The Making of Her: Why School Matters - Clarissa Farr

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the same time advocates for girls’ schools have not always helped themselves by choosing the most robust and persuasive grounds on which to prevail. I’m a passionate believer myself in women’s education and empowerment, but not every argument for having girls educated separately is necessarily convincing and we do ourselves no good by appearing to grasp any new ‘proof’ instrumental to our cause.

      I’m particularly dubious, for example, about there being a scientific, biological justification for girls’ schools. In a no doubt well-intentioned attempt to ensure their immortality, a body of so-called ‘science’ has developed arguing that girls need to be taught separately because they are neurologically different – they literally have differently wired brains and therefore it follows that they require teaching in special ways that would be wasted on boys but can make differently wired girls flourish. We can call this the ‘nature’ argument. A few years ago, for example, advocates of girls’ schools latched with great enthusiasm onto the work of the American psychologist JoAnn Deak and her book Girls Will Be Girls. Here was the ‘proof’ the girls’ school movement had been looking for. Along with a great deal of very sensible and pragmatic advice about the raising of daughters, Deak – renowned, as the cover blurb says, for her knowledge of ‘what makes girls tick’ – makes this claim: ‘brain research now clearly shows that the structure of the male and female brain is different at birth, apparently the result of oestrogen or testosterone shaping it in utero. In other words, female brains have more neurons in certain areas than male brains as a result of having more estrogen bathing them during fetal development.’[1] Bathed in oestrogen in the womb, the female brain also has a predisposition for effectiveness in certain cognitive areas: language facility, auditory skills, fine motor skills and sequential/detailed-thinking. Deak goes on to argue that the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, is especially sensitive in females, making them experience more frequent and more intense emotions. Given the biologically different nature of the male and female brains, both genders, she advises, need to spend time on activities that are counter to their neurological grain. To grow into properly balanced individuals, little girls should spend more time with building blocks and little boys in the drawing corner, and so on. You can see at once how its central point – that girls are wired differently – could be used by advocates of girls’ schools to propose an entire curriculum and approach to learning that would be uniquely girl-centred, justified – indeed essential – because the science says they need it.

      Not everyone is so convinced by this correlation. The idea that men and women are biologically different in more ways than the obvious is explored with some vigour by Cordelia Fine in her wonderfully acerbic book, Delusions of Gender. The clue is in the title: Fine ruthlessly demolishes what she sees as the dubious scientific proofs of the neurological differences between men and women and the so-called male and female brains. Distinguishing between the brain as a biological structure and the more complex notion of the mind, and surveying hundreds of years’ worth of evidence which has been used to build the concept of ‘neurosexism’, she points to the fact that in a world where we love referencing gender differences and learn to do so from very early childhood, time and time again those differences are seen to be derived as much – or more – from our own preconceptions, born of social customs about the characteristics of gender, as from any actual physiological evidence. In other words, for her it’s about nurture rather than nature.

      Fine argues that men and women behave and perform certain tasks differently, and might presumably also learn differently, not so much because of any intrinsic neurological difference but because they are fulfilling a social expectation. Society and the self thus become reciprocally defining – the one informs and reinforces the other. Here for example is what she has to say about housework and who does it:

      In families with children in which both spouses work full time, women do about twice as much childcare and housework as men – the notorious ‘second shift’ … You might think that, even if this isn’t quite fair, it’s nonetheless rational. When one person earns more than the other then he (most likely) enjoys greater bargaining power at the trade union negotiations that, for some, become their marriage. Certainly, in line with this unromantic logic, as a woman’s financial contribution approaches that of her husband’s, her housework decreases. It doesn’t actually become quite equitable, you understand. Just less unequal. But only up to the point at which her earnings equal his. After that – when she starts to earn more than him – something very curious starts to happen. The more she earns, the more housework she does …

      What on earth could be behind this extraordinary injustice in which she returns home from a hard day at work to run the vacuum cleaner under his well-rested legs? A few popular writers have made some creative suggestions. John Gray, author of the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus books, has recently made a valiant stab at arguing that performing routine housework chores is actually selectively beneficial to women, including – if not especially – those with demanding jobs. His idea (which to my knowledge has not been empirically tested) is that because the modern woman has removed herself from her traditional home sphere with its babies, children and friends on whom to call with a pot roast, she has dangerously low levels of oxytocin coursing through her blood. (Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone associated with social bonding and social interactions.) Thankfully, however, ‘nurturing oxytocin-producing domestic routine duties like laundry, shopping, cooking and cleaning’ are available in plentiful supply. Phew! Such chores, however, have a very ill effect on men. For them, the priority is testosterone-producing tasks – for without the stimulating rush of that sex hormone, men become little better than limp rags (and not even ones that wipe themselves along the countertops).[2]

      This fascinating debate will go on, but I’m inclined to agree with Cordelia Fine that the perceived differences in behaviour – and as part of that, learning preferences – are more to do with cultural and social influences than biology. In my experience, generally speaking, there are certain ways in which girls and boys tend to differ in their habits and behaviours. I say tend. Of course I know more about the girls – based on twenty-odd years of leading girls’ schools I can say for example that the girls I have known are often inclined to be self-critical, to be more concerned than their brothers about getting things right first time, to be dutifully good at planning and completing things (which is why they sometimes do better when assessed continuously and less well if taking exams). They are also sensitive to social dynamics and can read the subtext of conversations and behaviours very skilfully. This of course is linked both to why they value and nurture lasting friendships as well as why they are also so much better than boys at bullying. Where boys are inclined just to hit one other, girls can torture one another slowly over weeks using only gestures of their eyebrows, making the behaviour so much harder to detect and pin down. I also know that generalising is dangerous and there are many girls at St Paul’s who would pull me up for stereotyping and say they didn’t recognise themselves here. But actually these are my general observations, based on the 25,000 or so girls I have known. The question for us here is not so much whether they are different from boys – which in my opinion they are – but more how does that difference come about? Are girls born different, or is it that society makes them so because of its expectations? What actually can we say to justify educating girls (and therefore boys) separately?

      In many ways, when I hear recent leavers from St Paul’s who are now making their way in professional life talk about their experiences, it is more and more clear to me that girls’ schools are indeed oddly out of step with some of the ‘realities’ of the so-called modern working world. In a well-regarded modern company, for example, a Paulina in her thirties told me recently how she was surprised at having to fend off the unwelcome advances of a more senior male colleague at work who would approach her desk, stand too close and suggest drinks after hours. When I asked why she didn’t tell him to get lost, she replied that as he controlled her promotion prospects and her pay, she had to be very careful. Another told me that when the male staff packed up on Fridays early to go and play football and she asked to join them, she was told that wasn’t how it worked and she might like to go and have a manicure instead. We may be providing a stimulating intellectual experience and nurturing a love of scholarship, but as regards preparation for life and work,

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