Gender Equity: Still Knocking at the Classroom Door

Sadker, David. (1999.) Gender Equity: Still Knocking at the Classroom Door. Educational Leadership, 56.

This article focuses on gender and whether or not there exists educational equity. It looks at the lower frequency of dropout rates in girls and the great number of females in higher education—facts that imply that there has been some victory in gender equality. However, the article also mentions the social biases that women and girls still suffer in terms of lower expectations and participation in math and science related fields. It goes further to realize the implicit biases that lead educators to treat boys and girls differently in the classroom. This is something that I have experienced in my classroom. Essentially—I know more about how to work with my male students than with my female students. With that I tend to be overly cautious with them—which must be seen as a bit of favoritism by the males. That’s something that I’ve got to work on.