Sources used in this document:

According to David Sadker in 1999, sexual segregation still existed in the United States educational system -- women are likely to major in the far less lucrative fields of the humanities, and concentrating in these subjects lead to far dimmer employment prospects (Sadker 1999:23). Although women today have outnumbered men by a narrow percentage at many universities, this barrier (psychological and logistical) to women making inroads in STEM fields remains in 2013. Employment prospects for humanities and social science graduates are even worse than in the 1990s. Rather than fight the problem of sexism, many schools are creating single-gender classrooms as a way of coping with the fact that girls' performance in math and science tends to falter at puberty. Sadker sees this as a Band-Aid solution, rather than truly addressing the problems of gender equity in the classroom 'head on.' After all, real life is not segregated by sex.

Sadker has a point: even though single-gender classrooms may show greater gains for students in the short run, many nations with gendered educational systems (such as those in traditional societies, in the Middle and Near East, or nations such as Japan where private single-sex schools are more actively patronized) do not show demonstrably more equity between men and women in performance on tests of math and science. In fact, in only two nations do women outperform males in STEM subjects: Sweden and Iceland, where traditionally males have focused on hunting and fishing as a way of life, versus white collar jobs (Can girls excel in math and science, 2009, Education in Japan Community Blog). But this should not be seen as evidence that women are innately uninterested in or poor in math. "Records from top schools in Boston show that girls outperformed boys in physics in the mid-19th century" and female enrollment was higher in these classes while "Latin and Greek…were considered the province of gentlemen -- until the 20th century, when lucrative opportunities began to open up in the sciences" (Can girls excel in math and science, 2009, Education in Japan Community Blog). Schools can have a powerful shaping influence in determining what subjects are gendered male and female, and thus indirectly affect the future of students in terms of what career paths they choose and what salaries they eventually earn.

The popular media can also have a profound influence upon gender perceptions. Children consume many hours of television per day, often at ages before they can exercise their critical faculties to evaluate the accuracy and