critically reflect on the issue of gender discrimination in education

Gender equality through school: providing a safe and inclusive learning environment

Credit: Khumais

Boys and girls must feel welcome in a safe and secure learning environment. Governments, schools, teachers and students all have a part to play in ensuring that schools are free of violence and discrimination and provide a gender-sensitive, good-quality education (Figure 16). To achieve this, governments can develop nondiscriminatory curricula, facilitate teacher education and make sure sanitation facilities are adequate. Schools are responsible for addressing school-related violence and providing comprehensive health education. Teachers should follow professional norms regarding appropriate disciplinary practices and provide unbiased instruction. And students must behave in a non-violent, inclusive way.

FIGURE 16: Who is responsible for what in ensuring gender equality through school

NATIONAL AND SCHOOL POLICIES SHOULD TARGET SCHOOL-RELATED VIOLENCE

School-related violence is a pervasive issue in some countries. Violence can be physical, psychological or sexual; it can occur on school grounds, in transit or in cyberspace; and it may include bullying, corporal punishment, verbal and emotional abuse, intimidation, sexual harassment and assault, gang activity and the presence of weapons among students. It is often perpetrated as a result of gender norms and stereotypes and enforced by unequal power dynamics. It was estimated that, globally, approximately 246 million girls and boys experienced some form of school-related violence in 2014 (UNGEI, 2017).

While the vast majority of teachers are caring professionals who put the best interest of their students first, some abuse their position of power. In West and Central African countries, sexual abuse and exploitation by teachers, school staff and others in position of authority is common practice (Antonowicz, 2010). Sexual violence happens frequently in many schools in South Africa but crimes are rarely investigated and prosecution rates are low (HRW, 2016). In the United Republic of Tanzania, over half of girls and boys who had experienced physical abuse identified a teacher as an abuser (HakiElimu, 2017). In Samoa, 41% of children surveyed in 2013 indicated that they had experienced violence at the hands of their teacher (Office of the Ombudsman and NHRI Samoa, 2015).

Some countries, including Chile, Fiji, Finland, Peru, the Republic of Korea and Sweden, have passed legislation on violence in educational institutions (UNESCO, 2015c, 2017b). The 2013 Anti-Bullying Act in the Philippines requires all schools to adopt policies to prevent and address acts of bullying. It explicitly refers to gender-based bullying, which is described as any act that humiliates or excludes a person on the basis of perceived or actual sexual orientation and gender identity. Yet in the following year just 38% of schools had adopted child protection or anti-bullying policies. The low rate highlighted a lack of communication and a weak monitoring framework.

The Department of Education responded by issuing a memorandum to clarify submission requirements and is working to build implementation capacity (UNESCO, 2015c). Teacher education and codes of conduct can help change teacher attitudes and behaviours. In South Sudan, the UNICEF Communities Care programme engaged with teachers to challenge norms that enable sexual violence and brought about some shifts in teacher attitudes and behaviours (UNGEI, 2017). The Doorways programme in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi trained upper primary and lower secondary school teachers on children’s rights and responsibilities, alternative teaching practices, basic counselling and listening skills, awareness of sexual harassment at school and teacher code of conduct (DevTech Systems, 2008; Queen et al., 2015). The Communication for Change project trained teachers in the Democratic Republic of Congo to act as first responders when they witnessed school-related gender-based violence. The share of participating teachers who were aware of how to prevent gender-based violence in school increased from 56% to 95% after the intervention (C-Change, 2013). Teacher codes of conduct are generally written by teacher unions to guide their members. They promote professional accountability by giving peers a way to hold each other to account for adhering to norms (Poisson, 2009). A recent survey by Education International found that teacher codes of conduct were present in 26 of 50 countries surveyed (EI, 2017). A separate review of 24 countries found that over half of teachers believed the code of conduct had a very significant impact in reducing misconduct (McKelvie-Sebileau, 2011).

Teacher codes of conduct can be effective in reducing school-related gender-based violence if they explicitly refer to violence and abuse and include clear breach reporting and enforcement protocols. Mongolia’s Teachers Code of Ethics for General Education Schools and Kindergartens contains a section on teacher ethical norms, which specifies that teachers should protect student’s health and well-being, including from sexual abuse, and should ensure equal participation without discrimination, including on the basis of sex (Steiner-Khamsi and Batjargal, 2017). Kenya has a range of penalties for breach of professional conduct, including suspension and interdiction. Teachers convicted of sexual offences against students are deregistered (Kenya Teachers Service Commission, 2013). However, even when they exist, these codes are not always successfully disseminated.

The implementation of Ethiopia’s Code of Conduct on Prevention of School-Related Gender-Based Violence in Schools has been patchy. Some school staff reportedly lacked commitment to or a sense of ownership of the code (Parkes et al., 2017). Students are also responsible for ensuring their behaviour does not impinge on others’ right to education (UNICEF and UNESCO, 2007). Schools are increasingly implementing prevention-oriented models to teach students acceptable strategies for interacting with their peers (Horner et al., 2010). These models set clear guidelines for students and define consistent instruction, record-keeping and follow-up procedures for teachers and other adults, such as administrative and custodial staff, playground supervisors, cafeteria workers and parent and community volunteers (Lewis et al., 2014).

Students are more likely to show positive social behaviours and reduce negative behaviours after the implementation of such programmes (Durlak et al., 2011). There is also increasing evidence linking improved social skills to academic achievement (Horner et al., 2010). While these codes of conduct are mostly used in Europe and North America (Sklad et al., 2012), Asian countries such as Singapore have also begun adopting them (Durlak et al., 2011).

GENDER-SENSITIVE FACILITIES CAN INCREASE THE TIME GIRLS SPEND IN SCHOOL

Inadequate sanitation facilities for girls during menstruation can have a negative effect on school attendance. Among 145 countries with data, primary school access to basic sanitation facilities was below 50% in 28 countries, 17 of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Only limited data are available on whether girls have separate facilities, let alone whether the facilities are functional or well maintained. In only 9 of 44 countries did more than 75% of primary schools have single-sex facilities; in Benin and Comoros, under 5% of schools had single-sex facilities. An estimated one in ten African girls miss school during menstruation (HRW, 2016).

Regulations requiring separate toilet facilities for boys and girls can help. Yet analysis of regulations in 71 education systems by the GEM Report team shows that only 61% required sex-separate facilities for public schools and 66% for private schools (UNESCO, 2017a). Regulations alone are not sufficient to ensure facilities are available. Although separate sanitation facilities are mandated by regulations in Bangladesh, a survey found that in 2014 only 12% of girls reported access to female-only toilets with water and soap available. Combined with a lack of waste bins, the poor facilities contributed to girls missing school during menstruation. Two in five girls were absent during menstruation for an average of three days during each cycle (Alam et al., 2014). Girls in Haiti have reported having to go home to change the materials they use to manage their menstruation, resulting in lost instructional time (HRW, 2016).

School inspections play a key role in ensuring that schools adhere to regulations. However, inspections do not always take gender issues into account. In Sweden, the school inspectorate takes gender equality into consideration (Heikkilä, 2016) and in the United Kingdom inspectors evaluate equal opportunities in the classroom and whether the school provides an inclusive environment for boys and girls (Rogers, 2014). By contrast, gender issues are rarely included in inspections in Bangladesh, with sex-separate sanitation facilities only occasionally observed (Chatterley et al., 2014). In any case, inspectorates are severely constrained by human resource shortages in many poor countries. For instance, in Mvomero district, United Republic of Tanzania, although 80% of schools are supposed to be inspected annually, only one in five schools were inspected in 2013 (Holvoet, 2015).

GENDER EQUALITY IN EDUCATION REQUIRES UNBIASED CURRICULA AND TEXTBOOKS

To facilitate gender-responsive instruction, curricula and textbooks should be free from gender bias and promote equality in gender relations. How students perceive themselves and how they project their role in society is shaped to some extent by what they experience at school, including by how they are represented in textbooks.

Comprehensive sexuality education

School-based comprehensive sexuality education programmes equip children and young people with empowering knowledge, skills and attitudes. In many contexts, programmes focus almost exclusively on HIV as a motivator to encourage students to delay sexual activity and have fewer sexual partners and less frequent sexual contacts (Fonner et al., 2014). However, international guidelines and standards, along with emerging evidence about factors influencing programme effectiveness, increasingly stress the value of a comprehensive approach centred on gender and human rights (Ketting and Winkelmann, 2013). A review of 22 studies showed that comprehensive sexuality education programmes that addressed gender power relations were five times more likely to be effective in reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy than those that did not (Haberland, 2015).

In 2009, UNESCO and other UN agencies published the revised International Technical Guidance on Sexual Education to provide an evidence-based, age-appropriate set of topics and learning objectives for comprehensive sexuality education programmes for students aged 5 to 18 (UNESCO, 2009). In 2010, the International Planned Parenthood Federation adopted a rights-based approach in its Framework for Comprehensive Sexuality Education, and the WHO Regional Office for Europe produced Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe as a framework for policy-makers and education and health authorities (WHO Regional Office for Europe and BZgA, 2010). Nearly ten years after the original report, UNESCO’s revised guidance expands coverage to both school-based and out-of-school programmes with a strong focus on human rights, gender equality and skills building. The guidance can act as both an advocacy and accountability tool for programme implementers, NGOs, and youth (UNESCO, 2018).

A 2015 review of the status of comprehensive sexuality education in 48 countries found that almost 80% had supportive policies or strategies. Despite this political will, a significant gap remained between policies and implementation (UNESCO, 2015b). In western and central Africa, UNESCO’s Sexuality Education Review and Assessment Tool was used to assess 10 out of 13 national sexuality education programmes. Fewer than half the curricula met global standards for required content for all age groups, with gender and social norms identified as the weakest areas (Herat et al., 2014; UNESCO and UNFPA, 2012).

Recent studies in Ghana and Kenya provided evidence of gaps in content and delivery. The Kenya study covered 78 public and private secondary schools. While 75% of teachers reported teaching all topics of a comprehensive sexuality education programme, only 2% of students reported learning all topics. Only 20% learned about types of contraceptive methods, and even fewer learned how to use and where to get them (Figure 17). In some cases, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information was taught. Almost 60% of teachers incorrectly taught that condoms alone were not effective in pregnancy prevention (Sidze et al., 2017). Moreover, 71% of teachers emphasized abstinence as the best or only method to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and most depicted sex as dangerous or immoral for young people.

FIGURE 17: In Kenya, only one in five students reported learning about contraceptive methods

Barriers to effective implementation of comprehensive programmes include lack of well-trained teachers, poor support of schools, weak regulation and supervision of policy implementation, opposition from religious and conservative groups, and culturally imposed silence about sexuality. In the Ghana study, 77% of teachers reported lacking resources or teaching materials. A smaller share reported conflicts, embarrassment or opposition from the community or students on moral or religious grounds (Awusabo-Asare et al., 2017).

Textbooks increasingly cover gender issues but progress is insufficient

Self-reporting from governments in Cuba, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, Nicaragua, Slovenia and Spain indicates that gender equality is integrated into national school curricula (UN Human Rights Council, 2017). The Ministry of Education, Culture, Science equality as one of the key values in its new core curriculum (Steiner-Khamsi and Batjargal, 2017).

Over the past 50 years, mentions of women and women’s rights in textbooks have increased (Bromley et al., 2016; Nakagawa and Wotipka, 2016). Nevertheless, in many countries women remain under-represented or, when included, are relegated to traditional roles such as housework and childcare (UNESCO, 2016a). Women accounted for only 37% of images in primary and secondary school textbooks in the Islamic Republic of

Iran in 2006–2007 (Paivandi, 2008) and across nine Jordanian secondary school history books only 21% of images were female. From Sweden to the Syrian Arab Republic, despite governments explicitly identifying the importance of gender equality in textbooks, women and men were still routinely portrayed in a stereotypical manner (Bromley et al., 2016).

Both governments and civil society can act to reduce textbook biases. The Human Rights Council has made it clear that ‘states have an obligation to periodically review and revise curricula, textbooks, programmes and teaching methods to ensure that they do not perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes’ (UN Human Rights Council, 2017). Some states include an explicit gender analysis as part of their textbook and review process. In Viet Nam, the National Strategy on Gender Equality for 2011–2020 specifies that textbook content should be reviewed for gender stereotypes (UNESCO, 2016c). In Ghana, the Textbook Development and Distribution Policy for Pre-tertiary Education included gender sensitivity as one of the main criteria for evaluating textbook proposals (Ghana MOE, 2001). By contrast, the Pakistan National Textbook and Learning Materials Policy and Plan of Action does not mention gender as a criterion of textbook review, referring instead to ‘quality of content, presentation, language and specific provincial coverage’ (Pakistan MOE, 2007).

Textbook monitoring by parents and civil society can be effective. In South Africa, a parent’s question posted on Facebook in July 2016 inspired a petition that ultimately led the textbook publisher to amend and issue an apology for content that promoted blaming the victim for sexual assault (Davies, 2016).

TEACHER EDUCATION CAN HELP ADDRESS UNDERLYING GENDER BIASES

Aside from the influence of official curricula and textbooks, teacher practice in the classroom is partly shaped by their assumptions and stereotypes about gender, which in turn affects students’ beliefs and learning. In Australia, female teachers felt particularly responsible for boys’ underachievement relative to male teachers (Hodgetts, 2010). In the United States, anxiety expressed by female mathematics teachers was associated with female students’ belief in the stereotype that boys are better at mathematics (Beilock et al., 2010).

Teacher education can assist teachers to reflect on and overcome their biases. Formal initiatives in teacher education with a focus on gender have taken place in Italy, the Republic of Moldova and Sudan (OHCHR, 2015). In Spain, the University of Oviedo requires teacher candidates to complete a mandatory course on gender and education (Bourn et al., 2017). In Ankara, Turkey preservice teachers that took a semester long course on gender equity in education developed more gender sensitive attitudes (Erden, 2009).

In low and middle income countries, teacher education programmes are often externally funded. The UNESCO Regional Bureau in Bangkok has recently funded a five-year project, Enhancing Girls’ and Women’s Right to Quality Education through Gender Sensitive Policy Making, Teacher Development and Pedagogy, which focuses on training participants from Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan to conduct gender assessments in teacher education (UNESCO, 2016b).

In Karamoja region, Uganda, the UNICEF Gender Socialization in Schools programme trained over 1,000 primary school teachers to enhance their knowledge, attitudes and practices related to gender equality promotion and conflict resolution. The initial training lasted for two days and was followed by two refresher training sessions. A subset of teachers received reinforcing text messages reminding them of examples of good practice. However, while the programme improved teachers’ knowledge and attitudes on gender equality, classroom practices did not become more gender-responsive (American Institutes for Research and UNICEF, 2016; El-Bushra and Smith, 2016).

Nigeria updated its teacher education curriculum in 2012, in part to address gender issues (Unterhalter et al., 2015). While a policy is in place to ensure minimum standards on gender equality, a survey of 4,500 student teachers in 2014 showed that very few had an in-depth understanding of what gender equality in education might mean, while many were hostile to women’s participation in public life and any form of social engagement. Among respondents employed following graduation, teachers reported receiving no professional development on gender, a point echoed by other colleagues at the schools where they taught. Teachers who had the most egalitarian ideas about gender reported themselves the most frustrated of respondents and said that they were unable to put their ideas into practice (Unterhalter et al., 2017).

The examples from Uganda and Nigeria highlight some of the challenges in changing teacher practices. To be effective, teacher education and training need to be continuous to recognize the time it takes for such practices to change. They also need to incorporate other stakeholders to help build a more supportive environment.

Social Policy

Education's Role in Empowering Women and Promoting Gender Inequality: A Critical Review

October 2023
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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: gender equality and women’s empowerment in education.

1 Department of Specific Didactics, Faculty of Education, University of Burgos, Burgos, Spain
2 Department of Educational Sciences, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Editorial on the Research Topic Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Education

Current scholarly literature shows that gender inequalities are still present in the process of curricular decision making and teacher practices. These inequalities are expressed through the selection of educational content, the application of methodological strategies, the selection of teaching resources, interpersonal relationships, specific task assignments, or even seating choices within the classroom. These ongoing gender-related issues drive the need for teachers to receive specific and transversal training in this area. Such trainings should be aimed at revealing gender relations as a type of power relationship for the promotion of social change.

The literature in the field of teacher training indicates that the maintenance of gender stereotypes and biases in teacher discourses and practices reinforces the sex-gender system and, consequently, inequalities. Further research is therefore still needed to study the discourses that emerged from the teaching practices around gender. Moreover, research in this field should encourage critical reflection on teacher training plans and the teaching curriculum itself.

The adoption of coeducational approaches and the promotion of education in and for gender equality entails transforming the traditional teaching curriculum to overcome the androcentric constructive bases of historical, social, and literary knowledge. Such transformation would also motivate the incorporation of “polysemic views” in the understanding and interpretation of social reality. Even today, it is common to recognize in mainstream social communication discourses, such as advertising or audio-visual artistic expressions, clear imagery of unquestionable, allegedly identarian gender cultural patterns. The overcoming or relativization of these patterns should necessarily go through the reexamination of curricular content.

The eradication of gender inequalities requires not only the integration of all the voices that have built social knowledge but also the overcoming of gender stereotypes within the education system. It is thus essential to identify the shortcomings of teachers’ training and encourage gender studies as a requisite for their curricula in order to achieve inclusive, plural, and diverse models for teaching practices.

This Research Topic includes 15 manuscripts, from nine prestigious international academic institutions (Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Finland, Germany, Spain, and Sweden) on important topics related to the inclusion of gender inequalities in teacher training, and the analysis of this concept in the official school curriculum, materials, and teacher practices.

The experiences and socio-cultural constructions of the concept of gender constitute the explanatory core of the research problem addressed in “ The Challenge of Women’s Inclusion for Novel Teachers. Case Study in a Teacher Educator Public University ”. This research analyzes the representations of novice teachers of History and Social Sciences on the presence and absence of women’s historical experience in their teaching practices. The research demonstrates the permanence of positivist and androcentric epistemological approaches in the teaching of History, and highlights the urgency of addressing gender inequalities as one of the most pressing social problems of our contemporaneity. In this vein, “ Classical Sociology Through the Lens of Gendered Experiences ” seeks to promote discussion on the mediating role of gendered experiences in classical sociology’s theories of the move towards modern society. This study evidences the constructive relativity of social knowledge and its consequences for sociological teaching and learning.

From the conception of a socio-constructive nature of sexism, the research “ Intersections Around Ambivalent Sexism: Internalized Homonegativity, Resistance to Heteronormativity and Other Correlates ” explores the levels of internalized sexism and homonegativity, and the resistance to heteronormativity of Spanish psychology students. Its results are consistent with those obtained in the study “ Evaluation of Sexist and Prejudiced Attitudes Toward Homosexuality in Spanish Future Teachers: Analysis of Related Variables ”, focused on the analysis of sexist and prejudiced attitudes toward homosexuality of future Spanish teachers. Both studies show the influence of factors such as political ideology, gender identity and sexual orientation on students’ beliefs and perceptions. They also point out the need to advance in the eradication of discrimination based on sex and sexual diversity in the training of future professionals, and the implementation of intersectional approaches to understand the sexist construct.

The consequences of the invisibility of female referents in education and, therefore, of models on which to build plural and empowered identities, derives from the limitations inherent in traditional gender expectations and attributions. The educational hegemony of these attributions, the basis of the study “ Nine Contradictory Observations About Girls’ and Boys’ Upbringing and Education—The Strength-Based Approach as the Way to Eliminate the Gender Gap ”, continue to limit the potential expectations and talents of girls. Through “nine contradictory observations”, this article directs its proposal towards a “strength-based approach” as a way to eradicate the gender gap. Along these lines, “ Mindfulness and Empathy: Mediating Factors and Gender Differences in a Spanish Sample ” highlights the lack of studies aimed at analyzing the potential moderating role of gender in the development of empathic skills.

The research production around the gender gap and gender-segregated differentiation seems not to have received the desired impact in educational social spaces. From this perspective, on the one hand, the article “ Differentiations in Visibility-Male Advantages and Female Disadvantages in Gender-Segregated Programmes ” starts from the differential articulation of inter- and intra-group visibility, by gender, in students, underrepresented in their programmes. On the other hand, the works “ Distributing Feedback Wisely to Empower Girls in STEM ” and “ Girls in STEM: Is It a Female Role-Model Thing? ” highlight the still distant presence of women in the development of STEM professions, a circumstance originating in the educational context and influenced, therefore, by traditional gender models and by social factors that have an impact on the construction of personal identities, as also evidenced by the work “ What Dominates the Female Class Identification? Evidence From China ”.

These constructed identities are revealed in the underestimation of the self-efficacy of secondary school students regarding their competences in STEM subjects, as shown in the work “ Parent and Teacher Depictions of Gender Gaps in Secondary Student Appraisals of Their Academic Competences ”. Consequently, the analysis of self-efficacy, expectations of results, interest in STEM areas and the intervention in the classrooms of plural female role models are proposed as necessary working spaces to redirect this trend. These results are completed with the analysis of the potential influence of gender stereotypes in biased student evaluations of teaching in “ Gender Stereotypes in Student Evaluations of Teaching ”.

From the area of Brazilian physical education, “ Gender Participation and Preference: A Multiple-Case Study on Teaching Circus at PE in Brazilians Schools ” reports on the elective influence of Primary Education teachers in the assignment of circus physical activities according to gender, extensible to the sports activities of traditional teaching. In order to advance in critical and emancipatory training proposals in gender equality in this area, “ Breaking Cultural ‘Taboos’ About the Body and Gender: Brazilian Students’ Emancipation From a Thematic Perspective of School Physical Education ” stresses the importance of teaching programs oriented to the cultural construction of the differential concept of the body. From this perspective, the work “ REFLECT—A Teacher Training Program to Promote Gender Equality in Schools ” emphasizes the hegemonic role of socializing agents in maintaining the status quo of gender stereotypes in education and in the future professional development of men and women. As a response to the permanence of the sex-gender system, and to the evidence of the influence of teachers’ attitudes and practices in the promotion of truly coeducational educational environments, this program, aimed at future teachers of Secondary Education, aims to contribute, in a sustainable way, to gender equality from the educational spaces of subjective action (such as self-efficacy), and objective action (teaching methods and knowledge).

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

This Research Topic was completed with the main support of the Research Group Recognized in Didactics of History and Social Sciences (DHISO) (cod. 137), directed by Prof. Dr. Delfín Ortega-Sánchez (University of Burgos, Spain). Likewise, it has also been carried out within the framework of the projects Teach and learn to interpret contemporary problems and conflicts. What do social sciences contribute to the formation of a critical global citizenship? (EDU2016-80145-P), financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spanish Government), and Future Education and Democratic Hope. Rethinking Social Studies Education in changing times (PID2019-107383RB-I00), financed by the Ministry of Science, and Innovation (Spanish Government).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Keywords: gender equality, teacher training, gender representation, gender stereotypes, higher education, primary and secondary education, early childhood education

Citation: Ortega-Sánchez D, Sanz de la Cal E, Ibáñez Quintana J and Borghi B (2022) Editorial: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Education. Front. Educ. 7:833977. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.833977

Received: 12 December 2021; Accepted: 10 January 2022; Published: 26 January 2022.

Edited and reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Ortega-Sánchez, Sanz de la Cal, Ibáñez Quintana and Borghi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Delfín Ortega-Sánchez, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

How our education system undermines gender equity

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, and why culture change—not policy—may be the solution, joseph cimpian jc joseph cimpian associate professor of economics and education policy - new york university.

April 23, 2018

There are well-documented achievement and opportunity gaps by income and race/ethnicity. K-12 accountability policies often have a stated goal of reducing or eliminating those gaps, though with questionable effectiveness . Those same accountability policies require reporting academic proficiency by gender, but there are no explicit goals of reducing gender gaps and no “hard accountability” sanctions tied to gender-subgroup performance. We could ask, “Should gender be included more strongly in accountability policies?”

In this post, I’ll explain why I don’t think accountability policy interventions would produce real gender equity in the current system—a system that largely relies on existing state standardized tests of math and English language arts to gauge equity. I’ll argue that although much of the recent research on gender equity from kindergarten through postgraduate education uses math or STEM parity as a measure of equity, the overall picture related to gender equity is of an education system that devalues young women’s contributions and underestimates young women’s intellectual abilities more broadly.

In a sense, math and STEM outcomes simply afford insights into a deeper, more systemic problem. In order to improve access and equity across gender lines from kindergarten through the workforce, we need considerably more social-questioning and self-assessment of biases about women’s abilities.

As soon as girls enter school, they are underestimated

For over a decade now, I have studied gender achievement with my colleague Sarah Lubienski, a professor of math education at Indiana University-Bloomington. In a series of studies using data from both the 1998-99 and 2010-11 kindergarten cohorts of the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we found that no average gender gap in math test scores existed when boys and girls entered kindergarten, but a gap of nearly 0.25 standard deviations developed in favor of the boys by around second or third grade.

For comparison purposes, the growth of the black-white math test score gap was virtually identical to the growth in the gender gap. Unlike levels and growth in race-based gaps, though, which have been largely attributed to a combination of differences in the schools attended by black and white students and to socio-economic differences, boys and girls for the most part attend the same schools and come from families of similar socio-economic status. This suggests that something may be occurring within schools that contributes to an advantage for boys in math.

Exploring deeper, we found that the beliefs that teachers have about student ability might contribute significantly to the gap. When faced with a boy and a girl of the same race and socio-economic status who performed equally well on math tests and whom the teacher rated equally well in behaving and engaging with school, the teacher rated the boy as more mathematically able —an alarming pattern that replicated in a separate data set collected over a decade later .

Another way of thinking of this is that in order for a girl to be rated as mathematically capable as her male classmate, she not only needed to perform as well as him on a psychometrically rigorous external test, but also be seen as working harder than him. Subsequent matching and instrumental variables analyses suggested that teachers’ underrating of girls from kindergarten through third grade accounts for about half of the gender achievement gap growth in math. In other words, if teachers didn’t think their female students were less capable, the gender gap in math might be substantially smaller.

An interaction that Sarah and I had with a teacher drove home the importance and real-world relevance of these results. About five years ago, while Sarah and I were faculty at the University of Illinois, we gathered a small group of elementary teachers together to help us think through these findings and how we could intervene on the notion that girls were innately less capable than boys. One of the teachers pulled a stack of papers out of her tote bag, and spreading them on the conference table, said, “Now, I don’t even understand why you’re looking at girls’ math achievement. These are my students’ standardized test scores, and there are absolutely no gender differences. See, the girls can do just as well as the boys if they work hard enough.” Then, without anyone reacting, it was as if a light bulb went on. She gasped and continued, “Oh my gosh, I just did exactly what you said teachers are doing,” which is attributing girls’ success in math to hard work while attributing boys’ success to innate ability. She concluded, “I see now why you’re studying this.”

Although this teacher did ultimately recognize her gender-based attribution, there are (at least) three important points worth noting. First, her default assumption was that girls needed to work harder in order to achieve comparably to boys in math, and this reflects an all-too-common pattern among elementary school teachers, across at least the past couple decades and in other cultural contexts . Second, it is not obvious how to get teachers to change that default assumption. Third, the evidence that she brought to the table was state standardized test scores, and these types of tests can reveal different (often null or smaller) gender achievement gaps than other measures.

On this last point, state standardized tests consistently show small or no differences between boys and girls in math achievement, which contrasts with somewhat larger gaps on NAEP and PISA , as well as with gaps at the top of the distribution on the ECLS , SAT Mathematics assessment, and the American Mathematics Competition . The reasons for these discrepancies are not entirely clear, but what is clear is that there is no reason to expect that “hardening” the role of gender in accountability policies that use existing state tests and current benchmarks will change the current state of gender gaps. Policymakers might consider implementing test measures similar to those where gaps have been noted and placing more emphasis on gains throughout the achievement distribution. However, I doubt that a more nuanced policy for assessing math gains would address the underlying problem of the year-after-year underestimation of girls’ abilities and various signals and beliefs that buttress boys’ confidence and devalue girls, all of which cumulatively contributes to any measured gaps.

More obstacles await women in higher education and beyond

Looking beyond K-12 education, there is mounting evidence at the college and postgraduate levels that cultural differences between academic disciplines may be driving women away from STEM fields, as well as away from some non-STEM fields (e.g., criminal justice, philosophy, and economics). In fact, although research and policy discussions often dichotomize academic fields and occupations as “STEM” and “non-STEM,” the emerging research on gender discrimination in higher education finds that the factors that drive women away from some fields cut across the STEM/non-STEM divide. Thus, while gender representation disparities between STEM and non-STEM fields may help draw attention to gender representation more broadly, reifying the STEM/non-STEM distinction and focusing on math may be counterproductive to understanding the underlying reasons for gender representation gaps across academic disciplines.

In a recent study , my colleagues and I examined how perceptions on college majors relate to who is entering those majors. We found that the dominant factor predicting the gender of college-major entrants is the degree of perceived discrimination against women. To reach this conclusion, we used two sources of data. First, we created and administered surveys to gather perceptions on how much math is required for a major, how much science is required, how creative a field is, how lucrative careers are in a field, how helpful the field is to society, and how difficult it is for a woman to succeed in the field. After creating factor scales on each of the six dimensions for each major, we mapped those ratings onto the second data source, the Education Longitudinal Study, which contains several prior achievement, demographic, and attitudinal measures on which we matched young men and women attending four-year colleges.

Among this nationally representative sample, we found that the degree to which a field was perceived to be math- or science-intensive had very little relation to student gender. However, fields that were perceived to discriminate against women were strongly predictive of the gender of the students in the field, whether or not we accounted for the other five traits of the college majors. In short, women are less likely to enter fields where they expect to encounter discrimination.

And what happens if a woman perseveres in obtaining a college degree in a field where she encounters discrimination and underestimation and wants to pursue a postgraduate degree in that field, and maybe eventually work in academia? The literature suggests additional obstacles await her. These obstacles may take the form of those in the field thinking she’s not brilliant like her male peers in graduate school, having her looks discussed on online job boards when she’s job-hunting, performing more service work if she becomes university faculty, and getting less credit for co-authored publications in some disciplines when she goes up for tenure.

Each of the examples here and throughout this post reflects a similar problem—education systems (and society) unjustifiably and systematically view women as less intellectually capable.

Societal changes are necessary

My argument that policy probably isn’t the solution is not intended to undercut the importance of affirmative action and grievance policies that have helped many individuals take appropriate legal recourse. Rather, I am arguing that those policies are certainly not enough, and that the typical K-12 policy mechanisms will likely have no real effect in improving equity for girls.

The obstacles that women face are largely societal and cultural. They act against women from the time they enter kindergarten—instilling in very young girls a belief they are less innately talented than their male peers—and persist into their work lives. Educational institutions—with undoubtedly many well-intentioned educators—are themselves complicit in reinforcing the hurdles. In order to dismantle these barriers, we likely need educators at all levels of education to examine their own biases and stereotypes.

Smashing gender stereotypes and bias in and through education

“On this International Women’s Day and every day, UNESCO is committed to ensure all persons’ right to education free from bias and stereotypes”, said Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO.

Gender stereotypes and biases are built in people’s minds as early as childhood. They influence the toys children play with, the subjects they pursue, their entire experience of education, and their future lives and careers.

To mark International Women’s Day, UNESCO, the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) and Transform Education, with support from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), held a webinar calling on students, parents, teachers, governments and development partners to smash gender stereotypes and bias in and through education.

Moving from exclusion to inclusion

“When it comes to education, the system trains and teaches young children and young people, for example, how to dress, how to speak, influencing young people’s expressions,” shared Michael who along with Nicole, represented Transform Education, a feminist youth-led coalition hosted by UNGEI. “Obviously as we grow up, we see biases that have been created and partially embedded in the social, economic and political systems around us.”

Nicole shared her own experience of facing “negative norms since I was young saying how feminine and submissive a girl should be and classifying femininity as a negative characteristic when it comes to leadership at both school and the workplace.”

“A large number of boys tell us that if they don’t live up to these norms, they are bullied or otherwise experience violence at school”, said Gary Barker, CEO of Promundo, recognizing that gender norms also impact boys, and more broadly gender equality. “This matters for boys’ educational attainment… It matters also tremendously for girls and women. We know from our research that boys and young men who buy into these inequitable norms and learn them at home are more likely to use violence against a female partner and they are less likely to support gender equality overall.”

Choosing subjects and careers freely

“We know that gender stereotypes and biases become engrained in early childhood, and that they affect students’ decisions about the types of futures they should plan for,” said Erin Ganju, Managing Director of Echidna Giving and the moderator of the event.

“Girls and boys follow certain stereotypes. Girls’ aspirations are to become doctors, teachers, nurses, psychologists and veterinarians. For boys, they want to become engineers, work in ICT and in mechanics”, said Marta Encinas-Martin, Gender Ambassador at the OECD, sharing results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Gender stereotypes affect girls’ study paths and career choices. This has resulting implications, with fewer women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, and fewer men in the teaching, health and social workforce.

Transforming bias through education and communities

The Global Education Monitoring Report and UNESCO launched a new factsheet challenging gender bias and stereotypes in and through education. Recognizing the transformative role of education, Anna Cristina D’Addio stated that gender bias and stereotypes can “be reinforced but they could also be challenged by the school programmes, the curricula and the teaching materials and the teaching that learners are exposed to.”

Amelia Fernandez, Advisor for the Government of Navarre, and laureate of the 2019 UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education for the project SKOLAE, shared that “teachers have a duty to have a gender-transformative approach so that we explain to learners all of their capabilities and enable them to fulfil their potential as people and not as silos of boys and girls separately.”

Stephen Jalenga, from the Ministry of Education in Kenya, emphasized the role of mentors and role models to deconstruct gender stereotypes in STEM fields: “A girl from the rural area may have never seen a female engineer, or a female pilot. When you enable them to interact with such mentors, it gives them the impetus to move ahead.”

“We need to have these conversations in ways that are compassionate and caring and that call boys and men into the benefit that we all get when we embrace healthier versions of manhood”, said Barker.

Sujata Bordoloi, of UNGEI, said “We all have to unlearn and question false and limiting beliefs about others and ourselves. We think it would be really great if education around the world prepared students to think outside the ‘gender box’.”

Maria Nguyen, representing the SDG4Youth Network, closed the event with the following powerful words, “There is one key action that is needed to smash stereotypes and to challenge gender bias in and through education: to challenge the silence. Challenge it when no one else seems to be standing up against gender stereotypes in education. Challenge it when the needs of students and young people who are at the heart of education are unheard. Challenge what is spoken and what is left unspoken.”

Watch the recording of the event
Read the new factsheet: #BreakTheBias: Challenging gender bias and stereotypes in and through education
Learn more about the UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education
Learn more about UNESCO’s work on education and gender equality

More on this subject

How a UNESCO project is helping break gender barriers through education in Uganda

Laws and policies promoting gender equality in education are inadequately implemented

2020 Gender Report

Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Laws and policies determine the framework for achieving inclusion in education. At the international level, the global community’s aspirations are expressed in binding legal instruments and non-binding declarations, primarily led by the United Nations but also by regional organizations. These agreements have strongly influenced the national legislative and policy actions on which progress towards inclusion hinges.

However, in spite of the good intentions enshrined in laws and policies on inclusive education, governments often do not take the follow-up actions necessary to ensure implementation. Barriers to access, progression and learning remain high, and they disproportionately affect more disadvantaged populations. Within education systems, these populations face discrimination, rejection and reluctance to accommodate their needs. This section gives a brief overview of key international instruments and examines the evolution of legislative and policy development on two areas with a bearing on gender equality in education: early pregnancy and school counselling.

INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENTS HAVE SHAPED INCLUSION AND GENDER EQUALITY IN EDUCATION

The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action have been and continue to be influential in driving legislative initiatives towards gender equality around the world. In the past decade, 131 countries have enacted 274 legal and regulatory reforms supporting gender equality. In 80% of the countries with data, national plans to achieve gender equality are in place, although only one-third are costed and resourced (UN Women, 2020a).

Progress has been made towards eliminating gender discrimination in education. Building on the 1960 UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in Education, which has been ratified by 23 more countries since 1995 for a total of 105 (UNESCO, 2020d), Article 10 of CEDAW asks signatories to ‘take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in order to ensure to them equal rights with men in the field of education’. Yet many countries entered reservations when ratifying CEDAW (Keller, 2014). Over time, all reservations on Article 10 have been withdrawn, but many reservations remain on other articles limiting the education opportunities of women and girls (Freeman, 2009).

Overall, 90 countries now prohibit gender discrimination in their constitutions. An analysis by the GEM Report team shows that education ministries have sponsored laws promoting gender equality in 50% of countries and have issued policies to that end in 42% of countries. Another 46% of countries have legislation and 58% policies promoting gender equality in education under other ministries’ leadership.

Education ministries have sponsored laws promoting gender equality in 50% of countries and have issued policies to that end in 42% of countries

The right to inclusive education is enshrined in the 2006 UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In 2016, General Comment 4 by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities broadened the concept of inclusion, stating that among the core features of inclusive education must be respect for the diversity of all learners, irrespective not only of disability but also of other characteristics, such as sex. Still, many governments have yet to establish this principle in their laws, policies and practices: 68% of countries have a definition of inclusive education in their laws and policies but only 57% of these definitions cover multiple marginalized groups. In 25% of countries, the definition of inclusive education only covers people with disabilities or special needs.

EDUCATION POLICIES AND PRACTICES CONTINUE TO FAIL GIRLS WHO EXPERIENCE EARLY PREGNANCY

Early or teenage pregnancy can be a consequence of early school leaving, but it is also one of its causes: pregnant girls and young mothers are not always able to return to school to continue or complete their education, especially in poorer countries, but also in some rich ones. Strategic objectives B.1 and B.4 of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action called on countries to remove all barriers to formal education for pregnant adolescents and young mothers, including by promoting affordable and physically accessible childcare facilities and parental education to encourage those responsible for the care of children and siblings to return to, continue and complete their education.

Early pregnancy rates remain at levels higher than the 1995 regional average in some sub-Saharan African countries

Globally, the prevalence of early pregnancy declined by one-third between 1995 and 2020, from some 60 to 40 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 (UNPD, 2019). Yet early pregnancy rates remain high in many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where, despite an overall fall from 133 to 97 births per 1,000 15- to 19-year old women over the past 25 years, rates remain at levels higher than the 1995 regional average in countries including Chad (145), Mali (157) and Niger (171). Early pregnancy is often linked to early marriage (Box 5).

Case studies from Argentina (Ginestra, 2020a), Sierra Leone (Bah, 2020) and the United Kingdom (Freedman, 2020) show how early pregnancy hinders girls’ education, and what steps have been taken to ameliorate the problem. Strong political commitment has led to progress in reducing early pregnancy rates and providing education for pregnant girls. Support to pregnant teenagers to address issues with childcare and with social, health and psychological problems has to be holistic to keep them in education. It requires cross-government cooperation, backed up with adequate funding and coordination with partners.

In Argentina, legislation and flexible programmes have supported pregnant girls and young parents

Argentina recorded 61 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 in 1995; the figure had fallen to 49 by 2018. An initial decline was followed by an increase between 2003 and 2011, then the rate decreased again. Most early pregnancies occur among 15- to 19-year-olds but pregnancies among younger girls also exist. The number of births per 1,000 girls below 15 fell from 2.1 in 1995 to 1.4 in 2018 (Ginestra, 2020a). The probability of early pregnancy depends on region, education level, socio-economic status and access to sexual and reproductive health education and services. In 2011/12, 18% of the poorest 20% of women aged 15 to 19 were pregnant, compared with 3% of the richest 20% (UNICEF and Argentina Ministry of Social Development, 2013). As of 2017, young mothers represented 4.4% of students in urban areas but 8.7% in rural areas. Young fathers represented 3.1% of students in urban areas and 4.5% in rural areas (Argentina Ministry of Education, 2017). Girls’ risk of early pregnancy is increased by poverty, limited access to adequate health services, low school retention rates, work at early ages, childcare responsibilities and general inequality of opportunity (Azevedo et al., 2012).

For girls aged 15 to 17 who had attended school, maternity was the main reason for early school leaving, cited by 38% (UNICEF and Argentina Ministry of Social Development, 2013). Among 15- to 29-year-olds of both sexes, about 16% said pregnancy, maternity, paternity or engagement was their main reason for not completing secondary school. However, while 30% of females mentioned dropping out due to maternity, only 5% of males cited paternity as the reason (INDEC, 2014).

The proportion of pregnant girls and young mothers decreases as the level of education attained increases (UNICEF and Argentina Ministry of Social Development, 2013). While 57% of young mothers had completed primary and 38% had completed secondary, only 4% had continued into post-secondary education. Conversely, 55% of 20- to 29-year-old women who had not experienced early pregnancy had completed secondary education and 15% had continued their studies beyond secondary (UNFPA, 2020).

Pregnancy during adolescence also has a detrimental effect on school achievement. Pregnant girls and young mothers achieve lower grades and fail more often than girls without children. For instance, 64% of young mothers did not achieve basic proficiency in mathematics, compared with 45% of other female students. Young parents are also more likely to repeat grades (Argentina Ministry of Education, 2017).

Paternity in adolescence has received much less attention than maternity. Qualitative studies have struggled to reach a consensus on its impact. Some research indicates that young fathers leave school to provide for their children (Fernandez Romeral, 2017), while other studies suggest that most had already left school and that the pregnancy encouraged them to re-enter school (Argentina Ministry of Education, 2019).

Argentina has enacted two laws that protect pregnant girls’ and young parents’ right to education. Its 2002 Law 25584 prohibits any institutional action that prevents pregnant students and young mothers and fathers from school entry or continuation. They have the right to permitted absences during pregnancy, breastfeeding or any matter related to the health of mother or child (Argentina Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, 2002). Law 26206 in 2006 guaranteed school entry, progression and completion for female students during and after pregnancy, making available breastfeeding rooms, home- and hospital-based education, special regimes of absences and flexibility with regard to examinations. It also made it possible for young mothers to attend classes with their child and envisaged including out-of-school adolescents in non-formal education before full reintegration in formal school (Argentina Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, 2006).

Flexible learning programmes at the provincial level have enabled pregnant girls and adolescent parents to return to school. In 2008, Buenos Aires province introduced the programme Salas maternales: madres, padres y hermanos/as mayores, todos en secundaria (Nurseries: mothers, fathers and siblings, all in secondary school) in cooperation with UNICEF. Nurseries are set up in schools that can accommodate them or in nearby kindergartens. While students attend classes, their children receive care in an environment that stimulates early learning. At school, adolescent parents receive support to help them carry out their role as parents or caregivers and continue studying. In 2017, there were 82 nurseries across the province. An evaluation found that school retention had increased, generating higher school completion without interruption. Furthermore, young parents’ attitudes towards studying had changed, with school completion seen as allowing adolescents to be independent of their families, find a good job and begin university. The programme is unique in also targeting young fathers (UNICEF, 2017). The Autonomous City of Buenos Aires has also implemented interventions to address the education implications of early pregnancy (Box 6).

Sierra Leone overturned an education ban on pregnant girls and young mothersIn Sierra Leone, the percentage of 15- to 19-year-olds who have given birth fell from 34% in 2008 to 21% in 2019. More rural teenagers (29%) than urban (14%) have early pregnancies, and teenagers from the poorest 20% of households (33%) are more likely than their richest counterparts (11%) to have children. Early pregnancy rates decrease with education: 44% of adolescent girls with no education have already had a child, compared with 17% of those with secondary education.

In Sierra Leone, at least 20% of school-age girls are not in education because of pregnancy

At least 20% of school-age girls are not in education because of pregnancy (Statistics Sierra Leone and ICF, 2019). When pregnant girls leave school, it is rarely due to lack of motivation or interest. Instead, it is because they lack social support, childcare assistance and legitimate financial means to support themselves. They may become more dependent on men, which increases the risk of rapid repeat pregnancies, jeopardizing their health and that of their children.

Forced exclusion during pregnancy has been a long-standing practice, rooted in societal gender norms and cultural practices. Reports of degrading treatment of girls, such as urine testing and physical examinations in schools, exist have existed since at least the 1990s. Before 2010, expulsion was widespread but not universal; many schools and head teachers did allow girls to stay in school and take examinations, and there was no written policy or ban stopping pregnant girls from attending school, although dealing with negative teacher, peer, parent and community attitudes and behaviours on teen pregnancy was challenging.In August 2010, however, Sierra Leone’s cabinet agreed that the minister of education, youth and sports should issue a directive preventing pregnant girls from attending school and taking examinations. The ban became official policy in April 2015, just as schools reopened after the 2014 Ebola outbreak. It remained operational until 2019. At that time in sub-Saharan Africa, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea and the United Republic of Tanzania totally banned pregnant girls and young mothers from public schools (Human Rights Watch, 2019). In addition, 20 countries had no laws, policies or strategies supporting girls’ right to go back to school after pregnancy (Human Rights Watch, 2018).

Activists brought a case against Sierra Leone at the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States, which ruled the ban discriminatory in December 2019 and ordered its immediate lifting. In March 2020, the government complied, overturning the 2010 ban and announcing two new policies focusing on ‘radical inclusion’ and ‘comprehensive safety’ of all children in the education system, to take effect from the 2020/21 school year (Sierra Leone Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, 2020).

In the United Kingdom, tackling early pregnancy required cooperation between government departments

The early pregnancy rate has more than halved in the United Kingdom: the number of conceptions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 17 declined from 42 in 1995 to 18 in 2017, although the level is still above that in other western European countries. Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act requires parents of young women who become pregnant while in school to make sure their daughter receives a full-time education until she turns 16.

However, despite the legal framework, many adolescent girls who become pregnant are still de facto excluded from education institutions because of lack of access to childcare or school facilities, as well as discriminatory and stigmatizing attitudes. Women who have children before 18 are 20% more likely than other women to have no education qualification by age 30 (Cook and Cameron, 2015). The combination of lack of education qualifications and the demands of motherhood results in lower employment opportunities and higher likelihood of living in poverty (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2007).

In the UK, women who have children before 18 are 20% more likely than other women to have no education qualification by age 30

The Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which ran from 1999 to 2010, was an important initiative to address early pregnancy and meet young parents’ needs. Part of broader efforts to tackle social exclusion, it took a wide-ranging, holistic approach. It included a national awareness-raising campaign; better coordination between government departments and tiers; improved prevention of the causes of teenage pregnancy through measures such as better education in and out of school, access to contraception and targeting of at-risk groups, including young men; and a focus on young mothers’ return to education through childcare support. A national and local structure was set up to implement this strategy, including a national Teenage Pregnancy Unit established with cross-government funding and consisting of a team of civil servants and external experts from the non-government sector.

Comprehensive sexuality education is crucial in addressing early pregnancy

While most early pregnancies occur within marriages or unions, their prevalence can indicate lack of access to sexual and reproductive health education and services to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Global evidence shows that comprehensive sexuality education programmes can help young people to choose to delay having sex, reduce the frequency of unprotected sexual activity and increase the use of protection against unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (UNESCO, 2018).

In Argentina, 83% of female and 74% of male secondary school students reported in 2017 that the subject they would most like the school to address was sexual and reproductive health (Argentina Ministry of Education, 2017). Such education has been compulsory in public and private schools at all levels since 2006, and a National Programme of Comprehensive Sexual Health Education began in 2008 (Argentina Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, 2006). However, as evidenced by the students’ responses, provision in schools is still variable and only partial. Out of 23 provinces, 16 adhered to the national law or had passed their own legislation; Formosa, Mendoza and Jujuy had ministerial resolutions instead of provincial laws; Córdoba formed a commission to boost provision of sexual and reproductive health education in schools and created a provincial programme in 2009; and Salta, Santiago del Estero, Tucumán and Tierra del Fuego had no sexual and reproductive health education legislation, even though their early pregnancy rates are among the country’s highest.

The high number of religious (mostly Catholic) schools opposed to the law is a key obstacle to implementation. Some provincial governments have also lacked political commitment for religious reasons. Inconsistency in provincial education laws regarding religious education contributes to unequal provision of sexual and reproductive health education: while some provinces encourage Catholic education in schools, others support pluralistic, non-dogmatic, scientific and secular education. Moreover, the national law on sexual and reproductive health education is somewhat ambiguous. Although it establishes binding curriculum content for each education level, it says each school can adapt the content depending on its sociocultural contexts, ideologies and beliefs, with no explanation of how they should be reconciled (Esquivel, 2013).

Argentina has a remarkable range of measures intended to guarantee adolescents’ right to sexual and reproductive health services. However, some are only partially implemented, while others lack accountability and transparency mechanisms (Human Rights Watch, 2010).

Knowledge and access to contraceptives continue to be huge challenges for girls and women in Sierra Leone. Between 2008 and 2013, the share of married and sexually active women aged 15 to 19 using modern means of contraception doubled from 10% to 20%. By 2019, however, a precipitous drop to 14% had taken place, possibly associated with a 2008 government decision to essentially end comprehensive sexuality education in schools. Reduced access to services across the country due to the Ebola outbreak may have been a further factor (Bah, 2020), a concern exacerbated by the school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Box 4).

In the United Kingdom, the 2017 Children and Social Work Act introduced compulsory relationship education in primary schools and compulsory relationship and sex education in secondary schools from September 2019. Statutory provision was expected to start in September 2020, with guidance applying to all schools, including free schools, academies and faith schools. The guidance obliges schools to increase the time spent teaching about menstrual health and informed consent, addresses risks related to social media and the internet, such as sexting and image-based sexual abuse, and outlines what pupils should know at the end of each level of schooling. Two parents’ guides were published so that schools could engage with parents to try to avoid resistance to relationship and sex education.

For the next generation of girls, I wish for less taboos! Let’s talk about sex! Let’s talk about contraception! Let’s talk about pregnancy! Let’s talk about menstruation! Let’s talk about gender! Let’s talk about FGM and GBV! Let’s talk! Openly. Together. And without shame.Corinna, Netherlands

SCHOOL COUNSELLING POLICIES HAVE NOT BEEN SUFFICIENTLY GENDER-RESPONSIVE

Strategic objective B.1 of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action called on countries to make available non-discriminatory and gender-sensitive professional school counselling and career education to encourage girls to pursue academic and technical curricula in order to widen their career opportunities and ensure equal access to education. The influence of teaching practices and teachers’ perceptions on girls’ and boys’ school orientation has been well studied, but the role of school counsellors and the extent to which countries have made this institution more gender-responsive have been less frequently considered.

As part of a general support system, counsellors can play an important role in steering young people towards tertiary education and helping them make the best choices for their future studies and career. Yet too few students benefit. In the United States, the median number of students per counsellor is 455, nearly twice the recommended level of 250 (American School Counselor Association, 2019; Chrisco Brennan, 2019). Access to counsellors is even more limited in France, with 1,200 students per counsellor in some secondary schools (Mayer, 2019). High workloads limit advisers’ time with students and their ability to provide academic guidance. A 2018 survey by the National Council for School System Evaluation showed that half of 18- to 25-year-olds were dissatisfied with the counselling they had received in secondary school and did not feel supported by the institution at this critical stage (Hoibian and Millot, 2018).

Recognizing and accepting diversity is another important challenge. Counsellors’ perceptions, sociocultural biases and gender stereotypes can affect students’ education and career choices (United States Department of Education, 2018). An online random survey of secondary school counsellors in the US state of Wisconsin found that, even when school counsellors believed female students outperformed males in mathematics and were more likely to succeed, they were less likely to recommend mathematics over English to female students (Welsch and Windeln, 2019).

School and career counselling frequently lack gender responsiveness. Initiatives and programmes to help students make informed choices, free of gender bias, about their future fields of study and career frequently come from outside of education systems. This is confirmed by case studies of Botswana (Mokgolodi, 2020), Germany (Faulstich-Wieland, 2020) and the United Arab Emirates (Labib, 2020).

Gender patterns in TVET and STEM enrolment have evolved to varying degrees over the past 25 years, and countries have adopted a variety of approaches on using school counselling to orient more girls and women towards TVET and STEM.In Botswana, the overall share of women in TVET increased marginally over 1995–2018, from 31% to 35%. Their numbers also remain low in STEM subjects, despite improvement over the period. In recent years, women have outnumbered men in tertiary education: in 2017, they accounted for 59% of the student population. However, in 2018 women still made up a lower share of those enrolled in science (40%), and even lower in engineering, manufacturing and construction (29%).

A Gender Reference Committee was set up in 2006, with representation from all departments of the Ministry of Education and Skills Development to conduct gender awareness campaigns and make education gender-sensitive. Its work was guided by recommendations made in the 10th National Development Plan and the 1994 Revised National Policy on Education, which advocated for inclusive education and career guidance for the world of work (Botswana Ministry of Education, 1994; 1996). Since 1995, a comprehensive and compulsory guidance and counselling programme, which includes material on gender stereotypes, has been offered at all levels from pre-primary to tertiary education (Gysbers and Henderson, 2014). Its curriculum was developed in 1995, and pre-service and in-service guidance and counselling training was offered to teachers.

In 2011, the Gender Reference Committee revisited its strategy to enhance female participation in traditionally male-dominated careers and improve stakeholders’ understanding and participation. It developed a policy, an action plan and a poster campaign. In partnership with industry and tertiary education institutions, it organized science and mathematics fairs, career fairs, and forums on girls in mathematics and science to change views about careers and gender. The Human Resource Development Council, the semi-autonomous body responsible for skills development in the country, provides annual training to help school and career counsellors provide career guidance free of gender bias and stereotypes. Despite these coordinating structures, policies, plans and initiatives, an overall framework on how to facilitate inclusion of girls and women into TVET and STEM is lacking.

In Germany, the share of girls in STEM increased from 12% in 1999 to 19% in 2017. Germany is a federal republic in which the states are in charge of education. Schools have been responsible for providing counselling for vocational or career orientation and guidance since 2010. However, gender aspects are not central to these measures, and regional education authorities leave it up to individual schools, teachers or counsellors as to how and whether to conduct gender-responsive activities. School counselling does not seem so far to have much effect on the career directions of girls and women.

However, two nationwide activities supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research aim to improve the situation. The first, Komm-mach-MINT (Come do STEM) is an online platform intended to support girls and women in choosing further study and careers. It provides information on STEM for secondary and university students, parents, teachers and organizations (National Pact for Women in STEM Occupations, 2019; Großkopf and Struwe, 2019). The second, Klischeefrei (Cliché free), is a collaboration between the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and the Federal Ministry for Employment and Social Affairs. Launched in December 2017, it aims to remove gender stereotypes in all career and study paths for girls and boys starting from the pre-primary level all the way up to university and employment. It offers material for teachers and counsellors to use in their classes In the United Arab Emirates, women’s access to and participation in TVET and STEM grew between 1995 and 2017. However, women are still under-represented, particularly in engineering and construction. While the share of men and women is equal in ICT, female students are over-represented in certain STEM fields, including health and mathematics.

The government has developed education infrastructure and initiated national strategies to promote STEM and TVET education for boys and girls. The Ministry of Education Strategy 2010–2020 introduced a formal student counselling structure and programme to be implemented in schools (UAE Ministry of Education, 2020). In 2014, the National Admissions and Placement Office of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research began providing annual academic counselling for secondary school students and their parents in public and private schools (UAE Ministry of Education, 2014, 2015). However, neither the strategy nor its implementation makes any reference to gender or to whether programmes and counsellor training and support include gender-responsive practices. The same is true of more recent policies and long-term plans drafted at the federal level, including the Education 2020 Strategy, UAE Vision 2021, National Strategy for Higher Education 2030 and 2018 National Strategy for Advanced Innovation.

One gender-focused initiative is a collaboration between the Dubai Society of Engineers, a semi-government body which plays an active role in engaging Emirati women in science, technology, engineering and robotics, and the national section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Women in Engineering Committee, which coordinates events and activities to inspire and engage young female Emirati students in STEM fields (Margheri, 2016).

Countries need to include mandatory gender-responsive school counselling and career orientation to deconstruct false images of technology and their biased connection to gender stereotypes

Countries need to include mandatory gender-responsive school counselling and career orientation to deconstruct false images of technology and their biased connection to gender stereotypes. Such measures should nurture girls’ talents and interests in STEM and TVET. A key element of this kind of gender-sensitive orientation is professional training in gender-responsive guidance for teachers and counsellors (Driesel-Lange, 2011). Career guidance programmes should aim to raise awareness among parents, the most influential socialization agents, to enable them to play supportive roles free of biased notions of gender-appropriate careers. Hands-on experiences and internships can allow female students to see that their skills are valuable in technical occupations (Neuhof, 2013). The impact of school counselling necessarily has limitations, since it cannot change labour market realities where the responsibility for hiring lies with companies, but it can play an important part in encouraging young women and girls to break through barriers and fulfil their potential in traditionally male-dominated fields.

This is one of many stories of girls who are the first in their family to graduate. It was collected by the GEM Report as part of a campaign, #Iamthe1stgirl, aiming to demonstrate progress in gender equality in education since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action 25 years ago.

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Education as the Pathway towards Gender Equality

About the author.

Amartya Sen, often referred to as the father of the concept of ‘human development’, reminds us of a quote by H.G. Wells, where he said that “human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe”. Sen maintains that “if we continue to leave vast sections of the people of the world outside the orbit of education, we make the world not only less just, but also less secure”. To Sen, the gender aspect of education is a direct link between illiteracy and women’s security.

Not being able to read or write is a significant barrier for underprivileged women, since this can lead to their failure to make use of even the rather limited rights they may legally have (to own land or other property, or to appeal against unfair judgment and unjust treatment). There are often legal rights in rule books that are not used because the aggrieved parties cannot read those rule books. Gaps in schooling can, therefore, directly lead to insecurity by distancing the deprived from the ways and means of fighting against that deprivation. 1

For Sen, illiteracy and innumeracy are forms of insecurity in themselves, “not to be able to read or write or count or communicate is a tremendous deprivation. The extreme case of insecurity is the certainty of deprivation, and the absence of any chance of avoiding that fate”. 2 The link between education and security underlines the importance of education as akin to a basic need in the twenty-first century of human development.

GENDERED EDUCATION GAPS: SOME CRITICAL FACTS

While a moral and political argument can continue to be made for the education of girls and women, some facts speak powerfully to the issue at hand. Girls accounted for 53 per cent of the 61 million children of primary school age who were out of school in 2010. Girls accounted for 49 per cent of the 57 million children out of school in 2013. In surveys of 30 countries with more than 100,000 out-of-school children, 28 per cent of girls were out of school on average compared to 25 per cent of boys. Completion of primary school is a particular problem for girls in sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia. 3

Surveys in 55 developing countries reveal that girls are more likely to be out of school at a lower secondary age than boys, regardless of the wealth or location of the household. Almost two thirds of the world’s 775 million illiterate adults are women. In developing regions, there are 98 women per 100 men in tertiary education. There are significant inequalities in tertiary education in general, as well as in relation to areas of study, with women being over-represented in the humanities and social sciences and significantly under-represented in engineering, science and technology.

Gender-based violence in schools undermines the right to education and presents a major challenge to achieving gender equality in education because it negatively impacts girls’ participation and their retention in school. In addition, ineffective sexual and reproductive health education inhibits adolescents’ access to information and contributes to school dropouts, especially among girls who have reached puberty.

The education of girls and women can lead to a wide range of benefits from improved maternal health, reduced infant mortality and fertility rates to increased prevention against HIV and AIDS. 4 Educated mothers are more likely to know that HIV can be transmitted by breastfeeding, and that the risk of mother-to-child transmission can be reduced by taking drugs during pregnancy.

Each extra year of a mother’s schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5-10 per cent. Children of mothers with secondary education or higher are twice as likely to survive beyond age 5 compared to those whose mothers have no education. Improvements in women’s education explained half of the reduction in child deaths between 1990 and 2009. A child born to a mother who can read is 50 per cent more likely to survive past age 5. In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 1.8 million children’s lives could have been saved in 2008 if their mothers had at least a secondary education. In Indonesia, 68 per cent of children with mothers who have attended secondary school are immunized, compared with 19 per cent of children whose mothers have no primary schooling. Wages, agricultural income and productivity—all critical for reducing poverty— are higher where women involved in agriculture receive a better education. Each additional year of schooling beyond primary offers greater payoffs for improved opportunities, options and outcomes for girls and women.

In the varied discussions on the post-2015 education related agendas, there was strong consensus that gender equality in education remains a priority. Various inputs noted that inequalities in general, and particularly gender equality, need to be addressed simultaneously on multiple levels—economic, social, political and cultural. A response on behalf of the International Women’s Health Coalition maintained that “all girls, no matter how poor, isolated or disadvantaged, should be able to attend school regularly and without the interruption of early pregnancy, forced marriage, maternal injuries and death, and unequal domestic and childcare burdens”.

Other inputs highlighted the importance of ensuring access to post-basic and post-secondary education for girls and women. Referring to secondary education, the German Foundation for World Population noted that the “completion of secondary education has a strong correlation with girls marrying later and delaying first pregnancy.” While access to good quality education is important for girls and women, preventing gender-based violence and equality through education clearly also remains a priority.

Gender-based discrimination in education is, in effect, both a cause and a consequence of deep-rooted differences in society. Disparities, whether in terms of poverty, ethnic background, disability, or traditional attitudes about their status and role all undermine the ability of women and girls to exercise their rights. Moreover, harmful practices such as early marriage, gender-based violence, as well as discriminatory education laws and policies still prevent millions of girls from enrolling and completing their respective education. 5

Additionally, given the extensive and growing participation of women in income generating activities, education for girls and women is particularly important, especially in attempting to reverse gendered patterns of discrimination. Not only is it impossible to achieve gender equality without education, but expanding education opportunities for all can help stimulate productivity and thereby also reduce the economic vulnerability of poor households.

GENDER EQUALITY, EQUITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Equity is the strongest framing principle of a post-2015 rights-based agenda, and underlines the need to redress historical and structural inequalities in order to provide access to quality education at all levels. This heralds what was effectively one of the strongest themes that emerged in the post-2015 education consultations, i.e., a rights-based approach in which rights are indivisible. This implies that all aspects of education should be considered from a rights perspective, including structural features of education systems, methods of education, as well as the contents of the education curricula. Indeed, overcoming structural barriers to accessing good quality education is vital for realizing education rights for all.

In related post-2015 consultations, equity is affirmed as a fundamental value in education. Several inputs noted that inequality in education remains a persistent challenge. This is connected to a focus in the Millennium Development Goals on averages without an accompanying consideration of trends beneath the averages. Many contributions in the education consultation, as well as in the other thematic consultations, highlighted the lack of attention to marginalized and vulnerable groups.

Equal access to good quality education requires addressing wide-ranging and persistent inequalities in society and should include a stronger focus on how different forms of inequality intersect to produce unequal outcomes for marginalized and vulnerable groups. Post-2015 consultations suggest that overcoming inequality requires a goal that makes national governments accountable for providing minimum standards and implementing country specific plans for basic services, including education. Equity in education also implies various proactive and targeted measures to offer progressive support to disadvantaged groups.

Amartya Sen notes empirical work which has brought out very clearly how the relative respect and regard for women’s well-being is strongly influenced by their literacy and educated participation in decisions within and outside the family. Even the survival disadvantage of women compared with men in many developing countries (which leads to “such terrible phenomenon as a hundred million of ‘missing women’) seems to go down sharply, and may even get eliminated, with progress in women’s empowerment, for which literacy is a basic ingredient”.

In the summer of 2009, the International Labour Organization (ILO) issued a report entitled “Give Girls a Chance: Tackling child labour, a key to the future”, which makes a disturbing link between increasing child labour and the preference being given to boys when making decisions on education of children. The report states that in cultures in which a higher value is placed on education of male children, girls risk being taken out of school and are then likely to enter the workforce at an early age. The ILO report noted global estimates where more than 100 million girls were involved in child labour, and many were exposed to some of its worst forms.

Much of the research around women and education highlights the importance of investing in the education of girls as an effective way of tackling the gamut of poverty. This is in line with assertions made in numerous other references, which also point to a strong link between education, increased women’s (as opposed to girls’) labour force participation, the wages they earn and overall productivity, all of which ultimately yields higher benefits for communities and nations. In other words, it pays to invest in girls’ and women’s education.

GENDER SOCIALIZATION

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Western feminist stalwarts, such as Simone de Beauvoir, were elaborating the difference between biological ‘sex’ and social gender. Anne Oakley in particular, is known for coining the term gender socialization (1979), which indicates that gender is socially constructed. According to Oakley, parents are engaged in gender socialization but society holds the largest influence in constructing gender. She identified three social mechanisms of gender socialization: manipulation, canalization, and verbalization (Oakley, 1972). Oakley noted that gender is not a fixed concept but is determined by culture through the use of verbal and nonverbal signifiers and the creation of social norms and stereotypes, which identify proper and acceptable behavior. The signifiers are then perpetuated on a macro level, reinforced by the use of the media, as well as at the micro level, through individual relationships.

The concept entered mainstream lexicon on gender relations and development dynamics, and through criticism and counter criticism, ‘gender socialization’ itself became an important signifier. As a tool to highlight discriminatory practices, laws and perceptions (including stereotypes), gender socialization is often identified as the ‘root cause’ which explains various aspects of gender identities, and what underlies many gender dynamics.

In 2007, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) defined gender socialization as “[T]he process by which people learn to behave in a certain way, as dictated by societal beliefs, values, attitudes and examples. Gender socialization begins as early as when a woman becomes pregnant and people start making judgments about the value of males over females. These stereotypes are perpetuated by family members, teachers and others by having different expectations for males and females.”

There is, therefore, a clear interaction between socio-cultural values (and praxis) with gender socialization. This only partly explains why it is that in many developing societies there is a persistent prioritization of women’s ‘domestic’ roles and responsibilities over public ones. Most young girls are socialized into the ‘biological inevitability’ of their socially determined future roles as mothers. This is closely connected, in many relatively socially conservative contexts, with the need to ensure (the prerequisite of) marriage.

Most related studies maintain that women with formal education are much more likely to use reliable family planning methods, delay marriage and childbearing, and have fewer and healthier babies than women with no formal education. The World Bank estimates that one year of female schooling reduces fertility by 10 per cent, particularly where secondary schooling is undertaken.

In fact, because women with some formal education are more likely to seek medical care and be better informed about health care practices for themselves and their children, their offspring have higher survival rates and are better nourished. Not only that, but as indicated earlier, these women are less likely to undergo early pregnancy. Being better informed increases the chances of women knowing how to space their pregnancies better, how to access pre and post-natal care, including prevention of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and family planning in general. The World Bank estimates that an additional year of schooling for 1,000 women helps prevent two maternal deaths.

The World Bank, along with UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund highlight in several of their reports the intergenerational benefits of women’s education. An educated mother is more likely, it is maintained, to attempt to ensure educational opportunities for her children. Indeed, the World Bank specifically notes that “ in many countries each additional year of formal education completed by a mother translates into her children remaining in school for an additional one- third to one-half year”. 6

In short, girls’ education and the promotion of gender equality in education are critical to development, thus underlining the need to broadly address gender disparities in education.

The rhetorical question that needs to be raised here is whether the consistent elements of gender socialization in the region, and the confusing messages for both sexes, can only lead to entrenching processes of gender inequality. At the very least, it is safe to argue that gender socialization, combined with the continuing discrepancies in education opportunities and outcomes not only provide a negative feedback loop, but effectively contribute to entrenching patriarchal norms.

Political events and the endorsement of political leadership are often catalytic, if not necessary determinants, of policy change. In fact, most education reform programmes are often linked to political dynamics. To date, such reforms are typically launched through a political or legal act. In most cases, countries prioritize aspects such as forging a common heritage and understanding of citizenship, instruction in particular language(s), and other means of building capacities as well as popular support for party programmes. All developing country governments have, at one time or another, put special effort into including girls in the education system. While there is a continuous role for policy makers and governments, it is increasingly clear that the socio-cultural terrain is where the real battles need to be waged in a studied, deliberate and targeted fashion.

Influencing the way people think, believe and behave; i.e., culture is the single most complicated task of human development. And yet, in policy and advocacy circles globally, this particular challenge still remains largely considered as ‘soft’ and, at best, secondary in most considerations. What is maintained here is that within the current global geopolitical climate, particularly where an increasing number of young men—and now also young women—are reverting to extremes such as inflicting violence, and where this is often exacerbated by socialization processes which often enforce certain harmful practices (e.g., early marriage) and outdated forms of gender identity and roles, then culture needs to be a high priority.

Needed cultural shifts require several key conditions. One of these is the importance of bridging the activism around gender equality and doing so by involving both men and women. While this still remains anathema to many women’s rights activists, it is nevertheless necessary that men become more engaged in gender equality work, and that women realize that their rights are incumbent on the systematic partnership with men and on appreciating the specific needs and challenges that young boys and men themselves are struggling with.

Another critical determinant of cultural change is that it has to be from within. Those who have worked with human rights issues more broadly have had to learn the hard way that any change that appears to be induced ‘from outside’, even if responding to a dire need and with perfectly sound reason, is destined for failure in many cases. Sustainable change has to be owned and operated locally. This points to the importance of identifying the ‘cultural agents of change’ in any given society, which include both its men and women activists, religious leaders, traditional and community leaders (in some cases these categories converge), media figures, charismatic community mobilizers, and especially youth themselves, who are the most critical agents of change.

At the same time, it is a fallacy to think that there can be no linkages whatsoever between local ownership and external dynamics. International, especially multilateral, development partners have an important role to play in facilitating the bridge building between and among the cultural agents of change themselves on the one hand, and between them and their respective policymakers on the other. But in this day and age of technology and increasing speed of technology, international development actors, as well as transnational academic actors, are already facilitating the building of bridges between youth. Some of this is already happening through a plethora of fora (including social websites), and the impact remains difficult to gauge.

All this points to the fact that education in the traditional sense of school enrolment, drop-out rates, curricula development, and structural dynamics thereof are in multiple stages of transition. It remains to be seen how, and in what way, new forms of education, knowledge acquisition, and information sharing will significantly change patterns of gender socialization itself. It is too soon to definitely assess the shifting sands we are standing on. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to either overestimate the power of entrenched patriarchy, or to underestimate the capacity of women and men to significantly refashion their realities. At the same time, the changes in the culture of international development goal setting are already producing critical insights and inputs which are shaping the agenda of global, regional and national dynamics for upcoming decades.

The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author only and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of any institution, Board or staff member.

1 UNICEF and UNESCO: The World We Want— Making Education a Priority in the Post-2015 Development Agenda: Report of the Global Thematic Consultation on Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, 2013 . Available at http://www.unicef.org/education/files/ Making_education_a_Priority_in_the_Post-2015_Development_ Agenda.pdf.

3 “Making education a Priority in the Post-2015 Development Agenda: report of the Global Thematic Consultation on education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda”.

4 All the figures and data herein presented from UNESCO. 2011b. EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011. The Hidden Crisis: Armed Conflict and Education, Paris and UNESCO . World Atlas of Gender equality in education. Paris, 2012.

5 UNESCO— http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-...

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UNICEF and UNESCO, The World We Want—Making Education a Priority in the Post-2015 Development Agenda: Report of the Global Thematic Consultation on Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, 2013 . Available at http://www.unicef.org/education/files/Making_education_a_Priority_in_the... . United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of World Population Report: Reaching Common Ground—Culture, Gender and Human Rights (2008).

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Gender and sexual diversity in teacher education.

Bethy Leonardi Bethy Leonardi University of Colorado Boulder
and Sara Staley Sara Staley University of Colorado Boulder
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.281
Published online: 25 February 2019

Generations of education scholars have positioned issues that affect LGBTQ youth as critical to conversations about equity, diversity, democracy, and social justice in schools. Those voices, for generations, have been relegated to the periphery of those conversations at best and have been silenced at worst. Relatedly, university-based teacher education programs have been remiss in their attention to issues of gender and sexual diversity, systematically sending teachers into the field largely unprepared to create contexts that are safe for LGBTQ youth and to affirm gender and sexual diversity. With growing attention to issues that affect LGBTQ youth, both in educational research and practice as well as in the larger sociopolitical discourse, teachers are on the front lines. They are charged with navigating the complexities of students’ identities, the contexts in which they teach, local politics, and their own deeply held beliefs—and they are often, unsurprisingly, doing so with little or no support. That support needs to start much earlier.

Teacher education programs—and teacher educators—are implicated as central in changing the discourse around what counts as (non)negotiable in learning to teach. By supporting preservice teachers’ learning around gender and sexual diversity, their processes toward that end, and their engagement in queer practices, teacher educators and teacher education programs can work toward paying down the debt owed to teachers in the field and to LGBTQ students and families who have long suffered the consequences of silence.

teacher education
gender and sexual diversity
queer pedagogy
preservice teachers

Introduction

In 2015 , the American Educational Research Association (AERA) released a report on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues in education in an effort to “give voice to the research, to expand our understanding of LGBTQ issues, and to foster scientific and scholarly inquiry that draws upon solid theoretical models and methods” (Wimberly, 2015 , p. 3). Framing the basis for this new report of a not-so-new research agenda, AERA pointed to “recent legal, social, and policy shifts in support of LGBTQ people [that] are causing educators and education researchers to address LGBTQ issues with a new sense of legitimacy and urgency” (Wimberly, 2015 ). In the report’s introduction, for example, Wimberly cites “the enhanced social status of LGBTQ people and the increased visibility of LGBTQ issues across societal and cultural domains” as well as “changes in family structures and dynamics” as factors that “have led to an increased relevance and awareness of LGBTQ issues in schools or educational contexts” (p. 1). While it may be true that more youth and families are coming out and calling on their communities for positive recognition, we contest the notion that the legitimacy and urgency of LGBTQ issues in education is new. In fact, education researchers, including many who contributed their “extant knowledge” (Wimberly, 2015 , p. 16) to AERA’s report, have documented the relevance of LGBTQ issues in education contexts for over three decades (Kavanagh, 2016 ) and have argued for the value of including gender and sexual diversity in policies, practices, and systems that aim toward equitable education (Quinn & Meiners, 2011 ). Perhaps a more accurate and honest assessment of the state of LGBTQ issues in education involves admitting that the conversation has always been urgent, but in many contexts, including educational research, it has been shoved to the periphery at best and silenced at worst. As we will develop, silence is a recurring theme in this field of study. In this article, we focus specifically on that theme as it relates to teacher education, but we call attention to a broader question that AERA’s stance raises: Researchers in this field have long been speaking, but who has been listening?

This question raises an important tension as we turn toward how teacher education and educational research have attended to gender and sexual diversity. Discourse matters; that is, being included (or not) in what counts as important, nonnegotiable, legitimate, and urgent in the discourses of research on teaching and teacher education matters. Gender and sexual diversity’s marginal inclusion has shaped not only the trajectory of knowledge building of issues affecting LGBTQ youth in PK-12 schools, but also the pathways by which that knowledge has been disseminated to broader educational communities. Undoubtedly, that marginal inclusion also has been consequential to if, when, and how university-based teacher educators have “give[n] voice” to gender and sexual diversity in their support of preservice teachers (PSTs). Further complicating matters, scholars have been discouraged outright from conducting research on sexual orientation and gender identity. Sarah-Jane Dodd ( 2009 ), for example, cautioned that the “highly charged and highly personal” nature of LGBTQ-focused research “makes it vulnerable to bias and predetermined results” (p. 483). Citing a recommendation from the literature that researchers with strong personal beliefs in support or opposition of LGBTQ individuals should refrain from engaging in research on the topic, Dodd argued that the degree of bias may be difficult to protect against. Queer-identified scholars also have been warned of being “too close to the issues,” that presenting a research agenda centered on gay and lesbian issues would potentially affect their marketability, and that this agenda might best be saved until post-tenure (Donelson & Rogers, 2004 , p. 132). We highlight these instances of gatekeeping because it is within the context of these institutional barriers that the field of research on LGBTQ issues in teacher education has developed. Thus, as we endeavor to explore the driving questions, puzzles, and dilemmas of research in this field and argue for future directions that mind the complexity and messiness of enacting queer interventions in teacher preparation, it is also crucial to consider how the field has been positioned in the broader context of educational research.

In this article, a critical perspective is provided on LGBTQ-focused research in teacher education. Given the decades of research that have shaped the field thus far, this article certainly is not the first to take on that task. To note a couple of examples, in Kissen ( 2002 ), 28 scholars took a complex look at the “landscape” of teacher education with respect to “lesbian and gay awareness” (p. 11). Contributors explored how lesbian and gay (LG) issues have been positioned in “the multicultural enterprise” (p. 103) and shared experiences of teachers, teacher educators, and school administrators’ “struggles in trying to integrate LGBT awareness in teaching and teacher education” (p. 159). As a more recent example, Quinn and Meiners ( 2011 ) provided a summary of research on teacher education programs’ efforts to include LGBTQ people and topics. Theirs included a rich historical account of teacher accreditation practices, a topic not addressed in this article. Because this article is not framed as an exhaustive review of the literature, readings of this article’s perspective are encouraged alongside available others. The approach here involves focusing on some key problems, questions, and puzzles that have driven the field. Specifically, the following are addressed: What are key questions and puzzles that have driven research in this field? What can we learn from the insights, tensions, and dilemmas yielded by that research? In other words, guided by the wisdom of existing scholarship, what are generative directions for future research that the field might pursue? Readers will notice that those questions organize this discussion.

To begin, the discussion is grounded in theoretical perspectives on heteronormativity and the ways in which that violent construct is institutionalized in school spaces. From there, the discussion turns to three categories of research in this field: the nature of inclusion and exclusion in teacher education programs, course syllabi, and texts; PSTs’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs related to LGBTQ people and topics; and the nature and impact of LGBTQ-inclusive instructional interventions. Reflecting on the insights generated along these dimensions of inquiry, greater attention is called for toward the complexity and messiness involved in learning to disrupt heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia in education. Looking beyond the nature of teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, it is argued that future directions center PSTs’ processes of engagement, including resistance to and questions about what learning and unlearning (Britzman, 1998 ) does to students in education programs (Luhmann, 1998 ).

Heteronormativity

An important theoretical construct to understand in relation to how scholars have approached research in this field is heteronormativity. Michael Warner ( 1993 ) conceptualized heteronormativity as a cultural system of belief that “thinks of itself as the elemental form of human association, as the very model of inter-gender relations, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction without which society wouldn’t exist” (p. xxi). Put another way, heteronormativity is a powerful discursive framework that organizes commonsense understandings of what counts as “normal” with respect to gender, sexuality, relationships, families, and a whole host of other things. It is always and everywhere. On the one hand, through its presumption of heterosexuality and binary gender as the norm, heteronormativity privileges certain individuals (i.e., heterosexual, cisgender people) and arrangements (e.g., traditional family structures and romantic relationships); on the other, it positions antinormative sexualities and gender configurations as deviant. In this way, heteronormativity promotes homophobic and transphobic attitudes and behaviors, including anti-LGBTQ bullying and gendered harassment (Meyer, 2008 ). Researchers have written extensively about the heteronormative, heterosexist, homophobic context of schooling, including, for example, the ways in which heteronormativity is institutionalized in education spaces through language and discourse practices, policies, and everyday actions of administrators, teachers, and students (Blackburn & Smith, 2010 ; DePalma & Atkinson, 2010 ; Meyer, 2007 ; Wickens & Sandlin, 2010 ) and the violent consequences of unsafe school environments for LGBTQ youth (Human Rights Watch, 2001 ; GLSEN & Harris Interactive, 2012 ; Kosciw, Greytak, Giga, Villenas, & Danischewski, 2016 ). Disproportionately higher rates of violence committed against students who identify or are perceived to identify as LGBTQ is a persistent problem plaguing schools in a variety of national contexts and also one of the driving forces of research in this field. Reporting those trends is beyond the scope of this article, but interested readers are directed to data reported by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Network’s (GLSEN) National School Climate Survey , a report published every two years that indexes national trends on how LGBTQ youth experience school. Over the years, those data have provided the field crucial touchstones for contextualizing the nature and impact of school climate and culture on LGBTQ youth in the United States. 1

Heteronormativity is therefore a prominent theoretical lens that frames many problems, questions, and puzzles pursued by LGBTQ-focused educational research. One problem linked to heteronormativity that orients much of that research concerns a discourse of silence surrounding LGBTQ identities and experiences in PK-12 and teacher education. Given research that suggests teachers can play important roles in making LGBTQ youth feel safer and more connected at school (Greytak, Kosciw, & Boesen, 2013 ), calls to break the silence in teacher preparation have grown louder in the past decade. In 2007 , for example, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) published a resolution on strengthening teacher knowledge of LGBT issues. In spite of a trend during the previous decade that saw more inclusion of diversity issues in teacher education programs, NCTE’s position statement emphasized that LGBT issues were generally omitted or given very little attention. Describing effective teacher preparation programs as those that support teachers to make sense of and realize their professional obligations, which, the authors note, include preparing students for citizenship in a diverse society, NCTE resolved a commitment to providing leadership for the inclusion of LGBT issues in all teacher preparation programs. A decade since that resolution, the sound of silence continues to surround LGBTQ topics in teacher education. As Gorski, Davis, and Reiter ( 2013 ) put it, “[Scholars] overwhelmingly agree that silence persists in teacher education programs when it comes to LGBTQ concerns (Bower & Klecka, 2009 ; Clark, 2010 ; De-Jean, 2010 ; Hermann-Wilmarth & Bills, 2010 ; Jennings, 2007 ; Szalacha, 2004 ; Vavrus, 2009 )” (p. 229). A driving question in the field concerns what happens when teacher education coursework breaks the silence by broaching topics of gender and sexual diversity. In other words, what does inclusion look like? How do PSTs respond? What kinds of resistance should teacher educators be prepared for?

What Are the “Problems,” Questions, and Puzzles That Have Driven the Research?

Turning toward questions and puzzles that drive this field, this discussion is organized around three categories that comprise a bulk of related research. The first category are investigations of the nature of LGBTQ inclusion and exclusion in teacher education coursework. Then studies of PSTs’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs related to LGBTQ people are examined and gender and sexual diversity in the classroom are addressed. Last, research on LGBTQ-focused instructional interventions in teacher education is reviewed. Important to note is that while these studies fall under the LGBTQ umbrella, many focus solely on sexual diversity, homophobia, and heterosexism. In a review of LGBTQ research in higher education, Renn ( 2010 ) takes care to separate LGB and T to mark the ways that “research on sexual orientation and gender identity examines substantively different concepts” (p. 135). She notes that alliances built by LGBT people for the purposes of political, social, and intellectual projects have led to the conflated understanding of gender and sexuality. This article aligns with Renn’s perspective. Research on LGBTQ issues in education has made valuable contributions toward destigmatizing lesbian, gay, bisexual sexualities, and transgender and nonbinary gender identities. However, as Renn asks, how might this research also be constructing LGBTQ people as a monolithic community? Gender and sexuality identity categories, and the people who identify with them, “vary crucially ” (Alexander, 1999 , p. 288) and, therefore, require different consideration.

What Is the Nature of LGBTQ Inclusion in Teacher Education Coursework?

To understand how gender and sexual diversity have been taken up systematically, or not, in teacher education programs across the United States, scholars have looked to teacher educators, course syllabi, and salient texts. In 2007 , Jennings gathered data from 142 public university, elementary, and secondary teacher licensure programs (by surveying faculty directors, coordinators, and department chairs) in an effort to understand the degree to which programs attended to issues of diversity, broadly speaking. He found similar patterns across elementary and secondary programs in which the most emphasis was on race and ethnicity, followed by attention to special needs, language diversity, and social class. Gender and sexual orientation were the least emphasized, with 11.6% of secondary and 8.6% of elementary programs reporting that they ignored sexual orientation altogether. Questioning the “safety” of addressing sexual orientation compared to addressing race, Jennings wondered about sexual orientation’s “controversial ties to heterosexism, traditional gender roles, and oftentimes the religious beliefs of both faculty and students” (p. 1265). He also wondered about the dominant discourse in the field and specifically in multicultural education. Importantly, he pointed to Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (Banks & Banks, 1995 ), which was meant to provide a significant review of multicultural education research. Jennings reported that “neither ‘sexual orientation’ nor ‘homosexuality’ even earned a mention in the book’s subject index covering a text of nearly 900 pages” (p. 1265). In the revised and expanded volume of 1,200 pages (Banks & Banks, 2004 ), neither sexual orientation nor homosexuality received substantive attention.

In a related study, Macgillivray and Jennings ( 2008 ) analyzed the most widely used foundations of education textbooks for LGBT content. Asserting that these textbooks often exclude LGBT content or reinforce harmful stereotypes, they were interested in whether gender and sexual diversity were included, how they were included, and the potential consequences of inclusion. They situate their curiosity in what they call “the systematic neglect of the needs of LGBT youth and families within teacher preparation coursework [that] is rooted in heteronormative assumptions that present heterosexuality as the only legitimate sexual orientation” (p. 171). For example, they report that in the United States, 44.4% of elementary and 40% of secondary teacher preparation programs fail to include topics of sexual orientation program-wide (Jennings & Sherwin, 2008 ; Sherwin & Jennings, 2006 ). Their findings suggest that while all of the textbooks analyzed ( N = 8) included LGBT topics, coverage was inconsistent insofar as content and depth were concerned. Furthermore, inclusion was at times problematic. For example, they found that the “student-as-victim” narrative was used, presumably to build support for inclusion as well as knowledge about the lived experiences of LGBTQ students in schools. They warned, however, that this narrative “has the effect of essentializing and pathologizing LGBT identities (Talburt, 2005 ; Rasmussen, 2005a , 2005b ; Rofes, 2005a , 2005b ), rendering them as hapless victims with no self-determination or agency (Blackburn, 2005 )” (p. 182). Jennings and Macgillivray ( 2011 ) found similar trends when they analyzed multicultural textbooks ( N = 12), as did Gorski, Davis, and Reiter ( 2013 ), who, perhaps based on the contested nature of the inclusion of gender and sexual diversity in the multicultural education movement, were also interested in multicultural education courses. They performed a content analysis of 41 syllabi from multicultural education courses taught in the United States, looking for inclusion or exclusion of LGBTQ concerns. They also collected survey data from 80 multicultural education instructors in order to “uncover both the likelihood that, and the nature by which, they incorporated LGBTQ concerns into their courses” (p. 224). They found that LGBTQ concerns were often invisible and that when those concerns were included, they were undertheorized, not done so in context, and instead served to mask heteronormativity; this finding has persisted for over a decade (Letts, 2002 ). When teacher educators treat some groups or issues of equity as worthy of attention and others as not, Jennings ( 2007 ) points to this “obvious danger”: PSTs’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices will likely follow suit (p. 1259).

What Is the Nature of Teachers’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs about LGBTQ People and Teaching LGBTQ Content?

Over time, studies have been interested in the relationship among PSTs’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and perceived and anticipated behaviors as they relate to LGBTQ-inclusive practices and students who identify as LGBT. Perhaps this interest came from a study by James Sears, first published in 1991 . Sears was interested in prospective teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about homosexuality and how those personal beliefs interacted with their “professional attitudes,” which Sears defined as teachers’ willingness to take a proactive stance toward supporting LGB youth (e.g., by encouraging classroom discussions of sexuality and integrating sexual diversity into the curriculum). By analyzing survey and questionnaire data from 258 PSTs, Sears found that 80% of participants held negative views about lesbian and gay people. While many respondents maintained that they could keep their personal beliefs and professional behaviors separate and that they should be proactive as professionals in the field, Sears found that few were willing to take a proactive stance in supporting the unique needs of LGB students. He attributed this discrepancy to PSTs’ prejudicial attitudes, lack of knowledge, and fear. Over a decade later, Mudrey and Medina-Adams ( 2006 ) emulated Sears’s study with 200 PSTs. In particular, they were interested in knowledge gains, attitude differences, and perceptions of homosexuality. What they found, in their words, “was rather shocking” in that they obtained similar results. While PSTs in their study were more knowledgeable about homosexuality, “their personal attitudes and feelings were not reflective of this knowledge” (p. 86).

Since Sears’s study, many researchers have echoed that PSTs tend to lack knowledge and preparation around topics and issues related to sexual diversity and that they struggle with negative attitudes about gays and lesbians (Blackburn & Donelson, 2004 ; Butler, 1994 ; Jennings & Sherwin, 2008 ; Riggs, Rosenthal, & Smith-Bonahue, 2010 ; Robinson & Ferfolja, 2001 ; Shelton & Barnes, 2016 ; Szalacha, 2004 ). Researchers have also learned that PSTs’ attitudes and motivation to support LGBTQ students can change as they learn more about issues that affect LGBTQ students in schools.

What Is the Nature and Impact of LGBTQ-Focused Interventions in Teacher Education?

One interpretation of Sears’s ( 1991 ) findings is that the more knowledgeable teachers are about sexual diversity, the less likely they are to hold negative attitudes and beliefs about LGB people. Given that respondents overwhelmingly reported having little to no exposure to homosexuality in their high school experiences or beyond, Sears’s study points to an important implication for teacher education—that is, in the service of increasing knowledge and combating homophobia, teacher education becomes an obvious site for exposure to LGBTQ topics to begin. Less obvious, however, is what counts as “effective” exposure. Keep in mind that Sears also cautioned that gaining access to adequate and accurate knowledge may lessen prospective teachers’ negative attitudes, but it neither “eliminate[s] them” (p. 55) nor guarantees that teachers will assume proactive stances. In other words, interventions that focus solely on cognitive gain (e.g., increased knowledge and awareness of LGBTQ people and issues) are unlikely to disrupt the deeply embedded nature of homophobic personal beliefs and attitudes or motivate teachers to take LGBTQ-affirming action. This was also reflected in the findings reported by Mudrey and Medina-Adams ( 2006 ).

Indeed, questions regarding what antiheterosexist, antihomophobic, and antitransphobic educational interventions should include, how they should unfold, and how sustained their impacts might be remain unsettled. Previously, that uncertainty could be attributed to a dearth of research on interventions in PST learning (Szalacha, 2004 ). Sears, for example, put it this way: “Since there are relatively few studies on the effectiveness of particular educational interventions, it is difficult to specify [the critical elements of homophobia education] with precision” ( 1997 , p. 24). Drawing on insights from his previous research, Sears ( 1997 ) called for interventions that target thought, feeling, and action while also attending carefully to the unique contexts and sociocultural backgrounds of their learners. As research on interventions in teacher education has proliferated in the 2000s, studies are increasingly reporting positive effects of LGBTQ-inclusive coursework on PSTs’ knowledge and attitudes about LGBTQ people and their sense of responsibility to address gender and sexual diversity in the classroom (e.g., Clark, 2010 ; Richardson, 2008 ; Schmidt et al., 2012 ; Swartz, 2003 ; Taylor, 2002 ). What follows are a few examples of diverse approaches to instructional interventions that teacher educators have enacted.

Athanases and Larrabee ( 2003 ) conducted one of the first studies of PSTs’ responses to instruction regarding lesbian and gay issues in schools. In a course focused on the relationship between cultural diversity and education, students read articles that addressed topics such as the challenges that LG youth face, the lived experiences of LG adults, and the challenges of being virtually outed as a teacher; watched a video about key LG figures in U.S. history, including civil rights leader Bayard Rustin; and listened to an out, gay middle school teacher who visited the class as a guest speaker. The authors found that when afforded a safe discussion space and insiders’ perspectives, through readings by LG authors and exposure to LG-identified people, most students began to wear the mantle of advocacy for LG youth by semester’s end. A small number of other students, however, met the LG content with resistance because of religious convictions. Athanases and Larrabee therefore caution that instructors seeking to teach similar content must be prepared when students express “extreme resistance” (p. 256). Resistance is an important recurring theme in the literature (e.g., Allen & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2004 ; Hermann-Wilmarth, 2007 ; McConaghy, 2004 ; Robinson & Ferfolja, 2001 , 2002 ; Staley & Leonardi, 2016 ; Thein, 2013 ; White, Oswalt, Wyatt, & Peterson, 2010 ) (see “Why Do Students Resist?”).

In the context of four different elementary and secondary teacher education courses, Elsbree and Wong ( 2007 ) explored the possibilities of using The Laramie Project , a play based on interviews held with community members of Laramie, Wyoming, after the antigay murder of Matthew Shepard, to disrupt PSTs’ homophobic attitudes and support students to develop pedagogical strategies for organizing safe schools and classrooms. In the courses under study, The Laramie Project was part of a broader focus on sexual diversity that included the following activities: reading about LGBTQ identity, watching It’s Elementary: Talking about Gay Issues in Schools (Chasnoff & Cohen, 1996 ), attending a live performance of The Laramie Project , and engaging in class discussions of how homophobia impacts schooling and teachers’ responsibilities to engage in antihomophobia work. Pre- and postsurveys assessed the play’s impact on students’ knowledge, comfort, and personal and professional attitudes about LGBTQ issues. Results indicated positive shifts in knowledge and a moderate impact on attitudes, though the authors note that “impact” does not necessarily mean that positive change occurred. In fact, one third of respondents reported that the intervention did not change their personal beliefs and attitudes about LGBTQ topics. Nearly half of the students, however, reported that the intervention did change their professional attitudes and supported them to see their educational responsibilities to support LGBTQ youth. The authors conclude that affective interventions (e.g., attending a live performance of The Laramie Project ) might be more effective in disrupting homophobia than taking a solely cognitive approach (e.g., reading and discussing LGBTQ topics in class), though they underscore the importance of both types of interventions in preparing teachers to create safe, affirming classrooms.

Taking a different approach, Sykes and Goldstein ( 2004 ) explored the pedagogical possibilities of performed ethnography, that is, the process of turning ethnographic data and texts (e.g., interview transcripts) into scripts that are performed in front of audiences, as an antihomophobia educational tool for PST preparation. The central text, Wearing the Secret Out , was a 25-minute video-recorded theatrical performance informed by life history interviews that Sykes conducted with physical education teachers who identified as lesbian, gay, and queer. The performance addressed issues such as coming out, struggle, identity, homophobic violence, and same-sex desire. In addition to watching the performance, students read a complete interview transcript with one of the teachers featured in the video and worked collaboratively to create and perform their own original compositions that drew on select excerpts from the transcripts. Sykes and Goldstein report how performed ethnography enabled students to explore their fears of engaging in antihomophobia work and their desires to protect students from homophobic harassment from a “safe(r) distance” (p. 54), because those homophobic and antihomophobic discourses were raised by characters in the play rather than by students themselves.

As queer scholars and teacher educators in this field, the authors are indebted to the legacy of scholarship that broke the silence around sexual diversity in teacher education. The work of Sears, Athanases, Larrabee, and many others was groundbreaking, and that word is used deliberately; that is, the authors recognize the risk and labor involved in breaking the silence around gender and sexual diversity in educational research, which has long been an inhospitable context. What’s more, that research clearly demonstrated that including LGBTQ content across teacher preparation coursework is a crucial first step toward strengthening teachers’ knowledge of gender and sexual diversity. And here, significant distinctions are underscored between gender and sexuality that were underemphasized in the reviewed literature. Encouragingly, that situation seems to be changing. Studies focused explicitly on the school experiences of transgender and gender-expansive youth are on the rise (e.g., Greytak, Kosciw, & Diaz, 2009 ; McGuire, Anderson, Toomey, & Russell, 2010 ; Singh, 2013 ), as are inquiries that aim to support pre- and in-service educators in learning about and affirming transgender identities in PK-12 contexts (e.g., Greytak, Kosciw, & Boesen, 2013 ; Case & Meier, 2014 ; McWilliams, 2015 ; Meyer & Pullen Sansfacon, 2014 ; Ryan, Patraw, & Bednar, 2013 ). Regarding future directions for research, more thoughtful, critical attention is suggested toward gender identity and the unique issues that transgender, gender-expansive, and nonbinary youth and educators experience.

Before exploring where future directions might lead, it is noted that as scholars the authors have learned more about the affordances and constraints of opportunities of exposure to LGBTQ topics in coursework and many are challenging inclusion as an effective approach; that is, scholars are calling on ways in which inclusion often fails to challenge heterosexuality as a normative construction and are calling for pedagogies and interventions that “mov[e] beyond inclusion” (Blackburn & Smith, 2010 ). Blackburn and Clark ( 2011 ), Martino ( 2009 ), Schieble ( 2012 ), Macgillivray and Jennings ( 2008 ), and others caution that inclusion can have unintended consequences, for example, reinforcing heterosexism and homophobia and providing a “sentimental education” (Britzman, 1995 ) that erases differences by insisting that “gay and lesbian people are just like straight people” (Blackburn, Clark, & Nemeth, p. 2). Drawing on queer theoretical perspectives, these scholars argue for “queering” (Letts, 2002 ) teacher education, that is, for enacting “queer interventions” that “unmask heteronormativity” (Martino, 2009 , p. 386) and support students to develop critical habits of mind for deconstructing binaries and questioning how heterosexuality and binary gender become normalized in everyday practice. Enacting queer interventions that disrupt novice teachers’ notions of what counts as normal and also implicate them in systems of oppression is vulnerable, emotional work that involves “resistance and risk” (Allen & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2004 ) and requires unique approaches.

What Can We Learn From the Insights, Tensions, and Dilemmas of That Research?

Some key questions have been discussed that have driven the field in the service of asking: What can we learn from the insights, puzzles, and tensions that animate the scholarly conversation as it has unfolded in the past three decades? One conclusion to be drawn is that given the deeply embedded nature of heteronormativity in the discourses, pedagogies, and everyday practices of school, the work of preparing teachers to consistently affirm gender, sexual, and family diversity is neither easy nor straightforward. It involves transgressing a discourse of silence that still hangs heavy in many schools of education as well as working to strengthen teachers’ knowledge through thoughtful, deliberate integration of LGBTQ content and queer approaches across teacher education coursework. As research has resoundingly declared, these are complex endeavors that can be challenging to negotiate. Robinson and Ferfolja ( 2001 , 2002 ), for example, write powerfully about their difficult experiences including LG content and supporting PSTs to develop critical understandings of the systemic and structural nature of social inequities. The authors note that while students demonstrate varying degrees of resistance to social justice issues raised in their courses, sexuality and LG content “always incur the greatest resistance, due to the controversy and cultural taboos surrounding non-heterosexual or minority sexualities. This is reflected in some PSTs’ attitudes, interests and willingness to participate in various topic areas” ( 2001 , p. 124). They point to students’ tendencies to separate issues of gender and sexuality from the “mechanics” of teaching and to see them not as priorities for teacher education, but as negotiable topics that do not belong in the content classroom. Robinson and Ferfolja describe this opposition as a form of resistance that poses pedagogical, professional, and personal concerns for the teacher educator.

These challenges and resistances resonate with the current authors’ experiences as teacher educators oriented toward queer-affirming practices. Because heteronormativity so often goes unchallenged in PK-12 schools, the authors have themselves struggled with the task of disrupting PSTs’ well-formed notions of what counts as normal and appropriate with respect to gender and sexuality and what counts as important and (non)negotiable in learning to teach. They also have experienced the ways in which teacher educators’ assumptions, beliefs, and practices related to the way we “do” equity and diversity in teacher preparation are shaped by heteronormativity, homophobia, transphobia, and silence. They have felt pangs of frustration from well-meaning colleagues’ repeated invitations to visit their courses during LGBTQ week and lead the discussion rather than taking on the challenge themselves. And they have been heartened by the willingness of other colleagues to puzzle their way through gender and sexual diversity as new instructional terrain. In these ways, the wisdom of their inquiries, practice, and lived experiences working with thousands of pre- and in-service teachers and teacher educators prompts them to get curious about the challenges, resistances, and emotional labor involved in disrupting and deconstructing dominant discourses that perpetuate myths, stereotypes, and oppression. Those challenges are addressed in the next section and framed as productive sites for queer interventions and scholarly inquiry. The authors foreground the important relationship between emotion and resistance in the learning process and call on queer pedagogy as a source of inspiration and possibility.

Queer Pedagogy as Possibility

From the literature already reviewed, two points are clear: teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and actions sit in a complex relationship, and changing PSTs’ personal beliefs and motivating them toward action can be elusive goals. While building teachers’ knowledge and awareness of gender and sexuality as issues can support some positive changes, research cautions that instructional interventions cannot predict whether and how teachers will take future action in classrooms and schools. This begs the question, why? And what might resistance have to do with it? In the service of digging into those questions, the voices of queer and poststructural theorists are raised who encourage educators and researchers to ask: What does learning, and un learning (Britzman, 1998 ), do to students (Luhmann, 1998 )? And what can we learn about supporting PSTs to enact affirming and disrupting practices by digging into their processes of learning? Queer perspectives are elevated as a generative tool for doing that work of excavation.

Why Do Students Resist?

With respect to the why , Kevin Kumashiro’s ( 2000 , 2001 ) writing on the role of emotional crisis in anti-oppressive education, or teaching in ways that challenge multiple forms of oppression, is a useful place to start. Kumashiro ( 2000 ) cautions against assuming that “consciousness-raising” or building knowledge around particular issues of equity will lead to action or personal transformation. From this perspective, PSTs could theoretically learn about how heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia are institutionalized in schools and be introduced to the negative consequences for LGBTQ youth, and still, as professionals in the field, they could choose not to take action that affirms gender and sexual diversity. Calling on Britzman’s ( 1998 ) argument that all learning involves un learning, Kumashiro ( 2001 ) explains it this way:

I argue that learning about oppression and unlearning one’s worldview can be upsetting and paralyzing to students…. Though paradoxical and in some ways traumatic, this condition should be expected: by teaching students that the very ways in which we think and do things can be oppressive, teachers should expect their students to get upset. (p. 44, emphasis in original)

This perspective emphasizes that education that works against oppression must disrupt what students already know and have previously taken for granted as normal. In this way, unlearning can lead to “a state of ‘crisis’ or paralysis (such as feeling emotionally upset)” (Kumashiro, 2001 , p. 38). Kumashiro argues that educators must take seriously the roles of emotional crisis and resistance in students’ processes of engaging in anti-oppressive education, because if left unattended, crisis can exacerbate resistance and preclude the possibility of change. In order to move toward a desire to take action, then, educators must support students to work through crisis. Kumashiro encourages educators to be curious about students’ resistances and to make space for the emotional upset that attends anti-oppressive education.

To put this perspective into context, an example of a queer intervention is given that was enacted by the authors as part of a study conducted in a semester-long secondary literacy methods course in which Staley and Leonardi acted as lead instructors (Staley & Leonardi, 2016 ). Across course meetings, readings, and activities, they integrated topics of gender and sexual diversity, including heteronormativity and queer-inclusive literacy practices. Initially, they were interested in how students would respond, but were struck by the ways that the curriculum put several students into crisis. Using Kumashiro’s framework to make sense of the emotional overtones of students’ responses, they learned that foregrounding gender and sexual diversity invited complex emotional responses as students both resisted and engaged with the process of unlearning previously taken-for-granted assumptions. For example, learning that school is not a safe place for all students and that teachers have been complicit in making schooling unsafe for LGBTQ youth incited strong emotional responses. Also upsetting to students was not knowing how to address LGBTQ topics and issues in spite of their motivation to do so. Analysis suggested that discomfort shaped students’ responses to the curriculum in important ways. Some students were willing to move toward discomfort (called a move to “lean in”) (Chödrön, 2009 ). Others resisted discomfort altogether. Reflecting on the findings, Staley and Leonardi wondered what might have happened if they had anticipated a crisis of learning and invited students to connect with and critically attend to their emotional responses. What if the students had been invited to lean in to discomfort along the way? How might that have supported students through moments of crisis and resistance?

In the service of digging a little deeper into the why , the authors also looked to queer pedagogy as a productive tool for examining the complex relationship between emotion, resistance, and the self. Playing with what queer pedagogy might mean, and what it might mean to queer pedagogy, Luhmann ( 1998 ) wonders, “What if queer pedagogy puts into crisis what is known and how we come to know?” (p. 147). She argues for a pedagogy that moves from “what should be learned and how to teach this knowledge” to “how we come to know and how knowledge is produced in the interaction between teacher/text and student” (p. 147). Luhmann encourages educators to ask: “What does being taught, what does knowledge do to students?” This question orients educators toward an important shift away from a focus on what is being taught and by which methods and toward “an inquiry into the conditions for understanding, or refusing, knowledge (Felman, 1987 ; Lusted, 1986 )” (p. 148). In other words, queer pedagogy is less concerned with the text or topic that anchors a lesson than with the process through which students engage and resist that text and the conditions that make those interactions possible. Central to Luhmann’s argument is consideration of what students can bear to know and what they might refuse when they refuse certain identifications (e.g., the oppressor). She says, “What is at stake in this pedagogy is the deeply social or dialogical situation of subject formation, the processes of how we make ourselves through and against others” (Luhmann, 1998, pp. 153–154).

When Does Change Become Possible?

The question of when is connected to Kumashiro’s caution that knowledge building promotes change in the individual. Kumashiro ( 2000 ) doesn’t leave us to just sit in the warning, however; he suggests that anti-oppressive education must involve self-reflexivity, which he defines as “a change of the individual” (p. 45). Engaging Britzman’s ( 1998 ) thinking, he says that “efforts to challenge oppression need to involve changing the self, rethinking who one is by seeing the Other as an ‘equal’ but on different terms” (p. 81). Consciousness-raising, knowledge-building, and self-reflection are part of the process puzzle, but, Kumashiro argues, via Felman ( 1995 ), that “teaching and learning really take place only through entering and working through crisis, since it is this process that moves a student to a different intellectual/emotional/political space” (p. 44, emphasis in original). Attending to crisis and supporting students to reflect on how they are implicated in systems of oppression is as crucial as attending to self-reflexivity and facilitating students’ critical reflections on how that knowledge bears on their sense of self. As Kumashiro contends, it is only when students are willing to “think differently” about their sense of self and “significantly chang[e] how they see themselves and who they are” (p. 45) that taking anti-oppressive action becomes possible. Therefore, in order to navigate the challenges of enacting queer interventions in teacher education, pedagogies need to be used that pay close attention to the “conditions of learning” (Luhmann, 1998 ) that our interventions create and to how those conditions expand and foreclose opportunities for students to enter into crisis and engage in self-reflexive work.

So, what might it look like to bring this perspective to bear in practice? What if, as researchers and teacher educators, we drill down and place a lens of curiosity not so much on the what of students’ attitudes, resistance, advocacy (e.g., what is the nature of students’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs?), but on the why ? Why do students resist? And, in their resistance and moments of crisis, when do they get curious? When do they “lean in” to discomfort? What’s my role in facilitating that introspective curiosity? Assuming that such an inquiry stance requires that we get curious about the conditions of learning, we should ask, as Luhmann ( 1998 ) does: What is this learning doing to students? What kinds of identifications are at stake in this process? What structures these identifications? How do identifications become possible? What prevents them, and ultimately, makes learning (im)possible? What will this information, knowledge, and conversation do to students’ senses of self? What will the knowledge ask students to reconsider about themselves and the subject(s) studied? How will students insert themselves in this discussion? What positions might they refuse? Which ones might they find desirable?

In practice, this looks like not centering questions such as: Do you think it’s appropriate to affirm queer identities in PK-12 curriculum? Rather, the questions are: What comes up for you as you consider your role in affirming LGBTQ identities in your curriculum? What is it that you are responding to? Where are your “no’s” (e.g., resistances, defenses) and “yes’s” (e.g., openness, willingness to engage)? How do you know? What do you feel? Where do those feelings come from? Where are you, personally, in this conversation? How do you see, identify, or recognize yourself? How does this conversation affect, disrupt, or support your ideas of what counts as normal? Different? Appropriate? Do you notice binaries and oppositions coming up (e.g., us/them; good/bad; oppressed/oppressor; normal/abnormal; tolerant/tolerated)? How might an inquiry into these questions bolster or add layers to Mudrey and Medina-Adams’ ( 2006 ) findings (perhaps the why of what they found) that PSTs were more knowledgeable, but that their attitudes and feelings were not reflective of this knowledge?

With respect to gender and sexual diversity, there is no doubt a relationship between on-the-ground practices of teacher educators and the long-standing fight for relevancy in the discourses of educational research and practice, broadly speaking. For this reason, this article echoes Quinn and Meiners ( 2011 ) in saying, “rather than simply proposing more ‘on-the-ground’ research of local attitudes and prejudices, we again remind readers to study up by focusing on structures, systems, and power” (p. 145). As the literature review suggests, there are many PSTs who never get the opportunity to engage with gender and sexual diversity because of programmatic and institutional silences. Gender and sexual diversity are often left out of course syllabi and texts, even those specifically focused on diversity and multicultural education. And much of what PSTs encounter in terms of diversity, as Jennings ( 2007 ) noted, “are reflections of the values and beliefs held by teacher education faculty” (p. 1266). Therefore, it is essential to continue to confront the reality that in many programs, conversations about LGBTQ people still don’t exist. In addition to studying up and challenging those institutional structures, teacher educators and researchers are encouraged to drill down—that is, to consider how students are interacting with their learning as well as the kinds of spaces being created for them to navigate learning as a messy, emotional, and personal process. No doubt, this requires that we, as teacher educators and researchers, lean in to the vulnerability of learning ourselves.

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1. Visit www.GLSEN.org to read the most recent report, published in 2016.

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Gender Issues in Education

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Suzanne Manning 2

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Introduction

Our world is constructed around gender binaries, where women and men are assigned different roles and characteristics because of their gender. Often this leads to the oppression of women and of those who do not fit neatly inside the gender expectation “boxes.” Misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia are discriminatory attitudes held by many in society, which limit the freedoms and quality of life of people because of the way they choose to express their gender. Teachers and the education system are part of the (re)production of societal attitudes and can be influential in reinforcing or challenging gender discrimination. Awareness of gender issues is the first step in overcoming gender discrimination; action is the next.

This entry overviews gender issues in education, as a starting point for raising awareness. The first part deals with gender concepts by giving a working definition of gender as used in this entry, a brief selection of gender theoretical approaches, and...

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Manning, S. (2019). Gender Issues in Education. In: Peters, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Teacher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_333-1

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