Gender Equality in Education from Kindergarten to Higher Education: 73 Policies and Practices Diğdem Müge Siyez and Kadir Beycioglu ...the Father of Men and of Gods..., Zeus made a great evil for men, a sweet and lovely thing to look upon, in the likeness of a shy maiden, and all the gods gave her gifts, silvery raiment and a broidered veil, a wonder to behold, and bright garlands of blooming flowers and a crown of gold great beauty shone out from it. Because of what they gave her they called her Pandora, which means “the gift of all.” When this beautiful disaster had been made, Zeus brought her out and wonder took hold of gods and men when they beheld her. From her, the first woman, comes the race of women, who are an evil to men, with a nature to do evil. (Hamilton, 1969,p. 88) Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenges for reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance. (Kofi Annan) Contents Gender Equality ................................................................................. 1690 Gender Equality in Education .................................................................. 1691 Gender Equality as an Issue of Social Justice in Education ................................... 1694 Context: Overall Structure of Turkish National Education System ........................... 1695 Gender Equality in Turkish Education Context ................................................ 1698 Educational Policies ......................................................................... 1701 D. M. Siyez (*) Faculty of Education at Buca, Division of Counseling and Guidance, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] K. Beycioglu Faculty of Education at Buca, Department of Division of Educational Administration, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1687 R. Papa (ed.), Handbook on Promoting Social Justice in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14625-2_112 1688 D. M. Siyez and K. Beycioglu Curriculum, Course Books, and Language ................................................. 1702 Teacher Behaviors and Expectations ....................................................... 1703 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 1703 References ...................................................................................... 1705 Abstract Education is a human right guaranteed by law, but statistical indicators show that there is no equality of opportunity for access to the qualified education. Gender equality in education means that girls and boys, women and men, have an equal chance to have access to and participate in education, and that there is quality, equitable learning opportunities and outcomes. Education plays an important role either ensuring gender equality or nourishing gender inequality. In this section, the issue of gender equality in education will be evaluated on the basis on educational policies, curriculum, textbooks, and teacher expectations, as well as literacy and enrollment rates. Although these evaluations will be made mainly through the Turkish education system, the education system of the developed and developing countries will be handled. Keywords Gender equality · Gender equity · Education · Turkey In almost every culture, women and men are expected to perform certain roles which result in gender inequalities. Thus, gender inequality has been a part of all almost all cultures since ancient times. The perspectives of cultures to gender and issues about gender differences may differ from one society to another. In fact, these differences may be in the subsegments of the same culture (Kashima et al., 1995). Those perspectives are shaped by the society’s expectations and/or stereotypes attributed to being women and men. Ogdoc-Gascon (2016) denotes that gender roles are socially constructed roles and what is dispositive of gender roles are attributes of a society’s consideration about what is appropriate for men and women. Men have been regarded as a strong figure that has resulted in men’s having a priority role than women. Women have been regarded as a weaker object (not figure), and they have been supposed to make men’s world easier by staying at home, cooking, and caring children. The worst thing of those perspectives is that women were considered as the body of evil and destructive things. In ancient Greek, for example, women are viewed as source of troubles, especially in the story of Pandora. According to the Greek myths, Pandora opened a magic box that brought troubles to the lives of men. Because “Pandora was the tool for men’s destruction” (Ogdoc-Gascon, 2016, p. 84) and as a matter of course, gender equality was not a concern for societies during the ancient times. This was not different in many cultures throughout history. Women were expected (or forced) to stay at men’s back and call as a submissive gender. Because women were seen insignificant and less important than men, they were restricted to participate in public affairs, societal tasks, and services such as politics, 73 Gender Equality in Education from Kindergarten to Higher Education:... 1689 career, and education since those were seen as undertakings of men. Even in the literature texts, men hold priority. For instance, in “Romeo and Juliet,” males are named before female characters. Similarly, studies on grammar showed the same results. Amare and Manning (2007), in their study, found that the ratio of male- firstness is 5:1 in grammar exercises. By the sixteenth century, the traditional perspectives of women and men’s roles and responsibilities were started to be questioned (Ogdoc-Gascon, 2016). According to Stephenson (2009): The first wave of the women’s movement in the 1800s eventually led to women’s suffrage, but it did not lead to full gender equality, nor did it lead in the short term to increases in other forms of equality and justice, as some had hoped and some had feared. Norms of gender equality were further strengthened when, in 1945, the preamble to the United Nations Charter reaffirmed a faith in “the equal rights of men and women,” with Chap. 1 stating as one of the purposes of the UN “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion....(p. 123) Over the ages, gender equality was or has been regarded as “women’s issues” (Scambor et al., 2014). Then women’s equality became to be discussed as gender equality issue and “continued to be important as part of the basic human rights approaches within the UN, from the initial 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the proclamation that ‘women’s rights are human rights’ in the context of the UN’s 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights and 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women” (Stephenson, 2009, p. 123). The author continues that “interweaving of women’s social movements for equality and efforts in the United Nations has been an important part of the changing norms of gender equality.” Similarly, Holmarsdottir, Nomlomo, Farag, and Desai (2013) note that for the last few decades, “gender equality issue has been and still is one of the key global concerns in achieving empowerment for women and girls. A number of initiatives have focused on achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, many of which have been initiated by various organizations at national and international levels” (p. 1). Although the norms of gender equality have developed in cultures, the realization of it remains far behind in most countries (Stephenson, 2009). Similarly, Allen-Brown (2015) denotes that gender equality is a major global concern, and it is on the agendas of many national and international organizations that aims focus on women’s empowerment. It is of course true that gender equality is related to both women and men (Ruxton, 2004) and gives men “the opportunity to deny or ignore their power to affect gender relations at a personal level” (Rogers, 2004, p. 178), but it is generally equated with women rights and empowerment of women, because women suffer from gender inequalities almost in most cultures. Interestingly/unfor- tunately, gender equality generally is still and sometimes only an issue of feminist theory (Verloo & Lombardo, 2007) and “women play a central role in the promotion of gender equality” (de Keijzer, 2004, p. 30). This issue rarely and relatively finds a place to itself in the world of men (Barker, Nascimento, Segundo, & Pulerwitz, 1690 D. M. Siyez and K. Beycioglu 2004; Elsanousi, 2004; Lang & Smith, 2004). In addition, from the literature, it is very clear that traditional understanding of gender is still the source of a lot of inequalities between women and men. Stephenson (2009), for example, explains that “gender equality in the social and cultural spheres has also not been realized. Stereotyping of men as strong and as warriors (with the two being seen as related), and as participants in the public sphere, and women as more suited to the domestic sphere, as guardians of children, the home, and culture, continues despite the numbers of women who enter the political and economic spheres” (p. 124). In the next section, we try to explore the meaning of gender equality and the words related to gender equality issues. Gender Equality The meaning gender equality is affected by differences stemming from of every unique society’s social construct. Because