No-one's brain is pink - education for tomorrow

Kiri Tunks

Sexism still exists. It exists and persists in spite of the battles that have been fought, and we thought won, for women’s equality.

THE FACT is women and girls are still managing sexism at endemic levels at work, in school, in public, on social media. The evidence is depressing and overwhelming. The NEU’s own report ‘It’s just everywhere’ makes clear how routine sexual harassment and sexism is in schools but also that serious sexual assault is an issue too.

These findings are backed up by other research including the Girl Guiding Attitudes Survey which found 64% of girls experience sexual harassment in schools or End Violence Against Women’s ‘All day, every day’ report and briefing on schools’ legal obligations to prevent and respond to such incidents. But such experience is not a problem specific to schools: Plan UK found that 86% of women aged 18-24 suffered routine sexual harassment and abuse on the streets, and the TUC’s ‘Not just a bit of banter’ exposed the prevalence of it at work.

We live in a society where sexual assault is a fact of life for many women but only 6% of rape cases end in conviction. More than two women a week are murdered in the UK by their partner or another male family member and yet both the media and the justice system treat such deaths as a series of tragic individual incidents; a good man who cracked, with the implication that it was the murdered woman who somehow provoked her own death.

Then there is the pay gap; the maternity and pregnancy discrimination (54k women lose their jobs in the UK every year because of it); the cuts to public services which affect women more than men; the attacks on trade unions which have made great gains for equality over decades; and the impact of austerity – research by the Women’s Budget Group show that it is women who are most affected by this government’s policies with Black women being the hardest hit. No-one’s brain is pink The UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Phillip Alston, on a recent visit to the UK said

“If you got a group of misogynists together in a room and said ‘how can we make a system that works for men but not women?’ they wouldn’t have come up with too many other ideas than what’s in place.”

This state of affairs coincides with the the return of the ‘Pink Brain – Blue Brain’ premise across a range of academic research, media and even cultural institutions such as the Science Museum. In 2016 their ‘Who Am I? exhibition asked children to explore whether their brain was pink or blue. We have NGOs delivering training in education which asks participants to identify where they are on a Barbie to GI Joe ‘jelly baby continuum’.

Research purporting to prove sex difference has received a lot of coverage such as that by Simon Baron-Cohen which claims to prove that males are systemisers and females are empathisers from birth. This research involved showing newborn babies a mobile and a photo of a face. It’s research fraught with problems – not least the age of the subjects – and has been robustly challenged and yet it’s an idea that still gains traction. Perhaps it’s because it reinforces the way our society is organised and seems to make sense of it. At one level, it is easier to believe that the brains of women and men are fundamentally different than to challenge structural and social inequality. More than that, perhaps this scientific drive betrays a need to prove gender difference in order to justify a sexist ideology which can be used to sustain the oppression and exploitation of women.

It is astonishing how flimsy the research which claims to prove sex difference is and how easily it falls apart on rigorous inspection. We think of science as being neutral and objective but we forget that scientists are people and subject to cultural influence like any other. Darwin, when challenged about the sexist application of his theories pronounced: “I certainly think that women though generally superior to men in moral qualities are inferior intellectually”. A Victorian example of science being used to prove what people want to believe. Many scientists have analysed these findings on sex and gender, and debunked much of it, but their work has not received anywhere near the same exposure as the original claims. Cordelia Fine (Delusions of Gender, Testosterone Rex) and Angela Saini (Inferior) provide particularly powerful overviews of this debate.

Simply put, many of the claims made for sex difference are based on research which is either flawed in its sample base, or its execution or its interpretation. Sometimes, claims are based on a completely unrelated experiment, designed to look for something else. Given just how much research has been done in this field, the claims that are being made for it just don’t hold up. The evidence instead suggests that there is far more difference between the brains of individuals than between those of different sexes.

‘It is astonishing how flimsy the research which claims to prove sex difference is and how easily it falls apart on rigorous inspection.’

Yet modern science still excludes and misrepresents women. Look at how poorly women are represented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical (STEM) fields. All the evidence shows that girls are as adept in these subjects as boys until GCSE but take-up drops off at A Level and beyond resulting in women making up only 24% of STEM graduates. The fact that so few women work in computing is particularly odd given the history of women in its development: Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson to name a few. But this is a field in which sexual harassment is rife. Addressing that might go some way in changing the career choices of women.

But what other deeper, subtle processes are at work here? The constant presentation of the male maths? The genius trope? The logical ‘male’ brain? The male environment and culture? All messages which signal to girls ‘Pick something else’.

Given the scale of the problem, how can schools begin to challenge this? Well, schools can and do make a difference. My own schooling in the 80s was consciously anti-sexist. That’s not to say I was schooled in some kind of feminist Utopia but everyone did metalwork, woodwork, textiles and cooking. We had Local Education Authority (LEA) advisors and input that provided resources and raised expectations of schools.

The educational landscape is very different now. Firstly, there has been a huge atomisation of the education system with the growth of academies and free schools and the demise of LEAs. Schools no longer have access to reliably ‘kitemarked’ policies or advice and are likely to approach this kind of work haphazardly, intermittently and according to what is cheap or available. Relationships and Sex education is a particular weak spot. Schools rely on their results to survive in this cut-throat world where poor exam grades can result in academisation.

This means subjects like PSHE, Citizenship or the Arts are disappearing from the curriculum. These are the very places where complex issues of sexism, sex and relationships could be safely and productively explored. Now we have outsourced this learning to the internet where pornography is prolific and few filters exist to help young people navigate what they see.

Changes to Initial Teacher Training mean that new teachers are likely to be much more school based so there is less awareness of pedagogical or social theories. Anti-sexism and anti-racism pedagogy was part of my PGCE. This is not something that routinely happens now.

I would argue further that there has been a ‘machofication’ of our schools which is harmful for all of us. We have a school system which imposes strict dress codes and hair styles; has a zero-tolerance behaviour system; a military approach to management where staff are told to ‘man-up’ to handle the workload and stress created by a data-heavy top-down assessment and inspection system; where staff and students are routinely expected to ‘go the extra hundred miles’; where pastoral support is seen as ‘fluffy’ instead of a vital part of supporting our young people. And yet, there are educators all over the UK finding ways to challenge sexism in our schools, ensuring that the curriculum makes women and their achievements visible; making space for young people to ask challenging questions about relationships and behaviour (and to cope with being challenged themselves); staff setting up feminist groups and conferences for young people. But this work shouldn’t be left to chance. It’s schooling that all our children need and should be universally implemented and funded so that it is part of a high-quality entitlement.

We need a complete revolution in how we organise our schools so that they work for young people in their lives now and in their futures. We need a rich, broad, global curriculum which actively involves young people in their education and exposes them to the diverse nature of the world and different people’s contributions to it – in the past and the present day.

We need an education which teaches our young people to know their rights and to know how to ask questions and make real sense of the answers. We need to change our culture so that sexism is challenged at every turn and not allow the huge potential of our young women to be stifled or silenced through harassment, violence or prejudice – or for any of our young people to be hemmed in by stereotypes and prejudice. We all, men and women, suffer when expected to conform to sexist stereotypes.

Here’s some science: no-one’s brain is pink; our brains are grey and endowed with inestimable capability. We must not get distracted by unsubstantiated, poorly constructed ideology, masquerading as science. As educators, we must not limit what is possible for young people. Our job is to expand horizons and knock down barriers. If we do that, maybe we can build an education system, and a society, that works equally for everyone.

No-one’s brain is pink

Sexism still exists. It exists and persists in spite of the battles that have been fought, and we thought won, for women’s equality.

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