Girls Can Be Anything: But Boys Will Be Boys: Discourses of Sex Difference in Education Reform Debates
![handle is hein.journals/nevlj13 and id is 545 raw text is: GIRLS CAN BE ANYTHING. . . BUT
Boys WILL BE Boys:
DISCOURSES OF SEX DIFFERENCE
IN EDUCATION REFORM
DEBATES
Dr. Juliet A. Williams*
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, K-12 public education has emerged as a central staging
ground for debating the nature and significance of gender differences. What
might the rise of gender-based advocacy in education suggest about contempo-
rary understandings of sex and gender in the United States?' Assessing recent
efforts to introduce gender-appropriate learning strategies into K-12 class-
rooms, this Article examines the divergent ways advocates articulate claims
about gender differences. The terms of gender-based advocacy today suggest
that biological essentialism is on the retreat when it comes to girls but
retrenching when it comes to boys. Advocates for girls evince skepticism, if not
outright hostility, to approaches that attribute gender differences to underlying
biological factors, instead directing their efforts to challenging gender bias in
the classroom and addressing cultural forces that erode girls' self-esteem and
discourage participation in male-dominated fields like science, math, and tech-
nology. In contrast, boys' advocates have been much more likely to foreground
approaches that emphasize biological sex differences when addressing the
widely reported gender gap in academic achievement and other indicators that
boys are falling behind girls in school.2
* Associate Professor, Department of Gender Studies, University of California-Los
Angeles, jawilliams@gender.ucla.edu.
' The gender-advocacy trend is not limited to the U.S. In recent years, a boy turn has been
documented in numerous countries. Across national contexts, there are significant differ-
ences in the way the boy crisis has been characterized and addressed. See Marcus B.
Weaver-Hightower, Issues of Boys' Education in the United States: Diffuse Contexts and
Futures, in THE PROBLEM WITH Boys' EDucATToN: BEYOND THE BACKLASH 1, 1 (2009)
(From Canada to Wales, England to Australia, and New Zealand to Japan, anxieties over
boys' faltering literacy scores and grim social indicators have gripped the attention of the
media, parents, administrators, teachers, and politicians. In many of these countries, wide-
spread alarm and concerted local and national interventions have been apparent . . . .).
2 Claims that boys are falling behind girls in school have played a central role in galvanizing
boys' advocacy in the United States over the past two decades. See, e.g., PEGi TYRE, THE
TROUBLE WITH Boys: A SURPRISING REPORT CARD ON OUR SONS, THEIR PROBLEMS AT
SCHOOL, AND WHAT PARENTS AND EDUCATORS MUST Do 33 (2008) ([T]he
underperformance of boys is not just an uncomfortable fact but a real and pressing
problem.).
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Girls Can Be Anything: But Boys Will Be Boys: Discourses of Sex Difference in Education Reform Debates
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