girls register greater gains in academic achievement when they attend single-sex
schools.
Although coeducational schools may be in some instances detrimental to girl's
cognitive growth and may send hidden curricula messages reinforcing women's
subordination, particularly through the modelling of men in important administrative
positions, the coexistence of girls and boys in settings defined as serious and formal
tends to reduce the myths of masculinity and femininity that set the genders apart from
each other.
Sara-Lafosse's study shows that students perceptions of equal abilities by both sexes
along a wide range of dimensions (intellectual to artistic) tend to be higher among
students with substantial exposure to coeducational schooling than among those whose
experience has been limited mostly to single-sex schools. Her data also show that levels
of aggression- and essential feature of machista behaviour- and the belief that
housework is solely a woman's task diminish for boys in coeducational schools. For
those who think of the many virtues in single-sex schooling, Sara-Lafosse presents a
view of other gains that accrue when there is a more open contact between male and
female students. (Stromquist)
STROMQUIST, Nelly P (1992) Feminist Reflections on the Politics of the Peruvian
University, in: STROMQUIST, Nelly (ed) (1992) Women and Education in Latin
America. Knowledge, Power and Change, Lynne Rienner, London, 147-167.
This chapter examines a highly politicized university setting in order to detect the
extent to which feminist currents have had an impact on the curriculum or the
sociopolitical agenda of the university. In Peru, university students are highly sensitive
to the questions of social, economic, and ethnic inequalities in the rest of the society- a
feature that long has characterized them. This sensitivity to social disparities,
unfortunately, has not been extended to gender issues.
Despite the fact that several fields have a large female enrollment and that women
participate to a moderate degree in university politics, the political agenda is defined in
the Marxist context of a class struggle, with feminist concerns dismissed as petty
bourgeois. Women students who seek acceptance must then suppress these concerns.
Stromquist discusses the various factors that account for the low attention to gender
issues in the university. Salient among these issues is the strong reliance on Marxist as a
theoretical framework. Because it emphasizes the mode of production rather than the
interplay between production and reproduction, this framework is compatible with
existing patriarchal ideologies that leave little space for the development of a feminist
agenda.