This column appears in The world of education. If you are subscribed to Monde, you can subscribe to this weekly newsletter by following this link.
44%. This is the share of French men and women aged 18 to 29 who believe that the school system does not guarantee gender equality in terms of orientation, according to the white paper “Acting for equality 2021-2022”. The figures are unanimous, girls and boys do not make the same orientation choices.
In high school, only 2% of girls choose digital and IT courses and only 9% of boys choose the health and social sectors. If we take the example of technological courses, the figures are even more instructive: at the start of the 2021 school year, 92% of students in the technological terminal for industry and sustainable development were boys…
On the surface, school orientation seems to be a succession of very personal decisions, and, in theory, everyone can do everything. But society maintains the idea that girls and boys do not have the same tastes and skills, thus justifying differentiated study choices: care and education for some, science and technology for others. There is nothing natural about these choices and the persistence of sexist stereotypes internalized by students and their entourage leads to differences in terms of career paths, success and choice of orientation.
The school, from primary to high school, participates in the construction of the orientation choices of individuals and does not escape the reproduction of these stereotypes. The study by the Center Hubertine-Auclert on the obstacles to the orientation of girls in the computer and digital sectors of high school recently demonstrated that the high school could also – despite itself – be a producer of inequalities and obstacles to diversified educational orientations. .
Train teaching teams
Why are so-called non-traditional career choices so complicated? These decisions greatly involve adolescents on an identity and psychological level. At the moment when they have to be made public, pupils are forced to express their degree of conformity with the system of norms that characterizes them, first as girls or boys. It is also during this period that the entourage exerts its power of influence in spite of itself, in an equally conditioned manner.
Educational guidance issues are closely linked to the fight for gender equality and the fight against gender violence. Despite the specific framework of national education supposed to promote strict equality between girls and boys – a deeply republican commitment – the educational trajectories of girls and boys are significantly different and inexorably result in professional inequalities with only 17% of trades. mixed, inequalities in terms of qualification levels and, of course, wage inequalities. Is it necessary to recall that, in 2022, for equal working hours, women receive a salary 22% lower than that of men?
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