Feminist Theories of

Education
Feminist perspectives focus on gender
inequalities in society.

Feminist research has revealed the extent of

male domination and the ways in which male
supremacy has been maintained.

From a feminist viewpoint, one of the main

roles of education has been to maintain
gender inequality.
Gender and
education
From the 1960s onwards, feminist sociologists
highlighted the following gender inequalities
in education.

Gendered language

2 Gendered roles

3 Gender stereotypes
 Gendered language
reflecting wider society, school
textbooks (and teachers) tend to
use gendered language – ‘he’,
‘him’, ‘his’, ‘man’ and ‘men’
when referring to a person or
people. This tends to downgrade
women and make them invisible.
 Gendered roles
school textbooks have
tended to present males and
females in traditional gender
roles – for example, women
as mothers and housewives.
This is particularly evident in
reading schemes from the
1960s and 1970s.
 
Gender stereotypes
 reading schemes have also tended to present traditional
gender stereotypes. For example an analysis of six reading
schemes from the 1960s and 1970s found that:
 
 boys are presented as more adventurous than girls
 
 as physically stronger
 
 as having more choices
 
 girls are presented as more caring than boys
 
 as more interested in domestic matters
 
 as followers rather than leaders
Women in the
curriculum
– in terms of what’s taught in
schools – the curriculum –
women tend to be missing, in
the background, or in second
place. Feminists often argue
that women have been ‘hidden
from history’ – history has been
the subject of men -
http://womenshistory.about.com
/library/bio/blbio_list.htm
 Subject choice
traditionally, female students
have tended to avoid maths,
science and technology.
Certain subjects were often
seen as ‘boys’ subjects’ and
‘girls’ subjects. Often girls
subjects had lower status and
lower market value.
Discrimination
– there is evidence of discrimination against girls
in education simply because of their gender. For
example, when the 11-plus exam was introduced
in the 1940s, the pass mark was set lower for
boys than for girls to make certain there roughly
equal numbers of boys and girl sin grammar
schools. In other words girls were artificially
‘failed’ so boys could ‘succeed’.
Further and higher education – traditionally the
number of female students going on to further
and higher education has been lower than for
boys. There is evidence that teachers often gave
boys more encouragement than girls to go to
university (Stanworth, 1983).
Feminist perspectives –
an evaluation
Feminist perspectives have been valuable for
exposing gender inequality in education. Partly as
a result of sociological research, a lot has changed
– for example, much of the sexism in reading
schemes has now disappeared.
 
Today, women have overtaken men on most
measures of educational attainment. Their grades
at GCSE and A level are significantly higher than
those of male students. And more women than
men are going on to higher education. The
concern now is the underachievement of boys
rather than discrimination against girls.