Find more information and data on education here. Essay: Gender Roles in Education The issue of gender inequality is one which has been publicly reverberating through society for decades. Developing a strategy and working plan, EU objectives for gender equality in research, Step 2: Analysing and assessing the state-of-play in the institution, Step 3: Setting up a Gender Equality Plan, Step 4: Implementing a Gender Equality Plan, Step 5: Monitoring progress and evaluating a Gender Equality Plan. One of the main challenges is that girls and boys tend to choose subjects according to traditional gender roles. Monitoring and steering organisational change, 4. (2018). The educational system should promote STEM subjects to girls and women and encourage all students to break down gender expectations when it comes to their career choices. Find out more: see Why it matters and What we do. Even where schools do make efforts to include notable women in given fields, taken as a whole – across subjects and across year groups – men (and predominantly white men) still dominate, sending powerful messages to children. Simply put, gender stereotypes are generalizations about the roles of each gender. © 2020 European Institute for Gender Equality. Underpinning the processes with an outcome-focused approach, Principle 5. My PE teacher has a large range of insults, his most common, and most insulting, is ‘like a girl’. Whilst a zero-tolerance approach is rightly taken to racist or homophobic language in schools, what is considered ‘low level’ sexist language or ‘banter’ is often tolerated in a way that overlooks the profound effects it can have. Advancing girls’ secondary education, in particular, is one of the most transformative development strategies countries can invest in. Delivering gender equality through education. Most schools make conscious efforts to educate around issues of diversity but even with the best intentions gendered stereotyping can sometimes go unnoticed or unchallenged as some of the examples on this page show. In contrast, boys performed better than girls in mathematics in about 80 per cent of participating countries. PDF file: Quick Start Guide to Improving Gender Balance and Equalities resources (288 KB) - use this resource to navigate your way quickly through some of our most popular resources. It is not enough for children to be told they can do anything or that sexist language is wrong – crucially they also need to see those messages reflected in staff attitudes, what they learn and their experience of the school environment. Are policies on uniform, jewellery and make-up applied equally to all? Providing universal access to, and ensuring the completion of, primary education for all girls and boys is one of the key areas of concern identified in the Beijing Platform for Action adopted in 1995. As with race, gender plays a large role in education. Harmful gender stereotypes and wrongful gender stereotyping are one of the root causes for discrimination, abuse and violence in manifold areas and can lead to violations of a wide array of human rights. [2] OECD (2019), PISA 2018 Results (Volume II): Where All Students Can Succeed, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/b5fd1b8f-en. [2]. The gender gaps in higher education carry on to the job market. Gender related challenges in the education system are an obstacle for economic growth and better career opportunities, especially for women. Delivering a coordinated, multiagency response, Strategic framework on violence against women 2015-2018, Legal Definitions in the EU Member States, EIGE's publications on gender-based violence, Cooperation with EU candidate countries and potential candidates, Organising an event in EIGE's entry point, First steps towards more inclusive language, Key principles for inclusive language use, Avoid gendered pronouns (he or she) when the person’s gender is unknown, Avoid irrelevant information about gender, Avoid gendered stereotypes as descriptive terms, Using different adjectives for women and men, Do not use ‘he’ to refer to unknown people, Do not use gender-biased nouns to refer to groups of people, Greetings and other forms of inclusive communication, Solutions for how to use gender-sensitive language, The argument for work-life balance measures, Step-by-step approach to building a compelling business case, Step 1: Identify national work-life balance initiatives and partners, Step 2: Identify potential resistance and find solutions, Step 3: Maximise buy-in from stakeholders, Step 4: Design a solid implementation plan, Step 6: Highlight benefits and celebrate early wins, Toolbox for planning work-life balance measures in ICT companies. While globally out-of-school girls are more likely than out-of-school boys to never enrol in school, progress in reducing the number of out-of-school children has stagnated for both girls and boys since 2007, as increased access to primary education has barely kept pace with global child population growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this progress, some 59 million children of primary school age were out of school in 2018 (55 per cent of whom were girls), with sub-Saharan Africa observing the highest overall rates. 16, LT-01103 Vilnius, Lithuania. Examples of gender-sensitive practices in parliaments, Women and men have equal opportunities to ENTER the parliament, Women and men have equal opportunities to INFLUENCE the parliament’s working procedures, Women’s interests and concerns have adequate SPACE on parliamentary agenda, The parliament produces gender-sensitive LEGISLATION, The parliament complies with its SYMBOLIC function, Gender budgeting in women’s and men’s lived realities. Identify existing gender inequalities and their underlying causes, Step 3. Completion of secondary education brings significant benefits to girls and societies – from increased lifetime earnings to reductions in adolescent childbearing, child marriage, stunting, and maternal and child mortality. Primary education provides the foundation for a lifetime of learning. In India, the Philippines and Burundi, 93 boys are enrolled in lower secondary school for every 100 girls. Interventions that address the high costs of education for families, including the abolition of school fees, cash transfer programs and school feeding programs, have demonstrated success at reaching out-of-school children, whether applied universally or targeted towards specific populations, such as rural girls. Where gender disparities in learning outcomes are pronounced, a gender-sensitive pedagogical approach should be emphasized. More than two-thirds of countries have reached gender parity (defined as having a gender parity index [GPI] value between 0.97 and 1.03) in enrolment in primary education, but in countries that have not reached parity, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, girls are more likely to be disadvantaged than boys. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of out-of-school girls of primary school age decreased globally by 44 per cent, from 57 million to 32 million.