Effects of Anti-Sexism Training in Schools
A Switch in the Poles of Gender Inequality
The Gender Equality Movement
In Sweden, Anti-Sexism Awareness Training begins in kindergarten. Under this program, teachers deliberately attempt to switch traditional gender roles. Girls are given toy tractors to play with and boys are given dolls. Girls are encouraged to use physical strength and boys are discouraged from celebrating athletic achievements [Debold, Elizabeth. What Ever Happened to the Vikings? What is Enlightenment? Issue 41. EnlightenNext: Maple Shade, NJ, 2008].
In 2005, in its first ever Global Gender Gap Report, the World Economic Forum deemed Sweden the "most advanced country" for women with regard to economic and political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and well-being. In the recent 2007 Global Gender Gap Report, Sweden again ranked first with Norway, Finland, and Iceland following as the top gender-equal countries. The report covered a total of 128 countries, representing over 90 percent of the world’s population [Hausmann, Ricardo, Laura D. Tyson, Saadia Zahidi. The Global Gender Gap Report 2007. World Economic Forum: Geneva, Switzerland, 2007].
In the seventies, similar anti-sexism programs were tried in United States schools. Therapist, educator, and author, Michael Gurian, makes reference to these social experiments in his book, The Wonder of Girls.
"During about a quarter century," says Michael Gurian, "from about 1965 to about 1990, our society engaged in what is surely one of the most interesting social illusions in human history: that sex differences in neurology, temperament, psychology, biochemistry, and physiology, didn't matter much." [Gurian, Michael. The Wonder of Girls: Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our Daughters. Pocket Books: New York, 2002].
As a result of this illusion, many parents sought to raise their girls and boys as if they were the same in hope that neither sex's potential would be limited by cultural gender stereotypes. (Related article: The Nature of Girls and Boys.)
However, these anti-sexism programs were deemed a failure in the United States due perhaps to wider cultural diversity and increased parental desire for children to assume traditional gender roles than that found in the relatively homogeneous nations of Northern Europe. In the U.S. school experiments, American children resisted playing with toys which they perceived as wrong for their gender. When pressed, the American children played with the "inappropriate" toys in gender-acceptable ways. For example, girls used toy tractors as care objects and boys used dolls as weapons.
To the U.S., the World Economic Forum gave a gender gap rank of 31 out of 128 countries. The UK scored an 11 and Canada ranked 18. The Nordic countries, in comparison, boast remarkably generous maternal and paternal leave policies, afforadable child care, and free access to higher education. From outward appearances, it would seem that the successful implementation of gender neutrality programming in schools provides the anticipated outcome of a gender-equal society, at least when measured by economic standards.
Increasing Discontent Among Males
Despite outward appearances of equality, however, some subjects of Scandinavian anti-sexist training, particularly men, claim to have resisted programming. In Elizabeth Debold's article, What Ever Happened to the Vikings?, referenced above, a Danish man reflects on his experience with an equality project headed by a gender-equality consultant to his school. "The main message was: Being a boy, you are guilty because you are oppressing the girls by default. Most of us guys resisted in different ways--but what can you do as twelve-year-olds when all the grownups, including your male teachers, think that they are doing a great and right thing?"
According to an article in Marie Claire magazine, Swedish girls routinely outperform boys in school, and in 2005 women made up more than 60 percent of all Swedish college students. The author describes Sweden as pro-female, rather than gender-equal, and includes anecdotes describing a switch in gender roles as opposed to equality or neutrality among the sexes [The World's Best Country for Women. Marie Claire. Hearst Communications, 2008].
Critics of gender neutralization programs, including Michael Gurian, argue that such programs are based on the inaccurate assumption that gender is primarily a result of socialization rather than of biology. "There is hardly an area of the brain," says Gurian, "where from very young ages we don't see girls emerging somewhat different from boys, and these differences appear in studies on all continents, in all cultures."
Increasing discontent among the men in pro-female societies suggests that anti-sexist programs have gone too far, creating a switch in the poles of inequality between the sexes rather than the neutralization of gender. In response to the abundant biological evidence of inborn differences between the sexes, parents and educators can better support children by developing gender-appropriate approaches to raising them so that neither sex's potential is limited by the illusion that sex doesn't matter. In other words, parents and educators can embrace the positive characteristics inherent in both masculine and feminine expressions of gender regardless of sex.
