Research on European American Girls

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School failure and intrusion are substantially different for European American girls than for members of racial and linguistic minorities. Studies by Sadker et al. (1989) and others (which focus mainly on European American girls) show that gender-based bias in school is significant and powerful. Some schools still track girls to mothering roles and boys to college. In the 1980s and 1990s, girls scored lower than boys on some math and science measures, but by 2000, these differences had been virtually erased (U.S. Department of Education, 2007).

In the primary grades, the school’s failure of girls takes different forms. The average girl enters school academically ahead of boys her age and remains ahead (as measured by grades and test scores) through the elementary grades (AAUW, 1992). For these girls, the major problems with school achievement occur after they leave the predominantly female turf of elementary schools.

A multiracial perspective on gender and student achievement leads to distinctly different conclusions for students of color. Unlike students of color, young European American girls normally do not come to school and encounter a new environment run by “others.” These girls go from a usually female-centered home culture to a female-centered school culture. Schools and teachers have positive expectations for them. Young, middle-class European American girls do not encounter the substantially destructive attacks on their gender that young minority children (male or female) encounter in their culture. When students share class, race, and gender with the teacher or the counselor, they are usually encouraged to “become the best they can be.” Female students from several minority cultures encounter the oppression of race and class in school.

Fortunately, gender-role stereotyping in schools is decreasing, but it remains a problem (National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 2002). The efforts to reduce gender stereotyping among teachers create new questions about school achievement across cultural groups.

It is often boys, particularly African American, Latino, and Asian boys, who lack role models for the first six years of schooling. Whereas European American girls benefit from their female-centered primary school experience, children of color—particularly boys—fail. It is boys who encounter the most conflicts, receive the most punishments, and most often get placed in special education and remedial programs (Flood, 2000).

The positive school experiences of girls begin to change in adolescence. The teenage years in our society are a time of redefining self and roles. Young girls and boys who were once self-confident now search for new identities. Earlier self-definitions shift. For many teenagers, belonging to a group becomes a major goal. Young people look to their peers for guidance through these difficult and troubling years.

Schoolgirls, at least those European American girls studied, suffer significant declines in self-esteem as they move from childhood to adolescence. A nationwide study commissioned by the AAUW in 1990 found that on average 69 percent of elementary school boys and 60 percent of elementary school girls reported being “happy the way I am”; among high school students, the percentages were 46 percent for boys and only 29 percent for girls.