Schooling and Gender: Reflecting Social Realities within Educational Systems

Walk into almost any school in the world, and you will find more than just students learning academic subjects. You will find a social world in miniature – one that mirrors the hierarchies, norms, and inequalities of the society outside its walls. Schools do not exist in a vacuum. They absorb and reproduce the values and power structures of the broader world, and gender sits at the center of that reproduction. Understanding how schools reflect and reinforce gender inequality is not just an academic exercise – it is essential for anyone who cares about equitable education.

Schools as a mirror of society 🔗

The idea that a school functions as a microcosm of society is well-established in educational sociology. Every interaction in a school – between students, between teachers and students, and between students and learning materials – carries embedded social meanings. Educators have noted that because “school is a microcosm of the world,” the sexist cultures and gender hierarchies present in broader society are inescapable within school walls. Students do not arrive at school as blank slates; they bring with them gender norms absorbed from family, media, religion, and community – and the school either challenges or reinforces those norms every single day.

This is why gender subordination in education cannot be separated from gender subordination in society at large. UNESCO estimates that globally, 133 million girls and 139 million boys are out of school, and women account for nearly two-thirds of all adults who lack basic literacy skills. These numbers are not random – they are the result of deeply rooted social and economic structures that play out in and through educational systems.

Gender subordination and access to education 🔗

The most visible form of gender inequality in schooling is differential access. In many parts of the world, girls face structural barriers that prevent them from entering or staying in school. UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report points to poverty, geographical isolation, early marriage and pregnancy, and traditional attitudes about the role of women as key obstacles to girls’ education. The report also notes that in only 9 out of 44 countries with available data did more than 75% of primary schools have single-sex sanitation facilities – a basic requirement that, when absent, causes an estimated one in ten African girls to miss school during menstruation.

But access alone does not tell the full story. Even when girls do attend school, they often encounter an environment that is subtly – or not so subtly – structured against them. Research shows that gender bias appears in teaching practices, curriculum content, and the school environment, and that these biases work together to prevent girls from achieving equal outcomes even when they have nominal access to schooling.

The hidden curriculum and what textbooks teach without saying so 🔗

One of the most powerful mechanisms through which schools reproduce gender inequality is the hidden curriculum – a term coined by Philip Jackson in 1968 to describe the unstated values, beliefs, and cultural norms that are transmitted through school routines and materials without being explicitly taught. Researchers have argued that students spend as much as 80 to 95% of classroom time using textbooks, making these materials a primary vehicle for transmitting gender norms, whether intentionally or not.

The evidence on gender bias in textbooks is substantial and global. A large-scale analysis of 1,255 textbooks from 34 countries found consistent patterns: women and girls appear less frequently than men and boys, are portrayed as more passive, are less likely to be associated with achievement or work, and are more commonly linked to the home and traditionally female occupations. The study also found that textbooks from lower-income countries showed a greater degree of gender bias than those from wealthier countries.

The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Blog highlighted a study from Australia where, despite women outnumbering men in the population, 57% of characters in school textbooks were male. Men appeared twice as often in law and order roles and four times as often in depictions related to politics and government. These are not just abstract statistics – they send a message to students about who holds power and who does not.

Studies from countries including Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Syria have shown that textbooks consistently portray men in prestigious professions – scientists, doctors, managers, government officials – while women are depicted in supporting roles such as caregivers, school employees, or fashion models. Researchers have observed that even physical education curricula carry gendered assumptions, with a widespread belief across many cultures that boys are naturally better at physical exercise while girls are suited to domestic activities like sewing and cooking. These depictions, repeated across grade levels and subjects, condition students to see gender roles as natural and fixed rather than socially constructed.

Teacher interactions and classroom dynamics 🔗

Beyond textbooks, the day-to-day dynamics of the classroom itself can reinforce gender inequality. Research by Sadker, Sadker, and Zittleman, based on thousands of observation hours in public and private schools across the United States, found that teachers engaged less frequently with female students – asking them fewer questions and providing them with less substantive feedback. The distribution of teacher time, energy, and attention consistently favored male students. The same researchers found that male characters outnumber female characters two-to-one in curricular materials used across schools.

Teachers often hold unconscious gendered expectations that shape how they interact with and evaluate students. Boys tend to receive more encouragement in mathematics and science and are given more challenging tasks, while girls receive more praise for neatness and compliance rather than for intellectual contributions. Research has also shown that teachers are more likely to overestimate a boy’s ability in mathematics while underrating a girl’s – a pattern that reinforces the very gap it purports to reflect.

Notably, this problem is not one-directional. Gender bias harms boys too. The narrow expectations of masculinity that schools implicitly uphold – that boys should be assertive, emotionally restrained, and disinterested in the arts or social sciences – constrain the educational paths available to them. As educator consultant Beth Davies has pointed out, boys being pressured to conform to a certain kind of strength or presentation is equally harmful, even if it operates differently than the pressures placed on girls.

When gender meets class: intersecting inequalities in schooling 🔗

Gender does not operate in isolation inside the school. It intersects with class, caste, race, and ethnicity to create layered experiences of advantage and disadvantage. This is what scholars of intersectionality in education have long argued – that understanding gender inequality in schools requires looking at how multiple social identities compound one another.

A girl from a low-income family does not face only gender-based barriers; she also faces economic constraints that may mean fewer school supplies, the need to contribute to household labor, early marriage pressure, or schools located far from safe transit. Research confirms that poverty plays a direct role in determining gender equality in schools through the direct and indirect costs of schooling, and that addressing gender inequality requires strategies that also tackle the wider social factors influencing whether families send children – and which children – to school.

An intersectional study of eighth-grade students in the United States found that within the same socioeconomic class, significant racial and gender inequalities persisted in both academic and social-emotional outcomes. The findings suggest that even when economic disadvantage is addressed, the compounding effects of gender and race continue to shape educational experiences – making it clear that no single-axis approach to educational inequality is sufficient.

Boys from marginalized communities face their own set of pressures. Social expectations around masculinity – particularly for boys from lower-income or minority backgrounds – can push them toward early entry into labor markets, away from fields perceived as “soft,” or toward behavioral patterns that result in disproportionate disciplinary action at school. UNESCO’s global report on boys’ disengagement from education brings together evidence from over 140 countries showing that boys are at greater risk of repeating grades, failing to progress, and disengaging from learning – a set of challenges shaped as much by class and culture as by gender itself.

What a gender-sensitive curriculum looks like 🔗

Recognizing the problem is the first step. Addressing it requires deliberate, systemic change – and gender-sensitive education is the framework through which that change can happen. A gender-sensitive curriculum does not simply add a few female names to a textbook or celebrate International Women’s Day. It fundamentally rethinks what is taught, who is represented, what language is used, and how teachers engage with students.

An OECD analysis of UNESCO’s review of 110 national curriculum frameworks across 78 countries found that gender biases and stereotypes persist particularly in math and science textbooks, with women severely underrepresented in these fields. The analysis calls for curriculum frameworks that represent men and women in varied roles – both within and outside the family – and that include experiences and needs of all genders equitably.

UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report outlines clear responsibilities across the education system: governments are urged to develop nondiscriminatory curricula and invest in teacher training; schools must address gender-based violence and create safe environments; and teachers should provide unbiased instruction by actively examining their own gendered assumptions. Countries like Ghana have taken practical steps – for example, incorporating gender sensitivity as a formal criterion in textbook evaluation policies.

Tools such as UNESCO’s gender checklist for teaching materials help teachers audit the books, images, and activities they use for gendered language, occupational stereotypes, and imbalances in representation. Beyond materials, classroom practices need to shift – toward more equitable distribution of attention, more diverse role models, and explicit conversations about gender norms that give all students the vocabulary to question the world around them.

UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education recognizes the curriculum as having a genuinely transformative role – one that can challenge gender stereotypes rather than embed them further. This requires more than policy – it requires educators who are trained to see gender bias when it occurs, even in the ordinary moments of a school day.

Why this matters beyond school gates 🔗

The gender dynamics that play out in schools do not stay there. Research consistently shows that gender inequality within education contributes to lasting disparities in the workplace and in political participation. Globally, women make up only 35% of students enrolled in STEM fields in higher education, and just 20% of science and engineering professionals are women – a gap that begins forming in early schooling through differential encouragement, representation, and expectation. Increasing women’s access to quality education has also been shown to improve broader health outcomes – lowering maternal and infant mortality rates, reducing childhood malnutrition, and decreasing new HIV diagnoses. The stakes of getting gender-sensitive education right extend far beyond classroom performance.

Schools are not passive. They make choices – through their curricula, their textbooks, their disciplinary practices, and the ways their teachers speak and listen – that either perpetuate or disrupt the gender hierarchies of the wider society. That is precisely what makes them such powerful sites for change, if those who work within them are willing to look clearly at what is being taught alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic.

What do you think? If schools genuinely reflect the gender norms of the society around them, can they ever truly drive change without broader social transformation happening at the same time? And when you look back at your own schooling experience, which aspects of the curriculum – explicit or hidden – shaped your understanding of what was “meant” for different genders?

References

1. https://standard.asl.org/30006/features/shadowed-by-sexism-how-gender-inequality-manifests-in-school-community/
2. https://www.unesco.org/en/gender-equality/education/need-know
3. https://gem-report-2017.unesco.org/en/chapter/gender_recommendations/
4. https://populationeducation.org/how-gender-bias-in-the-education-system-affects-girls/
5. https://iwne.ee/conditioning-through-education-gender-bias-and-the-hidden-curriculum-in-textbooks/
6. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11463758/
7. https://world-education-blog.org/2016/03/08/gender-bias-is-rife-in-textbooks/
8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331186X.2022.2152616
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_curricula
10. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/gender-equity-classroom-rebecca-alber
11. https://book.all-means-all.education/ama-2025-en/chapter/gender-and-school-policy/
12. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19452829.2022.2090523
13. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4624767/
14. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2022/05/gender-stereotypes-in-education_a6f2df0e/a46ae056-en.pdf
15. https://gem-report-2017.unesco.org/en/chapter/gender_accountability_through_school/
16. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/how-to-identify-gender-inequality-in-teaching-materials/3996027.html
17. https://www.ibe.unesco.org/en/articles/promoting-gender-equity-and-through-education