Subject Choice and Occupational Aspirations among Pupils at Girls' Schools
Francis, Becky; Hutchings, Merryn; Archer, Louise; Amelling, Lindsay
Pedagogy, Culture and Society , v11 n3 p425-442 2003
Various studies have found that British girls' curriculum subject preferences and future aspirations have changed and diversified in recent years. Other work has suggested that girls educated in single-sex schools might have a different (perhaps less gender-stereotypical) experience of education in comparison with their contemporaries at co-educational schools. This article draws on a study of the preferences of girls in English single-sex schools to explore these issues of subject choice and occupational aspiration further. It is argued that, like girls in mixed-sex secondary schools, single-sex schoolgirls' subject preferences have become more diverse and less gender-stereotypical than was the case twenty years ago. But where single-sex schoolgirls might have been expected to rate maths and science more highly than their counterparts in mixed-sex schools, the reverse was the case. Our findings support the argument that girls are now significantly more academically focused and ambitious for their future occupations than they were twenty years ago. However, we argue that a gender dichotomy remains evident in the types of future occupation chosen by girls. (Contains 1 figure, 4 tables, and 4 notes.)