Gender bias – a preference or prejudice toward one gender over the other – can be conscious or unconscious, and can manifest itself in many ways.
Fortunately, there have been improvements in gender equality over the years, but ingrained biases about males and females still exist – and can have grave consequences.
Stubborn beliefs cultivated from an early age such as “girls are bad at math,” “girls are better at cooking,” or “boys don’t cry,” pave the way to sobering statistics about the number of female leaders in business and politics, and disturbing truths about the frequency of sexual harassment.
‘Kindergarten is where it needs to begin’
Deborah Towns, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne, said sexism and unconscious bias in schools, just as in businesses, needs to be “examined and challenged”.
“Teachers and students should understand traditional assumptions about girls’ and boys’ behaviour, subject choices or career choices can be learned (and unlearned),” Towns wrote in The Conversation.
“Past beliefs that girls could not do maths, or be footballers, tram drivers, lawyers or doctors or politicians, for example, were challenged, and changed. Kindergarten is where it needs to begin.”
Towns said the fact that Australia is a 21st century democracy means that gendered schooling should be challenged.
“Why do we maintain single sex schools, segregating boys and girls, when we don’t segregate students based on other demographics, such as race?” she wrote.
Gender-neutral language
In 2016, Headington School in Oxfordshire - one of the UK’s top girls’ schools - told parents that the use of the term 'girls' or 'ladies' was considered gender discrimination.
The school’s headmistress, Caroline Jordan, encouraged students to use 'gender-neutral' language, such as 'pupils' or 'students'.
Despite making headlines, Headington School is not the first school to do this.
Egalia pre-school and Nicolaigården, both located in Stockholm, Sweden, adopted this policy years ago, rejecting gender-based pronouns with the hope of grooming children to think of one another on equal terms.
Careful not to exclude any groups within its communities, most of the children's books include homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children.
To help avoid gender bias, the school’s 33 students are encouraged to avoid using the words 'he' and 'she' when referring to one another. Instead, children are encouraged to call one another by their first name, or use ‘they’.
‘A whole school approach to challenging sexism’
Towns said schooling should be about “individual student needs and their pipelines to success, within a ‘whole school approach’ to challenge sexism”.
“Schooling should not be based on the traditional attitudes of political, business and educational leaders and school staff who may be influenced by unconscious bias. Teacher training needs to incorporate ways to recognise and tackle sexism,” she wrote.
Towns said the education system urgently needs to develop a new government gender equity policy framework for schooling with guidelines, transparent targets, measuring and progress reporting.
“And this should be updated as students’ and society’s needs change. Creating gender equity is a complex and continuous process,” she wrote.