain selfawareness,
and relate to others.
Gaining Ground in College
Not too long ago, it was unheard of for
young women to strive for higher education.
Edward Clarke, a 19th-century doctor
and author, claimed that women’s
brains were relatively undeveloped, and
could not withstand the pressures of
higher learning. Indeed, he maintained,
all those resources needed to think
would make them infertile by draining
energy from their reproductive organs!
Women willing to buck the stereotypes
faced daunting obstacles. When
Canadian Martha Lewis enrolled in
teachers college in 1849 in New
Brunswick, she was not only ordered to
enter the room before the men and leave
before the end of class, but was also
required to wear a black veil at all times.
Only 100 years ago, Harvard University
refused to admit women because
Charles Eliot, the school’s president,
feared they would “waste the university’s
valuable resources.”
Thanks to the courageous women
who had gone before, women in developed
countries began enrolling in college
in ever increasing numbers. By
1978, the number of men and women
attending college was
equal. But since that time,
women have been steadily
outpacing men in attending
college and earning
degrees. This represents an
academic revolution in the
view of many experts.
In the United States, the proportion of young women enrolled in college has exceeded the enrollment rates for young men, and the gap has widened over time, according to the DC-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB) <www.prb.org> Between 1970 and 2005, the gender composition has shifted to the extent that women now make up the majority – 54 percent – of the 10.8 million young adults enrolled in college, according to the bureau.
Gender differences in enrollment are more pronounced for racial and ethnic minorities, especially for African-Americans and Hispanics. “Nationwide, there is a 7 percentage-point gap between men and women’s college enrollment rates. For blacks and Latinos, the gender gap is 9 percentage points,” states the PRB.
The U.S. is not the only country experiencing this trend. In many OECD countries, more women than men are now getting university degrees. “On average 33 percent of women have tertiary education compared with 28 percent of men the same age,” according to the 2008 OECD report. “The gender gap in favor of women is greatest in countries such as Canada, Finland and Sweden. In countries including Japan and Korea, men are receiving university degrees at a higher rate than women, but females are catching up,” the report states.
In some instances, the gender shift
was inadvertent. In Poland in the 1950s
and ‘60s, for instance, the communist
government encouraged working-class
women to enter traditional female occupations
such as nursing, teaching, and
office work, which required them to
attain higher educational levels than the
men, who were directed into well-paid
industrial jobs requiring less schooling.
Yet the difference in the educational levels
of that time “was not a conscious and
planned policy of the government,” says
Professor Ireneusz Bialecki, director,
Centre for Science Policy and Higher
Education in Warsaw. “Many factors
indicate that it was an unplanned and
unintended side effect of the strong
expansion of vocational education
addressed mainly to men, especially the
basic vocational schools.”
Thirty years ago in the United States,
as the women’s movement began calling
attention to the ways in which society
denied opportunities for women and
girls, educators began focusing on helping
girls succeed in the classroom.
Programs to build girls’ self-esteem
sprang up in schools around the country,
teaching methods became more girlfriendly,
and girls were encouraged to
improve their math and science skills. In
addition, legislation struck down discrimination
against girls in school athletic
programs, and the Women’s
Educational Equity Act of 1973 provided
funds for promoting gender equity in
the classroom.
Experts also posit that young women
are maturing earlier than their male
counterparts and tend to achieve academically
at higher levels at an earlier
age. As competition has heated up for
entrance into colleges, a greater number
of young women present a more impressive
academic, and often leadership, profile
to admissions committees.
At the same time, barriers to women
began to fall—or were demolished by
feisty pioneers and legal rulings—in
most occupations. No longer did
employment ads separate jobs into
“male wanted” and “female wanted.”
Both parents and teachers began urging
girls to get a good education so they
would later have better jobs, higher salaries, and more respect. Just as
important, families became more willing
to finance their daughters’ educations.
While more girls are receiving primary education in even the poorest parts of the world, very few receive secondary and tertiary education, according to a 2006 World Bank report. In developing countries reducing gender inequality in literacy and in primary and secondary education is key to reducing poverty.
“Dumbing Down”
Now that women outnumber men on
college campuses, some undesirable and
disturbing trends have begun to emerge.
Howard and Matthew Greene are educational
consultants and the authors of
the “Greenes’ Guides to Educational
Planning.” “Girls feel that they need to
appear less intellectual or studious in
order to be attractive to the men on
campus,” stated the father and son team
in a recent article. “Women are also very
conscious of their appearance, from
how they dress to how much they
weigh. There is an inordinate amount of
dieting that turns into eating disorders.”
Binge drinking by women is also on
the rise, because women want to be
seen as “cool” and popular by the men.
“We don’t mean to stereotype here,”
maintain the Greenes, “but there is a lot
of survey data that reveals the pressures
these issues place on collegiate women.”
Continuing Barriers
Despite the gains in educational achievement,
women still tend to cluster in certain
occupational fields. In Poland,
according to Professor Bialecki, women
continue to enter fields considered “feminine,”
such as education, healthcare,
and communication. This holds true for
OECD countries in general, with twothirds
of college-educated women
obtaining diplomas in humanities, arts,
education, and health and welfare, less
than one-third attaining degrees in math
and computer science, and less than
one-fourth in engineering, manufacturing,
and construction. Only a miniscule
number of women are earning
advanced degrees in engineering and
computer science.
This gender clustering in certain
fields arises mostly from social conditioning,
says Ruta Sevo, Ph.D., program
director, Research on Gender in Science
and Engineering, at the National Science
Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.
“The gender schema is at play even
before we’re born,” she explains. “It says
girls are not good at math, they don’t
like to get dirty, or get into jobs that
interfere with their family, and so on.
Peer pressure and parents steer children
into and away from different fields.”
Gender expectations set in with a
vengeance around middle school. Like
women on college campuses, young
girls often feel the need to dumb down
in order to be attractive to the boys.
Unfortunately, this aversion hits hardest
in high school, “when math is so important
to future careers,” says Sevo.
When women do enter science
careers, they are further hampered by
gender bias. Women are still expected to
subjugate their careers to family;
research funds are not equitably disbursed
between men and women
researchers; and the number of women
scientists on faculty rosters is disproportionately
small. As with other fields, the
“glass ceiling” halts the progress of
women into more advanced positions
in science.
“Of the thousands of career classifications
held by the U. S. Department of
Labor,” says Sevo, “women are often
steered to only 20 of them—those that
don’t compete with men, are service-oriented
like nursing and secretarial, and
keep you close to home.”
“Fortunately,” she adds, “all these limits
are subjective.”
By forgoing these occupational paths,
women “are closing the doors to high-status
careers in mathematics, science, and engineering,”
wrote Dr. Carrie Paechter,
of Goldsmiths College in London, in her
paper, “Gender, Reason, and Emotion in
Secondary Mathematics Classrooms.”
Beyond depriving themselves from careers
in which they might find great satisfaction
and excellent salaries, she says, “it matters
because it is significantly reducing the
numbers of those who might go to work
in the wealth-producing fields of science
and technology.”
In the United States, as well as in other
countries, “there are huge workforce deficits
in science and engineering because not
enough girls are going into them,” says
Sevo. “Jobs in [those fields] pay more than
secretarial, so women can have a better
quality of life. With our high divorce rate,
the notion that a woman doesn’t need a
well-paid job is moot. And a better educated
populace means better educated children.”
Another problem that continues to
plague the world’s women is the disparity in
pay. In all developed countries, women continue
to receive less pay than men for the
same work. And when women enter traditionally
male occupations, it appears that
this “feminization” downgrades the prestige
and salaries these fields formerly offered.
In addition to harming individual women
and their families, these conditions negatively
impact national economies as well. As citizens earn more—and thus spend
and save more—the national economy
improves, raising the standard of living for
everyone. Achieving equality for women in
education and the workplace will ultimately
result in a more prosperous, stable, and
peaceful world.
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