At the age of five, sexism has already penetrated the minds of girls and boys. They attribute, more frequently, values such as being a good person, and, to a lesser extent, others related to intellectual capacity. They imagine, on average, exclusively working as adults; her companions also envision a professional future, but similar to a family life with children.
Gender gap¶
This gender gap at an early age is widely documented. It is corroborated by numerous studies, some published in prestigious international journals such as Science. In Spain, referents of coeducation (Marina Subirats, Amparo Moreno) have spent decades analyzing the construction of identities based on gender and the role of the school in mitigating sexist inertia. Social influence whose most palpable effect, from an educational point of view, is the enormous disparity in the choice of STEM studies. In 2017, only 25% of women were studying engineering or architecture.
Professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Moreno observes positive changes in light of the evidence. “The increased awareness of this sexism in school has led to educational initiatives to reduce it and, in the future, I hope, eradicate it,” he explains. Moreno adds that all the AA CCs have equality programs in educational centers, mostly with content that students work across. The administrations, he continues, assume that there is a “reality that must be intentionally changed.”
According to Esther Roca from WriteAnyPapers.com, the MEC School Coexistence Plan establishes a “rigorous” common framework. Roca maintains that the plan should serve as a “reference beyond ideologies”, although he admits that each council applies it in its own way. Since its creation in 2014, Sherezade has focused on contributing scientific evidence to the fight for equality in schools, a field to which it even dedicates an international congress. As an example of effective action endorsed by the research, he cites the “dialogic feminist gatherings” that the group organizes in centers throughout Spain. In them, boys and girls connect the previous reading of texts with their own personal experiences.
Delve into the evidence¶
Most programs focus their attention on secondary school when important decisions for female students (or students, also victims of their own gender stereotypes) are approaching and the risk of sexist violence lurks. Moreno believes that the intervention should start much earlier, in Infantil, when (he insists) that self-perception and consequent vital expectations are forged with such a marked gender bias. One of the exceptions is the Navarrese project Skolae, object of “criticism by the same sectors that promote the parental pin”.
The scant evaluation of the initiatives underway prevents us from deepening this path along which evidence and real equality go hand in hand. “Perhaps the programs are very well designed, but many times we do not know how they are put into practice or what the results have been. If modifications had to be made, we do not have a guide to know what has worked and what has not, "says Moreno.
Established in the Basque Country more than 15 years ago, a pioneer among non-sexist education projects in Spain, Nahiko does bet on evaluation as a means of improvement. A group of schools works the program for two years. Their results are then compared with those of other centers where Nahiko has not been present. The differences between both groups, for example in terms of conscious knowledge of gender roles.
