New research suggests mixed-gender high schools perpetuate gender gap

Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-02-09 16:31

Article here. Nice to see an article on "the wage gap" that points out the obvious: major in English and *surprise*, you'll have a much harder time finding a job right out of college than someone who majored in a subject for which an employer can find a more immediate application. Excerpt:

'Two economics professors at the University of California, Davis have published a paper arguing that mixed-gender high schools are at least partially to blame for the persistent gender gap in the salaries of men and women.
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The researchers found that the gender ratio of high school classmates considerably and consistently affected the choices students later made about their majors.
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One obvious reason is that men and women — as groups — make substantially different choices when it comes to college majors. This phenomenon generally holds true throughout the developed world.

In the U.S., more women choose to major in humanities fields, such as English. Very nearly two-thirds of all humanities degrees go to women. Meanwhile, more men choose to major in engineering and the hard sciences. In engineering, for example, about 80 percent of recent grads are male.'

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Comments

"Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." (Remember that from high school social studies?)

But, you say, that was about racial segregation in schools. Is this really so different, the idea of separate schools for the sexes? After all, both ethnicity and gender are indellible characteristics.

Private schools are allowed under law to be gender-discriminatory. But, not ethnically so. Wonder why that is, when it hardly seems defensible to be so on either front when speaking of principles.

But anyway, if it can be shown decisively that both boys and girls do better in school if they attend single-sex schools, then should "an exception" to the general idea of "separate but equal is inherently unequal" be made? What, double the number of schools now open and split the staff? Here in the Age of Budget Austerity? Doubt that'll happen. But a case could be made for separating classroom attendance. A big public school could for example have 500 students in grade 11. There are about 250 boys and girls each. Each day, there are 8 class periods and for the 11th graders, 16 classrooms per period are occupied by 11th graders of mixed gender. So if you separate the kids by sex, do you now need 32 classrooms? Answer: No. The number of students hasn't changed at all. Same number of teachers are needed, same number of periods, same number of classrooms. You've just assigned ppl to class periods by sex, that's all.

I think sex separation in society is bad. Every time I see a single-sex anythimg, I don't like it. Single-sex facilities or even events that do not have an inherent and irrefutable rationale for them being so are IMO just plain wrong, just like racial segregation. In this matter the facilities would still be co-ed but the benefits of single-sex classrooms (lower distraction factor, etc.) could be realized.

Just a thought. Some questions, they just don't have easy answers.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-02-09 23:48