Executive Summary

G.I. Joe meets Barbie, software
engineer meets caregiver:
Males and females in B.C.’s public schools and beyond

© The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation holds copyright on this document.
The executive summary is reproduced here with permission of the BCTF.

Full text available online at http://bctf.ca/uploadedfiles/publications/research_reports/2000sd03.pdf

September 2000
by Anne C. (Anny) Schaefer
BCTF Research Department

Preface

Following a referral from the March 2000 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF), the Spring 2000 Representative Assembly passed the following motion:

This research report is not meant to be comprehensive. Rather, it draws together some of the information that currently exists on the status of male and female students in British Columbia—or Canada or another jurisdiction when B.C. data are not available—before and after completing or leaving the public school system. The primary purpose of this report is to provide accurate and timely data to inform public dialogue around the experiences of males and females in B.C.’s public-education system.

Following a discussion of perceptions of the issue in other jurisdictions, and certain conceptual issues, general demographics are presented for students (“Enrolment”) and teachers, administrative officers, and other educators (“Educators”). Graduation standings and drop-out rate have been combined into one section, “Secondary school completion.” Secondary school course enrolment by gender is no longer collected; the most recent data, as well as other indicators, are presented in “Course enrolment and achievement” to create a picture of gender issues related to course choices and achievement.

“Special needs and gender” summarizes special needs designations among male and female students. Post-secondary attendance and faculty enrolment at universities and colleges are both included in “Post-secondary indicators.” A section entitled “Health” includes information on sex education in the province as well as a number of other health issues. “Crime and violence” depicts differences in male and female criminal behaviour and victimization. Finally, “Economic and labour indicators” compares male and female social and economic status more broadly.

The report concludes with a summary and discussion of the findings.

Summary

This section provides an overview of the data provided in this report. The following table displays whether females or males are at an advantage for each indicator considered, while the lists that follow summarize a number of other variables. Refer to the main report for more details.

Selected gender indicators: Who is relatively more advantaged?

INDICATOR	MALE	FEMALE
Six-year Dogwood completion rate		ü
Six-year Dogwood completion rate, Aboriginal students		ü
Graduates as a percentage of September Grade 12 enrolment		ü
Employment, secondary school completers		ü
Employment, secondary school non-completers	ü
Ease with “computer culture”	ü
Provincial exam participation
Physics	ü
Math	ü
Communications	ü
All others except Geology		ü
Average school marks, all examinable subjects		ü
Average provincial exam marks
Geology, Geography, History, Chemistry	ü
All other examinable subjects except Mathematics and Biology		ü
Honours graduates		ü
Provincial scholarship winners		ü
Provincial gold-medal winners	ü
Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) reading and writing		ü
Gifted designation		ü
TIMSS RESULTS:
Mathematics achievement, Grade 4	ü
Science achievement, Grade 4	ü
Mathematics achievement, Grade 8		ü
Science achievement, Grade 8	ü
Mathematics and science literacy, Grade 12	ü
Reasoning and social utility, Grade 12	ü
Advanced mathematics, Grade 12	ü
Physics, Grade 12	ü
Post-secondary qualifications
Commerce, health, education, fine arts, humanities		ü
Engineering, applied science, math and physical sciences	ü
Eligibility for direct admission to university		ü
Participation in post-secondary education, youth ages 18-24		ü
Post-secondary enrolment
Registered apprenticeship programs	ü
Skill upgrading programs	ü
College university transfer and career programs		ü
University undergraduate		ü
University graduate	ü
University undergraduate agricultural and biological sciences and social sciences; undergraduate and graduate education, fine and applied arts, health professions, humanities, general arts and sciences		ü
University undergraduate and graduate engineering and applied sciences, mathematics and physical sciences; graduate agricultural and biological sciences	ü
Bachelor and first professional degrees		ü
Master degrees		ü
Earned doctorates	ü
College/institute outcomes
Grade point average (GPA)		ü
Program satisfaction		ü
Co-operative education participation	ü
Labour force participation	ü
Median gross monthly salary	ü
Full-time work	ü
Health
Life expectancy at birth		ü
Absence of chronic disease and disability	ü
Adolescents’ self-ratings of health	ü
Absence of stomachache, headache, backache, etc.	ü
Absence of emotional health problems	ü
Adequate exercise	ü
Adequate birth weight	ü
Absence of childhood cancers		ü
Non-smoker	ü
Lower injury rate		ü
Lower mortality rate		ü
Fewer hospital admissions		ü
Workplace safety		ü
Adequate time for family, friends and leisure	ü
Mental health (except suicide)	ü
Self-acceptance of body image	ü
Occupations
Skilled crafts and tradespersons, trades supervisors, manual workers, senior managers, middle managers, skilled sales and service, semi-professional/technical	ü
Administrative and clerical, sales and service, clerical supervisors, professionals		ü
Teachers		ü
Administrative officers	ü
Superintendents	ü
University faculty	ü
College instructors	ü
Labour force participation, except 15-24 years of age	ü
Earnings from work	ü
Median total income	ü
Economic adequacy/self-sufficiency	ü
High-technology career preparation	ü

The following lists attempt to describe some other facets of being male or female at the turn of the millennium.

Males are more likely than females to:

Ø      be identified as having the following special needs (in descending order relative to females):

o        autism

o        moderate behaviour disorder

o        severe behaviour disorder

o        severe learning disability

o        physical disability

o        visual impairment

o        mild intellectual disability

o        behaviour disorder—rehabilitation

o        deaf/hard of hearing

o        moderate to severe/profound mental disability

o        deaf/blind.

Ø      commit suicide (although females have more suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide more often).

Ø      want to gain weight, have muscle dysmorphia.

Ø      be affected by “masculinity ideology.”

Ø      be frequently involved in fights.

Ø      have been threatened with physical harm or physically assaulted.

Ø      feel unsafe at school.

Ø      be bullied.

Ø      bully.

Ø      be charged with a crime.

Ø      be victims of criminal acts by other youths.

Ø      receive a tougher sentence in court for the same crime.

Ø      be involved in robbery, major assault and other serious violent crimes.

Ø      be disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of homicide, except for spousal homicide (two-thirds of all homicide victims and 90% of those accused of murder are male).

Ø      experience overt or covert violence and to be the victims of property damage (as teachers).

Ø      be perpetrators of violence against teachers.

Ø      be stalked.

Ø      be sexual harassers.

Ø      have higher labour force participation and unemployment rates in every age group.

Ø      earn minimum wage in 20-24 age group.

Ø      have more paid work hours in every age and role group except for unmarried youth ages 18-24, employed full-time.

Ø      work as a truck driver.

Ø      have more leisure time than females in every age-role group

Ø      receive income support when unattached.

Females are more likely than males to:

Ø      be identified in the physically dependent special needs category (slightly).

Ø      want to lose weight, have eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

Ø      be depressed, have suicidal thoughts, attempt suicide (although males commit suicide more often)

Ø      feel time-stressed.

Ø      smoke.

Ø      be negatively affected by early sexual activity, teenage pregnancy.

Ø      be a lone parent and to be in low-income if a lone parent.

Ø      have been verbally harassed.

Ø      receive a lighter sentence such as being put on probation if sentenced.

Ø      be increasingly charged with violent crimes.

Ø      be 14-15 when involved in crime.

Ø      be a victim of spousal homicide (80% of spousal homicide victims are female).

Ø      be victimized by severe domestic violence

Ø      have been physically abused in childhood and adolescence.

Ø      have been sexually abused (as adolescents, 5 times more likely than males).

Ø      inflict covert violence on teachers during parent-teacher interviews (as parents).

Ø      experience sexual harassment.

Ø      have lower labour force participation rates.

Ø      work part-time involuntarily.

Ø      work as a retail salesperson.

Ø      earn minimum wage, except for those aged 20-24.

Ø      do more unpaid work than men in all age and role groups.

Ø      be poor if non-elderly or elderly.

Discussion

Opponents of public education and those who wish to sell newspapers occasionally invent crises in an attempt to discredit the system (BCTF, 2000b). This inclination is not limited to Canada or even North America. Discussing primary literacy, The Times Educational Supplement recently wrote in an editorial: “There is a tendency in British education to assume the worst on flimsy evidence, and then react accord­ingly. It’s a propensity exacerbated by the mainstream media, always eager to prise open the smallest chink in anyone’s armour—be they politician, policy adviser or primary teacher” (“Talk well,” 1998).

That said, the data examined in this report reveal that a stunning amount of gender stereotyping remains in British Columbia’s public education system, from Kindergarten through graduate school and beyond. Males still dominate in the “hard” sciences, technology and engineering, while females still dominate in the arts and the helping professions. Women do more housework, men have more leisure time. Men earn the big bucks, women tend to get part-time, low-paying jobs. There is no evidence that this situation is imposed, caused, or condoned by public schools. Stronger forces are obviously at work here, particularly the myths of masculinity and femininity and the glorification of violence that are transmitted in families throughout the land and reinforced by the mass media, and an overarching view of education as passive absorption of atomized bits of information which can be measured by grades, standardized tests, scholarships, and similar outcomes. Experience with standardized tests in the U.K. , for example, has demonstrated dramatically that measurements of literacy are greatly affected by the content of testing instruments.

Given the range of factors that reflect, define and describe our lives, it would be a tremendous oversimplification to say that schools are failing boys. Schools are within society—certainly those who routinely condemn schools would not wish them to be a force for radical change? On the other hand, teachers’ wishes for both boys and girls to succeed in school—the stimulus for this report—can best be effected through a constructivist approach that treats each child, male or female, as an individual. In terms of one of the most contentious gender areas—reading—this would involve gearing reading materials to the interests and abilities of individuals, then moving beyond their interests to “fill in the gaps.” For example, a particular boy may prefer adventure stories, and factual and technical information. In this case, the teacher would work to find appropriate materials that appeal to the child, but might also search for “crossovers” that would also enhance his emotional literacy. Alternatively, a particular girl might prefer fantasy, and narratives that deal with interpersonal relationships, materials the teacher might wish to supplement with appealing documents to enhance the girl’s analytical skills and information-handling ability.

In this way, teachers can do their best to keep students’ options open, so both science and the arts, technology and the caring professions—and the combinations thereof that will increasingly become part of our daily landscape—remain open to them, as well as the non-economic facets of being a person. There is little doubt that many if not most teachers already operate in this manner. What critics of education must frequently be reminded of, however, is that students are dramatically affected by their socio-economic status, the neighbourhoods in which they grow up—or are uprooted from all too frequently—their family type, parenting style, their peers, cultural background, and so forth. In other words, a myriad of powerful factors that schools and teachers can attempt to counteract—to some extent. These factors are intertwined with gender: Which boys earn gold medals for perfect scores on three scholarship exams? Which girls drop out of school, take up smoking, and become lone teenage parents?

In this context, certain aspects of male and female experience in school do deserve particular attention.

School safety: We have seen that male students fight more frequently than female students, are more often threatened with physical harm or physically assaulted, are more likely to feel unsafe at school, and are more likely to be bullied, bully, and inflict violence on their teachers. We have also seen that male teachers experience more overt or covert violence than their female counterparts, are more often the victims of property damage, and are more likely to be stalked. A student who does not feel safe cannot learn well. It is therefore imperative that school safety programs, including anti-bullying initiatives and insistence upon an atmosphere of respect, be one of the highest priorities in today’s schools.

Closely related are programs to counteract homophobia and heterosexism. Sadly, reports of suicide among youth who have been harassed for being gay (whether they are or not) are all too common in British Columbia. One young man is taking a different approach, asking the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to find the North Vancouver school board guilty of discrimination for allowing other students to harass him in secondary school from 1993 to 1998. He is claiming more than $80,000 in damages (Alphonso, 2000).

Also necessary is further research to uncover the reasons for male teachers’ higher risk of being victimized by violence. Once these factors are unraveled, programs can be developed to counteract these factors.

Educational technology: Simply put, to avoid present and future ghettoization, students and teachers, male and female, attuned to computer culture or not, should have access to educational technology. This will require ample and appropriate pre-service and in-service education for teachers on how to infuse educational technology into the entire curriculum. Adequate educational funding of these ventures is, of course, a fundamental requirement. Teachers must also have ready access to technology to “play with,” learn about and become comfortable enough with to develop their own lessons. In some districts, teachers can use professional development funds to purchase personal computers. This option should be investigated.

Special needs: The data indicate that boys are more frequently identified as having special needs than are girls. There is evidence that females with attention deficit disorder, for example, are often overlooked, perhaps because they are more likely to daydream than be hyperactive. The special needs that exhibit this type of identification gender gap are often those in which the student does not meet the socialization or self-control required to participate in the classroom, such as the moderate and severe behaviour categories.

A variety of factors are involved. Some are physiological or medical in nature—such as attention deficit disorder or autism, while others are social in nature—such as expressing anger or acting out in other ways in response to unmet needs. It appears that boys are more likely than girls to be disruptive in the classroom. And, since the behaviour identified as a problem often has to do with relationships, those actions that are disruptive to other students, rather than harmful to the student himself or herself, are those most likely to lead to a special needs designation. Behaviours that damage the student himself or herself, rather than others, are less likely to be identified; such students, therefore, are less likely to get the extra help that can come with identification. In the current system, this is more likely to be girls.

In the rush to ensure that boys are not shortchanged, it is important to ensure that the needs of less-vocal females are being met. The costs of not doing so are great.

Sex education: Medical health officers in B.C. have recently expressed concern about the consistency and adequacy of sex education in B.C., in light of growing complacency about HIV and AIDS among young gay men. While the ministry-prescribed learning outcomes for Family Life Education may appear adequate on the surface (although the name may not reflect many young people’s experience of sexuality), there is no information to indicate whether and how the outcomes are being addressed in all the different classrooms in the province. The BCTF may wish to consider whether recommending a review is in order.

Also relevant to this area of CAPP is sharing information on the importance of parenting to boys’ and girls’ health and adaptability. The new brain research has much to say on this topic.

Data: The Ministry of Education stopped collecting data on students’ course choices by gender as well as teachers’ subjects by gender in 1996. Reinstating this data collection and even augmenting it to include other variables would allow informed discussion of males’ and females’ preferences and preparation prior to post-secondary education. Without it, little can be said.

Raising economic awareness among both females and males: While CAPP may have components related to awareness of income and earnings from different occupations, females’ propensity to become low-income lone parents, to work part-time and in low-paying jobs, and to live in poverty, and males’ tendency to rely on income assistance, indicate the need for more education in this area. Government cutbacks of income-support programs are likely to accelerate rather than reverse, and economic self-reliance will be essential for both males and females.

Sensitivity: It is imperative that schools and teachers be sensitive to both boys’ and girls’ achievement and self-esteem needs. It is too easy to overlook a student’s mental health status when she or he is doing well at school. Teachers and parents would do well to ask themselves the cost of high achievement.

Workplace safety: Data from the Workers’ Compensation Board clearly indicate that young males are at high risk of workplace injury and death. Education partners should ensure that existing educational materials are used in the schools so boys get the message from an early age.

While these actions in and of themselves cannot halt or reverse existing social mores surrounding gender, they do provide policy options that are within educators’ reach. They may be only a drop in the ocean but, as Mother Teresa said, “the ocean is made up of drops.”

References

Alphonso, C. (2000, September 12). Bullied student wants school board to pay. The Globe and Mail. pp. A-1, A-8. return to text.

B.C. Teachers’ Federation. (2000b, June 5). Ontario teachers warn B.C. colleagues to stay away [Issue Alert]. Vancouver, BC: B.C. Teachers’ Federation. Vol. 12, No. 5..  return to text.

“Talk Well.” (1998, November 13). Talk well, read well. The Times Educational Supplement. Retrieved July 11, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.tes.co.uk/tp/900000/PRN/teshome.html (TES Archive).  return to text.

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