Separate and Unequal?

Separating children by sex may help teens focus on their schoolwork, but teachers manage to transmit stereotyped gender roles just the same.

By Jesse J. Logan, published on November 01, 2001 - last reviewed on January 14, 2009

Think sending your daughter to a single-sex academy will make her assertive, or that an all-boys school will teach your son new found respect for women? That's not necessarily the case, according to one landmark California study. Instead, teachers tend to unintentionally reinforce traditional gender stereotypes in single-sex classrooms, often sending mixed messages about gender, according to results published in 2001 in Teachers College Record. Boys, for example, were told it's OK to cry, but should learn to be strong and support their wives. Girls were told they could do anything they want, but were also made aware of expectations to be feminine in clothing and appearance. In some schools, girls were taught quilting, sewing or makeup application.

Amanda Datnow, Ph.D., an assistant professor of education administration at the University of Toronto, and her colleagues at the University of California at San Diego tested single-sex education in six California districts, observing classrooms and interviewing more than 300 middle- and high-school students and their parents and teachers.

"Educators believed that simply by separating boys and girls, gender equity would be achieved, but that didn't pan out," says Datnow. "The tendency was to teach according to presumptions that girls are cooperative or boys are competitive." Boys were viewed as rambunctious and talkative, and were closely monitored. But because girls are stereotyped as studious and well-behaved, they were allowed more freedom. Interestingly, removing the opposite sex did not eliminate single-sex strife. Girls were catty toward one another, and boys taunted other boys. One distinct advantage of the single-sex classroom, though, is the candor with which dating, pregnancy and gender can be addressed. Research has established that romance can derail the scholastic aspirations of boys and girls alike, and "Single-sex classrooms allowed girls and boys to engage in discussion about how to make life decisions that would enhance their future academic achievement," says Datnow.

So segregating boys and girls may not teach kids gender equality, but it could force them to sit through geography without passing love letters across the aisles.