{"id":643,"date":"2019-04-25T01:21:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T01:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/?p=643"},"modified":"2019-04-26T16:35:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T16:35:12","slug":"gender-achievement-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/2019\/04\/25\/gender-achievement-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Achievement Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 15, 2019, the <\/span>New York Times <\/span><\/i>published an article by Claire Cain Miller titled <\/span>\u201c\u2018It Doesn\u2019t Have To Be This Way.\u2019 Why Some Boys Can Keep Up With Girls in School<\/span><\/a>.\u201d This article makes an argument that boys perform less well in school due to traditional notions of masculinity that disincentivize boys from putting forth the effort required to do well in school. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Miller says that girls, on the other hand, learn to be \u201c<\/span>diligent, cooperative and ambitious,\u201d which sets them up to be successful in school. \u00a0Miller then bring forth evidence that Asian American boys perform better than boys of other races and delay the gender achievement gap until middle school when they begin performing less well than Asian American girls. \u00a0The author points towards cultural practices that are common in Asian American families that value working hard in school in both boys and girls for making this progress to narrow the gender achievement gap.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although this is interesting research, there are some problems with how it is presented: the article makes the boys seem like the victims of a failed education system that has been set up for girls to succeed. \u00a0Despite the fact that boys do generally perform less well in reading intensive subjects, a gap that is<\/span> often<\/span><\/a> referred to as \u201cthe problem with boys\u201d, girls still lag behind boys in academic achievement and future careers in STEM subjects. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 1: Published <\/span>here<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0<\/a>F\u00a0<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Figure 2: Source <\/span>here<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n

Recent research has shown that this is not because girls are innately worse at STEM, but due to other psychosocial factors. \u00a0For example, a recent<\/span> study<\/span><\/a> highlighted that when students were told to write down their values (like family, friends and other things unrelated to the class) at the beginning and in the middle of a physics class, girls\u2019 average score raised from a C to a B compared to a control group (and boys\u2019 scores were unaffected). \u00a0A similar <\/span>study<\/span><\/a> primed girls to think of themselves as a stereotypical man or woman and then perform a test related to spatial ability (a traditional situation where men are stereotypically assumed to be better): women who were told to think of themselves as a stereotypical man actually performed better than men who were told to think of themselves as either a stereotypical man or woman. \u00a0Thus, stereotypes impact women\u2019s ability to perform a task related to STEM achievement just like toxic forms of masculinity affect boys\u2019 school achievement. <\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the fact that the article failed to mention areas where girls are outperformed by boys, it also fails to acknowledge the fact that the traits they listed that make girls more successful in school (diligence, cooperation, etc.) are also entrenched in unproductive forms of normative femininity. \u00a0<\/span>Research<\/span><\/a> has shown that girls learn at a very young age to be quiet and cooperative in the classroom and other areas of life. \u00a0This means that boys take up most of the talking time and receive the majority of the attention in the classroom. Additionally, as Reshma Saujani, founder of non-profit Girls Who Code, argues in her <\/span>TED Talk<\/span><\/a>, \u201cwe\u2019re raising our girls to be perfect and we\u2019re raising our boys to be brave.\u201d Normative femininity requires that girls are the perfect daughters, the perfect friends, and the perfect students.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Research like in Miller’s\u00a0<\/span>New York Times <\/span><\/i>article shows that this is working: girls are performing well in school and going to school longer than boys. \u00a0BUT, what the article is missing is that teaching this perfection is making girls miss out on opportunities. Saujani shares that when students are given an assignment that is too difficult, many girls give up rather than try and be wrong, while boys enjoy the challenge. \u00a0Later in life when applying to jobs, women only apply if they have all of the required qualifications, while men only have an average of three-fifths of the required qualifications. Boys are taught to instead be brave, which means they are more likely to leave school early to start a company or pursue other career paths rather than follow the straight-and-narrow like most girls.\u00a0 This contributes to the fact that more women than men graduate from college, but more men than women run companies. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, while Miller raised interesting questions related to the intersection between gender and racial achievement gaps, she creates an argument that makes it seem like girls\u2019 success is received at the expense of boys\u2019. \u00a0But in reality, society has created a complicated mess of normalized views of masculinity and femininity that set both boys and girls up to fail in some areas of their education. This is an area that needs more attention when discussing the achievement gap.<\/span><\/p>\n

Post by: Kayla Freeman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 15, 2019, the New York Times published an article by Claire Cain Miller titled \u201c\u2018It Doesn\u2019t Have To Be This Way.\u2019 Why Some Boys Can Keep Up With Girls in School.\u201d This article makes an argument that boys perform less well in school due to traditional notions of masculinity that disincentivize boys from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6972,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1048,457067,272],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6972"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":664,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}