explanations of gender differences in subject choice

Question 1

explanations of gender differences in subject choice

Answer 1

early socialisation and gender domains
gendered subject images
peer pressure
gendered career opportunities
vocational subjects

Question 2

gender domain - browne and ross

Answer 2

children’s beliefs about gender domains are shaped by their early experiences and the expectations of adults

Question 3

murphy and elwood

Answer 3

boys read hobby books and info texts, while girls are more likely to read stories about people
- - - helps explain why boys prefer science subjects and girls prefer subjects such as english

Question 4

murphy

Answer 4

boys and girls pay attention to different details of the same task- helps to explain why girls choose humanities and boys choose science

Question 5

kelly

Answer 5

science is seen as a boys subject:
- science teachers more likely to be men
- examples teachers use and in textbooks often draw on boys interests rather than girls

Question 6

colley

Answer 6

computer science seen as masculine:
- involves working with machines- part of male gender domain
- way it’s taught is off putting to girls. tasks tend to be abstract and teaching styles formal, few opps for group work

Question 7

single sex schooling - leonard

Answer 7

analysis of 13000 individuals.
- girls in girls schools more likely to take maths and science Alevels, while boys in boys schools more likely to take english and languages.
- girls from singlesex schools also more likely to study male dominated subjects at uni

Question 8

peer pressure - paechter

Answer 8

pupils see sport as mainly within the male gender domain, girls who are ‘sporty’ have to cope with an image that contradicts the conventional female stereotype

Question 9

peer pressure - dewar

Answer 9

male students would call girls ‘lesbian’ or ‘butch’ if they appeared to be interested in sport

Question 10

peer pressure - institute of physics

Answer 10

doing sciences in mixed schools is off putting.
peers police one anothers subject choices so that girls and boys adopt an appropriate gender identity, with girls pressured to avoid subjects such as physics

Question 11

gendered career opportunities

Answer 11

• sex typing of occupations affect boys’ and girls’ ideas about what kinds of jobs are possible or acceptable
• also help to explain why vocational courses are much more gender-specific than academic courses, since vocational studies are by definition more closely linked to students’ career plans

Question 12

vocational subjects - fuller

Answer 12

most WC girls have ambitions to go into jobs such as childcare or hair and beauty- reflects their WC habitus and their realistic expectation for ‘people like us’
- these ambitions may arise out of work experience placements which are often gendered and classed e.g Fuller found that placements in feminine WC jobs e.g nursery nursing were overwhelmingly the norm for the girls in her study
- fuller concludes that school was implicitly steering girls towards certain types of jobs- and hence the certain types of vocational course