A Conversation about Double Standards in School
Updated: Jul 12, 2023
By: Ana Palacios
The double standard began early, at least for me. School was an environment filled already with so many stressors, it just happened to be that knowing what to wear was one of the top priorities on my list. For me and many others, I had to double check the length of my inseams and gauge whether my spaghetti strap was not too scandalous for that hot summer day. Dress codes have been imposing an unfair implicit messaging for those females presenting that go to school: we had to be aware that the way in which we chose to dress would impact our days. In fact, this unfair double standard is plagued by misanthrope messages.
Girls and boys are separated from physical education to sex E.D courses, our differences couldn't be made more clear. For boys, it is paramount they excel during physical education. Girls, if they did, were considered a tomboy and could be austed. This at a very basic and anecdotal level. Still, it is true that the conditioning that goes on at school has direct and immediate impacts on the behaviors of girls and boys (presenting). In sports for example, girls are less likely to identify with a sport, especially if it is considered traditionally masculine, due to the gendered nature of sports. Boys on the other hand are assured of their physical power over girls during these times, and it is an important way to gain social capital. It is not by chance that women’s sports are taken less seriously.
The question remains: what are double standards in school? To this point there are many. I would not like to continue without first acknowledging the many intersections that involve how children and students are viewed. Race, class, sexual orientation and presentation as well as gender all intersect in the way kids are perceived and roles are enforced.
One of the most cited and researched issues with double standards devolved into a maths debacle. Men and boy’s hegemony over maths and most things in the STEM field is long standing. Regardless of the fact women have contributed greatly in that field, women only make up 23 percent of STEM occupations in the United States(Wise, 2017). Studies conducted agreed that girls performed better in maths when their class was only other girls, suggesting a social factor to girls' struggles in maths. Furthermore, the STEM field continues to be one where it is almost controversial to be a woman, and where instances of sexism are long documented, from TikTok story times to the disregardment of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of DNA. Men are overwhelmingly more represented in the STEM field, thus, are more likely to pursue a career in that field. The impact of seeing someone like you being successful in and taking on that role is insurmountable, especially to children.
The maths debacle continues. With recent studies suggesting that it is in fact not the skill level that impacts girls vs. boys performance (as their skill level in mathematics was largely the same) but in fact it was social factors that impacted both their performance and their career pursuits. Science may allow us to sus out these social implications of the socialization of children and their eventual careers. Firstly is the point of parental expectations. In a study conducted in the U.K, they found that parents expected boys to do better than girls in school, as early as kindergarten (Entwisle & Baker, 1983; Miller & Halpern, 2014). Furthermore, pedagogical studies have shown that the way we engage with knowledge has much to do with the way that the latter fits with our identities. Early childhood messaging regarding differences between girls and boys contribute to children's identities (i.e seeing themselves in the role of a girl or a boy, which is largely heteronormative, although I will not immediately touch on that). Studies show that “by the time girls are 6 or 7 years of age, they are becoming less and less interested in games that are designed for “really smart” kids, and they are less likely to associate being smart with being a girl” (Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2017).
This statistic, however true, should not be confused with the general assumption that girls become any less intelligent than their boy counterparts come puberty. Through a meta-analysis which combined data from other studies in different years. The findings prove the opposite: girls did better in a range of subjects than boys (Rhodes, Leslie, Yee, and Saunders, 2019). Why then, is it that girls are less likely to pursue a career in STEM, or continue to higher education? Moreover, why are there less women occupying higher ranking positions, if the metric is how much one excels in school?
The way school is gendered, on top of parental and societal expectations contribute to a large degree, the way in which we view and internalize gender roles. The connection between gender roles and the performance of both boys and girls in school is intertwined, and most palpable in the tasks they may undertake and the dreams they choose to follow.Girls are from a young age objectified and told that to be a woman is to internalize other gazes before your own. Girls are told that to exist in a place of knowledge you must prepare and become ‘appropriate.’ Furthermore, girls who may associate with intelligence are scrutinized and those who pursue sports othered and deemed less important. Although some of these pursuits may seem banal in the grand scheme of things, they set up a dynamic where girls must prove their worthiness to adults and male counterparts already, in a space they are inherently worthy of occupying.
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