ABSTRACT
The sociology of education has been concerned primarily with examining class inequalities in educational achievement, and especially the relative failure of workingclass children in obtaining educational qualifications. Until recently, sociologists have overlooked other important dimensions of educational differentiation – for example, gender and racial differences in achievement. Feminists have argued that girls are not only disadvantaged in the educational system, but that it is there that they learn to be subordinate and to accept dominant ideologies of femininity and masculinity. Girls are gendered; they come to see themselves as less important than boys. Despite the wide publicity given to the fact that on average girls in the UK now show a higher level of achievement than boys in formal education, the vast majority of boys and a significant number of girls still hold the view that it is better to be male than female (Reay, 2002). Specifically, school creates girls as ‘no good’ at mathematics, science and technology. Girls are apparently channelled into particular subjects that are seen as suitable for them and thus have their opportunities in the labour market severely reduced as a consequence. Girls also become specific sorts of female. Being and becoming, practising and doing femininity are very different things for women of different classes and ethnicities (Skeggs, 1997) – ethnicity and class articulate with gender to place girls and women in hierarchies of power.
