Gender Bias in the Classroom: How it Affects Female Students
Loss of Self-esteem
Lack of Girls in Math and Science
Invisibility
Testing

This section of the site examines how the gender biases discussed above affect female students. It discusses diminishing self-esteems, the lack of female involvement in math and science, female "invisibility", and the testing gap.

"We don't feel we have the right to our dreams, or if we achieve them, we feel undeserving," (Orenstein, 1994). With a lack of guidance and support from teachers, girls begin to question their academic abilities. Their uncertainties, coupled with the natural changes occurring as they enter young adulthood, undermine their self-esteem.

Preceding drops in academic achievement, is a loss of confidence, especially in the areas of math and science. In the study Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America, conducted by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the most dramatic gender gap was determined to center around the issue of competence. As Orenstein notes in her book, School Girls, "Even girls who like the subjects [math and science] are, by age 15, only half as likely as boys to feel competent in them." With this loss of confidence in their abilities, comes a loss of self-esteem, (1994).

Loss of Self-Esteem

According to Harter and Rosenberg, self-esteem is generated from two areas: (1) How a person views her performance in areas in which success is important to her, (2) How a person believes she is perceived by significant others, such as parents, teachers, and peers.

Girls are very perceptive when it comes to judging how others feel about them. They pick up on the subtle cues given off by adults. By telling teachers that a certain group of their students had been found to show great potential, Rosenthal and Jacobson influenced the teachers' behavior towards their students. By the end of the year, the students who had shown signs of being intellectual bloomers, had much higher scores on an IQ test then the rest of the class. While this does not seem surprising, it in fact is when you take into account the fact that the students who had been picked out were in fact only randomly assigned to that group. They had not shown any signs of especially strong intellectual ability. Therefore, when teachers hold stereotypes and expectations for their students, it often affects their teaching so much that outcomes reflect the stereotypes and expectations that they initially held. Also, when adults hold stereotypes, such as the one studied in 1992 which showed that when adults were asked to picture an intelligent child 57% of women and 71% of men imagined a boy, girls notice (Sadker and Sadker, 1994, p.256).

Another area which becomes important to girls as they move into adolescence, is their appearance. The AAUW study found that confidence in "the way I look" was the single most important determinant of self-worth for a white middle school girl, (Orenstein, 1994, p.94). Once again, girls' self-esteems hinge on the way they perceive others view them. Therefore, if they feel others view them as fat, they begin to diet, and in some cases, they will even stop eating. Girls who are white, and middle- to upper- class are at the highest risk of falling prey to developing eating disorders. Conflicting messages sent by parents at home, and boys at school, have pushed about one million girls into eating disorders. According to Orenstein, during the late 1980's twice as many female patients under the age of twelve were admitted to hospitals for treatment of eating disorders. Some studies have even shown that up to 50 percent of nine-year-old girls are dieting.

On the other end of the spectrum, girls who are severely over weight, are 20 percent less likely to attend college then thinner girls (Orenstein, 1994, p. 99). "Since our culture equates "fat" with "dumb", then dumb they must become," (Orenstein,1994, p. 99). Stigmas such as these can have just as much of an effect on a girl's ability to achieve within a school setting as a learning disability.

When race is placed in the equation as well, many differences of the effects of low self-esteem become apparent. In the age range of nine to fifteen, the decrease of happiness in girls can be traced along racial lines. The AAUW found that Latina girls, happiness plunged 38 percent, with white girls not far behind, at 33 percent. The happiest group was found to be the African Americans, with a decrease in happiness of only seven percent. A direct correlation exists between girls' happiness and her self-esteem.

Latina girls are very likely to lose their self-esteem, due in part to the messages sent to them by the schools. According to Orenstein, Latina girls are even less likely to be called on then other girls. They are also the least likely to be recognized as gifted. This leads to such statistics as: Latina girls are the group most often held back, from fifth grade on. They are also the group most likely to report that by age thirteen they have never taken a single science course. As one teacher cited in Orenstein's work notes, "You are combating really entrenched sex roles: from the time they're little, they have to take care of their siblings and the boys don't have to do that. Then you are combating the biases of people in school... she'll never be recognized as a leader in school."(p. 200).

With such barriers to overcome, it is not surprising that Latina Girls are twice as likely to become teen age mothers and that they the highest drop out rate of any group, about 50 percent. While self-esteem is not the only issue many of these girls face it is one which deeply affects every part of their lives, including achievement and participation in school.

Another area which effects a girl's self-esteem is a lack of role models in textbooks, and in life. As the child moves into adolescence, and is faced with trying to carve out an identity for herself, she looks to areas where she has found success in the past. She also looks at where other women have succeeded. As Sara Evans points out, "Having a history is a prerequisite to claiming a right to shape the future," (Sadker and Sadker,1994, p. 265). Therefore, all girls need to have role models of women who have "made it" in areas such as math and science, as well as other careers dominated by men.

Why Are Girls Left Out of Math And Science?

Many people ask the question, "Why do the largest gender gaps appear in math and science?" The placement of boys and girls into stereotypic gender roles beginning as early as preschool is one reason. According to a study, there are "significant imbalances in girls' involvement in the types of play (climbing, construction, block and sand play), that provide opportunities for the development of spatial, mathematical, and scientific skills (Ebbeck, 1984). This stereotype is perpetuated in elementary and secondary schools where teachers hold the preconception that girls are incapable of learning math and science. For this reason girls are often left out of math and science lessons or they are not pushed to succeed when they are involved. Quite often teachers will do the more difficult projects and/or questions for females but they will aid males only until the point where they can succeed on their own (McCormick, 1994). Consequently, girls become disenchanted with math and science classes and their levels of participation decline.

The gaps between girls and boys in math and sciences are diminishing, and the old stereotypes are being corrected, but "harmful remnants still remain" (Sadker and Sadker 1994). These "harmful remnants" were illustrated by the new Teen Talk Barbie in 1992. Mattel, the makers of Barbie, interviewed thousands of children in search of popular phrases that their new Barbie could say. When the new Barbies hit the market, one of the phrases they said was, "math class is tough." Barbie's saying was not only an illustration of past "frustrations many women felt as schoolgirls" (Sadker and Sadker 1994), but it was also a clear illustration of the frustrations that the thousands of schoolgirls interviewed by Mattel must have been feeling.

The members of the Woodrow Wilson Gender Equity in Mathematics and Science Congress (WW-GEMS) have focused on this issue for over twenty years. After reviewing works in the area of sex differences and mathematics, Elizabeth Fennema concluded, "There was evidence to support the idea that there were differences between girls' and boys' learning of mathematics, particularly in items that required complex reasoning," (1993, p.14). This however does not mean that there are genetic differences in areas such as special abilities, as Jacobs and Eccles claimed in 1985. In fact, as Fennema points out, society's influence on girls might be one of the reasons why girls are not choosing math and science. "People's actions are socially constructed... people make decisions which are based on an awareness of the potentialities, and limitations of certain courses of action," (Thomas, 1990, p. 1). Therefore, when girls receive the messages that mathematics are inappropriate for them to learn, they turn their focus to other subjects, such as art and humanities. Thomas also points out that even if women do enter into the upper level science and math courses they are not welcomed, because "To both scientists and their public, scientific thought is male thought," (Thomas, 1990, p.7).

Self-esteem plays a role in math and science as well. When boys succeed in math or science it is attributed to their ability. However, when girls succeed in math and science, it is chalked up to luck (Tobias, 1993). Therefore the girls do not feel confident enough to try the sciences that are perceived as more difficult. The 1987-8 survey of women in higher educational institutes showed 45.8 percent of medical school students were women, along with 43.3 percent of the dentistry student body. Female biology students topped out the percentages at, 53.6 percent. Physics and engineering on the other hand, were much lower with only 16.1 percent females participating in physics, and 10.7 percent in engineering (Thomas, 1990, p.4). These percentages illustrate the sentiments among women that physics and engineering are much more difficult than biology.

Invisibility

Although drops in academic ability of females are most visible in math and science, problems exist in all areas. One of the main problems affecting all course work is that girls are becoming invisible in the classroom.

As an interview from Peggy Orenstein's (1994) sociological study illustrates, girls can become invisible to a teacher.

"In a sense, Becca is invisible. Her teachers don't see her as someone in need of counseling or special help, because, although her grades have dropped, she is never combustible: she never for instance, yells in class, pounds on desks, fights with other children, conspicuously challenges authority."

Combine this with the knowledge that boys are called on much more often in class, and a pattern becomes clear. Because the girls are not sure of themselves, they do not speak up in class. When they do not cause a fuss, or draw attention to themselves, they can begin to slip through the cracks. If teachers are not aware of the problem, girls begin to feel their input is not necessary, and they begin to participate even less, thus perpetuating the cycle.

Testing

Due to the problems discussed above, such as loss of self-esteem and lack of confidence in math and science abilities, girls are being shortchanged on standardized tests. Tests such as the SATs reward students for taking educated guesses. This however, creates a problem because girls are much less confident in their abilities, and therefore are much less willing to guess (Casey and Fuentes). Boys, on the other hand, are much more willing to take a chance and guess, when they are not certain. Another problem with standardized tests is that they often weigh math ability very heavily, which puts girls who have not continued to take math in high school at a great disadvantage.

*(Other factors may be involved in creating the gap between male and female test scores. For instance, many experts argue that standardized tests are inherently biased toward females and minorities.) [Race and Test Group]

Government 375: Educational Reform and Ideology