View article

There is abundant evidence that inequality between women and men is a very general feature of Western education systems. Dif-ferential treatment and differential outcomes for both staff and students have been extensively documented by research over the past decade.'In the same period, considerable energy has been spent trying to change it. A stock of nonsexist curriculum materials and teaching aids have been produced, and centers have been set up to disseminate them. In Australia, as in other advanced capitalist countries, there is a campaign to end gender stereotypes in career counselling and subject choice, to get more girls into mathematics, science, and traditionally masculine trades and professions. Sexual harassment is being made an issue in schools and colleges. There are equal-opportu-nity policies in force in some states, and antidiscrimination laws apply, if unevenly, to education.

Yet the effect …