DOCUMENT RESUME ED 415 729 HE 030 748 AUTHOR Thomas, Kim TITLE Gender and Subject in Higher Education. INSTITUTION Society for Research into Higher Education, Ltd., London (England). ISBN ISBN-0-335-09271-3 PUB DATE 1990-00-00 NOTE 207p. AVAILABLE FROM Taylor and Francis Publishers, 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007-1598; phone: 800-821-8312; fax: 215-785-5515 ($29.95). PUB TYPE Books (010) Reports Research (143) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC09 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *College Students; Course Selection (Students); English; Females; Feminism; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Humanities; *Intellectual Disciplines; Interdisciplinary Approach; Majors (Students); Males; Physics; Sciences; *Sex Differences; Student Attitudes; Student Development; Student Experience IDENTIFIERS *United Kingdom ABSTRACT This book reports a study which examined the concrete experiences of male and female university students in the United Kingdom, and the meanings students attach to them. It suggests that meanings arise from everyday discourse, which habitually uses oppositions such as masculinity/femininity and arts/sciences. Chapter 1 introduces the issue of gender as a social construct, and discusses the relationship of education to gender, and gender and subject choice. It describes the study's methodology, which involved interviews with 48 male and 48 female students and 12 faculty at two British universities and one polytechnic in two subject areas--English and physics. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the literature on gender and education, gender and science, and the different cultures of "science" and "humanities." Chapter 4 looks at how physics students and staff construct their subject and how this affects and is affected by their ideas about humanities disciplines. Chapter 5 similarly looks at ideas held by English students about their discipline and the sciences. Chapters 6 and 7 examine how studying either physics or English interacts with students' sense of personal and gender identity. The concluding chapter summarizes findings and urges the breakdown of disciplinary barriers at the university level.(Contains approximately 225 references.) (DB) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** The Society for Research into Higher Education N Gender and Subject in Higher Education PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Taylor & Francis TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION '").. Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) I\ /this document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. .% CI Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Nts.-0 \I Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. * KimK Thomas BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 Gender and Subject in Higher Education Titles recently published under the SRHE/ Open University Press imprint: Michael Allen: The Goals of Universities Sir Christopher Ball and Heather Eggins: Higher Education into the 1990s Tony Becher: Academic Tribes and Territories William Birch: The Challenge to Higher Education David Boud et al.: Teaching in Laboratories Heather Eggins: Restructuring Higher Education Colin Evans: Language People Oliver Fulton: Access and Institutional Change Derck Gardiner: The Anatomy of Supervision Gunnar Handal and Per Lauvas: Promoting Reflective Teaching Vivien Hodgson et al.: Beyond Distance Teaching, Towards Open Learning Peter Linklater: Education and the World of Work Graeme Moodie: Standards and Criteria in Higher Education John Pratt and Suzanne Silverman: Responding to Constraint John Radford and David Rose: A Liberal Science Marjorie Reeves: The Crisis in Higher Education John T. E. Richardson et al.: Student Learning Derek Robbins: The Rise of Independent Study Geoffrey Squires: First Degree Gordon Taylor et al.: Literacy by Degrees Malcolm Tight: Academic Freedom and Responsibility Susan Warner Weil and Ian McGill: Making Sense of Experiential Learning David Watson: Managing the Modular Course Alan Woodley et al.: Choosing to Learn Gender and Subject in Higher Education Kim Thomas The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press Published by SRHE and Open University Press Celtic Court 22 Ballmoor Buckingham MK18 1XW and 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101 Bristol, PA 19007, USA First Published 1990 Copyright © Kim Thomas 1990 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without written permission from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Thomas, Kim Gender and subject in higher education. I. Great Britain. Higher education institutions. Sexism I. Title 378 ISBN 0 335 09272 1 0 335 09271 3 (paperback) Library of Congress Catalog Number Available Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk 6 This book is dedicated to my father, Ken Thomas, and to the memory of my mother, Myra Thomas 7 Contents Acknowledgements viii 1 The Question of Gender 1 2Feminism and Education 10 3The Two Cultures 24 4Constructing Science 38 5Constructing Humanities 72 6Gender Identity and Science Students 109 7Gender Identity and Humanities Students 139 8Conclusion 172 References 184 Index 193 The Society for Research into Higher Education 199 Acknowledgements This book came about as the result of the efforts of a group of women staff at Aston University. The group, who had been campaigning to improve oppor- tunities and conditions for female staff and students at Aston, successfully persuaded the university to fund, for three years, a Ph.D on 'Women in Higher Education'. I was taken on as a postgraduate student in 1983 and completed the thesis four years later. Gender and Subject in Higher Education is a revised and shortened version of that thesis. I have never before had the opportunity to thank all the members of the women's group for their part in securing the funding for the Ph.D, and should like, therefore, to do so now. Thanks arc also due to the following, without whom this book could not have been written: Jan Webb and Henry Miller, my two excellent research supervisors, for their help and advice; Ian Bates, my husband, for his support in general and for his proof-reading in particular; All the students and lecturers who gave their time to be interviewed for the research; Aston University, for funding the project. 1 The Question of Gender Introduction The research on which this book is based is concerned both with examining the concrete experiences of male and female students, and with the meanings students attach to those experiences.I suggest that these meanings arise from everyday discourse, which habitually makes use of oppositions such as masculinity/femininity, science/artsoppositions which make sense only in relation to each other. Within these oppositions, one is rated more highly than the other: in this case, masculinity and science. Masculinity is defined by what it is not; the term 'masculinity' does not make sense without a knowledge of the term 'femininity'. This book looks at these two divisions masculinity/femininity and arts/ scienceand examines the interaction between them in higher education; it regards the terms as social constructions, not as givens. It examines students' understanding of these divisions and how this understanding relates to the role of education in society. The next sections of this chapter will draw attention to the issues discussed in the book and outline the content of the later chapters. The issue of gender Gender is a social construction; it concerns the differing qualities culturally attributed to women and men (Oakley 1972). Sociologists, Acker (1981) has argued, have often failed to recognize that sex differences are the result of cultural and social influences: Writing of men, sociologists show an acute awareness of the social con- straints upon their actions. Writing of women, or of sex differences, they frequently switch to psychological or biological levels of explanation. (Acker 1981: 78) An important premise of this book is that people's actions are socially con- strained, although not socially determined; people make decisions which are based on an awareness of the potentialities and limitations of certain courses of 10 2 Gender and Subject in Higher Education action. The choices made by men and women arc limited, amongst other things, by social expectations of masculine and feminine behaviour; this is not to say, however, that people passively accept their socially allocated roles. The study of gender is, like the study of class or of race, also the study of inequality; we are interested in not only why women do not occupy positions of power, status or responsibility in the same numbers as men, but also the process by which this occurs. Whether we believe that inequality of the sexes is the result of genetic differences, the desire of men to control and dominate women, outdated attitudes and prejudices or historical struggle, it is undoubtedly the case that there is a continuous process of producing and reproducing inequality. The use of the word 'gender' not only