Gender atypical subject selection

In Dame Athene Donald’s inaugural address as President of the British Science Association in 2015 she stated that “the problems of how we introduce gender stereotyping for our children start incredibly early“. She asks, if girls “have never had the opportunity to take things to pieces and build them up again; if they have always just played with dolls …. in a stereotypically female situation such as worrying about hair style or making tea, then how can they imagine themselves as engineers or chemists?” Dame Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University, says that she is “astonished by how many people tell me a girl they know has been told that maths isn’t for them, or that girls are no good at maths or even that they do maths like a boy”. She believes that even though girls’ exam results in maths and physics are as good if not better than boys, these negative messages “sink in subliminally” and girls are discouraged from pursuing maths and science as careers. Professor Donald’s comments are backed up by recent research in this area.

• Justman and Méndez (2018, abstract) examined data for Victorian students, finding that there is gendered streaming of STEM subjects in secondary schools, with boys more likely to take physics, information technology and advanced mathematics and girls more likely to take life sciences like biology, but that there is “significantly less gender streaming in STEM subjects among female students in all-girls schools than in co-educational schools”. Girls in Australian single-sex schools are more likely than girls in co-educational schools to take physics, advanced maths and chemistry (p. 290).

• A 2018 German study has found that single-sex programs in computer science and mechanical engineering held since 2001 have led to a decrease in the number of female students dropping out of STEM disciplines at German universities. As a result, these programs have helped lead to an increase in the number of females in traditionally male-dominated STEM fields (Busolt, Ludewig & Schmidt, 2018, p. 251).

• A 2017 Taiwanese study has found that single-sex schools are advantageous for women’s pursuit of careers in the technology fields. Twenty of the 28 research participants were from single-sex schools. In single-sex schools, participants reported less gender stereotyping and discrimination which enabled them the freedom to choose subjects that were not stereotypically for women. Single-sex schools were reported to provide girls with female role models who further encouraged their involvement in technology. Many participants reported feeling encouraged or inspired by their female teachers. This led the author to suggest that gender discrimination and stereotyping can threatens girls’ potentiality in technology (Wang, 2017, pp. 156-157).

• A 2015 study by Kester Lee and Judy Anderson from the University of Sydney found that girls in single-sex schools have the most positive attitudes to maths and girls in co-educational schools have the least positive attitudes (p. 357). In fact, girls in single-sex schools were the most positive of all students, followed by boys in single-sex schools, then co-educational boys and finally co-educational girls (p. 361). Lee and Anderson concluded that, for girls, “single-sex settings resulted in much more favourable attitudes towards mathematics than those in coeducational settings” (p. 363).

• Similarly, a 2016 report by Dr Chris Ryan of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research confirms that, by Year 8, girls in single-sex schools are more likely to enjoy and be confident in maths than girls in co-educational schools. Ryan concluded that “boys tend to favour mathematics in terms of their confidence and how much they value the subject, while girls’ attitudes to science are relatively stronger”. However: “The exception to this statement is that girls in single-sex schools have stronger attitudes towards mathematics than science compared with boys, unlike in co-educational schools” (p. 23).

• Gandara and Silva (2015, pp. 7, 11) found that despite equal numbers of female and male high school students in Chile sitting the biology, chemistry and physics pre-admission tests for entry into science-based university degrees, and despite female students achieving a higher Grade Point Average (GPA) at high school than male students, on average males outperformed female students in the three science admission tests, even after controlling for socioeconomic status (SES) and school type. They also found that girls attending single-sex schools in Chile were more likely to sit the chemistry and physics tests than girls from co-ed schools (pp. 7-8) and that they achieved higher scores that their co-ed counterparts on all three tests (biology, chemistry and physics) (p. 11).

• A 2015 report by the Institute of Physics (UK) found that co-ed schools need to do more to tackle sexist banter and attitudes that discourage girls from pursuing careers in science. The Opening Doors report found that many schools were “inadvertently reinforcing the notion that certain subjects were harder than others” and that girls “lack ability” and “innate talent” in certain subjects, and this was “particularly true for girls contemplating mathematics and the physical sciences”. In addition, timetabling constraints in many schools reinforced gender stereotypes through offering subjects in blocks that send “a strong message about the types of courses that are taken by boys and girls”.

• In 2013 the Institute of Physics’ Closing Doors report examined existing gender imbalances in six A-level subjects which result in girls being more likely to take English, biology and psychology, and boys being more likely to take mathematics, physics and economics. The report found that 81% of government co-ed schools were “reinforcing” these gender balances “or making them worse” (p. 11). One of the main findings of the report, however, was that “single-sex schools are significantly better than co-educational schools at countering gender imbalances in progression to these six subjects” (p. 5).

• Schneeweis and Zweimüller (2012) showed that Austrian girls studying in classes with a higher proportion of girls were more likely to choose to study in a technical (vocational) school at age 14. They concluded that “in more female environments, girls are less restrained by gender stereotypes and are more likely to consider traditional male school types and careers” (p. 490).

• In their study of female engineering students at a Sydney university, Tully and Jacobs concluded that: “Single gender classes may provide a learning environment where the female voice is not marginalised. The personal attributes of the teachers, most notably their encouragement, care and availability, appeared to motivate these female students from single gender schools to excel” (2010, p. 464).

• Alice Sullivan, a British academic, found that: “Girls at single-sex schools were less likely to see themselves as ‘below average’ in maths and science”. She also noted that single-sex schooling “generally promoted a gender-atypical self-concept” (2009, p. 281).

• Sullivan, Joshi and Leonard (2010) found that: “A single-sex environment may make it less likely that students will perceive particular academic subjects as being ‘for’ a particular sex. While in a coeducational school, a girl taking physics, for example, would have found herself in a minority in the class, this would not apply in a single-sex environment” (p. 27). As a result, “single-sex schools were associated with attainment in gender atypical subject areas for both boys and girls… [and] women who had attended single-sex schools were more likely than coeducated women to gain their highest qualification by age 33 in a male-dominated field” (p. 25). This “confirms the view that single sex environments can actually reduce the tendency of students to behave according to gender-typical stereotypes or norms” (p. 26). (Also see, Sullivan, Joshi & Leonard, 2008).

• A study of over 350,000 comprehensive and grammar school students in England found that girls’ schools countered traditional gender stereotyping, with girls in single-sex schools 30-40% more likely to enrol in physics, chemistry and/or biology than girls in co-educational schools (Spielhofer, Benton & Schagen, 2004, p. 154).