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Why is there a strongly gendered trend in subject choice in education? In the British education system there is currently a very strong divide in terms of subject choices between males and females, which in most cases occur from age fourteen onwards and this strong divide can be found at every tier of educational qualification. For instance in 2010 nearly 70% of students doing a social science GCSE were female, while nearly 65% of PE students were femalei. At A-level, when Maths, English and Science are no longer compulsory, there emerges a much greater division between arts and science subjects ; for instance a University of Cambridge study found that 77% of Maths A2 students surveyed were male whilst 70% of English Literature A2 students were female ii. And finally in Higher Education, in 2008 there were more than twice as many women as men studying Education and almost six times as many men as women studying Engineering and technologyiii. In the past this trend could have been very easily explained by the fact that schools actively timetabled students towards gender-stereotyped subjectsiv however according to Whitehead the main problem now appears to be the attitudes of the pupils themselves v. In terms of assessing gendered subject choice as a problem, for political reasons the focus tends to be on women s limited participation in scientific and engineering subjects, with the assumption that increasing this would correspondingly increase men s participation in arts and humanities subjects. This is of course a problematic assumption and one that I will address later on, but for the purposes of this essay I will be treating increased female involvement in scientific and technological subjects as an indicator of general equality in subject choice as it can indicate less restrictive gender norms and it is on this subject that the bulk of data is available.

The fact that this trend continues, despite the many movements towards gender equality over the past four decades, poses a number of issues. On a simple measure of equality, studies have shown that maths and science students tend to earn more than arts and humanities students vi, a trend which could be seen to partially account for the continuing pay gap between men and women. On deeper levels of discussion, the continuing existence of gendered behaviour such as this has been 1

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used to argue that gendered patterns of behaviour are far less mutable than had been asserted by Feminist movements. In essence then the debate ultimately turns to the question of whether biological sex or cultural gender is the strongest determinant of gendered human behaviour. Proponents of the former body of thought would tend to argue for transcultural and transhistorical patterns of behaviour rooted in innate biological difference, with the potential conclusion then that equal opportunities legislation and initiatives are ultimately doomed to failure. Arguing against this strand of thought, this essay is intended to assess the potential reasons why this gendering of subject choice still persists. As it would seem to be a logical error to attempt to provide a monocausal model of explanation for this complex phenomenon, this will be done by an assessment of different factors that can be seen to cumulatively produce the patterns that have been observed.

Firstly I will engage in a critique of biological-reductionist explanations for the phenomenon at hand. This is not to say that biological factors can have no effect on gendered behaviour (as it is very difficult to separate biological from social factors) but merely to argue against positions that posit genetic, pre-cultural biology as determining explanations for behaviour. As Birke has noted, both biological determinism and many feminist critiques of it rest upon a false dichotomy between biology and societyvii whereas in fact social phenomenon, as far as they are experienced via human cognition, are inseparable from the biological functions of the brain and vice-versa. Therefore, following this, I would argue that biological processes can be seen as the means by which we experience social phenomena (in terms of sensory and neural activity) rather than the primary causes of them. With this in mind, biological-reductionist models can be seen as genocentric , giving causal priority to genetic factors and ignoring both social and environmental influences on both behaviour and biology. In the context of subject choice they would tend to posit sex-based models as an ultimate explanation for why men and women tend to enjoy and perform better at different tasks, and thus be expected to engage in different forms of work. This model, therefore, has little or

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no room for structural constraints on an individual s choice as these would be seen to be the logical product of biological predispositions to begin with.

A key example of this relevant to the subject at hand is Govier s work on Brainsex and occupation. Govier argues that, although there is not a homogenous brain-type for both sexes, there are more common types for males and females in terms of differently-sized areas devoted to different patterns of thought viii, for instance male brains tended to have better spatial reasoning capabilities and be more skilled at solving mathematical problemsix whereas female brains performed better at engaging in verbal and emotional tasksx. In terms of subject choice, a proponent of this position may take this as evidence that men are predisposed to be better at mathematical and physical tasks whereas women are better at verbal and emotional ones. This would, for instance, account for the sex split between arts and science subjects as well as between productive and reproductive labours. However there are three key criticisms that need to be made of this model. Firstly, on a logical level, Govier admits that each brainsex is not essential but merely more common to a particular sexxi and that there is a considerable amount of overlap between the sexes in terms of brainsex . This would seem to beg the question as to why scientists continue to discuss brain types in sexed terms, when the evidence seems to demonstrate that someone s brainsex is not dependent upon one s biological sex (and that brains themselves lack any reproductive organs that could be the basis of a sex distinction). If anything, the continuing illogical description of brain types as male and female can be seen as demonstrating that scientists are no exception to our culture s strongly internalised gender norms. The second criticism, relating back to the genocentrism of biological-determinist accounts, is that Govier seems to assume that only genetic factors could have an influence upon how a brain develops, whereas in fact there is a large amount of data to show that one s physical and (crucially in this case) social environment play a large part in the development of neural connectionsxii which ultimately lead to differently-emphasised areas of the brain in areas like languagexiii and emotional 3

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reasoning xiv. Therefore, I would argue, in order to demonstrate that these different brain types have a genetic rather than environmental cause, one would have to engage in brain scans of babies and infants and demonstrate from them a great degree of sex dimorphism before social and cultural factors can be seen to have had an effect on brain development.

Thirdly, leaving aside the internal contradictions of the genocentric model, I would argue that crosscultural (both contemporaneous and cross-temporal) comparisons are one of the simplest ways of critiquing this form of explanation as any significant differences would quite clearly demonstrate that the origins of those differences are social rather than genetic. For instance, if one compares Sweden and the UK in terms of gender balances in tertiary education in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, in 2001 Sweden had 8.5% more female engineering graduates than the UK and 15.3% more female computing graduates xv. This last figure is of particular importance, as in the UK computing has often been described as one of the most masculine subjectsxvi, whereas in Sweden 40% of computing graduates are female. That such stark differences can be found between two fairly similar societies (both liberal-democracies with capitalist economies and welfare states) demonstrates how flexible gender norms can be, seeming to contradict the assertion that sex is a strong determinant of subject choice. This is further compounded by comparisons with former Communist states (as examples of more widely divergent societies to our own), which show even starker differences. The most striking example of this is that in 1987 the Bulgarian educational authority limited the proportion of female engineering students to 50%xvii demonstrating a complete inversion of what some authors have proclaimed to be the natural order of things. A final, and most illuminating, comparison shows that following the reunification of Germany, the numbers of female engineering and technology students in the former GDR fell dramaticallyxviii. The exact figures are difficult to find, although prior to reunification they were described as being at a level similar to Russia and Bulgaria, with 50% or more engineering students being female, whilst by 1997 they were described as having fallen to a West4

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German level xix, which in 2001 was only 20.5% of Engineering students being femalexx. Such a rapid decline would seem to demonstrate a direct correlation between forms of society and the genderpolarisation of certain subjects. From all this I would argue that evidence seems to demonstrate that social factors have a far larger influence than biological ones in determining the gendering of subject choice. Again, rather than proposing a monocausal model of explanation, I am going to examine two key factors that could be observed to have an effect. The first, and most similar to the previously critiqued genetic arguments, is to do with why males and females have been observed to enjoy and be interested in different types of subject. Colley found that feminine subjects tended to be associated with being about people , whereas masculine subjects tended to be about things xxi. This would seem to account for the gender split between arts and sciences in academia, although it is important here to note that the mode and philosophy of the subject is as important as the object of study; in Colley s words: it is not science that is masculine but the study of abstract, complex, inanimate processes and objects .xxii. For instance Biology as a natural science tends not to be masculine stereotyped in the same way as other sciencesxxiii whereas Economics, a subject that is ostensibly about people , had 75% male students at GCSE level in 2010xxiv presumably due to the fact that it emphasises abstract scientific and objective modes of study. In addition to the arts/sciences split, this divide between about people and about things can be observed in terms of vocational subjects and the perception of vocations themselves as masculine/femininexxv, often described in terms of productive and reproductive labour. A potential explanation for this split can be found in Chodorow s psychoanalytic theory of genderxxvi. Chodorow argues that, although there is no essential psychic difference between males and females, one can observe (in a simplistic way) a sliding scale of masculine and feminine psychologies. Chodorow argues that this is rooted in the gendered division of labour, specifically domestic labour around parenting. Her argument runs that in most of world women do the majority of child-caring 5

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tasks; then when children become self-aware females tend to easily identify with their primary caregiver, whereas males identify as distinct from them, with the result that males develop more rigid ego boundaries and a stronger distinction between their self and othersxxvii. This in turn is reinforced by socialisation agents in the production and reproduction of masculine and feminine personality types. One could then see these typical (although obviously not universal) personality types as leading into gendered subject choice; masculine subjects are those that study phenomena as objective, distinct and abstracted from oneself whereas feminine ones study phenomena in subjective and relational terms to oneself. This would therefore seem to demonstrate that social patterns tend to have a strong influence on why people find interest in different subjects, a phenomenon that is often taken to be either natural or purely individualistic. In cross-national comparisons one can definitely see a correlation between nations that encourage equal division of child caring duties via parental leavexxviii and a reduction in strongly gendered subject choicexxix, with Sweden (followed by Denmark and Finland) again surfacing as the most equal in terms of childcare as well as in subject choice, with further work being needed to establish whether this correlation is a causal relationship1. In addition to this gendering of interest in different subjects, which can be seen as a latent factor due to its existing below the level of conscious thought, there is another more easily observable social factor; that of the gender stereotyping of subjects and occupations. Whereas the previous factor operated on an unconscious level determining why one would be interested in specific subjects, this one operates on a conscious level and can be seen to restrain individual choice despite any interest they may have in said subject. The previous psychoanalytic account is, of course, a route by which subjects can come be sex-stereotyped but as Whitehead argues Once defined in this way
they can take on a significance for pupils that goes beyond the subject-matter involved; they can become a way of demonstrating sex-appropriate behaviour and thus help establish an individual's gender identity (Bem, 1981)
1

xxx

. She also argues that selection of subjects for GCSE and A-level occurs at a time when

It would certainly be an interesting and worthy topic to study children who were raised in more equitable circumstances or by single fathers and see how this affects their subject choice and career aspirations.

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individuals are most sensitive to stereotyped behaviours for their sex due to being in the process of negotiating a transfer from a childhood gender identity into an adult onexxxi. This appears to be particularly salient for boys, as in her study of A-level selection girls were found to be well spread across a range of masculine feminine and neutral subjects (indeed girls were more concentrated in masculine than feminine subjects) whereas boys tended to be concentrated largely in masculine subjects. This is perhaps because there has historically been a far greater gulf between childhood and adulthood for men than for women xxxii and that at the time of adolescence a boy must avoid anything that makes them feminine or sissified, he must not be caught acting like a girl
xxxiii

It could also be the result of the fact that males are positioned as the more powerful sex and (also as a result of Feminist campaigns), a female is less likely to be stigmatised for engaging in a more powerful masculine role than a male is for being perceived to willingly engage in a less powerful feminine one. This would certainly seem to explain why so much research and so many government initiatives emphasise the smaller number of women in masculine subjects despite Whitehead s finding that, in the UK for A-levels (and presumably University as applications depend on A-levels) It
is not so much therefore that girls are under-represented in mathematics and the physical sciences, but that boys are greatly over-represented; similarly, in languages girls appear to be over-represented in these areas only because boys are so greatly under-represented in them
xxxiv

. In terms of the previously posited

relationship between subject choice and childhood, it does not take a great leap of logic to propose that having a male parent engage in larger amounts of childcare may instil in males (and females) a different notion of what it is to be masculine , perhaps one that would require a less intense performance at adolescence (although we must keep in mind that gender identities are not merely determined through childhood but are actively reproduced by a range of elements throughout the life course).

To conclude therefore, I have demonstrated that neurologically focused models of explanation for the continuing phenomenon of gendered subject choice are highly flawed, as they rest upon a

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genocentric model that ignores the effects one s social environment can have on one s brain development and use samples exclusively drawn from their own, highly gendered, societies. Further to this I have demonstrated two key levels at which one s choice of subject can be seen as the product of social forces; those at the unconscious level of interest in a field of study as influenced by one s early gender construction and those at the conscious level of subject selection as a means of solidifying and reaffirming one s gender identity at a time when it is in a transitional crisis . This all seems to demonstrate that the effects of social forces on the gendering of one s subject choice are far more pertinent than any genetic effects drawn from one s sex and therefore that programs to improve equality in education and in wider society are far from fruitless. Crucially it also seems to demonstrate a need for the research focus to shift from why females are underrepresented in science and technology subjects to why males are so over-represented in them, with a view to understanding this in the context of performing masculinity and its relationship with one s primary socialisation.

RESULTS 2010: GCSE, Applied GCSE, Entry Level, Diploma , Joint Council for Qualifications (2010) Online Edition: http://www.jcq.org.uk/attachments/published/1321/GCSE%20Results%20Handout.pdf (accessed 22/02/2012) pp9

ii

Factsheet 2-As and A-Level Choice: Gender makes a difference , Cambridge Assessment, Online Edition: http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/ca/digitalAssets/186185_AS_and_A_Level_Choice_Factsheet_2.pdf (accessed 22/02/2012) iii Table 10 , Chapter 3 Social Trends 39 , Office for National Statistics (2009), Online Edition: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/social-trends-rd/social-trends/social-trends-39/index.html (accessed 22/02/2012) pp35

Sutherland, M.B, Sex Bias in Education, Basil Blackwell (1981) Whitehead, J.M, Sex stereotypes, gender identity and subject choice at A-level , Educational Research Vol.38 No.2 (1996) pp147
v vi vii

iv

Dolton, P & Vignoles, A.F, The Return on Post-Compulsory School Mathematics Study. Economica, 69 (2002) pp. 113-142.

Birke, L, Shaping Biology- Feminism and the idea of the biological , Debating Biology: Sociological Reflections on Health, Medicine and Society, Routledge (2003), Bendelow, Birke and Williams (eds) pp41 viii Govier, E, Brainsex and Occupation , Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation, Routledge (1998) Radford (ed)
ix x

Ibid pp3-4 Ibid pp3-6 xi Ibid pp2

Huttenlocher, P.R,& Dabholkar, A.S, Regional differences in synaptogenesis in the human cerebral cortex. Journal of Comparative Neurology no.387 (1997) pp167-178 Huttenlocher, J, Haight, W, Bryk, A, Seltzer, M & Lyons, T, Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender Developmental Psychology no.27 (1991) pp236-248. xiv Lieberman, A.F, & Zeanah, H, Disorders of attachment in infancy , Infant Psychiatry no.4 (1995) pp571-587
xiii xii

Van Langen, A and Dekkers, H, Cross-national differences in participating in tertiary science, technology, engineering and mathematics education , Comparative Education Vol.41 No.3 (2005) pp332

xv

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Colley, A, Gender and subject choice in secondary education , Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation, Routledge (1998) Radford (ed) pp24 Lightbody, P and Durndell, A, Perceptions of careers in science and technology , Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation, Routledge (1998) Radford (ed) pp40 xviii Durndell, A, Cameron, C, Knox, A and Stocks, R Gender and Computing: west and East Europe , Computers and Human Behaviour Vol.13, No.2 (1997) pp270 Ibid Van Langen, A and Dekkers, H, Cross-national differences in participating in tertiary science, technology, engineering and mathematics education , Comparative Education Vol.41 No.3 (2005) pp332 xxi Colley, A, Gender and subject choice in secondary education , Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation, Routledge (1998) Radford (ed) pp24 xxii Ibid pp25 xxiii Ibid
xx xix xvii

xvi

xxiv xxiv

RESULTS 2010: GCSE, Applied GCSE, Entry Level, Diploma , Joint Council for Qualifications (2010) Online Edition: http://www.jcq.org.uk/attachments/published/1321/GCSE%20Results%20Handout.pdf (accessed 22/02/2012) pp9

Kelly, A, When I grow up I want to be : a longitudinal study of the development of career preferences , British Journal of Guidance and Counselling Vol.17 No.2 (1989) pp179-200 xxvi Chodorow, N.J, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender, University of California Press (1978) xxvii Ibid pp173-178 xxviii Haas, L, Parental leave and gender equality: Lessons from the European union , Review of Policy Research Vol.20, Issue 1 (2003) pp89-114 xxix Van Langen, A and Dekkers, H, Cross-national differences in participating in tertiary science, technology, engineering and mathematics education , Comparative Education Vol.41 No.3 (2005) pp332 xxx Whitehead, J.M, Sex stereotypes, gender identity and subject choice at A-level , Educational Research Vol.38 No.2 (1996) pp149 xxxi Ibid xxxii Firestone, S, The Dialectic of Sex: The case for Feminist Revolution, Paladin (1972) pp80-81 xxxiii nd Doyle, J.A, The Male Experience (2 Ed), Wm. C. Brown (1989) pp147, cited in: Whitehead, J.M, Sex stereotypes, gender identity and subject choice at A-level , Educational Research Vol.38 No.2 (1996) pp150 xxxiv Whitehead, J.M, Sex stereotypes, gender identity and subject choice at A-level , Educational Research Vol.38 No.2 (1996) pp155

xxv

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Bibliography
Bendelow, Birke and Williams (eds), Debating Biology: Sociological Reflections on Health, Medicine and Society, Routledge (2003) Chodorow, N.J, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender, University of California Press (1978)
Dolton, P & Vignoles, A.F, The Return on Post-Compulsory School Mathematics Study. Economica, 69 (2002) pp. 113-142.

Doyle, J.A, The Male Experience (2nd Ed), Wm. C. Brown (1989) Durndell, A, Cameron, C, Knox, A and Stocks, R Gender and Computing: west and East Europe , Computers and Human Behaviour Vol.13, No.2 (1997) pp269-280 Firestone, S, The Dialectic of Sex: The case for Feminist Revolution, Paladin (1972) Haas, L, Parental leave and gender equality: Lessons from the European Union , Review of Policy Research Vol.20, Issue 1 (2003) pp89-114
Huttenlocher, J, Haight, W, Bryk, A, Seltzer, M & Lyons, T, Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender Developmental Psychology no.27 (1991) pp236-248. Huttenlocher, P.R,& Dabholkar, A.S, Regional differences in synaptogenesis in the human cerebral cortex. Journal of Comparative Neurology no.387 (1997) pp167-178

Kelly, A, When I grow up I want to be : a longitudinal study of the development of career preferences , British Journal of Guidance and Counselling Vol.17 No.2 (1989) pp179-200
Lieberman, A.F, & Zeanah, H, Disorders of attachment in infancy , Infant Psychiatry no.4 (1995) pp571-587

Radford (ed), Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation, Routledge (1998) Sutherland, M.B, Sex Bias in Education, Basil Blackwell (1981) Van Langen, A and Dekkers, H, Cross-national differences in participating in tertiary science, technology, engineering and mathematics education , Comparative Education Vol.41 No.3 (2005) pp329-350 Whitehead, J.M, Sex stereotypes, gender identity and subject choice at A-level , Educational Research Vol.38 No.2 (1996) pp147-160 Unknown Author
Factsheet 2-As and A-Level Choice: Gender makes a difference , Cambridge Assessment, Online Edition: http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/ca/digitalAssets/186185_AS_and_A_Level_Choice_Factsheet_2.pdf (accessed 22/02/2012) RESULTS 2010: GCSE, Applied GCSE, Entry Level, Diploma , Joint Council for Qualifications (2010) Online Edition: http://www.jcq.org.uk/attachments/published/1321/GCSE%20Results%20Handout.pdf (accessed 22/02/2012) Social Trends 39 , Office for National Statistics (2009), Online Edition: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/social-trendsrd/social-trends/social-trends-39/index.html (accessed 22/02/2012)

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