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The relationship between gender and educational achievement has undergone one of the most dramatic reversals in the whole of social policy. In the 1960s and 1970s, sociological concern centred on the underachievement of girls, who were steered away from academic and scientific study. Today, girls outperform boys at almost every stage, from the Early Years Foundation Stage through GCSE and A-Level to university entry and degree class. The AQA specification requires you to explain both sides of this reversal — the improvement of girls and the relative underachievement of boys — using external and internal factors, and to qualify the headline story by considering how gender intersects with class and ethnicity. The single most common mistake is to claim that "all girls now beat all boys"; the reality is far more nuanced, and demonstrating that nuance is the key to top-band marks.
Key Definition: The gender gap in education is the measurable difference in achievement between males and females. In the contemporary UK it consistently favours females overall, though it is uneven across subjects and is powerfully cut across by social class and ethnicity.
Spec Mapping: This lesson maps to AQA A-Level Sociology (7192), Paper 1, Education — the requirement to understand and evaluate differential educational achievement by gender (both the rise of girls and the relative position of boys), the external and internal factors behind it, and gender differences in subject choice.
Synoptic Links: Gender and achievement connects to feminism (liberal feminism's celebration of girls' gains versus radical and other feminists' insistence that patriarchy persists), to the family (changing female roles, the impact of divorce, female breadwinners, and changing aspirations — see Sharpe), to work and stratification (the decline of male manual labour; the gendered labour market), and to theory of identity. Methods in Context is engaged through the classroom-interaction studies (Swann and Graddol; Spender) and the documentary analysis of magazines (McRobbie), each with characteristic strengths and weaknesses you can use as evaluation.
You should describe the pattern accurately and qualitatively, avoiding invented precise figures:
It is also vital to note that the gap varies sharply by subject: boys still tend to do relatively better in some STEM subjects (physics, computing), while girls dominate English, modern languages, and the humanities. The overall picture is one of female advantage, but it is an advantage that is patterned by subject, class, and ethnicity rather than uniform.
To understand the reversal, you must first grasp why girls historically under-achieved, because the factors that have changed are precisely the mirror image of the factors that once held girls back. Before the 1980s, girls' lower achievement and their concentration in "feminine" subjects reflected a society organised around traditional gender roles: girls were socialised to see their futures as wives and mothers, so academic ambition seemed unnecessary or even unfeminine. Sue Sharpe's (1976) original study found girls prioritising "love, marriage and children" over careers and being reluctant to appear "too clever" for fear of damaging their marriage prospects. The labour market offered women fewer and lower-paid opportunities, weakening the pay-off from qualifications, and the curriculum and careers advice steered girls firmly towards domestic and "caring" pathways. Underachievement, in other words, was not natural but produced by patriarchal socialisation, a restricted labour market, and a gendered curriculum. It follows that girls' subsequent improvement is best explained by the transformation of exactly these conditions — which is why the external factors below (feminism, changing aspirations, the expanding female labour market) carry so much weight.
The feminist movement has transformed women's expectations since the 1960s, challenging traditional gender roles and securing legal change (the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, and subsequent equality legislation). This has helped create a culture in which girls expect careers, independence, and economic self-sufficiency. McRobbie (1994) demonstrated the cultural shift through documentary analysis of girls' magazines: those of the 1970s emphasised romance, marriage, and "getting your man", whereas by the 1990s they celebrated independence, careers, and assertiveness. Such media shifts both reflect and reinforce raised female aspirations.
The landmark evidence comes from Sue Sharpe (1994), who interviewed working-class girls in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. In the 1970s the girls' priorities were, in order, "love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs, and careers" — they saw their futures in domestic terms and were reluctant to appear "too clever". By the 1990s the priorities had reversed to "jobs, careers, and being able to support themselves"; marriage and children had slipped down the list and the girls now valued independence and feared the insecurity of relying on a man (against a backdrop of rising divorce). Francis (2001) confirmed that girls now held high, career-focused aspirations, whereas some boys aspired to careers (in sport or entertainment) that they wrongly believed did not require qualifications.
Increases in divorce, cohabitation, and lone-parent families (the great majority headed by women) mean many women are now their household's main breadwinner, demonstrating to girls that they must be able to support themselves and motivating educational achievement. The growth of the female labour market, especially in the service sector and in professional and managerial work, provides girls with visible role models and a clear pay-off for qualifications. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) argued that in an "individualised" society women increasingly pursue their own self-defined goals, of which a career is central, rather than living through a husband and children.
It is important to read girls' improvement through competing feminist lenses, as this supplies powerful evaluation. Liberal feminists celebrate the gains as evidence that the campaign against discrimination is working: equal-opportunities legislation, the removal of overt barriers, and changing attitudes have allowed girls to fulfil their potential, and continued reform will close remaining gaps. Radical and other feminists, however, caution that the education system remains patriarchal beneath the headline results. They point to the continued sexual harassment of girls in school, the persistence of gendered subject choice that funnels women away from the highest-paid fields, the under-representation of women in senior school leadership (most secondary headteachers have historically been men, despite a female-majority teaching workforce), and the fact that the curriculum and "male gaze" still position women in particular ways. From this angle, girls' examination success coexists with an unbroken patriarchy — a vital qualification to any "girls are winning" narrative, and a direct link to the feminism topic in the wider specification.
The collapse of manufacturing, mining, and heavy industry has, some argue, produced a "crisis of masculinity." These industries once provided well-paid, secure work for men without qualifications and underwrote a traditional working-class masculine identity built on physical strength, manual skill, and being the family provider. Their disappearance has, on this view, left some working-class boys without a clear adult destination, undermining the incentive to achieve. Mitsos and Browne (1998) argued that this decline of male manual work has produced a loss of motivation and self-esteem among working-class boys, who no longer see the point of qualifications because the jobs their fathers and grandfathers held no longer exist.
Evaluation (AO3): the "crisis of masculinity" is a popular but contested idea. The manual jobs in question rarely required qualifications, so their disappearance does not straightforwardly explain a qualifications gap; and feminists argue the panic over "failing boys" can divert attention and resources away from girls and from the persistent disadvantages women still face after education, in pay and promotion.
Several further external explanations for boys' relative underachievement are worth knowing. The DCSF (2007) and others have pointed to boys' weaker literacy and language development, partly because parents spend less time reading with sons and because boys' leisure activities (sport, gaming) develop skills less aligned with the verbal, reading-heavy demands of the curriculum, whereas girls' "bedroom culture" of talk and reading (cf. McRobbie) builds language skills directly relevant to school. Some commentators add that boys are socialised to be more boisterous and less willing to spend time on the patient, sustained work that examinations reward. On aspirations, Francis (2001) noted that some boys held unrealistically high hopes (of becoming professional footballers or pop stars) that they wrongly believed did not require qualifications, dampening their effort, whereas girls' career aspirations were more realistically tied to educational success. Evaluation: these explanations risk generalising about all boys and all girls and can slide into the very gender stereotypes sociology seeks to question; they are also hard to separate from class, since it is working-class boys whose literacy and aspirations are most affected — once again pointing towards an intersectional reading rather than a simple "gender" story.
Mitsos and Browne (1998) argued that the education system has become "feminised" — organised in ways that favour the strengths more commonly developed in girls. They pointed to the dominance of coursework and continuous assessment, which rewards organisation, neatness, and sustained effort (qualities they associate with girls' socialisation) over the high-stakes, last-minute terminal exam (stereotypically suiting boys' risk-taking); to the declining proportion of male teachers, especially in primary schools, depriving boys of male role models; and to an emphasis on reading and verbal communication where girls tend to be ahead.
Evaluation: Gorard (2005) delivered a powerful rebuttal, showing that the gender gap was already widening before the introduction of GCSE coursework in 1988, and that the gap appears as a fairly constant feature rather than a coursework artefact — so coursework cannot be the primary cause. Moreover, successive governments have since reduced coursework and shifted back towards terminal exams, yet the gap has persisted, undermining the feminisation thesis further. Read (2008) also questioned whether classrooms are really "feminised", finding that teachers, including women, still frequently use a "masculine", disciplinarian, authoritative pedagogy.
Classroom-interaction research suggests teachers treat boys and girls differently. Swann and Graddol (1988) found that boys dominate whole-class discussion and receive more teacher attention — but much of it is negative, focused on managing their behaviour, whereas girls receive less attention but more of it is positive and academically focused. Spender (1982) earlier argued that teachers spend more time interacting with boys, marginalising girls. Francis (2000) found that while boys received more attention, they were also disciplined more harshly and subjected to lower expectations, suggesting teacher–pupil interaction can simultaneously over-attend to and under-serve boys. These patterns link to labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy (Lesson 3): if teachers expect boys to misbehave and under-perform, those expectations can become reality.
A major internal driver of girls' improvement has been the deliberate pursuit of equal opportunities within education itself. Initiatives such as GIST (Girls Into Science and Technology) and WISE (Women Into Science and Engineering) encouraged girls into traditionally "male" subjects by providing female role models and challenging stereotypes, while the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 compelled girls and boys to study broadly the same subjects up to 16, removing the option for schools to steer girls away from science. Boaler (1998) argued that these equal-opportunities policies were central to girls' rising achievement: the removal of formal barriers and the conscious effort to make schooling fairer allowed girls' potential, long suppressed, to be realised. The growing proportion of female teachers, who can act as role models of academic and professional success, may reinforce this. Evaluation: these are internal changes that complement the external shift in aspirations (Sharpe), showing again that the cause of girls' improvement is best understood as external and internal factors acting together rather than either alone — and feminists note that such policies have done far more for subject access at school than for equality in the labour market beyond it.
Key Definition: Gendered subject choice refers to the persistent tendency for boys and girls to choose different subjects — girls towards the humanities, languages, and "caring" subjects; boys towards the physical sciences, computing, and technology.
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