Mind the Gap: Gender and Schools
Since the 1980s, women have been surpassing men in college attendance and
completion, kicking off a gender war in education that research shows starts
much earlier. Why are girls doing so much better? Why are boys struggling?
Although concerns about schools and gender
have garnered periodic media attention, the hot
button issue has shifted—from How Schools
Shortchange Girls in 1995 (American Association
of University Women) to The War Against Boys in
2000 (Christina Hoff Sommers). “Astoundingly,
given the amount of media attention,” says
Susan E. Mayer, Dean of the Harris School,
“there is very little credible research on this topic.”
Seeking to change this, the Harris School hosted
a two-day conference in April that brought
together leaders in the field to gain better
perspective and to share ideas and the latest
research. Their innovative papers grappled
essentially with ways to accommodate the many
factors that influence the growing gap—and to
begin the process of getting to the bottom of
what the gap means, why it’s occurring, and
what can be done.
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Harris School Assistant Professors Ofer
Malamud and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach,
for example, wondered whether their (very
preliminary) finding that teachers rate boys more
harshly in reading and science than suggested by
standardized tests may perhaps explain boys’
detachment from school early on. Thomas Dee
of
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Swarthmore explored whether the teacher’s
own gender might affect outcomes, finding that
having a female teacher had no effect on girls’
test scores but lowered those of boys, especially
in math and science.
These early experiences in school can pave the
way or block the route to college, as can influences
beyond the classroom. Murat Iyigun of
Harvard looked to larger economic forces that
might explain why men are underinvesting in
education, in this case in the marriage market.
Bridget Terry Long of Harvard asked whether a
change in access to higher education could
explain the shift by gender, finding little effect of
either the growth in community colleges (with
their higher female enrollment) or the rise in
male incarceration. What matters more in
college decisions, she finds, are the types of jobs
that await.
According to Todd Zoellick, the regional
representative from the US Department of
Education, by 2010 there will be 142 female for
every 100 male college graduates. For African
Americans, the difference will be two to one.
The ramifications for this gender gap are not
fully understood, but as Francine Blau, a
respected labor economist at Cornell, noted,
“Clearly we’re heading into a period of time
when women will be more educated than men.
Even if men made strong sudden gains, they
still wouldn’t catch up.”
In beginning the conversation, this conference
has jump-started the research. Bringing together
leading scholars to focus efforts on this growing
gender gap is a first step in answering whether,
and what, the growing difference between boys
and girls, men and women means to families
and to the economic output of the country—
as well as finding ways to provide equal and
accessible education.
Barbara Ray
For more information about this conference, the speakers, or papers, visit harrisschool.uchicago.edu/Research/conferences/gender-schooling/.
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