Based on the course articles, the guest lecture of Anne Phoenix and group discussion.
Group 1: Christina Öström (writer), Emilia Christiansen and Annina Rintakumpu
As much as we like to praise Finland for being a gender equal country, it is clear that there is still room for improvement. It is hardly surprising that the gender dichotomous and heteronormative attitudes and practices that are present in society as a whole, also impact the school world. Gender equality research in Finnish basic education has shown that there are great differences between how girls and boys perform and behave in school and what is expected from them by teachers and parents.
The gap in PISA results between boys and girls in Finland is one of the biggest of the OECD countries – girls outperform boys in nearly all subjects all throughout basic education. Regardless of their world class performances in natural sciences, Finnish girls are underrepresented in these fields in higher education and on the (highly gender segregated) labor market in Finland. On a societal level it is a huge loss if the world’s top performers in science end up in other fields simply because of gender stereotyping.
An interesting viewpoint that was brought up during the lecture was how boys’ and girls’ achievements tend to get attributed in different ways. With boys, parents and teachers tend to emphasize natural talent and giftedness, whereas girls’ good grades tend to be explained by their dutifulness and work ethic. This is also reflected in the students’ social relations, where it is more accepted for girls to spend time on school work and express caring about their grades and performance, whereas boys often need to act indifferent if they want to gain respect and popularity – and if they are to perform well in school it has to happen with minimal effort. This way of thinking is damaging in many ways, as it negatively impacts girls’ self esteem while simultaneously promoting an unrealistic ideal for boys.
Lastly, I want to mention the interesting viewpoints of Ann Phoenix on the concept of intersectionality. Gender is one of the social categories that tends to be viewed on its own in research. Intersectionality challenges this notion through examining how different social categories interact and how looking at several categories together can give us a more nuanced understanding of the complex social identities that actually exist. Much of recent research within social justice has focused especially on the ways the “big 3″ – ethnicity, class and gender, are related. In Finland too, an intersectional perspective on gender and social justice issues could allow a deeper understanding of how different social categories interplay and the impact they can have on the individual student.