"What about the boys!": Presumptive equality, and the obfuscation of concerns about theory, research, policy, resources and curriculum in the education of girls and boys Vistoria Foster University of Western Sydney Nepean This paper discusses the notion of presumptive equality, as the discursive context underpinning recent discussions of the education of boys in N.S.W. Three different but interrelated aspects of presumptive equality are identified, and their implications for social justice issues in education are raised. They are first, the presumption that equality for women and girls has been achieved; second, the presumption that men and women are equal in the sense of being equivalent, symmetrical populations, having different but equal problems; and third, the presumption that men and boys are equally disadvantaged in society and schooling as women and girls. The presumption that equality for women has been achieved It is widely believed that women now have equality with men in society, that past inequalities have been corrected, and indeed, that things have gone too far the other way, and now it is men's turn for an equal share of the social justice cake. This view is expressed by some young women who believe that the goals of feminism are firmly established in their own lives, that the barriers to women's equality (whatever they were) have fallen away and that women can now do anything they wish. Despite the rhetoric of equality, an extensive review of research in a number of professions and occupations (Foster, 1994b) reveals that women have not made significant advances towards equality in the public sphere at all, and may have gone backwards in some fields (Daniel, 1993; Bacchi, 1993; Still, Guerin and Chia, 1992). In the domestic sphere, the Australian government report Half Way to Equal (1992:45) and Bittman (1991) conclude that unpaid work continues to fall disproportionately to women regardless of wage rates, education or husband's income. A detailed study by Korosi, Parkinson, Rimmer and Rimmer entitled ÔRising Inequality?Õ (1993) revealed some startling gender differences in income for young Australians. Although the degree of gender-based occupational segregation decreased from 1988 to 1993, the pay gap between young men and women has actually widened, especially among the young rich, where the gender difference is marked. The authors conclude (1993:22): The desegregation of work which did occur did not appear to help the young women to achieve economic equality. This is striking since from the regressions it can be concluded that the widening pay gap had little to do with family formation, career breaks, experience, working hours or student status. The authors report these findings as "puzzling and unexpected" since it has long been held that occupational segregation is one of the keys to women's inequality and indeed, a strong priority of girls' education policy in Australia has been encouraging girls into 'non-traditional' subjects and occupations. The authors suggest that there are at least two reasons for these findings. The first relates to the nature of discrimination on the job, whereby in business, for example, young men are favoured by (often informal) employment practices, whereas young women are often held back by the same kinds of practices. This phenomenon is consistent with WilliamsÕ (1989) research on the differential treatment of men and women in non-traditional occupations. RimmerÕs second reason relates to the nature of the sexual division of labour, and the fact that both young men and women observe their mothers doing a disproportionate amount of domestic work. It is clear from government reports and research studies alike that surprisingly, gender is as much a determinant of economic, political and social inequality for women as it was a decade ago. In terms of schooling, in NSW at least, during 1993 and 1994 the view that girls have attained educational equality with boys, and even overtaken them, began to be pervasive. The purpose of this paper is to examine the origins of that view and to evaluate its veracity. Almost the sole criterion for evaluating the success of equality programs in girlsÕ education has been girlsÕ greater participation and achievement in previously male-dominated subjects, such as maths and science. As I have argued previously (Foster, 1992a) this notion of equality sees girls as lacking in relation to the norms of a masculine educational paradigm whose epistemological and curricular underpinnings have so far not been contested (Foster, 1989, 1992a,b; Yates, 1993). During 1993 a strong perception developed in the media, and broadly in the school education community, that equality had been achieved. For example, the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article (19 July 1993) entitled ÔGirls to the fore in HSC mathsÕ and another entitled ÔJumping the gender gapÕ (21 July 1993). The latter article stated, erroneously, ÔWhen it comes to choosing school subjects, boys and girls are no longer divided into separate campsÕ and concluded, ÔEquality of opportunity is finally reaching NSW classroomsÕ. Because education policies have focused almost exclusively on girlsÕ participation in maths and science, little if any attention is directed towards the persisting, extreme polarisation by sex between female-dominated subjects such as Textiles and Design, Home Science and Society and Culture, and male-dominated subjects such as Physics, Engineering Science and Industrial Technology. The following statistics from the 1993 NSW Higher School Certificate examinations are enlightening. Course nameScaled meansNumbers of students Agriculture 2 UnitM30.4M1,381 F32.0F704 Agriculture 3 UnitM33.3M305 F34.4F208 ChemistryM30.3M6,982 F29.6F5,802 Computing StudiesM30.4M5,916 F29.6F4,652 Economics 2 UnitM31.3M7,350 F32.3F6,118 Economics 3 UnitM34.3M2,444 F35.8F2,059 Electronics TechnologyM30.5M111 F33.3F3 Engineering ScienceM31.0M2,787 2 UnitF30.9F172 Engineering ScienceM34.7M570 3 UnitF33.6F48 GeologyM28.7M298 F32.0F189 Industrial TechnologyM30.0M4,990 F30.5F287 Mathematics 2 UnitM33.1M14,947 F33.2F15,316 Mathematics 3 UnitM41.7M7,518 F42.1F5,722 Mathematics 4 UnitM43.8M2,568 F43.6F1,470 PhysicsM30.0M8,084 F30.0F3,021 Rural TechnologyM29.1M72 FÑFÑ Science 3 UnitM29.2M130 F30.7F164 Science 4 UnitM35.9M377 F36.5F362 Sheep HusbandaryM29.5M33 and Wool TechnologyF38.7F1 Table 1:1993 NSW Higher School Certificate scaled examination means by sex Source: New South Wales Board of Studies These statistics show that girls are now achieving means that are either equal to, or higher than, those of boys. They also show, however, that a large disparity continues to exist between the participation rates of boys and girls in these subjects. There has been little change in girls' participation in subjects like physics and industrial technology which have remained impervious to change (Teese, 1994:20). The perception that girls are now outperforming boys at school, particularly in the prestigious male-dominated areas of maths and science requires close scrutiny. MacCann (1993:21) conducted a detailed analysis by sex of the 1992 New South Wales Higher School Certificate results. This analysis showed that girls outperform boys in the five Key Learning Areas of English; Human Society and its Environment; Languages other than English; Creative Arts; and Personal Development, Health and Physical Education. Boys outperform girls slightly in the Key Learning Area of Mathematics, and in Physics, Chemistry, Geology and 4-unit Science. Boys also perform better in Engineering Science and Industrial Technology, where girls are only 7 per cent and 6 per cent of students respectively. While both girlsÕ participation and performance in maths and science-related subjects have improved, it could not be said that they are outperforming boys in these areas. MacCann (1993:22) makes a further very important point which has received no attention. It is that the courses in which males tend to specialise are more highly intercorrelated than the courses in which females tend to specialise. An example is that even the intercorrelation between two different courses such as Physics and Chemistry is higher than that between two English papers or two Modern History papers. This is not an effect of scaling procedures, but stems from the nature of the courses themselves. For example, MathsÐScience courses intercorrelate more highly partly because mathematicalÐspatial abilities are important components in each of the courses. The result is that a student who finishes near the top of one course will tend to finish near the top of other courses. This effect is clearly advantageous to boys. It explains why it is that although girlsÕ median Tertiary Entrance Score is 15 marks higher than boysÕ, boysÕ TES is nevertheless higher than girlsÕ TES at the highest levels of 400 to 500 (MacCann,1993:9). This effect raises the vital issue of the epistemological bases of the curriculum; it is an issue that demands attention. Similarly, scant attention has been paid to the finding that in NSW the average Tertiary Entrance Score of girls in single-sex non-selective high schools is higher than that of girls in similar coeducational non-selective high schools (Ministry of Education and Youth Affairs, 1993). This suggests that it is girls, not boys, who experience the adverse effects of the climate of coeducational schools. Girls have been steadily increasing their representation in the top 1000 students over the past five years. Girls are now 48 per cent of top students, but 52 per cent of the total candidates. Girls topped 103 subjects in the 1993 HSC, compared with 51 subjects topped by males (MacCann, 1993). Again, it must be pointed out that boys continue to dominate at the top levels of subjects which have larger post-school rewards in terms of careers, financial rewards and status. Conversely, there has been little movement of boys into subjects concerned with domestic and intimate life, relationships and the care of others. An important aspect of the widespread misinterpretation of achievement data is that girls are viewed as an amorphous, homogeneous population, assumed to have benefited uniformly from policy strategies. There is little questioning of who the girls are who are outperforming boys, and of the still vast differences between the schooling experiences of girls from different socioeconomic backgrounds (Graetz, 1991; Teese, 1994), of different ethnic and racial origins, and of Aboriginal girls. Teese (1994) investigates the relationship between gender and social class, in terms of the benefits or ÔyieldÕ derived from schooling. Teese (1994:20) concludes from his study of the hierarchical dimensions of ÔprofitÕ and ÔmalenessÕ that Ômost of the male groups occupy the Ôhigh yieldÕ quadrant and most of the females occupy the Ôlow yieldÕ quadrantÕ. Girls are all located in the Ôlow yieldÕ sector, except for those of high socioeconomic status, and boys all within the Ôhigh yieldÕ sector, in order of occupational background. In relation to mathematics in particular, Teese (1994:15) states that equally striking is the fact that in no case do girlsÕ enrolment rates in maths reach the threshold represented by the lowest male rate, that is, as recorded by males from unskilled and semi-skilled backgrounds. Across the extremes of gender and occupational status, upper middle-class males were more than twice as likely to study maths as lower working-class females. Teese characterises the curriculum as continuing to be organised around the 'career trajectories of males'. Graetz (1991:3) concludes similarly that: Although net gender differences in basic schooling have declined substantially, some differences in higher education remain largely undiminished ... womenÕs attainments are more constrained by social origins and less enhanced by ability. Both structural factors, such as social background, and cultural factors, such as gender-based stereotypes and expectations, may still shape and constrain womenÕs educational achievements. Indeed, the August 1993 issue of The Gen carried an article on this subject entitled, ÔBut the girls are doing brilliantly!Õ which stated: But we have come to realise that participation and performance in maths and science does not, by any means, provide girls with a passport to career success, nor does it automatically result in better-paying jobs or increased workforce participation for women. GirlsÕ outcomes in maths and science are only a very small part of a much larger problem. The second discursive theme is that of men and women as equivalent and symmetrical populations. Equality as equivalence and symmetry Much recent commentary on gender relations in schooling and society is theoretically impoverished, treating males and females, boys and girls, as if they were complementary, symmetrical populations (for example, Fletcher, 1994). In a return to explanations derived from obsolete sex role theory (Connell, 1994b), the word ÔstereotypingÕ is used a great deal, and it is assumed that while girls have one lot of problems (which have largely been ameliorated), boys have another complementary lot. There has been a significant shift by advocates of special resourcing for boys' education from the theoretical position which sees gender relations in schooling as turning on differential and unequal power relations between men and women, for example, that of The National Action Plan for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools 1993-97. For instance, the Chairman (sic) of the Draft Report on the Inquiry into Boys' Education 1994 states (page 1): I am convinced that the problems of boys are real and that they demand system-wide solutions. They are parallel to - but not the same as - the problems of girls. They can be attributed to a similar cause. The solutions, therefore can run alongside the solutions for problems experienced by girls. The cause is identified (p.20) as 'restrictive stereotypes' which 'stifle individuals'. Although the Draft notes (p.19) that "the power structures of society are 'masculine' in their nature", the importance of this emphasis and its implications for considerations of gender equity in education are entirely underplayed. This discursive context avoids altogether any challenge to the fundamental asymmetry of gender relations in society and in schooling. The preference is rather to view men's place in gender relations as roughly equivalent to women's place in gender relations, and of the same order of oppression. But as Connell (1994c:4) points out Men's dominant position in the gender order has a material pay-off, and the discussions of masculinity have constantly under-estimated how big it is. Connell calls this pay-off the 'patriarchal dividend' which, he notes, is increasing rather than decreasing. On the model of gender as equivalence, it follows easily that the ÔsuccessesÕ of girlsÕ strategies can easily be replicated with boys. If the correct measures are taken, gender inequity will be overcome and the sexes will be "the same". In a simple and straightforward vein, the draft report recommends (p.9): boys need help. The way forward is to release boys from the educational and social constraints of narrow gender stereotypes This, of course, does not follow. Missing here is any acknowledgment of the unequal relations of power and privilege enjoyed by men and boys in Australian society, and their material investment in patriarchy. These are relations which render very different the schooling experiences of boys and girls. Missing also are important concepts such as Ôhegemonic masculinityÕ (Connell, 1987:184), and its implications for the climate of the school as a learning environment, and for the curriculum. This atheoretical obfuscation of the asymmetry of gender relations has vast implications for the ways in which social justice issues in relation to gender and education are coming to be conceptualised, and the ways in which policy is being framed (Foster, 1994a). Following from the equivalence model is the proposition that boys are equally, and now possibly more, disadvantaged than girls. This is a seductive and emotive line which has appealed to some parents, mostly mothers, who are genuinely concerned about their sons' development. Equal disadvantage, equal victims Once the notion of gender asymmetry has been dispensed with, the equal disadvantage of men can be easily asserted. Despite boys' greater post-school rewards as a population and the higher resourcing of boys' education extensively documented in a succession of national and state reports and in the gender and education literature, it is now held that schooling disadvantages boys. Warren Johnson, the Executive Officer of the Federation of P&C Associations writes in Education It is demonstrable that many boys are in states of educational, social and emotional distress and they are in genuine need of targeted resources. Johnson lists as evidence the already disproportionate resources going to boys, such as counselling and special placements, special classes for emotional and behaviour disturbance, intensive remedial classes. At present, several Sydney regions estimate that 90-95% of these resources go to boys. The construction of boys' advantage in education as disadvantage is a rhetorical twist which increasingly has been used to great effect. Much of this rhetoric originated with health workers and psychologists who argued spuriously that inadequacies in boys' schooling were the cause of what has become a familiar catalogue of problems: head injuries, suicides, male violence and so on. These arguments were applied to education. The Draft Report asserts (p.15) that "many boys have low self-esteem", although there is no research or other evidence to support this claim. This rhetorical process is described by Connell (1994a:2) thus: In places where feminist work has created women's studies programs or affirmative action programs (e.g. encouraging girls into science and mathematics), the idea that it is "boys' turn" for attention and resources is easily spread. This can be reinforced by calling attention to ways in which boys are less successful in schooling than girls: for instance in regard to reading and in higher dropout rates. Combined with statistics about men's earlier death, men's greater rates of injury by violence etc., this can be worked up into a claim that men are the truly disadvantaged group. These claims have been stated and restated by a handful of very vocal individuals, who have been content to argue their case through the newspapers, rather than in academic or other forums. This has successfully created a climate in which the notion of male disadvantage can be stretched to extremes. For example, Dr Michael Brown who teaches at a prestigious boys' independent school, argues in the journal, Gifted, (1994) that we are creating a new "underclass": gifted males! He urges that advocacy is needed for the white, male, Caucasian, non-migrant child. What follows is a brief discussion of some of the reasons why unsubstantiated claims have, for the present, found their way into draft education policy. How has presumptive equality been admitted as a basis for policy? There are several complex reasons which have all contributed to the present context. The first concerns the timing of calls for policies on behalf of boys. These demands coincided with, and are a strong reaction against, the misperception that girls are now outperforming boys in the prestigious male-dominated areas of maths and science. It is amazing to see the unpreparedness to tolerate girls' equal achievement in boys' terrain which surfaced at the particular moment when it seemed that this might be the case. One wonders if there would have been concerns expressed about boys' educational needs at all if girls had been reported to be beating boys in home economics or child care studies, or even in the social sciences. Certainly, prior to this moment, in the twenty years since Girls, School and Society , despite discussions by feminists of enculturated masculinity and its effects on males, boys' education was not identified as a problem, except by the concerned teachers of boys, often women. "What about the boys!" reached a crescendo at a particular moment when the construction of girls in relation to boys changed dramatically. Previously, girls had been cast in a deficit framework, as lacking in relation to boys' aptitudes, skills and achievements. Now suddenly girls were seen to be beating boys, overtaking them on their own turf. It is regrettable that this possibility was not widely welcomed as good for girls on social justice grounds, and also good for boys on humanitarian and ethical grounds. Gender relations and their outcomes, such as widespread sexual harassment of girls in schools, oppress girls. However, they also demean boys' humanity. But as Connell (1994a:2) points out, "persuading boys, male teachers and school administrators to follow feminist principles means asking them to act against their own interest as men". It is for this reason that there has been a rush to stop girls' perceived advances and to shore up and reinstate male privilege. The new benefits to males are being cast as resocialisation: releasing "boys from the educational and social constraints of narrow gender stereotypes". The second reason for the adoption of presumptive equality as policy concerns the particular context which makes this notion possible. Connell (1994c:2) describes this as "masculinity therapy": the most conspicuous form of gender politics among men at present. It represents a dramatic shift towards the political right, and mostly ignores the social context and economic inequality, and totally ignores the international context, to focus on the emotional problems of men. It is, at bottom, a psychological 'recovery' movement, addressed to the pain that heterosexual men feel and their uncertainties about gender. (They) are mostly white, middle class, and often middle aged. They feel they are in trouble, and they feel they are unfairly blamed by feminists. Some of their theorists, in fact, claim that men are more disadvantaged than women, and all of them say it is men's turn for the attention feminism has been getting for the problems of women. The practical effect is to turn heterosexual men inward to their own troubles, and withdraw energy from social change. It offers absolution from the guilt that feminism still arouses among men, and a kind of "separate sphere" in which men can pursue their own project of change. I have quoted Connell at length on this point because of the extent to which what Connell calls the "mythopoetic men's movement" and masculinity therapy are the frameworks currently driving proposed interventions in boys' education. My concern with them as policy frameworks is with their atheoretical and apolitical bases. Allied to this second reason is the third concerning male primacy as normative, and the subjective and objective components of masculinity as a hegemonic world view, which is both internalised and taken-for-granted. This explains why, despite a wealth of documented evidence of girls' subordinate status to that of boys in education and its outcomes, the interests of males nevertheless continue to be of prior importance to those of females. The experience of male students is valorised over that of female students, and male experience is reinforced as hegemonic through the curriculum and practices of schooling. Practical examples are the priority given to boys' learning problems, and the failure to date to address comprehensively the problem of sex-based harassment of girls as an endemic feature of schools, and its effects on girls' learning (Australian Education Council, 1992). The fourth reason is that to date policies have been directed towards making girls fit into male norms (Foster, 1992a), to the exclusion of other important curriculum changes. These include asking ethical questions about what is desirable in schools as learning environments (Foster,1987) and attempting the complex task of addressing the public-private division in the curriculum and its consequences for post-school outcomes for both boys and girls (Foster, 1992b). In addition, there is the concept of the "lived curiculum" of schooling (Foster, 1994b). For it seems that girls and boys are engaged in rather different projects at school -- that they live ostensibly the same curriculum in somewhat differing ways. Many boys see school primarily as the avenue to paid work, whatever that may be. The present overwhelming emphasis on work-related competencies (where the nature of "work" is not interrogated) is not helping to broaden that view. 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Presumptive equality, and the obfuscation of concerns about theory, research, policy, resources and curriculum in the education of girls and boys Victoria Foster Department of Educational Studies University of Western Sydney - Nepean Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference. Newcastle University. November 1994.