Discuss the Contribution of Learning Institutions to Gender Parity (Term Paper Sample)

Running Head: SCHOOLS AS GENDERED INSTITUTIONS
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Institution

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Introduction
Many scholars do agree to the fact that gender is an attribute that is socially constructed. And if so certain features within the schooling system have spearheaded judgments such as those of vicker that schools are gendered organizations that provide a particular context for making of masculinities and femininities. Vickers perspective is a debatable notion that can effectively be evaluated using the right kind of reasoning and research. Gender wars within the school system have raised an increasing level of debate in contemporary society. The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Mceetya, 2008) emphasizes that Australian schooling should promote excellence and equity. Education should prepare young learners with understanding and knowledge, values and skills that can make it possible for every leaner to face challenges and utilize opportunities; this includes both boys and girls. In despite of the existence of such as a policy framework, controversy exists because schools are still perceived as gendered institutions that provide contexts for the making of masculinity and femininity.
It is therefore the intention of this paper to provide an in-depth insight of how factual the notion of schools as gendered institutions for making masculinity and femininity is. The scope of this analysis will be grounded on foremost providing a contextual evaluation of the concepts of gender, masculinity and femininity. In order to provide a more prolific evaluation of the notion, the essay will examine view points of various authors and scholars on the same issue. In addition the paper will make an analysis of the credibility of the notion through analyzing normal practices in schools which tend to bring about gender difference. Additionally the essay will also analyze some of the routine practices of classroom management and how they influence the creation of masculinity and femininity.
Contextual Background of Gender, Masculinity and Femininity in Schools
Davies and Cook (1997) draw attention to the fact that we become gendered through a particular pattern of discourse that is usually made available to us in our various cultures. Schools offer the potential of empowering various individuals; on the other hand, as a socially shaped institution, schools are subjected to social influence. In particular, systems of education tend to strengthen the presented gender aspects through the transmission of representations as well as the beliefs regarding the natural and suitable gender roles (Davies &Cook 1997) .Schools also offer an exacting focus when we consider how and what the young people discover in schools about their sexuality. This is by no doubt reflecting the shared effects of the emphasis put on the school-based education by basically media attention as well as the high level government policies goings-on in the school area. Educationists conspire to develop schooling systems that are the most active as well as the most vital sites for young people to get to know their gender identities, sexuality and gender roles (Reay, 2001).
In the 1970’s feminist researchers drew much attention in taking into consideration the plight of girls within the school context. This is because a lot of the central tenant in the learning process was based on the sex theory of gender identity, which made learners be restricted to certain roles which only fitted within their gender specification. In 1990’s the rethinking of issues in Masculinity arose whereby there was a recognition of the fact that in despite of the conceptualization of masculine feature within the educational system boys also experienced challenges during the process of learning (Segal and Demos 2005).
In reality gender is intertwined through the use of a variety of discourse such as social structures and roles, expression, relationships, identity, games and pairing. Although the concept of gender is commonly perceived as a natural law status its concepts vary within time and context. The integration of the feminist and patriarchal ideologies formulates the basis of gender sensitivity issues within the educational context (Walker& Barton, 1983). Segal and Demos, (2005) further highlights that people are labeled or may choose to be identified in terms of their sexual identities due to the contacts they have and experiences they get from their environment. The credibility of each ideology however depends on strong factual basis that can be presented by the arguments provided. As a result it is essential to evaluate the perspectives of various scholars concerning how schools promote masculinity and femininity.

Literature Review
Cole (2007) argues out that schools embody an essential arena where the process of working our individual sexualities takes place. Other than the usually taught curriculums in schools there exist a number of rituals linked to schools that reflect influential messages about various sexuality experiences. For girls and boys, being able to keep pace with their physical, emotional, attitudinal as well as the development experiences of their peers provides a significant contribution towards their feelings of normalcy in addition to self-confidence. This involves balancing their development along with the supposed social as well as their parental expectations.
Boys and girls according to Cole (2007), find themselves subjected to various forms of regulations that tend to shut them in within the strict stereotype of the gendered sexuality. The school-based norms more often than not reveal the identity patterns which both conspire with the school regulations therefore subverting them. Our identities and life experiences are therefore passed through the gender lens which shapes the language that we use, the concepts we come up with as well as the games we undertake. This more often than not plays a significant role in determining individuals’ sense of selves and their relationships with the others.
Segal et.al., (2005) argues out that similar to how children are initially exposed to the aspects of gender within their respective family backgrounds, gender in schools is continuously shaped and reshaped through the day-to-day interactions as well as socialization (the gendering processes).The school as a gendering institution strengthens as well as maintains it through the social structure provided by the education system. Segal et.al. (2005) argues that gender construction that is shaped, strengthened as well as negotiated within the home background is also strengthened in addition to being maintained within the education system’s social structure.
The school therefore as a social ground is noticeable through the unbalanced control relations that are enacted not only on the basis of gender but through aspects of age and authority. Other social indicators consist of ethnicity, disability as well as language. All these are critical to the students’ experiences as well as their life quality at their respective schools (Reay2001). Contained in the institutional culture of the respective schools are the rules of interaction, explicit and implicit norms as well as codes that direct behaviors which are re-enacted as well as being re-enforced within the school’s routine .Gender establishment on the other hand is created through daily assumed practices. For instance, in a number of schools girls are mostly known to have cleaning responsibilities while boys are known to have the responsibilities of working on the school grounds and within the classrooms (Segal et.al. 2005).
Gender restrictions within the school as an institution therefore help to create as well as strengthen feminine along with masculine identities within the school. These gender identities are not prearranged or consummated submissively but are continuously performed in the end through either individual or collective resistance acts as well as accommodation. Instances of resistance may include boys declining to conduct tasks that entail sweeping within the school, as they perceive it as the girls’ preserve (Brown & Fletcher I995).
Davies, (1997) proposes that gender establishments are more critical to school students as they get older following the ritual of passages into adulthood. Gender-specific practices contribute significantly to the creation as well as the regulation of sexual identity and the forms of femininity and masculinity. Misbehaviors with regards to the limitations of customary gender behaviour are normally encouraged in the form of peer pressure, and in other cases through violence, e.g. bullying, physical abuse, and dispossession of access to resources. Among the student body, violence is more often perpetrated by boys on girls as well as other boys who do not obey the common rules of masculinity or on girls who are not adequately modest and introverted in their feminine manners. Both girls and boys therefore play a significant role in policing the limitations of the gender relations as well as punishing misbehavior. These limitations are determined by the rules of obligatory heterosexuality, which the school as gendered institution actively encourages.
According to Reed (2007), the issues of gender in education are not new. In the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, the major focus was on the girls’ educational experiences, and mostly their discrimination in the curriculum. Some educationists, operating from the feminist point of view, investigated how interactions in schools and classrooms produced negative impacts on the girls. Gender responsive strategies at that time challenged to re-shape the various curriculum as well as the approaches in schools education in order to accommodate the interests of girls in much the same way as boys.
The approac...