Gender in Education Essay Sample

“Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society” -Sonia Sotomayor. It is well-known boys are outgoing and require more attention from the teachers and their peers, whereas girls are more self-conscious, requiring less attention from the teacher” (Gasparova). Even though students of all genders take the same classes with the same teachers, each gender will receive a different education. The paper will focus on the inequalities between boys and girls in their education by listing the pros of being male in the classroom vs. being female and do colleges choose one gender more than another and do females or males have a higher chance of being successful at a well-paid job?  

What are some of the pros of being male in the educational system? Boys tend to be more active than girls, and because of this they become more restless if they must sit for extended periods, especially during school (Gasparova). Due to the restless behavior, they tend to have the teachers' undivided attention so that they will behave, whereas girls are more self-attentive, requiring less attention from the teacher. Seifert states, “In general, teachers interact with boys more often than with girls by a margin of 10 to 30 percent, depending on the grade level of the students and the personality of the teacher.” They may do this because the overall extroverted personalities are mostly male students, whereas girls tend to be more introverted. Even when it comes down to participating and answering questions as a class, Seifert states that “with boys, teachers tend to overlook wrong answers and praise them highly for displaying their knowledge correctly, but with girls, they tend to overlook right answers and criticize them more for any wrong answers.” They do this to boost the boy's confidence so that they do not give up and quit after high school or worse drop out. Due to all the praise towards the young males, girls can get less motivated to answer aloud in class even if they are correct due to the lack of praise.  

Another pro for boys is most schools' dress code policies. Most dress code policies are directed towards females because of boys being distracted, but the same does not go for the boys. For instance, “Many protests, walkouts, and petitions have been made to criticize the dress codes as sexist in that how it unfairly targets girls by body-shaming and blaming them for “promoting” sexual harassment.” Dress code issues happen in many schools due to teachers do not want girls' clothing to distract boys from schoolwork, whereas boys can wear whatever they would like. (Zhou) 

What are some of the pros of being a female in the classroom? Even though there are many pros of being male in the classroom, there are still many pros of being female. “Even though teachers interact with the boys more often than with girls by a margin of 10 to 30 percent, girls still earn slightly higher average grades than boys” (Seifert). “Girls earn higher grades in every subject, including the science-related fields, where boys are thought to surpass them.” (Gnaulati) Such high grades could be because the female gender has been known for extremely high standards or expectations to uphold, even as children. These standards can be enforced through their parents or family members, or even just themselves. These expectations can range from straight A’s, class president, and prom queen. Because of their elevated expectations, girls tend to have more motivation to be the best in school, whereas boys tend to be more carefree and relaxed in class. “Researchers also found girls scored nearly 30 points higher than boys on a 600-point scale, and all students scored better when girls made up at least 60 percent of students in the school.” (www.edweek.org) This shows that girls can comprehend and focus better than boys and the more girls in the classroom the more influenced the boys to do their work instead of not caring. Girls are expected to be well-behaved. Therefore, girls get praised for their good behavior, whereas boys get in trouble for unruly behavior and not good. Due to their better behavior, their comprehension, and motivation to do their work, that shows in their overall grades.  

Do colleges choose one gender more than another? It is commonly known that in the 1900s the male gender was the majority of the college population, but in present dates have women taken the lead. Around the time, 1830ish women finally got the right to attend college but of course with setbacks. During that time, women experienced many sexist remarks and experienced violence from male students because of their sex. In 1970, men accounted for 57 percent of college and university students, whereas women counted for the remainder 43 percent. Two years later, Congress passed Title IX regulations that prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school that received federal funding. (Thompson). In the short amount of time between 1970 and the mid-1980s, the gender gap grew but in the favor of women. Ever since the mid-1980s, women in the United States have received more bachelor’s degrees than men every year (Thompson). But in other countries, it is not like that. For example, Tokyo Medical school would alter female applicants' scores to reduce the amount of women enrollment numbers from nearly 40 percent in 2010 to approximately 30 percent now. (Npr) They would do such things, because they believed female applicants would quit as doctors after starting families, causing hospital staffing shortages. (www.nbcnews.com) They would add points to male applicants' test scores to give them higher chances of getting into medical school. “The Associated Press revealed that admissions programs were altered to automatically deduct points from the test results of all applicants on the first round, then add up to 20 points for male hopefuls.” (Npr) They would rather take an average or below average male student over a female student who was top of her class and had straight A’s all her life. “For decades, guys have been less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to enroll in college immediately, and less likely to finish college and earn a diploma.” (Thompson D) 71 percent of female high school graduates went on to college, compared to 61 percent of their male counterparts (Gnaulati). Such statements paired with the previous fact about females being more motivated than males even when it comes to applying and attending college. 

Do females or males have a higher chance of being successful at a well-paid job after college? In the past, females were taught only the basics and how to maintain the house while the men worked. “Between the 1930s and mid-1970s, women’s participation in the economy started to rise, with the gains primarily owing to an increase in work among married women. Yellen mentions that “by 1970 about 50 percent of single women and 40 percent of married women were participating in the labor force.” Even with this, there are still jobs that are dominated by males, such as doctoring. For instance, “male doctors still outnumber female doctors, 64 percent to 36 percent. But in 2019, 46,878 of medical school students (50.5 percent) are women and 45,855 (49.4 percent) are men” (Searing) “The 2019 American Community Survey estimated there were 2,523,490 registered nurses in the U.S. 2,186,697 female and 336,793 males, that makes about 87% more female nurses than male.” (www.census.gov) But outside of medical, New York Times states, “At U.S. financial services firms, women accounted for just under 22 percent of leadership roles in 2019, according to the most recent analysis from Deloitte,” On the contrary, USA today states in the vet field women make up about 59.1% of total veterinarians according to USAToday.com. People have certain jobs that they are superior in and succeed in. Even though there are big gender gaps in most jobs, the number of jobs that they could succeed in is equal.  

In conclusion, education equality has a lasting effect on the education of minors and their career field in the future. In schools, there are still gender gaps between females and males. There is more equality in schools than there has been in the past. Females have been working on closing the gap with their ambitious work and dedication. Even though males are more outgoing and require more attention from the teachers, females, who tend to be more to themselves, still manage to make better grades and earn more bachelor’s degrees. This proves that there are still big gender gaps in today's educational system, but it is slowly going down to give students of all genders an equal education.