While girls in elementary and secondary schools in Massachusetts are faring well according to standardized testing results, it seems that something is missing from the curriculum that would help them when entering the workforce. Currently, Massachusetts ranks 23rd in the United States for achieving parity in the state legislature. Female entrepreneurs earn less and receive less funding support relative to male entrepreneurs. Also, women are less likely to negotiate for starting salaries or ask for raises or promotions. Daily, children in Massachusetts are exposed to educators in a profession where they have little voice or control of policy. In 2013, 80% of educators were female. This is one of the reasons why the education profession has welcomed in more mandates than lawyers, doctors, policemen, and any other profession. Each day our kids are exposed to mostly women, trying to do their jobs while having little to no voice into the changes that are proposed to them daily. Much of the content that they teach is from a male perspective. What do you think that students in Massachusetts learn from this throughout their lives? Voices of women are not as valued as the voices of men.
Programs are sprouting up for women once they reach the workforce or decide to run for office. There are even a few programs that seek to empower female college and high school students. While the state has made major strides over the past few years, it is extremely difficult to undue the damage that has been done with centuries of textbooks, paintings, laws, and norms that simply did not consider the voices and presence of women. We cannot wait until our girls are approaching adulthood to remedy the effects of gender discrimination in every fiber of the state. By holding a microscope up to the issues at hand, legislators and state agencies can make better decisions about ways to ensure that they are supporting women throughout their lives.
Here are a few ideas on where state agencies in Massachusetts can start:
- Make civics a requirement for every student in every grade. Work with several subject matter experts including experts in policy and women’s learning and development to create the curriculum. In 2014 Executive Order 550 was issued to establish a task force on successful women in the workplace. One of the recommendations proposed by the task force was that that DESE should place an emphasis on getting female students interested in STEM, law, politics, and finance. Since 2014, there has been in an increase in STEM and financial literacy programs but little in law and politics. While more programs and policies need to be created to get more female students interested in male-dominated fields, it should be a requirement that all students learn about policies that affect the lives of women to begin to think about ways to support women from an early age. The state of Massachusetts cannot rely on old school civic education to prepare our children to tackle policy issues for the underserved. Getting our students working on problems including policy that would encourage for instance, equal pay, should begin in youth and could begin with a civics class.
- Form a committee to review Appendix B (literature exemplars suggested by the Common Core). While MassEdWatch supports the Common Core, the male to female author ratio is 136-29 for exemplar texts. Plus, many of the women featured are British authors. Also, in general, girls read six times as many biographies of males than females, and even in animal stories the animals are twice as likely to be males. DESE and the state of Massachusetts is making a values statement when we endorse policies and programs like the Common Core. We need to be careful of the voices we privilege and promote, even if it is only in a list of sample pieces of literature.
- Develop workplace readiness activities for elementary and secondary students in areas where women entering the workforce are struggling including improving decision-making and direct communication, identifying support systems, developing voice, and enhancing self-concept. Start by tasking DESE’s college and career readiness experts to work with a women’s learning and development specialist to identify high impact educational practices that would support all students, including female students.
- Form a committee to review the informational and literary texts in standardized tests used in MA for gender bias. Currently DESE serves on task forces and committees to review questions for bias however there is not enough of an emphasis placed on gender bias.
- Invest in the human capital of teachers and in teacher leadership programs. All students are learning from people who do not have a dominant voice in decision-making for their practice. All our students learn what are considered “female appropriate” behaviors from their teachers throughout their lives. If the voices of the women that the students interact with daily are not valued, then what are we teaching our students?
- Give educators trust and take their jobs seriously. Because of the new standards and the amount of education and training that a teacher must receive to continue in his or her profession, it is getting increasingly difficult for low performing teachers to fall through the cracks. We have great teachers in Massachusetts but unfortunately, they are not always trusted to help produce brainpower, the main currency of Massachusetts.
Let’s make Massachusetts Great Again!
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