Educating for Sex Equality

‘Tackling Gaps, Traps and Stereotypes'
25th March 2003, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Edinburgh : 10-12.30

A report by Sheila A. Constable

 ‘Tackling Gaps, Traps and Stereotypes'
25th March 2003, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Edinburgh : 10-12.30

A report by Sheila A. Constable

This seminar was hosted by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) Scotland as a forum from which to launch their new strategy for Learning Equality. This event was billed as an opportunity for people working in the education and training field to hear about examples of good practice and to discuss current issues and ideas with key stakeholders. The list of attending delegates, however, revealed that most people there were not working directly in the field of education.

John Wilkes, Director of EOC Scotland, opened the seminar by stating that they were launching a new strategy for training and education, because of the changing landscape in Scotland. This strategy is aimed at eliminating gender ghettos and sex stereotyping in society, so that girls /boys have an equal chance to go into any jobs, earn equal pay and have equal opportunities to get to the top in any field. The strategy is the result of consultation with many different individuals and organisations. He said that although this was an opportunity to hear of instances of good practice, sadly the EOC is aware that there are still many areas of concern which, it is hoped, the new strategy will be able to address.

Linda Watson-Brown, journalist and the Key Note Speaker, was then introduced. Previously an academic, she related her own negative experiences of being at the sharp end of gender discrimination in academia. Largely as a result of these experiences, she uses her current career as a journalist to disseminate to the general public what the EOC has achieved. She feels that there are committed, strong people out there but that women still have a long way to go and have lots of things still to achieve. She is very conscious that gender traps push women into low-paid, part-time jobs with low profiles, from which they cannot escape. The rhetoric tells us that all the changes have already taken place, but there is a huge gap between the rhetoric and the reality. Her final question to the audience was how can we all make learning equality happen?

Rowena Arshad, OBE, EOC Commissioner for Scotland set out to try and provide some practical answers to Linda’s question. She indicated that many of the audience members were co-funders to the EOC and partners with them in delivering the new strategy. The idea of entering into partnerships is all important, to create levels of change with individual practitioners first of all. These will form the foundations to build upon to create a c-change in attitudes and in our culture. The ripples created by these individuals initially in the pools of teaching and learning organisations will spread and grow into stronger waves as more and more individuals come on board. She said it will also be important to work with senior managers who have a lot of power and who take the lead and create the ethos in an organisation such as a school or a further education college. Theirs is a top down and bottom up strategy atone and the same time. She emphasised how important it will be for those leading the strategy to constantly examine their own values. She recognised that there are already pockets of good work in some schools, from individual teachers, but the danger there is that when the teacher leaves there is no-one left to take over the good work. She also referred to the encouraging example of the Scottish Parliament, up until 1st May at least – ranking fourth in the world in terms of the number of elected female MSPs.

There then followed short presentations from two 4th year students at Duncanrig Secondary School in East Kilbride. Both are members of Young Engineers at Duncanrig (YED), a club set up by a dedicated teacher there to counteract the fact that engineering is a male-dominated profession, and to try and get young people interested in engineering at an earlier age. The result has been to get many youngsters there (male and female) really interested and involved in engineering projects and competitions, working alongside each other and developing mutual respect. YED has become the top UK Young Engineers Club 2002. The youngsters have won awards for their design and invention and have presented their successes to various gatherings. The message that came through clearly is that the way to promote equality is through education starting at a very early age.

Eileen Simpson, Development Officer with the City of Edinburgh EAL Service, then told us of her work areas of race equality, inclusion and attainment in schools. When she worked as a PT of Guidance at Drummond Community High School, Edinburgh she produced and developed, in co-operation with others in the school, the Drummond Equality board game. This board game was designed to take young people from the womb, through the various stages of their lives in nursery, school, after school right up to age 25. It is aimed at the early teens, with 5 students playing at a time. There are 5 different characters in the game – examples are a working-class girl, a middle-class boy, a boy from an ethnic minority, someone who is disabled, and the idea is to pick the players so that their real-life roles will be reversed in the game. The players don’t know that the game is fixed and the winner is the one who starts first. The players discover, by living someone else’s life experience, that the game is full of inequalities in opportunities, etc, and the chances are fixed depending on your class, background, gender, race, level of ability. The idea is that once the game is over, the group will go on to discuss how it went, the outcome and the lessons learned, and how to change things to make life fairer for everyone.

Eileen told us that what happened at Drummond was that the senior pupils also opted to join in this experience by asking to receive training in presenting the game to 1st year pupils, with the result that they virtually took it over. They produced leaflets and contributed very effectively to the whole experience, so this became a real education in action process, with 1st year pupils as the trainees in the board game experience delivered to them by their senior peers. This became a ‘whole school experience’ and the game was taken out to other schools and presented to them, and the schools were then able to buy their own copy of the game. However, she said that recently the board game has been sold out and needs to be brought completely up to date. Eileen herself has since moved from Drummond to another job, and Drummond are presently trying to seek funding to update the game and produce more copies. This sounds like an example of best practice that should be taken over by a wider-based educational organisation, so it can be kept up-to-date and be made available to all schools.

Colin Johnson, Team Leader in Construction, Angus College, gave another example of good practice in that he designed a college course specifically to introduce women into construction, as currently only 1% of people employed in construction are female. He himself decided that there is a need to redress the balance, especially in craft areas, and cited the example that many senior citizens would feel much safer dealing with a female construction worker than a male one. He also feels that the shortage of all workers in the industry means that the time is right for a change. The numbers who actually attended his course in the first year were not hugely encouraging (only 4 women actually took up places on the course) but he came across as very optimistic that even this small number is sufficient to break new ground and that this bodes well for the future of this course.

Marie-Noelle Barton, MBE, National Manager of the WISE (Women Into Science and Engineering) Campaign gave WISE as another example of good practice. This positive action campaign was established to encourage and ensure that all women are more confident in the use of technology. She went through the many and varied reasons why girls and women in the UK do not enter engineering and do not even consider a career in engineering. In some ways she reasoned that the most important of these reasons are the attitudes of women themselves, since they do not have the same degree of self-esteem or self-confidence as men. Women have to look at the language they use about themselves as well as their own body-language. They have to accept that they cannot be perfect in a job from day one, and they must learn to ask for help. She made the point that everyone must be the target audience of the EOC’s new strategy, and that changing a culture which is so inbred in Scotland will be a very slow process.

Only 3 or 4 questions from the audience followed the speakers, and the seminar ended, followed by lunch and an opportunity to mingle with other delegates.

Despite the fact that the seminar was labelled ‘Educating for Sex Equality,’ I was slightly disappointed that it mainly concentrated on gender issues, and I was surprised that their strategy was not more all-inclusive. There had been no mention of the rights of the gay or lesbian community, and apart from Drummond School’s board game, there had been no mention of racial inequality, or of the rights of religious minorities or of any other minority group. Personally, I felt that it was all geared too much towards male/female equality issues, taken completely in isolation from every other issue, when this just does not reflect life. There is, of course, much more to their new strategy for education and training than is reflected in this report, and a glossy brochure reveals all, but the strategy needs to be delivered to those people working in the front line of the professions who deliver education and training on a daily basis, if it is truly to have an impact. This strategy is still relatively high-level and full of buzzwords, but my feeling is that it will take a long time to filter down to grass roots, and change society’s attitudes.


Sheila A. Constable

25 Mar 2003