If Women Perform better than men in

education, does it matter?

Affective equality and its implications for education

Kathleen Lynch
UCD Equality Studies Centre
School of Social Justice
University College Dublin, Ireland
Gender Differences in Educational Achievement Conference,
Swedish Presidency of the European Union
Uppsala, Sweden, November 17th -18th 2009
Gender differences in performance and retention in education in
the EU

„ On average Girls outperform boys in national examinations

„ Almost 60% of university graduates in the EU are women

„ Men still dominate the Mathematics, Science and Technology fields in

higher education (78-80%) and in employment; Women dominate arts,
humanities, social sciences and business
‰ Slight performance gap between girls and boys in MST favouring boys (varies by
country)
‰ Girls performance surpasses that of boys in languages
„ Literacy levels have declined in the EU since 2000

„ Working class, and particular ethnic minority boys have the greatest literacy
difficulties and are also the most likely to be early school leavers

‰ Source: European Commission and NESSE (Network of Experts in the Social Sciences
and Education) 2009 Gender and Education: Gendered Imperatives and their
Implications for Women and Men. DGEAC: Brussels (See www.nesse.fr)

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 2
Does it matter that boys perform more
poorly in schools?
„ Boys’ lower performance than girls is not a new
phenomenon – moral panic is displaced
„ Not all boys perform badly in school – Middle class
and upper middle class boys are not allowed to fail
„ Lower rates of attainment and drop out are issues
for working class boys and ethnic minority boys from
particular cultures that are working class
„ Boys’ lower performance in education does not
disadvantage them in the labour market.

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 3
Position of Women in Europe

„ 51% of the total EU population are women

‰ 40% of all the jobs are filled by women
‰ More women than men are unemployed: 12% and
9% respectively
‰ 28% of the women have part-time jobs; 4% of the
men have part-time jobs
‰ 9% of the men have management and senior
posts; 6% of the women have management and
senior posts
‰ Pay gap is 25% higher for men in terms of gross
hourly wages (varies from 15-35%)
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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 4
EU Gender Pay Gap (hourly wages)
EU expert group on Gender, Social Inclusion and Employment (EGGSIE) (2006)
Source of data: Structure of Earnings Survey (private sector) Eurostat

0.35

0.3

0.25
Gender pay gap (%)

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
E

IT

IT
K

LU

FI

T
IS
25

ES

Z
L

PT

BE
N 15
0

FR
SE

SI

LI
SK

EE
AT

IE

LV
BG
EL

PL
N
S1

M
D

D
U

H
R

N
EU
EU
M

Countries

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 5
Common explanations for the pay gap and
their limitations
„ The Human Capital thesis:
‰ claim is no longer tenable in most EU states as women are
as well or better educated than men
„ The Choice thesis
‰ Choice is a function of opportunity and gendered culture of
expectations
„ The Discrimination thesis
‰ still tenable, especially indirect discrimination
„ The Segregation thesis – women working in the
lower paid care, cleaning and catering economies
‰ this begs the question as to why they ‘choose’ these in the
first instance
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Care Ceiling
„ Overwhelming evidence that women in all EU states are the
primary (unpaid) carers in families and households and in the
care economy
„ Moral imperative on women to be primary carers in most
societies means that they often have little real choice about
sacrificing paid work for care work
„ Care ceiling is as powerful as the glass ceiling and more
ubiquitous
„ Girls and boys subject choices, career and job choices are
premised on future care assumptions – ‘men as breadwinners’,
‘women as primary carers’
„ Affective inequality between men and women in family and work
life is an equality problem for educationalists

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 7
What is Affective Equality About?

„ It recognises:
‰ a) the relational character of human beings (we
live in profound states of interdependence
economically, politically, culturally and socially -
as well as environmentally
‰ b) human vulnerability – we are all at some time
in our life deeply dependent
„ It integrates a concepts dependency and
interdependency into our understanding of
equality, human rights and citizenship

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Affective Inequalities

„ Affective inequality occurs directly when:

„ the burdens and pleasures of care and love work are unequally
distributed in society, between women and men particularly
„ those doing love and care work are not recognised economically,
politically and/or socially for that work
„ people are deprived of the love, care and solidarity (LCS) they need
to survive and develop as human beings

„ Affective inequality occurs indirectly when:

„ We are not educated regarding the theory and practice of love, care
and solidarity work in education
„ and when love, care and solidarity work is trivialised by omission
from public discourse

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 9
Unwritten assumptions of classical (European)
view of education
„ Rational Economic Actor model of the citizen
assumes the person to be educated is primarily
„ a) cerebral being (homo sapiens)
„ (b) a public persona – one is educated for the
economy; and, but to a lesser degree, for political,
social and cultural life
„ c) operating as a self-interested individual. The
individual is the reproduction unit for society (Ulrich
Beck)
‰ d) deeply gendered assumptions underpinning
formal education and our concept of the citizen-
to-be-educated
„ Denial of much of the work women do for no pay or low
pay as ‘real work’ for which we need education

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A care-less definition of citizenship?
„ The Market economy has become the primary producer of cultural
logic, of cultural value in the last 20 years in most of Europe

„ Lisbon strategy has a hierarchy of objectives – economic (top),

employment and social (bottom)

‰ Citizen is defined increasingly by EU policy as

„ 1. an economic agent, a ‘consumer’, ‘client’ with the capacity to
produce, buy and sell services/products –
„ 2. an autonomous, privatised person, focus is on caring for oneself -
individual responsibility for failure
„ 3. an individual enterprise, constantly re-educating, reinventing the
marketable self (care work is defined out of citizenship)

‰ We need to enable care discourses to redefine public discourse, policies

and politics so that caring can be valorised economically, politically and
culturally without being romanticised or adversely commercialised
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The caring citizen is an inadmissible
subject in education
„ Care is an inadmissible subject in the ‘strong’ politics of
education
„ The educated person is defined by the Lisbon Strategy as an
Economic Actor
„ Not assumed we need to be educated in the affective
(relational) or emotional domains of life
„ Care work of all kinds is devalued by being ignored by in
many countries in formal education

„ We are educated as carers only when we are becoming professional

care workers in whole or in part – nurses, therapists, teachers, child
care workers etc.

„ Yet dependency and interdependency are integral to the human

condition both personally and politically
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Masculinity is defined as Care-Less and
Femininity as Care-Full
„ Feminine identities are assumed to be care-full
(moral imperative on women to care)
„ Masculine identities are equated with dominance,
control and individual autonomy (R.W. Connell,
1995, 2003)
„ Men are assumed be care-less (men see
breadwinning as caring)
„ Women are care’s foot soldiers; men are ‘care
commanders – they can assign intimate care work
(love labouring) to others
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To promote gender equality in education
„ We need to examine the relationship between education
and the paid labour market and unpaid care work
‰ Educational identities are constructed in the context of both the
economy and the care world
„ There is a need to challenge the way masculinity and
femininity are defined especially the gendering of caring
identities
„ Need to challenge who we define as a citizen and what
work makes a citizen valued or valueless

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 Conclusions
„ Boys lower educational attainments do not disadvantage in the paid
labour market in the medium to longer term

„ Women and girls are not making labour market gains commensurate
with their educational achievements as they are socialised in and
outside of education to be the ‘default carers’ of society
„ the care ceiling is a major barrier to women’s promotion and advancement
within and between fields

„ Men and boys are defined culturally in terms of dominance and

breadwinning
„ masculinity is defined in opposition to the feminine, including hands-on caring
so men learn to avoid caring to maintain their sense of legitimate masculinity

„ Both gender identities are acted out in education as anticipatory

forms of socialisation

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Conclusion: 1. Policy Implications
Education and research are tools for change

„ Education about gender matters for change

„ Need for education about gender identities and gender relations at

all levels of education, particularly around the way gender identities
are polarised and how subjects themselves are gendered

„ Teachers need to be systematically educated about gender issues

(pre-service and in-service)

„ Schools and Colleges should be required to have equality policies –

outcomes need to be monitored and data needs to be publicly
available

„ Research and teaching on gender and related equality issues needs

to be promoted and supported in higher education

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 16
Conclusion: 2. Policy Implications for improving
retention and performance
„ Raising a) the standard of teaching and the resourcing of schools, &
b) the quality of care and support …is vital for improving
performances and retention especially for non-traditional achievers

„ The social class and ethnic character of early leaving and poor
literacy needs to be openly addressed for boys and girls

„ The culture of schools must change to take account of the changing

status of young persons – studies on how to democratise schools
need to be promoted; schools need to work through dialogue

„ As long as there are low wages and dead-end jobs, someone will
occupy these; education that feeds into such jobs is not attractive

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 17
Conclusions: 3 Policy Implications addressing the
intersectional character of gender identity
„ Simplistic accounts of gender differences in performance
are misleading in policy terms and need to be replaced
by more nuanced analyses

„ Need to study more carefully the ways in which social

class, ethnic, disability, sexual and other identities
impact on students in education across Europe – need
large scale EU-specific studies

„ Need to recognise the role of parents and peers in framing

gendered identities and address this educationally (adult
education, media work)

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 18
Related publications
‰ Lynch, K., Baker, J. and Lyons, M. (2009) Affective Equality: Love, Care and
Injustice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
‰ Grummell, B. Devine, D. and Lynch, K. (2009) ‘The Care-less Manager: Gender,
Care and New Managerialism in Higher Education, Gender and Education, Vol.
21, No. 2: 191-208.
‰ Lynch, K. ‘Affective Equality: Who Cares?’ Development, Vol. 52, (3): 410-415
‰ Lynch, K., (2007) ‘Love labour as a distinct and non-commodifiable form of Care
Labour’ Sociological Review, Vol. 55, (3): 550-570.
‰ Lynch, K. Lyons, M., and Cantillon, S. (2007) ‘Breaking Silence: Educating for
Love, Care and Solidarity’, International Studies in Sociology of Education, Vol.
17, No.1-2: 1-19.
‰ Lynch, K., (2006) ‘Neo-Liberalism and Marketisation: the implications for higher
education’, European Educational Research Journal, Vol. 5, No.1: 1-17

‰ Baker, J. Lynch, K. ,Cantillon, S.and Walsh, J. (2009) Equality: From Theory to

Action, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (323pp) (2nd edition)
‰ Lynch, K., Grummell, B. and Devine, D. (2010) Who Manages Education: The
Care Ceiling in Senior Appointments. (Basingstoke: Palgrave in press)

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Social Justice www.ucd.ie/esc 19