“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity” – Cicero
Trying to mould a single article on gender without any historical background or context is like trying to master chess without knowing the rules. So much of the research is chained to social and political mores from the past. In fact, the argument could be made that the subjugation of women has been the norm in western civilization since the Ancient Greeks denied women the right to vote. However, even at the dawn of the 20th Century, over two thousand years after the fall of the Greek empire, the role of women had seen little change. Women still did not have the right to vote, and were deemed to be less intelligent than men. This was proven by pseudo-scientific studies like the Variability Hypothesis, which stated, “While women were all very much the same, men showed a much greater range of both physical and mental abilities” (Katharine S. Milar, 2012). The greater variability of men showed, according to Johann Meckel, and, to a lesser extent Charles Darwin, that they were more intelligent. The Variability Hypothesis is one of many similar theories that existed around the dawn of the 20th Century that proved the superiority of men.
It wasn’t until the 1960s and liberation of the feminist movement that western academia started to challenge the idea of the inherent, genetic, mental inferiority of women. Writing in 1966, Eleanor E. MacCoby, is one of the first authors to suggest that female performance in school may have a societal, rather than genetic component, “The evidence is not clear whether boys or girls have a higher correlation between ability (as measured by I.Q. tests) and achievement…. [Girls] wish to conform to their parents’ and teachers’ expectations of good academic performance, but fear that high academic achievement will make them unpopular with boys” (1966). MacCoby is one of the first of a group of scholars to draw a connection between academic performance and something other than genetic differences. Prior to the 1960s the only explanation that was given was that girls, while getting an early intellectual head-start on the boys, would fall behind as boys matured, caught up, and then superseded them. MacCoby also wrote that girls, especially in subject like Math, did not do well because there was no need for it in there societally pre-determined role as housewife:
Perhaps the explanation for the differences we have noted is very simple: members of each sex are encouraged in, and become interested in and proficient at, the kinds of tasks that are most relevant to the roles they fill currently or are expected to fill in the future. According to this view, boys forge ahead in math because they and their parents and teachers know they may become engineers or scientists; on the other hand, girls know that they are unlikely to need math in the occupations they will take up when they leave school” (MacCoby, 1966).
Eleven years later, in 1977, Elizabeth Fennema and Julia Sherman still laboured to disprove the contemporary belief that women were not as intellectually capable as men, “It has been an accepted belief that males achieve better in mathematics than females (Glennon & Callahan, 1968; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Sometimes this difference is attributed to underlying ability and other times it is attributed to a social climate that does not encourage girls to study mathematics” (1977). Fennema and Sherman tried to determine what the gender difference would be if other variables, such as attitude, Socio-economic status (SES), and gender stereotypes were controlled. The authors used their own metric, the Fennema-Sherman Aptitude Scales, which, consequently is used in several other articles I came across for my literature review, to rate gender difference. Their results were conclusive, “The data do not support either the expectations that males are invariably superior in mathematics achievement and spatial visualization or the idea that differences between the sexes increase with age and/or mathematics difficulty” (Fennema & Sherman, 1977). The authors also concluded, like MacCoby, that it is attitudinal, not intellectual, difference that affects female performance.
Furthermore, the attitudinal difference is likely to be derived from social pressure against women, “Since the study of mathematics appears not to be sex-neutral, attitudes toward mathematics may reflect cultural proscriptions and prescriptions. Thus the attitudes measured probably reflect more of this socio-cultural influence on the student than any incorrigible personal characteristics” (Fennema & Sherman, 1977).
Pierre Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital theory could be used to partially explain the attitudinal difficulties women face in the education system. He believed that individuals gained cultural capital by being exposed to cultural edifices like the library, museum, plays and so on. Individuals then used this knowledge to their advantage in school and, by extension, society in general, “Cultural capital refers to symbolic goods existing in the mode of linguistic and cultural competence, and largely institutionalized in the form of educational credentials, that agents use to maintain their prestige” (Kebede, 2012).
Usually, Bourdieu’s theory is used to explain why people of lower SES backgrounds achieve relatively low academic success compared to individuals who exist within higher SES. However, I believe that cultural capital can also work against the female gender. If cultural capital is, “an “accumulated labor,” which can be appropriated in the form of “social energy” that acts both as a force and as a principle permeating the social world” (Encyclopedia of Identity, 2012), then it could act as a force of culture to continue to deny individuals of a lower cultural class, i.e. women. Individuals choosing not to pursue an academic role demonstrate this lack of cultural capital, thereby re-enforcing the idea that academia is not for women. It is a cyclical denigration for the sole purpose of maintaining cultural standards:
In its institutionalized mode, cultural capital exists in the form of mostly educational credentials. In addition to augmenting the added value of cultural capital and guaranteeing its worth, the institutionalization of cultural capital minimizes the problem of cultural capital being constantly questioned. By establishing a qualitative difference between those who are licensed and those who are not, even if they possess the talent, cultural capital is made to acquire an autonomous position, thereby guaranteeing the monetary value of credentials (Kebede, 2012).
Today, in Canada, we have stalled at the level of recognition. We know that, while university entrance rates for women have equalled and even surpassed that of men, women are not choosing mathematics as an occupational field. Perhaps more frustrating is the knowledge that gender, as an area of research, has also stalled. We cannot seem to figure out why, exactly, women don’t like math. Rebecca Coulter believes that too much emphasis is placed on individual teachers, without looking at the system as a whole, “The emphasis on “self-reliance” and rampant individualism threatens any systemic or structural interpretation of gender-equity policies” (1996). Coulter believes that gender-equity, that is, the removal of gender bias from schooling, is being removed from explicit guidelines of conducted. Indeed, BC’s Diversity Framework gives only a cursory definition of gender diversity in reference to the School Act, and does not include any resources, suggestions, or adaptations to help teachers to address issues of gender bias (BC Ministry of Education, 2008). Rebecca Coulter writes that the similarity of educational policy among Canada’s various ministries of Education is due, in large part, to a narrow interpretation of the issue:
Across Canada, the dominant approach to gender-equity policies in education, and even then implemented unevenly and inconsistently, remains the relatively shallow one of sex-role stereotyping first articulated in the 1970s…. Why sex-role socialization theory remains dominant in education can in part be explained by the fact that it is a form of critique easily accommodated within existing state arrangements and liberal notions of equality of opportunity (Coulter, 1996).
Coulter seems to echo Bourdieu’s idea of Cultural Capital, the idea that the feminist movement has remained stagnant is due to the nature of Western cultural ideals. She believes that new research into the systems of education, rather than its curriculum, need to be examined.
iMovie
Challenge