Diana Temple
The Higher School Certificate results have for the past couple of years emphasised a trend for girls to do significantly better than boys in almost all subjects at almost all levels. This seems to be an Australia-wide trend, although data from different states are not exactly comparable. It appears to be a phenomenon throughout the western world. This is suggested by an article from the British journal The Economist (quoted later) and by the report of a joint program set up between Scottish educationalists and those in New South Wales to investigate the apparent under-achievement of boys.
Newspapers in Sydney headlined the high performance of girls in Tertiary Entrance Ranking scores (these are ranks from 0 to 100, derived from results from the higher school certificate examination together with school assessments of students, scaled according to a formula which takes account of differences between schools and between mean performance in specific subjects)
These TER scores are used by universities to determine entry to courses, with highly sought-after faculties like medicine and law requiring near-maximum rankings. In NSW, 14 students achieved a maximum pass scaled as 100, of these 8 were girls. The average TER from the total of 61,800 students was 54.4 for girls, who comprised 52.6% of students, compared with the average TER of 46.45 for boys.
This dramatic difference has been shown not to depend on scaling of marks or on subject choice. At single-sex government schools, the average TER for girls was 60.1 and for boys 52.8. Girls comprised 57% of the top 5000 places and took first place in 116 of the 176 courses available for the HSC examination. These gender differences were apparent in results from 1995 as well as 1996 TER results.
In Victoria, information supplied by the Board of Studies is similar. For the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), 45,165 students were eligible to receive the VCE; 94.8% of, eligible females and 91.2% of eligible males satisfied the requirements for the VCE in 1996 figures almost identical to 1995. Girls were reported to be achieving higher average grades than boys in almost every VCE subject. The Board's Statistical information book measures good performance by scores above C+. A higher proportion of girls scored high grades (above C+) in core subjects: English, mathematics, sciences, business and economics, humanities and information technology. Boys dominated grades of D and below. This gender gap was widespreadin highest level maths, the high grades were gained by 68% of girls and 59% of boys; the corresponding percentages in English were 9 to 16% higher for girls than boys, and for art the gap was 21%.
The new success of girls in sciences and maths is ascribed by educational researchers to boys being pressured into traditional male subjects to which they might not be suited, while girls who choose such subjects are more motivated. Most girls choose arts and the humanities, and a preference for 'softer' subjects is still leading girls into jobs in lowerpaid lower-status service industries (reported Alex Messina in The Age). Melbourne University research showed that boys from lower socio-economic backgrounds were most likely to overenrol in maths and physics and to be absent from the humanities. This is at odds with a 1996 report from the NSW Gender Project which found that the largest gender difference in TER scores occurred in higher socioeconomic groups, while the gender gap narrowed in poorer areas. The retiring Principal of an elite Melbourne girls' school, St Catherine's, Toorak, is quoted in The Age as having 'observed at first hand a phenomenon of modern education: the increasingly superior academic performance of girls over boys', and believing that 'the battle to attract girls into the traditional male domains of maths and science has been won'.
Information was not available from all Australian states. In Queensland gender equity researchers did not quote any numerical data but said that school leaving examination results were still similar to the traditional pattern, with boys gaining most of the very top marks and also those at the bottom, while girls were concentrated in the next rank. This is the pattern in the results of the U.S. Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, taken by American high school students. Critics of the PSAT results say the results are biased against girls because of the maths portion of the multiple choice exam, and changes are to be made to the test. (New Scientist, 23 November 1996) The Eco nomist, 28 September 1996, ran an article entitled 'Tomorrow's Second Sex', from which 1 quote: 'The signs are everywhere in America and Europe, more women at work; girls doing better in school; debate about feminisation in America's politics... evidence of a growing social problem: uneducated, unmarried, unemployed men.' The following points were made by The Economist:
'Professional men are less affected than unskilled men by economic change; high unemployment has fallen on the poorer end of the labour market.'
'The trouble with men appears early: at school .... Men take up half or more university places in most countries (America and also Australia are exceptions), [but] at primary and secondary schools girls are increasingly out-performing boys. ...In England and Wales, girls score higher than boys in tests conducted at 7, 9, 11 and at 5. English and Welsh children at 16 take a series of tests called the GCE. Of girls, 48% achieve a standard of A, B or C in five or more subjects, compared with 39% of boys.... The pattern is repeated all over Europe. In 1995 in Europe, 124 girls got general leaving certificates to every 100 boys.
Women dominate the jobs that are growing, while men are trapped in jobs that are declining.
'Because jobs are knowledgebased, this disparity in educational attainment is bound to be reflected in employment . .... The picture in the west is: the labour market is increasingly friendly to women, though men still make more money, but there are grow. ing numbers of men outside the labour market. A European Union report notes "Male manual workers are willing to undertake low-paid and low-skilled jobs providing they are not feminised." Despite huge social change... traditional sexual attitudes retain a stubborn hold .... Areas of male idleness are considered places of deterioration, disorder and danger.'
A book by W. Wilson, When Work Disappears, is quoted: 'For (American) men, employment is strongly linked to marriage and fatherhood. This applies particularly to inner-city blacks of whom a majority never married. ... But Europe faces similar problems .... young people make up a disproportionate share of Europe's unemployed.'
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that in Australia, men and young people are most affected by the current increase in unemployment Women are taking up the majority of newly-created jobs, mostly with part-time work.
What, asks The Economist, is the solution? Not, it seems, the Japanese solution. In Japan, only 1 % of children are born to single mothers, crime is low, marriage rates are high. A paradise? Butthe labour market is rigged in favour of men; women are expected to give up jobs on marriage; in recession the 'office flowers' are made redundant first.
There has to be a better way. Do men, or women, have to be a second sex? When can real equality prevail, in education and in work?