The Effects of Girls Chaging Priorities on Their Educational Achievement from a Liberal Feminist Perspective
Hypothesis
Using a liberal feminist perspective, I am going to investigate the
effects of girls changing priorities on their educational achievement,
from wanting a marriage and children to a career and independence.
Employing the work of Sharpe and Wilkinson, I will test the
hypothesis: ‘the improved educational performance of girls has been
greatly influenced by higher career aspirations.’ This area of
research interests me because I know females whose aspirations have
changed over time, and I am interested as to what caused this change.
I will be looking at females aged 10, 20 and 30 years old that live in
Manchester.
Concepts and context
Gender can be defined as whether someone is socialised as masculine
and feminine. It refers to the way society teaches the two sexes to
function, behave, dress and think, through socialisation. One way to
explain the increase in girl’s educational achievement is that their
socialisation is changing and leading to higher career aspirations.
Career aspirations can be defined as having a strong desire to
dedicate your life to a particular job or profession. Nowadays, girls
want careers and are willing to postpone or sacrifice a marriage for
this, as apposed to girls in the 1970’s, who out love etc first.
Sharpe’s 1971 study showed this.
My hypothesis is supported by the liberal feminist Helen Wilkinson’s
argument that in today’s society there is a rise in women’s confidence
leading to 79% of them wanting a career. She found that 54% of all
newly qualified solicitors are female, indicating the growth of female
ambition and assertiveness. She also found that only 50% of women are
prioritising starting a family as goal in life and only 23% of young
women (aged 16-24) believe that a woman needs a stable relationship to
feel fulfilled. Wilkinson believes that this is a result of
socialisation via more positive female role models and the growing
popularity of feminism.
Sharpe argues that girls’ priorities have changed from wanting a