Top Five Reasons Gender Equity Matters in Education
As we wrap the school year and reflect on the previous year, we’ve been thinking about the ways in which gender equity really matters in education. Gender equity is not just a “nice to have” or a bonus category - it is essential to the function of schools and to the safety and flourishing of the people who work and learn within them.
1. Representation
Few things are more powerful than seeing someone like you in a position of authority. The United States has just over 14,000 school districts and fewer than 25% of them are led by women. (A caveat: I could not find reliable data about nonbinary people in these roles, which also speaks to the problem of representation of all genders in education.) The stats aren’t that much better at the level of individual schools: only about 50% of all principals are women and most of them lead elementary schools. Those patterns hold in institutions of higher education as well. Men dominate the professorship and university presidencies, even though women tend to get more graduate degrees. These realities have at least three implications: firstly, people who are not men are less likely to see people like themselves in the highest offices in education. Secondly, the pipelines to education leadership constrict to exclude people who are not men. This may happen through a number of mechanisms (e.g., women tend to carry greater burdens of home and family care in addition to the work they do in the workplace - see number 3), but it does happen. Finally, some research suggests that women’s leadership tendencies benefit students and teachers. We don’t know what we’re missing when we lose the opportunity to be led by women. Gender equity matters in education because people of all genders deserve to see examples of women’s leadership in all kinds of institutions.
2. Equal Pay
While there has been some headway on the problem of equal pay, women still tend to be underpaid for completing the same work as their better paid male colleagues. This is not (usually) a problem of an HR rep surreptitiously paying women seventy-one cents on the dollar relative to men in the office (that rate decreases for women of color), but there are other ways in which women - especially in education - encounter inequitable pay. Specifically, they may be responsible for home and family care, reduce their work hours to allow partners to pursue careers with longer work hours (and thereby forego promotions with attendant wage increases), pay more for healthcare and products aimed at women, pay more to ensure personal safety on their commutes, or have reduced access to financial services and training regarding financial management. Over the course of a lifetime, equal pay matters for more than just paycheck-to-paycheck comfort: like it or not, wages are associated with health, safety, length of life, and community involvement. Gender equity matters in education because right now, money is a predictor of flourishing and equal pay therefore contributes to greater flourishing.
3. Equitable work (at home and in the workplace)
Women outpace men in terms of earning the kinds of degrees and qualifications that prepare them for high-paying careers but often opt out of those careers and the wages that accompany them, especially when they have partners in similarly demanding fields. Women tend to be assigned “mom” or “secretarial” roles in the workplace - think things like bringing birthday cake, taking notes on a meeting, or reporting findings - so their contributions to work teams may be undervalued in terms of both wages and prestige. In higher education, junior faculty who are women of color bear the greatest burden of service assignment and so face the greatest obstacles in terms of allocating time to tenure-winning tasks. Women also bear greater burdens of care when it comes to children, aging family members, or other home-based tasks. Millennial fathers do spend more time with their children than did any previous generation of fathers, but that does not mean that women are freed from the cognitive loads of household management and childcare. Gender equity matters in education because the work traditionally attributed to women - at home and in workplaces - is critical, demanding work that should be shared among partners and colleagues.
4. Individual safety
We’ve talked about dress codes over and over on this blog. That is primarily for one reason: dress codes have direct consequences for the safety of female and non-binary bodies in schools. When non-male bodies are thought to be distractions from learning, that also suggests that those same bodies are consumable or commodified in educational spaces when, in fact, they deserve the same safety, service, and privilege as male bodies. Women, women of color, and non-binary people are the most likely individuals in schools and institutions of higher education to experience consequences related to their dress, and therefore the most likely to be removed from the educational experiences to which they are entitled. Further, incidents of gender-based bullying and violence may be instigated or reinforced when certain bodies are objectified and ostracized. Gender equity matters in education because, no matter the body one has or the gender presentation that one chooses, each individual deserves equal and safe access to education.
5. Academic achievement
I referenced this in the first section, but women’s leadership in education is not just a nice statistic for reporting or compliance. It actually benefits schools, colleges, and universities. Recent research suggests that, specifically in K12 schools, women tend to lead in ways that result in collaboration, buy-in, and efficacy among their colleagues and instructional staff. These cultural and cognitive markers, in turn, allow teachers a degree of autonomy, freedom, creativity, and professional decision-making that results in greater academic achievement among students. Gender equity matters in education because women’s leadership benefits institutional culture, teacher’s work experience, and student learning.
-Lauren