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  • Girls will be girls...?

    Friday 15 April 2011

    Categories: Careers, Education, Media Influence, Role Models

    Ofsted has criticised mixed schools in particular for failing to encourage girls to think about entering careers other than the traditional ones. Guardian 12/4/11 These jobs, including beauty therapy, childcare and hairdressing, generally have lower pay scales and fewer opportunities for progression. However Ofsted said that girls in single sex schools, especially those in selective schools, had more positive attitudes to non stereotypical careers. In these schools girls didn’t view any career as being closed to them and felt that women should be encouraged into roles traditionally held by men.

    This really just confirms what we in single sex schools have known for a long time – ‘it is easier to promote confidence and a competitive attitude in the absence of boys’. Girls in single-sex schools are aware of the problems they may face in the future, the press and media help promote that message all the time, but in terms of subject choice, career path and work experience there are no pre-determined norms and therefore the pressure to choose a certain path doesn’t exist.

    Single sex schools for girls challenge stereotypical choices in a variety of ways; ensuring the speaker at Prize Giving/Speech Day is a highly successful female; inviting recent Old Girls back into school; ensuring that there is an equal balance of males and females representing a range of career options at a Careers Evening; making sure departments use non-stereotypical posters to advertise careers; assemblies to promote successful women’s achievements and so on. Most careers-based computer programs are not gender-biased and therefore if a career path is offered, the school/careers department should go out of its way to ensure a wide variety of work experience is available to everyone.

    In an all-girls’ environment girls feel free to consider every option, to choose to study any subject and to be leaders, initiators and experimenters. Go girls!

    Posted by Louise Robinson

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