Gender and Education

It was interesting to research Gender and Education and find what is current in regard to equity in 2010. Most of the current information was related to college level in the way of statistics. There were a number of sights to assist teachers with gender equity and books related to the matter. I found one current article from last week that reached national news regarding a wrestling coach that views Title IX as discriminate against men. (huh?)

In the Associated Press on March 23rd there was an article regarding a wrestling coach that viewed Title IX as being discriminate against men….explaining it’s a numbers game. Explaining the biggest problem with meeting gender equity is Football in College. At Vanderbilt they have 330 varsity athletes, 110 are on the football team, if it needs to be 50-50 that means 55 men other than football can be in other varsity sports. Otherwise they are forced to downgrade the sport to club level to participate and make cuts in funding.

The wrestling coach argued what he called “unintended consequences of men loosing teams at schools trying to meet Title IX” also stating that a law intending to not discriminate based on sex is doing so by cutting men’s programs to make things equal which isn’t true equality. This article goes on to discuss money deals with ESPN and the fact that Vanderbilt is a Division 1 school for Football and Men’s basketball and gets Millions of dollars for that so…????? Who knows how that factors?

Anyway, The American Council on Education with regard to higher education stated the gender gap has reached a plateau and females still hold the majority at 57-43 in colleges. There is a decline in the percentage of Hispanic male graduates from 45% in 1999-200 to 42% in 2007-2008. They also have the lowest Bachelor’s degree attainment at 10%. This is attributed to immigration, only 51% of Hispanic young adults born outside the US complete High School, compared to 81% of US born Hispanics. Hispanic woman born in the US are at the same rate as African American woman 18% obtain bachelor’s degrees.

"Despite progress by African Americans of both genders and Hispanic woman, the gaps in bachelor’s degree attainment rates between these groups and whites are larger today than they were in the 1960’s and 70’s." (American Council on Education Jan. 26, 2010)

I watched this video that I found interesting and is more relevant to gender bias in K-12. This web-site from the University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center has a lot of information that can be helpful related to gender equity in teaching.

There were other interesting articles regarding the possibility of a Men’s Studies Department at Wagner College in New York and the NCAA Gender Equity Planning Best Practices which I included here to take a look at.