5/12/2008 1:48:18 PM by Wendy Kaminer | Comments [2] |  

By Wendy Kaminer

        Next fall, all academic programs in Greene County, Georgia public schools will be segregated by sex, if the Greene County Board of Education has its way.  Last week, the board voted unanimously to mandate single sex education in all county schools.  This controversial mandate is of questionable legality: the U.S. Department of Education recently eased prohibitions on sex segregation in public schools, but, “enrollment in a single sex class should be a completely voluntary option for students and their families,” a Department press release stressed.
   
        Why is the Green County Board of Ed so anxious to test the limits of federal anti-discrimination law (and constitutional guarantees of equality?)  It assumes that prohibiting coed classes will improve academic performance in troubled schools throughout the county.  "Girls tend to do better in small groups. Quiet time. Boys tend to do better when they are able to express themselves," board chair Janice Gallimore declares, parroting resilient stereotypes about male and female learning styles.  “We've got a school district that needs immediate change.” school superintendent Shawn McCollough explains.  “All of the research says that when you go to single gender schools, it's positive improvements for the kids.”  In other words, “Studies show …”  Except that they don’t.

        “(S)eparating by sex is not the solution to gender inequity in education,” according to a 1998 report by the American Association of University Women.  More recently the AAUW questioned the wisdom of the 2006 federal regulations that eased limits on single sex education (which were also opposed by the ACLU.)

         But support for sex segregated schools, which has been building for some 15 years, is not based on facts so much as bias and wishful thinking about cognitive sexual difference.   Interestingly, dramatic increases in sexual equality over the past 40 years have not been matched by decreases in support for conventional notions of masculine and feminine aptitudes and styles.  People who have learned not to generalize about what comes naturally to members of different races and ethnicities don't necessarily hesitate to generalize about what’s natural for men and women.  When we’re talking about sex, separate but equal has persistent appeal.

        It will be interesting to see how civil rights and civil liberties advocates respond to the Greene County ban on coeducation.  Single sex education is increasingly fashionable, but as the ACLU has stated, “it fixes and reinforces in students of both sexes stereotypes and negative attitudes about themselves and one another, and builds upon the historic sexism that has denied all students truly equal opportunity, access, and equal treatment in American education.”  The ACLU strongly opposes sex segregated public schools; advocates of equality in Greene County Georgia should take note.

2/21/2008 4:31:08 PM by Wendy Kaminer | Comments [0] |  

        Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Wellesley retains a certain cachet, but most women’s colleges have suffered predictable declines in popularity and prestige since the late 1960s, when the top men’s school became coed.  By the late 1990s, only 1.3% of all women receiving B.A. degrees were graduates of women’s colleges.  Some single sex schools, (like Vassar and Skidmore) joined a trend they could not beat and began admitting men; others, like my alma mater, Smith College, struggled to find new raison d’etres: Smith offers an engineering program and boasts of the superior science education it provides for female students.

        Women who remain ideologically committed to single sex education, including many alums of single sex schools, naturally lament the decline of women’s colleges, but the fact that they’re no longer needed is a testament to their success.  The dream of educational equality shared by their founders has been realized. 

        Or has it?  A widely publicized, 1992 report prepared by the Wellesley Center for Research on Women (commissioned by the American Association of University Women) was entitled “How Schools Shortchange Girls.” The executive summary cited “gender bias as a major problem at all levels of schooling.”   But the alarmist tone of the title and the summary of this report was undermined by its actual findings, which were complicated and inconclusive.  In fact, the report noted that “socio-economic status,” not sex, was said to be the “best predictor of both grades and test scores.”  And, just 6 years later, the AAUW published a report questioning the virtues of single sex education for girls.

        The rather misleading framing of the 1992 report exemplified the primacy of ideology in what are billed as empirical studies of single sex education (among other questions involving sex and gender difference.)  So it was not surprising when a boy’s movement arose in the 1990s, and advocates for boys began challenging the belief that schools shortchanged girls.  They argue that it’s boys who are being shortchanged -- falling behind in verbal skills, while taking the lead in disciplinary problems and learning disabilities.  They point out that a majority of college students today are female.  This frequently cited development is less remarkable than it may appear: By the early 1900’s, more girls than boys were graduating from high school.  Still, boys are often said to be in more trouble than girls, victims of biology or social trends – including co-education.  

        Recently, advocates for boys have helped revitalize single sex programs in secondary schools, with the aid of the Bush Administration, which has eased federal restrictions on them.  Programs that might once have been prohibited as forms of sex discrimination are now permitted in the interests of sexual equality.

        It’s an old story: from the beginning, in the 19th century, feminists have disagreed about whether separatism was good or bad for women -- whether biology was destiny, and whether sexual justice required legal protections or legal equality.  Separatist or protectionist feminists stressed women's inescapably feminine natures (in modern terms, their "ways of knowing.") Today, advocates for boys (masculinists?) stress their different learning styles, temperaments, and vulnerabilities, and their consequent need for single sex environments.

        What do scientists say?  That’s a dangerous question, as former Harvard President Larry Summers learned; but when he speculated about natural cognitive differences between the sexes, and sparked protests that helped precipitate his resignation, he was not straying outside the mainstream.  As long as there has been a feminist movement and the threat of dismantling traditional gender roles, there have been scientists who claimed that intellectual and emotional differences between the sexes were only natural.  Today, some rely on technology, like brain scans purporting to show natural sexual difference.  In the late 1800’s, some claimed that men were smarter than women because their brains were heavier.  Whether the science of sexual difference will look equally silly 100 years from now, I cannot say (obviously.)  But history suggests we should be wary of claims about natural cognitive, characterological, and moral differences between the sexes and even warier of laws and policies designed to accommodate them.  Even if such differences do exist, to some degree, on average, they shouldn’t dictate the treatment of individuals.  

        Besides, beliefs about natural sexual difference tend to be self-perpetuating; single sex schools have long been marked by their own special form of sexism.  As researcher Valerie Lee observed in a study of Catholic schools some 20 years ago, while girls' schools paid attention to equality, they also “perpetuated a pernicious form of sexism: academic dependence and nonrigorous instruction.”  In chemistry classes, “undue attention was paid to neatness and cleanliness as well as to drawing parallels between domesticity and chemistry activities.”

        As you may have guessed, I am not an advocate of single sex education, (having experienced its failings firsthand,) but I don’t mean to adopt a dogmatic position against it.   I realize, of course, that some teenagers, male and female, prefer single sex environments and perform well in them (though I always wonder if they would perform equally well in small, well-financed, well taught coed programs.)  And I can’t help suspecting single sex programs of perpetuating gender stereotypes: A recent article lauding single sex classes in the South Carolina public schools notes that “educators gear their lessons to what students like: assigning action novels for boys to read or allowing girls to evaluate cosmetics for science projects.”  You can call this science, but it looks like lipstick feminism to me.

10/3/2007 2:51:42 PM by Wendy Kaminer | Comments [0] |  

        Prostitution is a crime for women but a “personal matter” for men.  That’s the lesson of the latest Washington sex scandal involving ultra conservative Louisiana Senator David Vitter and alleged D.C. madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.  Palfrey, charged with running a prostitution ring, faces federal racketeering charges.  Vitter, exposed as one of Palfrey’s clients, enjoys the support of his right wing Republican Senate colleagues, who have accepted his apology for committing a “serious sin,” which they characterize as personal.  We should forgive, not condemn, Vitter’s conduct, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn suggests: “Have you ever done anything wrong?” he asked reporters for The Hill.  “So have I.”  Vitter’s conduct is simply a "personal issue,” law and order presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani agrees.  (Vitter is southern regional chair of Giuliani’s campaign.)
       
        Feminists have long protested the gross inequities of prosecuting women for selling sex while forgiving or ignoring men for buying it.  (Ruth Marcus points out the problem with personalizing Vitter's conduct in the Washington Post.) Personally, (unlike Marcus,) I favor legalizing or de-criminalizing prostitution, but neither Vitter nor any of his conservative supporters share my libertarian views.  As far as I know, none of them have advocated treating prostitution as a private matter, or refraining from prosecuting women for their sexual “sins.”  Indeed, Vitter is a particularly self-righteous proponent of right wing “family values” -- except when he’s caught violating them.  Apologizing for his conduct, Vitter said, "Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling.  Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there -- with God and them.”  
   
        Out of respect for equal justice, prosecutors and journalists should ignore Vitter’s plea. If Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed a crime, then so did he. 
 
       
   

7/18/2007 1:45:17 PM by Wendy Kaminer | Comments [1] |