research topics on gender and education

We use cookies to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services.

To learn more, check our Privacy Policy .

Reject all Manage preferences Accept

• skip to navigation
• skip to content

We're sorry but this site doesn't work properly withoutJavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.

Focusing investments where they’re needed most

Strengthening partnerships to drive progress

Empowering decision-makers with evidence

When all adolescents learn equally, the world becomes more equal, too.

The evidence for gender and education resource (eger) seeks to address gender inequalities and injustices in global education. by providing easily accessible data and evidence, we support the gender and education community as a knowledge partner and inform programs and policies that shape the global agenda. with evidence and partnership at the center, eger seeks to create a world with better education for all., explore eger's resources.

Organization and program profiles show what activities exist, who is behind them, and where they are taking place

Data Visualization

Maps and tables provide an overarching view of what’s happening in the gender and education space

Power in Numbers

A gender lens on education data to drive equity and empowerment

Evidence to Practice

Search program approaches and outcomes to understand the current state of evidence

Hundreds of organizations are already in EGER. Is yours?

You can check by clicking the button below, then adjust the table to explore organizations and programs by name, country, topic, and more! If you would like to join EGER, create a profile here .

The Latest Evidence from EGER

This content is hosted by a third party (youtube.com). to view this content you need to change your preferences for cookies usage., webinar: why education matters for the cpd: it’s not just about fertility.

This CPD56 side event was hosted by EGER and the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) .

The event focused on the examination and discussion of the links between education and health, violence, and gender equality. Panel presentations explored how education impacts HIV risk, fertility and child mortality; the contexts in which education is helping reduce sexual violence; and the potential for education to shift harmful gender norms.

Systematic review: Policies and interventions to remove gender-related barriers to girls’ school participation and learning in low- and middle-income countries

This systematic review identified and assessed the strength of the evidence of interventions and exposures addressing gender-related barriers to schooling for girls in LMICs.

Meeting the Moment: The gender & education community's response to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted girls’ education across the globe in early 2020. In this brief, learn how the global gender and education community responded to this global crisis to ensure girls received the quality education they deserve.

Check it out!

Data on Learning Loss and What We Can Do About It

EGER hosted a virtual webinar on the latest evidence on learning loss during COVID-19, teaching at the right level, and long-term implications of inaction. Learn more about the most promising approaches used in the field to mitigate learning loss.

Safety First: Eliminate Violence to Transform Education

Violence has devastating effects on brain development, health outcomes, and education achievement. On September 22nd, 2022 we held a webinar to discuss the scope and scale of the problem and to learn about proven and promising solutions.

Advancing the Agenda in Girls’ Education Research

In this brief, researchers outline the crucial next steps to advance the research agenda on girls’ education. They propose five areas where researchers can better collaborate to advance knowledge and action for girls' education and women’s empowerment.

Join the EGER Community

Uplifting Gender and Sexuality Education Research pp 185–230 Cite as

Re-Doing Research: Best Practices for Asking About Gender and Sexuality in Education Studies

• Tiffany Jones 6  
• First Online: 06 August 2019

768 Accesses

3 Citations

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education ((GED))

This book chapter proposes re-doing research on gender and sexuality (G&S) in education in more inclusive ways. It explains best-practice guidelines developed for a 2018 UNESCO technical brief used for advising governments and transnational survey directors on the monitoring of violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex (SOGIE) status and education sectors’ responses. It details the development of the key standard questions; points to the complications of cultural and other differences and outlines the importance of considering violence alongside more affirming topics. It argues these best practices necessarily have a shelf life and should continually be ‘re-done’ over time.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

UNESCO. Out in the open: Education sector responses to violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression . Paris: UNESCO; 2016.

Google Scholar  

UNESCO. Call for action by ministers: Inclusive and equitable education for all learners in an environment free from discrimination and violence . Paris: UNESCO; 2016.

Brown T, Herman J, Park A. Exploring international priorities and best practices for the collection of data about gender minorities, report of meeting . Los Angeles: Williams Institute; 2017.

Haas AP, Eliason M, Mays VM, Mathy RM, Cochran SD, D’Augelli AR, et al. Suicide and suicide risk in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations: Review and recommendations. Journal of Homosexuality . 2011;58(1):10–51.

Article   Google Scholar  

SMART. Best practices for asking questions about sexual orientation on surveys . Los Angeles: Williams Institute; 2009.

Pinheiro PS. UN world report on violence against children . Geneva: United Nations Secretary General’s Study on Violence Against Children; 2006.

Jones T. The needs of students with intersex variations. Sex Education [Internet]. 2016;16(6):602–18. Available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681811.2016.1149808?journalCode=csed20 .

UNESCO. Insult to inclusion: Asia-Pacific report on school bullying, violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity . Bangkok: UNESCO; 2015.

UNESCO. Reaching out vol 2: Preventing and addressing SOGIE-related school violence in Viet Nam . Paris Ha Noi and Bangkok: UNESCO; 2016.

UNESCO. Reaching out vol 1: Preventing and addressing school-related gender-based violence in Viet Nam . Paris Ha Noi and Bangkok: UNESCO; 2016.

Plan International Thailand, International Center for Research on Women. Are schools safe and equal places for girls and boys in Asia? Research findings on school-related gender-based violence . Bangkok: Plan International; 2015.

Park A, Halawi F. Lack of equal treatment and access to equal opportunity for LGTBQ people in the United States: Submission to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review of United States of America . Los Angeles: Williams Institute; 2015.

Smith E, Jones T, Ward R, Dixon J, Mitchell A, Hillier L. From blues to rainbows: The mental health and well-being of gender diverse and transgender young people in Australia . Melbourne: Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society; 2014.

Russell ST, Ryan C, Toomey R, Diaz RM, Sanchez J. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adolescent school victimization: Implications for young adult health and adjustment. Journal of School Health . 2011;81(5):223–30.

METRO. Youth chances survey of 16–25   year olds: First reference report . London: METRO Youth Chances; 2014.

PNUD. Informe sobre la situación de los derechos humanos de las mujeres trans en El Salvador . San Salvador: PNUD y Procuraduría para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos; 2013.

Jones T, Hillier L. Comparing trans-spectrum and same-sex attracted youth: Increased risks, increased activisms. LGBT Youth . 2013;10(4):287–307.

Formby E. The impact of homophobic and transphobic bullying on education and employment: A European survey . Sheffield: IGLYO and Sheffield Hallam University; 2013.

Jones T, Smith E, Ward R, Dixon J, Hillier L, Mitchell A. School experiences of transgender and gender diverse students in Australia. Sex Education . 2016;16(2):156–71.

Kosciw J, Greytak EA, Palmer N, Boesen M. The 2013 National School Climate Survey: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in our nation’s schools . New York: GLSEN; 2014.

UNESCO. Bullying targeting secondary school students who are or are perceived to be transgender or same-sex attracted: Types, prevalence, impact, motivation and preventive measures in 5 provinces of Thailand. 2014. Available from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002275/227518e.pdf .

Jones T, Hart B, Carpenter M, Ansara G, Leonard W, Lucke J. Intersex: Stories and statistics from Australia . London: Open Book Publisher; 2016.

UNESCO, editor. Education sector responses to homophobic bullying . Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; 2012.

Hillier L, Jones T, Monagle M, Overton N, Gahan L, Blackman J, et al. Writing themselves in 3: The third national study on the sexual health and wellbeing of same-sex attracted and gender questioning young people . Melbourne: Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society; 2010.

Badgett MV, Nezhad S, Waaldijk K, van der Meulen Rodgers Y. The relationship between LGBT inclusion and economic development: An analysis of emerging economies . Los Angeles: Williams Institute; 2014.

Choi S, Wilson B, Shelton J, Gates G. Serving our youth 2015: The needs and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth experiencing homelessness . Los Angeles: Williams Institute with True Colors Fund; 2015.

Kuyper L. Young people and sexual orientation: Summary and discussion . The Hague: The Dutch Institute for Social Research; 2015.

CDC . Sexual identity, sex of sexual contacts, and health-risk behaviors among students in grades 9–12: Youth risk behavior surveillance, selected sites, United States, 2001–2009 . Atlanta: National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; 2011.

Gahan L, Jones T, Hillier L. An unresolved journey: Religious discourse and same-sex attracted and gender questioning young people. The Social Scientific Study of Religion . 2014;25(1):202–29.

Taylor C, Peter T. Every class in every school: Final report on the first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in Canadian schools . Toronto: EGALE and Canada Human Rights Trust; 2011.

Jones T. Policy and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex student s. Cham, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, and London: Springer; 2015.

Cavaria. National report on homophobic attitudes and stereotypes among young people in Belgium . Belgium: NISO Project; 2013.

Schnoonacker M, Dumon E. WELEBI: Onderzoek naar het mentaal en sociaal welbevinden van lesbische en biseksuele meisjes. 2009.

Makuchowska M, M. P. Situation of LGBT persons in Poland: 2010 and 2011 report . Warsaw: Kampania Przeciw Homofobii; 2012.

Bostwick W, Meyer IH, Aranda F, Russell ST, Hughes T, Birkett M, et al. Mental health and suicidality among racially/ethnically diverse sexual minority youths. American Journal of Public Health . 2014;104(6):1129–36.

Committee on LGBT Health Issues and Research Gaps and Opportunities. The health of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people: Building a foundation for better understanding . Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2011.

Youth Coalition, COJESS México, Eneache. Primera encuesta nacional sobre bullying homofóbico. 2012.

Cahill S, Makadon H. If they don’t count us, we don’t count: Trump administration rolls back sexual orientation and gender identity data collection. LGBT Health . 2017;4(3):171–3.

National LGBTI Health Alliance. Making the count: Addressing data integrity gaps in Australian standards for collecting sex and gender information . Sydney: National LGBTI Health Alliance; 2016.

Kuyper L, de Wit J, Adam P, Woertman L. Doing more good than harm? The effects of participation in sex research on young people in the Netherlands. Archives of Sexual Behavior . 2012;41(1):497–506. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-011-9780-y .

Jones T. How sex education research methodologies frame GLBTIQ students. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning . 2013;13(6):687–701.

Jones T, Hillier L. The Australian context: Turning research into policies, policies into research. In: Horn S, editor. Sexual orientation, gender identity, and schooling: The nexus of research, practice and policy . New York: Oxford University Press; 2016. pp. 289–309.

The GenIUSS Group. Best practices for asking questions to identify transgender and other gender minority respondents on population-based surveys . Los Angeles, CA: Williams Institute; 2014.

Sell RL. Defining and measuring sexual orientation: A review. Archives of Sexual Behavior . 1997;26(6):643–57.

United Nations. End violence and harmful medical practices on intersex children and adults, UN and regional experts urge. Geneva [Internet]. 2016. Available from: http://ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20739&LangID=E . 26 October 2016.

United Nations. Born free and equal: Sexual orientation and gender identity in international human rights law . New York and Geneva: United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner; 2012.

UN Secretary-General. Message to event on ending violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [Internet]. 2011. Available from: http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=11717&LangID=E .

UNESCO. Rio statement on homophobic bullying and education for all . Rio de Janiero, Brazil: UNESCO; 2011.

UNESCO. Review of homophobic bullying in educational institutions . Paris: UNESCO; 2012.

Winter S . Lost in transition: Transgender people, rights and HIV vulnerability in the Asia-Pacific region . Bangkok: United Nations Development Programme; 2013.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. Standard for sex and gender variables . Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics; 2016.

Bauer G, Braimoh J, Scheim A, Dharma C. Transgender-inclusive measures of sex/gender for population surveys: Mixed-methods evaluation and recommendations. PLoS One . 2017;12(5):e0178043.

Australian Government. Guidelines on the recognition of sex and gender . Barton: Commonwealth of Australia; 2013.

Keuzenkamp S, Kuyper L. Acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the Netherlands 2013 . The Hague: The Netherlands Institute for Social Research; 2013.

American Psychological Association. Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2010.

Remafedi G, Resnick MD, Blum R. Demography of sexual orientation in adolescents. Pediatrics . 1992;89(1):714–21.

Russell ST, Joyner K. Adolescent sexual orientation and suicide risk: Evidence from a national study. American Journal of Public Health . 2001;91(8):1276–81.

Hillier L, Warr D, Haste B. The rural mural: Sexuality and diversity in rural youth . Melbourne: Centre for the Study of Sexually Transmissible Diseases, 1996.

Reis E, Saewyc E. 83,000 youth: Selected findings of eight population-based studies as they pertain to anti-gay harassment and the safety and well-being of sexual minority students . Seattle: Safe Schools Coalition; 1999.

Peters L, Murphy A, Tonkin R, Milner R, Cox D. Adolescent health survey: Province of British Columbia . Burnaby: The McCreary Centre Society; 1993.

Haseldon L, Joloza T. Measuring sexual orientation: A guide for researchers . London: Office for National Statistics; 2009.

Hunt R, Jensen J. The school report: The experiences of young gay people in Britain’s schools . London: Stonewall, 2009.

Caceres C, Silva-Santisteban A, Salazar X, Cuadros J, Olivos F, Segura E. Informe final: Estudio a través de Internet sobre ‘Bullying’, y sus manifestaciones homofóbicas en escuelas de Chile, Guatemala, México y Perú, y su impacto en la salud de jóvenes varones entre 18 y 24 años . Lima: Instituto de Estudios en Salud, Sexualidad y Desarrollo Humano and Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia en colaboración con la Organización Panamericana de la Salud; 2011.

Mian L. Beijing: Aibai Culture & Education Center. 2012.

Human Rights Watch. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down: LGBT bullying and exclusion in Japanese schools . Tokyo: Human Rights Watch, 2016.

Clark TC, Lucassen M, Bullen P, Denny S. The health and well-being of transgender high school students: Results from the New Zealand adolescent health survey. Journal of Adolescent Health . 2014;55(1):93–99.

McNameea H, Lloydb K, Schubotzb D. Same sex attraction, homophobic bullying and mental health of young people in Northern Ireland. Journal of Youth Studies . 2008;11(1):33–46.

Pathela P, Hajat A, Schillinger J, Blank S, Sell RL, Mostashari F. Discordance between sexual behavior and self-reported sexual identity: A population-based survey of New York City men. Annals of Internal Medicine . 2006;145(1):416–25.

Saewyc E, Bauer G, Skay C, Bearinger L, Resnick MD, Reis E, et al. Measuring sexual orientation in adolescent health surveys: Evaluation of eight school-based surveys. Journal of Adolescent Health . 2004;35(345):e.1–e.16.

Cimpian J. Classification errors and bias regarding research on sexual minority youths. Educational Researcher . 2017;46(9):517–29.

Cochran SD, Mays VM. Lifetime prevalence of suicide symptoms and affective disorders among men reporting same-sex sexual partners: Results from NHANES III. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology . 2000;90(4):573–8.

Herdt G, McClintock M. The magical age of 10. Archives of Sexual Behavior . 2000;29(6):586–606.

Halperin DM. Thirteen ways of looking at a bisexual. Journal of Bisexuality . 2009;9(3):451–5.

American Psychological Association. Sexual orientation and homosexuality . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Website; 2011. 18 July 2011.

SIECUS. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth issues . New York: Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States; 2004.

Satcher D. The Surgeon General’s call to action to promote sexual health and responsible sexual behavior . Rockville: Office of the Surgeon General (US); 2001.

Laumann EO, Gagnon JH. A sociological perspective on sexual action. In: Parker RG, Gagnon JH, editors. Conceiving sexuality: Approaches to sex research in a postmodern world . New York: Routledge; 1995. pp. 183–213.

Saewyc E, Homma Y, Skay C, Bearinger L, Resnick MD, Reis E. Protective factors in the lives of bisexual adolescents in North America. American Journal of Public Health . 2009;99(1):110–17.

Statistics New Zealand. Statistical standard for gender identity . Christchurch: Statistics New Zealand; 2015.

U.S. Government. National inmate survey . Washington, DC: Conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and RTI International; 2010.

Clark TC, Fleming T, Bullen P, Denny S, Crengle S, Dyson B, et al. Youth’12 overview: The health and wellbeing of New Zealand secondary school students in 2012 . Auckland, New Zealand: The University of Auckland; 2013.

Kosciw J. The 2003 national school climate survey: The school-related experiences of our nation’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth . New York: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, 2003.

Jones T, del Pozo de Bolger A, Dunne T, Lykins A, Hawkes G. Female-to-Male (FtM) transgender people’s experiences in Australia . Cham, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, and London: Springer; 2015.

Van Caenegem E, Wierckx K, Elaut E, Buysse A, Dewaele A, Van Nieuwerburgh F, et al. Prevalence of gender nonconformity in Flanders, Belgium. Archives of Sexual Behavior . 2015;44(5):1281–7.

Martin C, Ruble D. Patterns of Gender Development. Annual Review of Psychology . 2013;61(1):353–81.

Olson K, Key A, Eaton N. Gender cognition in transgender children. Psychological Science . 2015;26(4):467–74.

Outright Action International. Human rights report: Being transgender in Iran . New York: Outright Action International; 2016.

Dreger A. Galileo’s middle finger: Heretics, activists, and the search for justice in science . New York: Penguin Press; 2015.

Davis G. Contesting intersex: The dubious diagnosis . New York: New York University Press; 2015.

Ediati A, Juniarto AZ, Birnie E, Drop SL, S, Faradz SM, et al. Gender development in Indonesian children, adolescents, and adults with disorders of sex development. Archives of Sexual Behavior . 2015;44(5):1339–61.

Achermann JC, Domenice S, Bachega TA, Nishi MY, Mendonca BB. Disorders of sex development: Effect of molecular diagnostics. Nature Reviews Endocrinology . 2015;11(8):478–88.

Ekenze S, Nwangwu E, Amah C, Agugua-Obianyo N, Onuh A. Disorders of sex development in a developing country. Pediatric Surgery International . 2015;31(1):93–99.

Mutlu GY, Kirmizibekmez H, Aydin H, Çetiner H, Moralioglu S. Pure gonadal dysgenesis (Swyer syndrome) due to microdeletion in the SRY gene. Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism . 2015;28(1–2):207–10.

Henningham M, Jones T. Cut it out: Rethinking surgical intervention on intersex infants. In: Jones T, editor. Bent Street . Melbourne: Clouds of Magellan; 2017. pp. 55–67.

Davis G. Normalizing intersex: The transformative power of stories. Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics . 2015;5(2):87–9.

Gül IG, Sayar GH, Özten E, Eryilmaz G. The phenomenology of delusions in a patient with disorders of sex development. Noro-Psikyatri Arsivi . 2015;52(2):198–9.

Ahmed SM, Fadl-Elmula I. Clinical, cytogenetic, and molecular characterization of disorders of sexual development 6 (DSD) in Sudan. Genomics and Applied Biology . 2016;6(8):1–6.

Camats N, Fernández-Cancio M, Audí L, Mullis PE, Moreno F. Human MAMLD1 Gene Variations Seem Not Sufficient to Explain a 46, XY DSD Phenotype. PLoS One . 2015;10(11):e0142831.

Oliveira MdS, de Paiva-e-Silva RB, Guerra-Junior G, Maciel-Guerra AT. Parents’ experiences of having a baby with ambiguous genitalia. Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism . 2015;28(7–8):833–8.

Paula GB, Ribeiro Andrade JG, Guaragna-Filho G, Sewaybricker LE, Miranda ML. Ovotesticular disorder of sex development with unusual karyotype: Patient report. Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism . 2015;28(5–6):677–80.

Dwyer A, Ball M, Barker E. Policing LGBTIQ people in rural spaces: Emerging issues and future concerns. Rural Society . 2015;24(3):227–43.

Howard J. The Joneses: Portraits and location stills. Southern Quarterly . 2015;52(4):155–64.

Grimes KM. Theology of whose body? Sexual complementarity, intersex conditions, and La Virgen de Guadalupe. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion . 2016;32(1):75–93.

Regmi E. Stories of intersex people from Nepal . Kathmandu: Organisation Intersex International; 2016.

Rubin DA. Provincializing intersex: US intersex activism, human rights, and transnational body politics. Frontiers . 2015;36(3):51–83.

Kalra B, Baruah M, Kalra S. Endocrinology and art: The Mahabharata and reproductive endocrinology. Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism . 2016;20(3):404–7.

US Department of Education. Student reports of bullying: Results from the 2015 school crime supplement to the national crime victimization survey . Washington, DC: US Department of Education; 2015.

CDC. School policy and environment school questionnaire . Atlanta: Centres for Disease Control and Prevention; 2006.

California Safe Schools Coalition, 4-H Centre for Youth Development. Consequences of harassment based on actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender non-conformity and steps for making schools safer . Davis: University of California, 2004.

Szalacha L. Safer sexual diversity climates: Lessons learned from an evaluation of Massachusetts safe schools program for gay and lesbian students. American Journal of Education . 2003;110(1):58–88.

Mitchell M, Gray M, Beninger K. Tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying among school-age children and young people: Findings from a mixed method study of teachers, other providers and pupils . London: Government Equalities Office; 2014.

Jones T. Researching & Working for transgender youth: Contexts, problems and solutions. Social Sciences . 2016;5(3):43.

Poteat P, Yoshikawa H, Calzo J, Russell S, Horn S. Gay-straight alliances as settings for youth inclusion and development: Future conceptual and methodological directions for research on these and other student groups in schools. Educational Researcher . 2017;46(9):508–16.

Mayo C. Queer and trans youth, relational subjectivity, and uncertain possibilities: Challenging research in complicated contexts. Educational Researcher . 2017;46(9):530–8.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Tiffany Jones

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tiffany Jones .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Faculty of Arts and Education , Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, VIC, Australia

Leanne Coll

Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Lisa van Leent

School of Education, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

Yvette Taylor

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Jones, T. (2019). Re-Doing Research: Best Practices for Asking About Gender and Sexuality in Education Studies. In: Jones, T., Coll, L., van Leent, L., Taylor, Y. (eds) Uplifting Gender and Sexuality Education Research. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24205-3_9

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24205-3_9

Published : 06 August 2019

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-24204-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-24205-3

eBook Packages : Education Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Paola belingheri.

1 Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy

Filippo Chiarello

Andrea fronzetti colladon.

2 Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

3 Department of Management, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Paola Rovelli

4 Faculty of Economics and Management, Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files. The only exception is the text of the abstracts (over 15,000) that we have downloaded from Scopus. These abstracts can be retrieved from Scopus, but we do not have permission to redistribute them.

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce–e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends–for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors–are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Introduction

The persistent gender inequalities that currently exist across the developed and developing world are receiving increasing attention from economists, policymakers, and the general public [e.g., 1 – 3 ]. Economic studies have indicated that women’s education and entry into the workforce contributes to social and economic well-being [e.g., 4 , 5 ], while their exclusion from the labor market and from managerial positions has an impact on overall labor productivity and income per capita [ 6 , 7 ]. The United Nations selected gender equality, with an emphasis on female education, as part of the Millennium Development Goals [ 8 ], and gender equality at-large as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 [ 9 ]. These latter objectives involve not only developing nations, but rather all countries, to achieve economic, social and environmental well-being.

As is the case with many SDGs, gender equality is still far from being achieved and persists across education, access to opportunities, or presence in decision-making positions [ 7 , 10 , 11 ]. As we enter the last decade for the SDGs’ implementation, and while we are battling a global health pandemic, effective and efficient action becomes paramount to reach this ambitious goal.

Scholars have dedicated a massive effort towards understanding gender equality, its determinants, its consequences for women and society, and the appropriate actions and policies to advance women’s equality. Many topics have been covered, ranging from women’s education and human capital [ 12 , 13 ] and their role in society [e.g., 14 , 15 ], to their appointment in firms’ top ranked positions [e.g., 16 , 17 ] and performance implications [e.g., 18 , 19 ]. Despite some attempts, extant literature reviews provide a narrow view on these issues, restricted to specific topics–e.g., female students’ presence in STEM fields [ 20 ], educational gender inequality [ 5 ], the gender pay gap [ 21 ], the glass ceiling effect [ 22 ], leadership [ 23 ], entrepreneurship [ 24 ], women’s presence on the board of directors [ 25 , 26 ], diversity management [ 27 ], gender stereotypes in advertisement [ 28 ], or specific professions [ 29 ]. A comprehensive view on gender-related research, taking stock of key findings and under-studied topics is thus lacking.

Extant literature has also highlighted that gender issues, and their economic and social ramifications, are complex topics that involve a large number of possible antecedents and outcomes [ 7 ]. Indeed, gender equality actions are most effective when implemented in unison with other SDGs (e.g., with SDG 8, see [ 30 ]) in a synergetic perspective [ 10 ]. Many bodies of literature (e.g., business, economics, development studies, sociology and psychology) approach the problem of achieving gender equality from different perspectives–often addressing specific and narrow aspects. This sometimes leads to a lack of clarity about how different issues, circumstances, and solutions may be related in precipitating or mitigating gender inequality or its effects. As the number of papers grows at an increasing pace, this issue is exacerbated and there is a need to step back and survey the body of gender equality literature as a whole. There is also a need to examine synergies between different topics and approaches, as well as gaps in our understanding of how different problems and solutions work together. Considering the important topic of women’s economic and social empowerment, this paper aims to fill this gap by answering the following research question: what are the most relevant findings in the literature on gender equality and how do they relate to each other ?

To do so, we conduct a scoping review [ 31 ], providing a synthesis of 15,465 articles dealing with gender equity related issues published in the last twenty-two years, covering both the periods of the MDGs and the SDGs (i.e., 2000 to mid 2021) in all the journals indexed in the Academic Journal Guide’s 2018 ranking of business and economics journals. Given the huge amount of research conducted on the topic, we adopt an innovative methodology, which relies on social network analysis and text mining. These techniques are increasingly adopted when surveying large bodies of text. Recently, they were applied to perform analysis of online gender communication differences [ 32 ] and gender behaviors in online technology communities [ 33 ], to identify and classify sexual harassment instances in academia [ 34 ], and to evaluate the gender inclusivity of disaster management policies [ 35 ].

Applied to the title, abstracts and keywords of the articles in our sample, this methodology allows us to identify a set of 27 recurrent topics within which we automatically classify the papers. Introducing additional novelty, by means of the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) indicator [ 36 ] and the SBS BI app [ 37 ], we assess the importance of each topic in the overall gender equality discourse and its relationships with the other topics, as well as trends over time, with a more accurate description than that offered by traditional literature reviews relying solely on the number of papers presented in each topic.

This methodology, applied to gender equality research spanning the past twenty-two years, enables two key contributions. First, we extract the main message that each document is conveying and how this is connected to other themes in literature, providing a rich picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the emerging topics. Second, by examining the semantic relationship between topics and how tightly their discourses are linked, we can identify the key relationships and connections between different topics. This semi-automatic methodology is also highly reproducible with minimum effort.

This literature review is organized as follows. In the next section, we present how we selected relevant papers and how we analyzed them through text mining and social network analysis. We then illustrate the importance of 27 selected research topics, measured by means of the SBS indicator. In the results section, we present an overview of the literature based on the SBS results–followed by an in-depth narrative analysis of the top 10 topics (i.e., those with the highest SBS) and their connections. Subsequently, we highlight a series of under-studied connections between the topics where there is potential for future research. Through this analysis, we build a map of the main gender-research trends in the last twenty-two years–presenting the most popular themes. We conclude by highlighting key areas on which research should focused in the future.

Our aim is to map a broad topic, gender equality research, that has been approached through a host of different angles and through different disciplines. Scoping reviews are the most appropriate as they provide the freedom to map different themes and identify literature gaps, thereby guiding the recommendation of new research agendas [ 38 ].

Several practical approaches have been proposed to identify and assess the underlying topics of a specific field using big data [ 39 – 41 ], but many of them fail without proper paper retrieval and text preprocessing. This is specifically true for a research field such as the gender-related one, which comprises the work of scholars from different backgrounds. In this section, we illustrate a novel approach for the analysis of scientific (gender-related) papers that relies on methods and tools of social network analysis and text mining. Our procedure has four main steps: (1) data collection, (2) text preprocessing, (3) keywords extraction and classification, and (4) evaluation of semantic importance and image.

Data collection

In this study, we analyze 22 years of literature on gender-related research. Following established practice for scoping reviews [ 42 ], our data collection consisted of two main steps, which we summarize here below.

Firstly, we retrieved from the Scopus database all the articles written in English that contained the term “gender” in their title, abstract or keywords and were published in a journal listed in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) ( https://charteredabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AJG2018-Methodology.pdf ), considering the time period from Jan 2000 to May 2021. We used this information considering that abstracts, titles and keywords represent the most informative part of a paper, while using the full-text would increase the signal-to-noise ratio for information extraction. Indeed, these textual elements already demonstrated to be reliable sources of information for the task of domain lexicon extraction [ 43 , 44 ]. We chose Scopus as source of literature because of its popularity, its update rate, and because it offers an API to ease the querying process. Indeed, while it does not allow to retrieve the full text of scientific articles, the Scopus API offers access to titles, abstracts, citation information and metadata for all its indexed scholarly journals. Moreover, we decided to focus on the journals listed in the AJG 2018 ranking because we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies only. The AJG is indeed widely used by universities and business schools as a reference point for journal and research rigor and quality. This first step, executed in June 2021, returned more than 55,000 papers.

In the second step–because a look at the papers showed very sparse results, many of which were not in line with the topic of this literature review (e.g., papers dealing with health care or medical issues, where the word gender indicates the gender of the patients)–we applied further inclusion criteria to make the sample more focused on the topic of this literature review (i.e., women’s gender equality issues). Specifically, we only retained those papers mentioning, in their title and/or abstract, both gender-related keywords (e.g., daughter, female, mother) and keywords referring to bias and equality issues (e.g., equality, bias, diversity, inclusion). After text pre-processing (see next section), keywords were first identified from a frequency-weighted list of words found in the titles, abstracts and keywords in the initial list of papers, extracted through text mining (following the same approach as [ 43 ]). They were selected by two of the co-authors independently, following respectively a bottom up and a top-down approach. The bottom-up approach consisted of examining the words found in the frequency-weighted list and classifying those related to gender and equality. The top-down approach consisted in searching in the word list for notable gender and equality-related words. Table 1 reports the sets of keywords we considered, together with some examples of words that were used to search for their presence in the dataset (a full list is provided in the S1 Text ). At end of this second step, we obtained a final sample of 15,465 relevant papers.

Text processing and keyword extraction

Text preprocessing aims at structuring text into a form that can be analyzed by statistical models. In the present section, we describe the preprocessing steps we applied to paper titles and abstracts, which, as explained below, partially follow a standard text preprocessing pipeline [ 45 ]. These activities have been performed using the R package udpipe [ 46 ].

The first step is n-gram extraction (i.e., a sequence of words from a given text sample) to identify which n-grams are important in the analysis, since domain-specific lexicons are often composed by bi-grams and tri-grams [ 47 ]. Multi-word extraction is usually implemented with statistics and linguistic rules, thus using the statistical properties of n-grams or machine learning approaches [ 48 ]. However, for the present paper, we used Scopus metadata in order to have a more effective and efficient n-grams collection approach [ 49 ]. We used the keywords of each paper in order to tag n-grams with their associated keywords automatically. Using this greedy approach, it was possible to collect all the keywords listed by the authors of the papers. From this list, we extracted only keywords composed by two, three and four words, we removed all the acronyms and rare keywords (i.e., appearing in less than 1% of papers), and we clustered keywords showing a high orthographic similarity–measured using a Levenshtein distance [ 50 ] lower than 2, considering these groups of keywords as representing same concepts, but expressed with different spelling. After tagging the n-grams in the abstracts, we followed a common data preparation pipeline that consists of the following steps: (i) tokenization, that splits the text into tokens (i.e., single words and previously tagged multi-words); (ii) removal of stop-words (i.e. those words that add little meaning to the text, usually being very common and short functional words–such as “and”, “or”, or “of”); (iii) parts-of-speech tagging, that is providing information concerning the morphological role of a word and its morphosyntactic context (e.g., if the token is a determiner, the next token is a noun or an adjective with very high confidence, [ 51 ]); and (iv) lemmatization, which consists in substituting each word with its dictionary form (or lemma). The output of the latter step allows grouping together the inflected forms of a word. For example, the verbs “am”, “are”, and “is” have the shared lemma “be”, or the nouns “cat” and “cats” both share the lemma “cat”. We preferred lemmatization over stemming [ 52 ] in order to obtain more interpretable results.

In addition, we identified a further set of keywords (with respect to those listed in the “keywords” field) by applying a series of automatic words unification and removal steps, as suggested in past research [ 53 , 54 ]. We removed: sparse terms (i.e., occurring in less than 0.1% of all documents), common terms (i.e., occurring in more than 10% of all documents) and retained only nouns and adjectives. It is relevant to notice that no document was lost due to these steps. We then used the TF-IDF function [ 55 ] to produce a new list of keywords. We additionally tested other approaches for the identification and clustering of keywords–such as TextRank [ 56 ] or Latent Dirichlet Allocation [ 57 ]–without obtaining more informative results.

Classification of research topics

To guide the literature analysis, two experts met regularly to examine the sample of collected papers and to identify the main topics and trends in gender research. Initially, they conducted brainstorming sessions on the topics they expected to find, due to their knowledge of the literature. This led to an initial list of topics. Subsequently, the experts worked independently, also supported by the keywords in paper titles and abstracts extracted with the procedure described above.

Considering all this information, each expert identified and clustered relevant keywords into topics. At the end of the process, the two assignments were compared and exhibited a 92% agreement. Another meeting was held to discuss discordant cases and reach a consensus. This resulted in a list of 27 topics, briefly introduced in Table 2 and subsequently detailed in the following sections.

Evaluation of semantic importance

Working on the lemmatized corpus of the 15,465 papers included in our sample, we proceeded with the evaluation of semantic importance trends for each topic and with the analysis of their connections and prevalent textual associations. To this aim, we used the Semantic Brand Score indicator [ 36 ], calculated through the SBS BI webapp [ 37 ] that also produced a brand image report for each topic. For this study we relied on the computing resources of the ENEA/CRESCO infrastructure [ 58 ].

The Semantic Brand Score (SBS) is a measure of semantic importance that combines methods of social network analysis and text mining. It is usually applied for the analysis of (big) textual data to evaluate the importance of one or more brands, names, words, or sets of keywords [ 36 ]. Indeed, the concept of “brand” is intended in a flexible way and goes beyond products or commercial brands. In this study, we evaluate the SBS time-trends of the keywords defining the research topics discussed in the previous section. Semantic importance comprises the three dimensions of topic prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Prevalence measures how frequently a research topic is used in the discourse. The more a topic is mentioned by scientific articles, the more the research community will be aware of it, with possible increase of future studies; this construct is partly related to that of brand awareness [ 59 ]. This effect is even stronger, considering that we are analyzing the title, abstract and keywords of the papers, i.e. the parts that have the highest visibility. A very important characteristic of the SBS is that it considers the relationships among words in a text. Topic importance is not just a matter of how frequently a topic is mentioned, but also of the associations a topic has in the text. Specifically, texts are transformed into networks of co-occurring words, and relationships are studied through social network analysis [ 60 ]. This step is necessary to calculate the other two dimensions of our semantic importance indicator. Accordingly, a social network of words is generated for each time period considered in the analysis–i.e., a graph made of n nodes (words) and E edges weighted by co-occurrence frequency, with W being the set of edge weights. The keywords representing each topic were clustered into single nodes.

The construct of diversity relates to that of brand image [ 59 ], in the sense that it considers the richness and distinctiveness of textual (topic) associations. Considering the above-mentioned networks, we calculated diversity using the distinctiveness centrality metric–as in the formula presented by Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi [ 61 ].

Lastly, connectivity was measured as the weighted betweenness centrality [ 62 , 63 ] of each research topic node. We used the formula presented by Wasserman and Faust [ 60 ]. The dimension of connectivity represents the “brokerage power” of each research topic–i.e., how much it can serve as a bridge to connect other terms (and ultimately topics) in the discourse [ 36 ].

The SBS is the final composite indicator obtained by summing the standardized scores of prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Standardization was carried out considering all the words in the corpus, for each specific timeframe.

This methodology, applied to a large and heterogeneous body of text, enables to automatically identify two important sets of information that add value to the literature review. Firstly, the relevance of each topic in literature is measured through a composite indicator of semantic importance, rather than simply looking at word frequencies. This provides a much richer picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the topics that are emerging in the literature. Secondly, it enables to examine the extent of the semantic relationship between topics, looking at how tightly their discourses are linked. In a field such as gender equality, where many topics are closely linked to each other and present overlaps in issues and solutions, this methodology offers a novel perspective with respect to traditional literature reviews. In addition, it ensures reproducibility over time and the possibility to semi-automatically update the analysis, as new papers become available.

Overview of main topics

In terms of descriptive textual statistics, our corpus is made of 15,465 text documents, consisting of a total of 2,685,893 lemmatized tokens (words) and 32,279 types. As a result, the type-token ratio is 1.2%. The number of hapaxes is 12,141, with a hapax-token ratio of 37.61%.

Fig 1 shows the list of 27 topics by decreasing SBS. The most researched topic is compensation , exceeding all others in prevalence, diversity, and connectivity. This means it is not only mentioned more often than other topics, but it is also connected to a greater number of other topics and is central to the discourse on gender equality. The next four topics are, in order of SBS, role , education , decision-making , and career progression . These topics, except for education , all concern women in the workforce. Between these first five topics and the following ones there is a clear drop in SBS scores. In particular, the topics that follow have a lower connectivity than the first five. They are hiring , performance , behavior , organization , and human capital . Again, except for behavior and human capital , the other three topics are purely related to women in the workforce. After another drop-off, the following topics deal prevalently with women in society. This trend highlights that research on gender in business journals has so far mainly paid attention to the conditions that women experience in business contexts, while also devoting some attention to women in society.

Fig 2 shows the SBS time series of the top 10 topics. While there has been a general increase in the number of Scopus-indexed publications in the last decade, we notice that some SBS trends remain steady, or even decrease. In particular, we observe that the main topic of the last twenty-two years, compensation , is losing momentum. Since 2016, it has been surpassed by decision-making , education and role , which may indicate that literature is increasingly attempting to identify root causes of compensation inequalities. Moreover, in the last two years, the topics of hiring , performance , and organization are experiencing the largest importance increase.

Fig 3 shows the SBS time trends of the remaining 17 topics (i.e., those not in the top 10). As we can see from the graph, there are some that maintain a steady trend–such as reputation , management , networks and governance , which also seem to have little importance. More relevant topics with average stationary trends (except for the last two years) are culture , family , and parenting . The feminine topic is among the most important here, and one of those that exhibit the larger variations over time (similarly to leadership ). On the other hand, the are some topics that, even if not among the most important, show increasing SBS trends; therefore, they could be considered as emerging topics and could become popular in the near future. These are entrepreneurship , leadership , board of directors , and sustainability . These emerging topics are also interesting to anticipate future trends in gender equality research that are conducive to overall equality in society.

In addition to the SBS score of the different topics, the network of terms they are associated to enables to gauge the extent to which their images (textual associations) overlap or differ ( Fig 4 ).

There is a central cluster of topics with high similarity, which are all connected with women in the workforce. The cluster includes topics such as organization , decision-making , performance , hiring , human capital , education and compensation . In addition, the topic of well-being is found within this cluster, suggesting that women’s equality in the workforce is associated to well-being considerations. The emerging topics of entrepreneurship and leadership are also closely connected with each other, possibly implying that leadership is a much-researched quality in female entrepreneurship. Topics that are relatively more distant include personality , politics , feminine , empowerment , management , board of directors , reputation , governance , parenting , masculine and network .

The following sections describe the top 10 topics and their main associations in literature (see Table 3 ), while providing a brief overview of the emerging topics.

Compensation

The topic of compensation is related to the topics of role , hiring , education and career progression , however, also sees a very high association with the words gap and inequality . Indeed, a well-known debate in degrowth economics centers around whether and how to adequately compensate women for their childbearing, childrearing, caregiver and household work [e.g., 30 ].

Even in paid work, women continue being offered lower compensations than their male counterparts who have the same job or cover the same role [ 64 – 67 ]. This severe inequality has been widely studied by scholars over the last twenty-two years. Dealing with this topic, some specific roles have been addressed. Specifically, research highlighted differences in compensation between female and male CEOs [e.g., 68 ], top executives [e.g., 69 ], and boards’ directors [e.g., 70 ]. Scholars investigated the determinants of these gaps, such as the gender composition of the board [e.g., 71 – 73 ] or women’s individual characteristics [e.g., 71 , 74 ].

Among these individual characteristics, education plays a relevant role [ 75 ]. Education is indeed presented as the solution for women, not only to achieve top executive roles, but also to reduce wage inequality [e.g., 76 , 77 ]. Past research has highlighted education influences on gender wage gaps, specifically referring to gender differences in skills [e.g., 78 ], college majors [e.g., 79 ], and college selectivity [e.g., 80 ].

Finally, the wage gap issue is strictly interrelated with hiring –e.g., looking at whether being a mother affects hiring and compensation [e.g., 65 , 81 ] or relating compensation to unemployment [e.g., 82 ]–and career progression –for instance looking at meritocracy [ 83 , 84 ] or the characteristics of the boss for whom women work [e.g., 85 ].

The roles covered by women have been deeply investigated. Scholars have focused on the role of women in their families and the society as a whole [e.g., 14 , 15 ], and, more widely, in business contexts [e.g., 18 , 81 ]. Indeed, despite still lagging behind their male counterparts [e.g., 86 , 87 ], in the last decade there has been an increase in top ranked positions achieved by women [e.g., 88 , 89 ]. Following this phenomenon, scholars have posed greater attention towards the presence of women in the board of directors [e.g., 16 , 18 , 90 , 91 ], given the increasing pressure to appoint female directors that firms, especially listed ones, have experienced. Other scholars have focused on the presence of women covering the role of CEO [e.g., 17 , 92 ] or being part of the top management team [e.g., 93 ]. Irrespectively of the level of analysis, all these studies tried to uncover the antecedents of women’s presence among top managers [e.g., 92 , 94 ] and the consequences of having a them involved in the firm’s decision-making –e.g., on performance [e.g., 19 , 95 , 96 ], risk [e.g., 97 , 98 ], and corporate social responsibility [e.g., 99 , 100 ].

Besides studying the difficulties and discriminations faced by women in getting a job [ 81 , 101 ], and, more specifically in the hiring , appointment, or career progression to these apical roles [e.g., 70 , 83 ], the majority of research of women’s roles dealt with compensation issues. Specifically, scholars highlight the pay-gap that still exists between women and men, both in general [e.g., 64 , 65 ], as well as referring to boards’ directors [e.g., 70 , 102 ], CEOs and executives [e.g., 69 , 103 , 104 ].

Finally, other scholars focused on the behavior of women when dealing with business. In this sense, particular attention has been paid to leadership and entrepreneurial behaviors. The former quite overlaps with dealing with the roles mentioned above, but also includes aspects such as leaders being stereotyped as masculine [e.g., 105 ], the need for greater exposure to female leaders to reduce biases [e.g., 106 ], or female leaders acting as queen bees [e.g., 107 ]. Regarding entrepreneurship , scholars mainly investigated women’s entrepreneurial entry [e.g., 108 , 109 ], differences between female and male entrepreneurs in the evaluations and funding received from investors [e.g., 110 , 111 ], and their performance gap [e.g., 112 , 113 ].

Education has long been recognized as key to social advancement and economic stability [ 114 ], for job progression and also a barrier to gender equality, especially in STEM-related fields. Research on education and gender equality is mostly linked with the topics of compensation , human capital , career progression , hiring , parenting and decision-making .

Education contributes to a higher human capital [ 115 ] and constitutes an investment on the part of women towards their future. In this context, literature points to the gender gap in educational attainment, and the consequences for women from a social, economic, personal and professional standpoint. Women are found to have less access to formal education and information, especially in emerging countries, which in turn may cause them to lose social and economic opportunities [e.g., 12 , 116 – 119 ]. Education in local and rural communities is also paramount to communicate the benefits of female empowerment , contributing to overall societal well-being [e.g., 120 ].

Once women access education, the image they have of the world and their place in society (i.e., habitus) affects their education performance [ 13 ] and is passed on to their children. These situations reinforce gender stereotypes, which become self-fulfilling prophecies that may negatively affect female students’ performance by lowering their confidence and heightening their anxiety [ 121 , 122 ]. Besides formal education, also the information that women are exposed to on a daily basis contributes to their human capital . Digital inequalities, for instance, stems from men spending more time online and acquiring higher digital skills than women [ 123 ].

Education is also a factor that should boost employability of candidates and thus hiring , career progression and compensation , however the relationship between these factors is not straightforward [ 115 ]. First, educational choices ( decision-making ) are influenced by variables such as self-efficacy and the presence of barriers, irrespectively of the career opportunities they offer, especially in STEM [ 124 ]. This brings additional difficulties to women’s enrollment and persistence in scientific and technical fields of study due to stereotypes and biases [ 125 , 126 ]. Moreover, access to education does not automatically translate into job opportunities for women and minority groups [ 127 , 128 ] or into female access to managerial positions [ 129 ].

Finally, parenting is reported as an antecedent of education [e.g., 130 ], with much of the literature focusing on the role of parents’ education on the opportunities afforded to children to enroll in education [ 131 – 134 ] and the role of parenting in their offspring’s perception of study fields and attitudes towards learning [ 135 – 138 ]. Parental education is also a predictor of the other related topics, namely human capital and compensation [ 139 ].

Decision-making

This literature mainly points to the fact that women are thought to make decisions differently than men. Women have indeed different priorities, such as they care more about people’s well-being, working with people or helping others, rather than maximizing their personal (or their firm’s) gain [ 140 ]. In other words, women typically present more communal than agentic behaviors, which are instead more frequent among men [ 141 ]. These different attitude, behavior and preferences in turn affect the decisions they make [e.g., 142 ] and the decision-making of the firm in which they work [e.g., 143 ].

At the individual level, gender affects, for instance, career aspirations [e.g., 144 ] and choices [e.g., 142 , 145 ], or the decision of creating a venture [e.g., 108 , 109 , 146 ]. Moreover, in everyday life, women and men make different decisions regarding partners [e.g., 147 ], childcare [e.g., 148 ], education [e.g., 149 ], attention to the environment [e.g., 150 ] and politics [e.g., 151 ].

At the firm level, scholars highlighted, for example, how the presence of women in the board affects corporate decisions [e.g., 152 , 153 ], that female CEOs are more conservative in accounting decisions [e.g., 154 ], or that female CFOs tend to make more conservative decisions regarding the firm’s financial reporting [e.g., 155 ]. Nevertheless, firm level research also investigated decisions that, influenced by gender bias, affect women, such as those pertaining hiring [e.g., 156 , 157 ], compensation [e.g., 73 , 158 ], or the empowerment of women once appointed [ 159 ].

Career progression

Once women have entered the workforce, the key aspect to achieve gender equality becomes career progression , including efforts toward overcoming the glass ceiling. Indeed, according to the SBS analysis, career progression is highly related to words such as work, social issues and equality. The topic with which it has the highest semantic overlap is role , followed by decision-making , hiring , education , compensation , leadership , human capital , and family .

Career progression implies an advancement in the hierarchical ladder of the firm, assigning managerial roles to women. Coherently, much of the literature has focused on identifying rationales for a greater female participation in the top management team and board of directors [e.g., 95 ] as well as the best criteria to ensure that the decision-makers promote the most valuable employees irrespectively of their individual characteristics, such as gender [e.g., 84 ]. The link between career progression , role and compensation is often provided in practice by performance appraisal exercises, frequently rooted in a culture of meritocracy that guides bonuses, salary increases and promotions. However, performance appraisals can actually mask gender-biased decisions where women are held to higher standards than their male colleagues [e.g., 83 , 84 , 95 , 160 , 161 ]. Women often have less opportunities to gain leadership experience and are less visible than their male colleagues, which constitute barriers to career advancement [e.g., 162 ]. Therefore, transparency and accountability, together with procedures that discourage discretionary choices, are paramount to achieve a fair career progression [e.g., 84 ], together with the relaxation of strict job boundaries in favor of cross-functional and self-directed tasks [e.g., 163 ].

In addition, a series of stereotypes about the type of leadership characteristics that are required for top management positions, which fit better with typical male and agentic attributes, are another key barrier to career advancement for women [e.g., 92 , 160 ].

Hiring is the entrance gateway for women into the workforce. Therefore, it is related to other workforce topics such as compensation , role , career progression , decision-making , human capital , performance , organization and education .

A first stream of literature focuses on the process leading up to candidates’ job applications, demonstrating that bias exists before positions are even opened, and it is perpetuated both by men and women through networking and gatekeeping practices [e.g., 164 , 165 ].

The hiring process itself is also subject to biases [ 166 ], for example gender-congruity bias that leads to men being preferred candidates in male-dominated sectors [e.g., 167 ], women being hired in positions with higher risk of failure [e.g., 168 ] and limited transparency and accountability afforded by written processes and procedures [e.g., 164 ] that all contribute to ascriptive inequality. In addition, providing incentives for evaluators to hire women may actually work to this end; however, this is not the case when supporting female candidates endangers higher-ranking male ones [ 169 ].

Another interesting perspective, instead, looks at top management teams’ composition and the effects on hiring practices, indicating that firms with more women in top management are less likely to lay off staff [e.g., 152 ].

Performance

Several scholars posed their attention towards women’s performance, its consequences [e.g., 170 , 171 ] and the implications of having women in decision-making positions [e.g., 18 , 19 ].

At the individual level, research focused on differences in educational and academic performance between women and men, especially referring to the gender gap in STEM fields [e.g., 171 ]. The presence of stereotype threats–that is the expectation that the members of a social group (e.g., women) “must deal with the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that would confirm the stereotype” [ 172 ]–affects women’s interested in STEM [e.g., 173 ], as well as their cognitive ability tests, penalizing them [e.g., 174 ]. A stronger gender identification enhances this gap [e.g., 175 ], whereas mentoring and role models can be used as solutions to this problem [e.g., 121 ]. Despite the negative effect of stereotype threats on girls’ performance [ 176 ], female and male students perform equally in mathematics and related subjects [e.g., 177 ]. Moreover, while individuals’ performance at school and university generally affects their achievements and the field in which they end up working, evidence reveals that performance in math or other scientific subjects does not explain why fewer women enter STEM working fields; rather this gap depends on other aspects, such as culture, past working experiences, or self-efficacy [e.g., 170 ]. Finally, scholars have highlighted the penalization that women face for their positive performance, for instance when they succeed in traditionally male areas [e.g., 178 ]. This penalization is explained by the violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions [e.g., 179 , 180 ], that is having women well performing in agentic areas, which are typical associated to men. Performance penalization can thus be overcome by clearly conveying communal characteristics and behaviors [ 178 ].

Evidence has been provided on how the involvement of women in boards of directors and decision-making positions affects firms’ performance. Nevertheless, results are mixed, with some studies showing positive effects on financial [ 19 , 181 , 182 ] and corporate social performance [ 99 , 182 , 183 ]. Other studies maintain a negative association [e.g., 18 ], and other again mixed [e.g., 184 ] or non-significant association [e.g., 185 ]. Also with respect to the presence of a female CEO, mixed results emerged so far, with some researches demonstrating a positive effect on firm’s performance [e.g., 96 , 186 ], while other obtaining only a limited evidence of this relationship [e.g., 103 ] or a negative one [e.g., 187 ].

Finally, some studies have investigated whether and how women’s performance affects their hiring [e.g., 101 ] and career progression [e.g., 83 , 160 ]. For instance, academic performance leads to different returns in hiring for women and men. Specifically, high-achieving men are called back significantly more often than high-achieving women, which are penalized when they have a major in mathematics; this result depends on employers’ gendered standards for applicants [e.g., 101 ]. Once appointed, performance ratings are more strongly related to promotions for women than men, and promoted women typically show higher past performance ratings than those of promoted men. This suggesting that women are subject to stricter standards for promotion [e.g., 160 ].

Behavioral aspects related to gender follow two main streams of literature. The first examines female personality and behavior in the workplace, and their alignment with cultural expectations or stereotypes [e.g., 188 ] as well as their impacts on equality. There is a common bias that depicts women as less agentic than males. Certain characteristics, such as those more congruent with male behaviors–e.g., self-promotion [e.g., 189 ], negotiation skills [e.g., 190 ] and general agentic behavior [e.g., 191 ]–, are less accepted in women. However, characteristics such as individualism in women have been found to promote greater gender equality in society [ 192 ]. In addition, behaviors such as display of emotions [e.g., 193 ], which are stereotypically female, work against women’s acceptance in the workplace, requiring women to carefully moderate their behavior to avoid exclusion. A counter-intuitive result is that women and minorities, which are more marginalized in the workplace, tend to be better problem-solvers in innovation competitions due to their different knowledge bases [ 194 ].

The other side of the coin is examined in a parallel literature stream on behavior towards women in the workplace. As a result of biases, prejudices and stereotypes, women may experience adverse behavior from their colleagues, such as incivility and harassment, which undermine their well-being [e.g., 195 , 196 ]. Biases that go beyond gender, such as for overweight people, are also more strongly applied to women [ 197 ].

Organization

The role of women and gender bias in organizations has been studied from different perspectives, which mirror those presented in detail in the following sections. Specifically, most research highlighted the stereotypical view of leaders [e.g., 105 ] and the roles played by women within firms, for instance referring to presence in the board of directors [e.g., 18 , 90 , 91 ], appointment as CEOs [e.g., 16 ], or top executives [e.g., 93 ].

Scholars have investigated antecedents and consequences of the presence of women in these apical roles. On the one side they looked at hiring and career progression [e.g., 83 , 92 , 160 , 168 , 198 ], finding women typically disadvantaged with respect to their male counterparts. On the other side, they studied women’s leadership styles and influence on the firm’s decision-making [e.g., 152 , 154 , 155 , 199 ], with implications for performance [e.g., 18 , 19 , 96 ].

Human capital

Human capital is a transverse topic that touches upon many different aspects of female gender equality. As such, it has the most associations with other topics, starting with education as mentioned above, with career-related topics such as role , decision-making , hiring , career progression , performance , compensation , leadership and organization . Another topic with which there is a close connection is behavior . In general, human capital is approached both from the education standpoint but also from the perspective of social capital.

The behavioral aspect in human capital comprises research related to gender differences for example in cultural and religious beliefs that influence women’s attitudes and perceptions towards STEM subjects [ 142 , 200 – 202 ], towards employment [ 203 ] or towards environmental issues [ 150 , 204 ]. These cultural differences also emerge in the context of globalization which may accelerate gender equality in the workforce [ 205 , 206 ]. Gender differences also appear in behaviors such as motivation [ 207 ], and in negotiation [ 190 ], and have repercussions on women’s decision-making related to their careers. The so-called gender equality paradox sees women in countries with lower gender equality more likely to pursue studies and careers in STEM fields, whereas the gap in STEM enrollment widens as countries achieve greater equality in society [ 171 ].

Career progression is modeled by literature as a choice-process where personal preferences, culture and decision-making affect the chosen path and the outcomes. Some literature highlights how women tend to self-select into different professions than men, often due to stereotypes rather than actual ability to perform in these professions [ 142 , 144 ]. These stereotypes also affect the perceptions of female performance or the amount of human capital required to equal male performance [ 110 , 193 , 208 ], particularly for mothers [ 81 ]. It is therefore often assumed that women are better suited to less visible and less leadership -oriented roles [ 209 ]. Women also express differing preferences towards work-family balance, which affect whether and how they pursue human capital gains [ 210 ], and ultimately their career progression and salary .

On the other hand, men are often unaware of gendered processes and behaviors that they carry forward in their interactions and decision-making [ 211 , 212 ]. Therefore, initiatives aimed at increasing managers’ human capital –by raising awareness of gender disparities in their organizations and engaging them in diversity promotion–are essential steps to counter gender bias and segregation [ 213 ].

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Among the emerging topics, the most pervasive one is women reaching leadership positions in the workforce and in society. This is still a rare occurrence for two main types of factors, on the one hand, bias and discrimination make it harder for women to access leadership positions [e.g., 214 – 216 ], on the other hand, the competitive nature and high pressure associated with leadership positions, coupled with the lack of women currently represented, reduce women’s desire to achieve them [e.g., 209 , 217 ]. Women are more effective leaders when they have access to education, resources and a diverse environment with representation [e.g., 218 , 219 ].

One sector where there is potential for women to carve out a leadership role is entrepreneurship . Although at the start of the millennium the discourse on entrepreneurship was found to be “discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled” [ 220 ], an increasing body of literature is studying how to stimulate female entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway to wealth, leadership and empowerment [e.g., 221 ]. Many barriers exist for women to access entrepreneurship, including the institutional and legal environment, social and cultural factors, access to knowledge and resources, and individual behavior [e.g., 222 , 223 ]. Education has been found to raise women’s entrepreneurial intentions [e.g., 224 ], although this effect is smaller than for men [e.g., 109 ]. In addition, increasing self-efficacy and risk-taking behavior constitute important success factors [e.g., 225 ].

Finally, the topic of sustainability is worth mentioning, as it is the primary objective of the SDGs and is closely associated with societal well-being. As society grapples with the effects of climate change and increasing depletion of natural resources, a narrative has emerged on women and their greater link to the environment [ 226 ]. Studies in developed countries have found some support for women leaders’ attention to sustainability issues in firms [e.g., 227 – 229 ], and smaller resource consumption by women [ 230 ]. At the same time, women will likely be more affected by the consequences of climate change [e.g., 230 ] but often lack the decision-making power to influence local decision-making on resource management and environmental policies [e.g., 231 ].

Research gaps and conclusions

Research on gender equality has advanced rapidly in the past decades, with a steady increase in publications, both in mainstream topics related to women in education and the workforce, and in emerging topics. Through a novel approach combining methods of text mining and social network analysis, we examined a comprehensive body of literature comprising 15,465 papers published between 2000 and mid 2021 on topics related to gender equality. We identified a set of 27 topics addressed by the literature and examined their connections.

At the highest level of abstraction, it is worth noting that papers abound on the identification of issues related to gender inequalities and imbalances in the workforce and in society. Literature has thoroughly examined the (unconscious) biases, barriers, stereotypes, and discriminatory behaviors that women are facing as a result of their gender. Instead, there are much fewer papers that discuss or demonstrate effective solutions to overcome gender bias [e.g., 121 , 143 , 145 , 163 , 194 , 213 , 232 ]. This is partly due to the relative ease in studying the status quo, as opposed to studying changes in the status quo. However, we observed a shift in the more recent years towards solution seeking in this domain, which we strongly encourage future researchers to focus on. In the future, we may focus on collecting and mapping pro-active contributions to gender studies, using additional Natural Language Processing techniques, able to measure the sentiment of scientific papers [ 43 ].

All of the mainstream topics identified in our literature review are closely related, and there is a wealth of insights looking at the intersection between issues such as education and career progression or human capital and role . However, emerging topics are worthy of being furtherly explored. It would be interesting to see more work on the topic of female entrepreneurship , exploring aspects such as education , personality , governance , management and leadership . For instance, how can education support female entrepreneurship? How can self-efficacy and risk-taking behaviors be taught or enhanced? What are the differences in managerial and governance styles of female entrepreneurs? Which personality traits are associated with successful entrepreneurs? Which traits are preferred by venture capitalists and funding bodies?

The emerging topic of sustainability also deserves further attention, as our society struggles with climate change and its consequences. It would be interesting to see more research on the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship , looking at how female entrepreneurs are tackling sustainability issues, examining both their business models and their company governance . In addition, scholars are suggested to dig deeper into the relationship between family values and behaviors.

Moreover, it would be relevant to understand how women’s networks (social capital), or the composition and structure of social networks involving both women and men, enable them to increase their remuneration and reach top corporate positions, participate in key decision-making bodies, and have a voice in communities. Furthermore, the achievement of gender equality might significantly change firm networks and ecosystems, with important implications for their performance and survival.

Similarly, research at the nexus of (corporate) governance , career progression , compensation and female empowerment could yield useful insights–for example discussing how enterprises, institutions and countries are managed and the impact for women and other minorities. Are there specific governance structures that favor diversity and inclusion?

Lastly, we foresee an emerging stream of research pertaining how the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged women, especially in the workforce, by making gender biases more evident.

For our analysis, we considered a set of 15,465 articles downloaded from the Scopus database (which is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). As we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies, we only considered those papers published in journals listed in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). All the journals listed in this ranking are also indexed by Scopus. Therefore, looking at a single database (i.e., Scopus) should not be considered a limitation of our study. However, future research could consider different databases and inclusion criteria.

With our literature review, we offer researchers a comprehensive map of major gender-related research trends over the past twenty-two years. This can serve as a lens to look to the future, contributing to the achievement of SDG5. Researchers may use our study as a starting point to identify key themes addressed in the literature. In addition, our methodological approach–based on the use of the Semantic Brand Score and its webapp–could support scholars interested in reviewing other areas of research.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

The computing resources and the related technical support used for this work have been provided by CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure and its staff. CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure is funded by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and by Italian and European research programmes (see http://www.cresco.enea.it/english for information).

Funding Statement

P.B and F.C.: Grant of the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction of the University of Pisa (DESTEC) for the project “Measuring Gender Bias with Semantic Analysis: The Development of an Assessment Tool and its Application in the European Space Industry. P.B., F.C., A.F.C., P.R.: Grant of the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG), “Misure di sostegno ai soci giovani AiIG” 2020, for the project “Gender Equality Through Data Intelligence (GEDI)”. F.C.: EU project ASSETs+ Project (Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence) EAC/A03/2018 - Erasmus+ programme, Sector Skills Alliances, Lot 3: Sector Skills Alliance for implementing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on skills G.A. NUMBER: 612678-EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA-B.

Data Availability

Innovation and technology for gender equality: Echidna Global Scholars taking action

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, nasrin siddiqa , nasrin siddiqa executive director - education & cultural society, bangladesh, 2019 echidna global scholar - brookings institution @nasrinsiddiqa arundhuti gupta , and arundhuti gupta 2021 echidna global scholar - center for universal education, brookings institution, founder trustee and ceo - mentor together @arundhutigupta anthony luvanda anthony luvanda 2022 echidna global scholar - brookings institution, co-founder & executive director - magharibi innovation hub, senior lecturer, information technology department, defence forces technical college - national defence university-kenya @anthonyluvanda.

March 8, 2023

Every year, the UN marks International Women’s Day by identifying a critical challenge impacting women and girls and advocating new policy tackling the issue. As the world continues to grapple with the implications of AI chatbots and the strong link among social media, misinformation, and democracy , this year’s theme “ DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality ” examines the link between digital technologies and gender.

At the forefront of building an inclusive digital world for girls and women are several Echidna Global Scholars working on gender equality in and through education across the Global South. Their policy research and praxis addresses pressing issues such as barriers to STEM education in rural Bangladesh , the economic potential of digital mentoring in India , and the gender divide in digital technology courses and careers in Kenya .

For this year’s International Women’s Day, we asked these three alumni scholars to share their reflections on the digital gender divide and the important work that lies ahead in imagining a more digitally inclusive world.  

It is time to think whether innovations and technology will be utilized to ensure equality and rights to accessing education and economic opportunities for women or to make women more vulnerable. Considering the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, we need to make a policy of digitalization in empowering women and ensuring girls pursue their interests in STEM and break down gender barriers.

We need to ensure that emerging technologies and artificial intelligence will be used to improve gender equality significantly by creating new opportunities and removing barriers for women and girls, rather than leaving millions of poor women workers unemployed. In Bangladesh, women face challenges to accessing education and economic opportunities. By using technology to provide educational resources, training opportunities, and access to information, we can empower women.

The world needs to simultaneously rescue women with immediate measures, and on the other hand, strengthen the next generation to deal with super-fast technology and digitalization. Researchers can play a vital role in informing need-based policy and understanding its impact. Digitalization should be human, and especially women-friendly. It would make the lives of women more comfortable and easier, rather than making them insecure. It would contribute to girls’ education, stop violence and trafficking, helping make girls and women aware of places and people, ensure digital marketing and entrepreneurship, provide health care information and services to women in rural areas and free educational resources and training, and enable the development of new skills and access to new economic opportunities for underserved women.

We can create a brighter, more equitable future for women around the world.   

We stand at an important juncture today where technology can become either one of our most consequential allies—if channeled effectively in our fight for gender equality—or if left to be shaped by the existing structures of society, yet another platform for the exclusion and disempowerment of women.

One of the most positive trends of the last four years had been that the gender gap in the use of mobile internet had been reducing. Worryingly, the rate of adoption by women has seemingly stalled in 2021 . My nonprofit organization, Mentor Together, runs a large career mentoring program based out of India that thousands of young women in universities access via their mobile phones. The increasing access to phones presented an avenue to counter the restrictions placed on the movement and freedom of young women and help them virtually access personalized career mentorship from inspiring role models across the country. Without concerted efforts to increase mobile phone access, women will lose out on even this avenue of learning.

The second opportunity that strikes me as critical for India is that the design of digital communities should very intentionally bring in ways to champion gender- transformative social norms . I found through my research that even well meaning, large communities of mentors can end up becoming limited champions because their messages never reach the people who need convincing (in this case the families and communities of our mentees). It is worrying that so much of the digital discourse in India displays the same negative gender norms with even quicker dissemination. The most powerful role of technology we have to intentionally design is positive human connection spreading in more virtuous cycles.

Digital technology has a role to play in bridging the various gender gaps within the workplace, yet we need to set in motion various interventions aimed at placing more women in the digital technology workspace.

The gender gap in the digital technology workforce begins early, as very few girls take up digital technology-related courses at the tertiary level of education. Girls from the lowest levels of education are subjected to cumulative disadvantages that reduce their chances of ending up in a digital technology career.

My research on the subject reveals that one of the best approaches to having more women in the digital technology workspace revolves around creating interventions for mitigating the cumulative disadvantages that lead to the exclusion of women from digital technologies careers. Such interventions may include but must not be confined to: improving institutional digital technology infrastructure at all levels of education; enhancing the training of digital technology personnel within all levels of education; building girls’ interest in digital technology-related courses from the earliest years; increasing digital technology advocacy and awareness among girls; and enhancing vocational counseling on digital technology careers.

Related Content

Hina Saleem

February 7, 2023

Anthony Luvanda

December 14, 2022

Bhawana Shrestha

September 2, 2022

Education Access & Equity Education Technology Global Education

Emerging Markets & Developing Economies

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Elyse Painter, Emily Gustafsson-Wright

January 5, 2024

Online only

9:00 am - 10:00 am EST

Nariman Moustafa

October 20, 2023

• Reference Manager
• Simple TEXT file

People also looked at

Editorial article, editorial: gender-specific inequalities in the education system and the labor market.

• 1 Institute for Sociology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
• 2 LIfBi, Bamberg, Germany

Editorial on the Research Topic Gender-specific inequalities in the education system and the labor market

Introduction

This Research Topic in Frontiers on gender-specific inequalities in education and the labor market aims to bring together recent empirical studies on differences in women's and men's educational and labor market preferences, choices, and opportunities. Existing studies have shown that women have caught up with and even surpassed men in educational attainment ( Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993 ; Breen et al., 2010 ; Hadjar and Berger, 2011 ; DiPrete and Buchmann, 2013 ) and that women are increasingly participating in the labor market and in jobs with higher socio-economic status. Yet many questions about gender inequalities in education and the labor market remain unanswered, at least in the country contexts examined below. What are the consequences of educational expansion in the parental generation, which has been particularly strong for women, for the educational attainment of daughters and sons? Are daughters and sons more downwardly mobile in education today? Are men more likely to share household tasks with women when the educational gap between husbands and wives is smaller? Are occupations increasingly sex-segregated due to women's empowerment and self-expression? What role do gender ideology, educational aspirations, work values, and household assets play in this process, and can intensive counseling programs lead to more gender-atypical university major choices? Do boys and girls with an immigrant background exhibit higher transition probabilities to a more prestigious educational path than children without an immigrant background? And to what extent do men and women differ in the preferences of work arrangements?

These and other questions are addressed in this Research Topic. We focus first on issues related to gender and education and then on gender and the labor market.

Gender and educational expansion

The first two articles in this Research Topic are devoted to the long-term effects of educational expansion on gender-specific differences in educational outcomes. It begins with a contribution by Blossfeld , who uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) to analyze how intercohort improvements in family educational attainment contribute to the rising educational attainment of sons and daughters in West Germany. Her article aims to answer two questions: (1) Is the improvement in the educational attainment of families particularly beneficial to the rise in daughters' educational attainment, since families with higher educational attainment are generally considered more gender equitable, or have both sons and daughters benefited similarly, and (2) have daughters particularly benefited from mothers' catching up with fathers' educational attainment, since mothers in particular serve as role models for their daughters? Her empirical results suggest that both sons and daughters have benefited similarly from the intercohort change in family educational attainment. She also finds that maternal education is equally relevant for the educational opportunities of sons and daughters. In addition, she shows that educational downward mobility has increased for sons and daughters as the proportion of children from academic family backgrounds rises. The second contribution, by Nennstiel and Becker , also observes that absolute educational downward mobility has increased, using Swiss data from the Census, the Cumulative Structural Survey, and the Population and Household Statistics (STATPOP) from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. As the share of privileged children increases, so does the pool of children who may be downwardly mobile. Their analysis, which compares birth cohorts 1951–1990 for Switzerland, also addresses relative intergenerational educational mobility. Nennstiel and Becker find that relative mobility rates have declined slightly for women and men. While there were gender differences in relative mobilities for the oldest cohorts studied, there is a convergence between the sexes across cohorts. For birth cohorts born after 1970, maternal education becomes more important for women's relative mobility than for men's, but remains less important than paternal education.

The third contribution by Peng and Wu addresses another consequence of the educational expansion process, namely how the reduction of the education gap between husbands and wives influences (in)equality in the division of housework in the Chinese context. The authors use the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS2018) and find that in households with a lower education gap between husband and wife, gender inequality in housework sharing is also lower. This effect of the education gap between husband and wife on inequality in household labor sharing is explained by the relative income and relative working hours of husband and wife.

Gender and stem education

Although women have caught up with men in educational attainment, women still differ greatly from men in their subject choices in the educational system ( Ware and Lee, 1988 ; Turner and Bowen, 1999 ; Bradley, 2000 ; Barone, 2011 ; Mann and DiPrete, 2013 ; Van de Werfhorst, 2017 ; Uunk et al., 2019 ; Jacob et al., 2020 ; Hägglund and Leuze, 2021 ). Women are much more likely to choose feminine subjects such as teacher education, humanities, social sciences, and healthcare. Men, on the other hand, are much more likely to opt for Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM). This horizontal gender segregation creates further gender inequalities, as STEM education offers better wage and career prospects than non-STEM education ( Christie and Michael, 2001 ; Black et al., 2008 ; OECD, 2017 ).

In this Research Topic, three articles explore some of the possible causes of gender differences in the choices of STEM subjects in education. The first two articles focus on what is known as the Gender-Equality-Paradox (GEP). GEP is the puzzling finding that men and women in more affluent and gender-equal countries choose more gender-specific fields of studies than those in less developed countries ( Bradley, 2000 ; Stoet and Geary, 2018 , 2020 ; Richardson et al., 2020 ). In their paper, Erdmann, Hill et al. test GEP longitudinally by describing how adolescents' gender-specific occupational expectations change over time (2006–2018) and how female empowerment and cultural norms might influence gender-specific occupational expectations. Using data from two waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2006 and 2018, from 26 European countries, the authors show that only in some countries occupational expectations became more segregated. In other countries, the proportion of gender parity or gender-atypical expectations increased. Moreover, in contrast to the cross-sectionally observed GEP, female empowerment and self-expression values led to less gender-typical occupational expectations among girls and boys. In his paper, Uunk also finds evidence against (interpretations of) GEP, using data from the PISA 2012 wave. Although wealthier countries show a larger male-favorable gap in STEM aspirations, multilevel analyses show that at the micro-level, household wealth is not associated with a larger gender gap in math intentions. Girls are also not less likely to choose math and STEM as household wealth increases.

The study by Gambaro et al. investigates the gender-typical occupational aspirations of immigrant and non-immigrant youth aged around 16 in four European countries (England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden) using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey (CILS4EU). The authors find that immigrant boys and girls aspire to slightly less gender-typical occupations than their peers in the majority population. More ambitious educational aspirations, but not gender ideology and work values, partly explain these smaller gender differences in the occupational aspirations of children with immigrant backgrounds.

In the last paper on gender and STEM, interventions to reduce gender bias in subject choices are addressed. The contribution by Erdmann, Schneider et al. examines if and how intensive counseling programs can lead to a more gender-atypical major choice in higher education among men and women in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Their study combined a panel study with an experimental design. They followed students 2 years before to 3 years after they completed a higher education entry certificate and randomly assigned students to a control or treatment group. Their results show that intensive counseling increased the gender-atypical degree choices of men and women. In particular, men were more likely to choose gender-atypical majors when they participated in the advising program. In addition, there is some evidence that the counseling program increases the likelihood that students will remain in their gender-atypical major (although this could not be measured directly).

Gender, migration, and education

A final paper on education and gender in this Research Topic, focuses on immigration background and educational attainment. A well-established finding in education research is that children with an immigrant background have a higher probability of transitioning to a more prestigious educational track than children without an immigrant background, after controlling for previous educational achievement and socioeconomic status ( Kristen and Dollmann, 2010 ; Jonsson and Rudolphi, 2011 ; Relikowski et al., 2012 ; Griga and Hadjar, 2014 ; Salikutluk, 2016 ; Dollmann and Weißmann, 2020 ). This ethnic choice effect is often explained by higher upward mobility aspirations among children from immigrant backgrounds ( Kao and Tienda, 1995 ), a finding also central in the paper of Gambaro et al. in this Research Topic. Glauser and Becker aim to contribute to this literature by (1) examining whether there are gender differences in this ethnic choice effect and (2) investigating whether educational aspirations can explain these higher educational transition probabilities into more demanding educational tracks for male and female immigrant students alike. Glauser and Becker concentrate on migrant groups from the Balkans, Turkey, and Portugal, and their country of analysis is Switzerland. Using panel data from the Transitions from Education to Employment (TREE) and the Determinants of educational choices and vocational training opportunities (DAB) studies, they demonstrate that only male migrants exhibit higher transition probabilities to more demanding educational tracks when controlling for prior school performance and family background, and that aspirations mediate part of this ethnic choice effect.

Gender and the labor market

Finally, empirical studies observe not only gender inequalities in education, but also in the labor market. Although women have increased their labor market participation dramatically in recent decades, women still earn less than men and work fewer hours ( Rosenfeld and Kalleberg, 1990 ; Charles, 2011 ; England et al., 2020 ). In addition, women are still more likely to work in different occupations and perform different tasks than men ( Steinmetz, 2011 ; Levanon and Grusky, 2016 ; Weeden, 2019 ; Zhu and Grusky, 2022 ). Two articles in this Research Topic address gender inequalities in the labor market. The paper by Jost and Möser investigates whether there are gender-specific preferences for work arrangements (part-time vs. full-time work, reductions of work, career advancement, salary, further training opportunities, collegial vs. competitive work environment, and flexibility) in Switzerland. In particular, they are interested in whether these gender-specific preferences are the result of gender-specific role expectations. They aim to test social role and human capital theory, both of which assume that gender roles are based on division of labor within couples. They conducted a discrete choice experiment that was included in the 10th wave of the DAB panel study. A first finding from their experiment is that women have a stronger preference for part-time work and a collegial work atmosphere than men and that men place more value on career prospects. In terms of gender role expectations between and within groups of men and women, they show that only men and women with more traditional gender role expectations (in terms of sharing housework and having children at a young age) are more likely to choose gender-typical job characteristics.

The final contribution by Folberg et al. examines gender differences in entrepreneurial interests using data from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. They test goal congruity theory, which assumes that people adopt gender-stereotypic goal orientations in response to social pressures to conform to traditional gender roles. In particular, they are interested in whether successful entrepreneurship is perceived as dominant but not described as typically female. In addition, they examine the role of (gender-stereotyped) agency, including the dimensions of competence, self-direction, dominance orientations, and community goal orientations (e.g., warmth) in female and male entrepreneurial interests, supplemented by sub-dimensions of gender stereotypes and stereotype-related constructs. Results indicate that entrepreneurship, although perceived as dominant, is not perceived as inherently masculine and can fulfill communal goals (e.g., caring for others). Both women and men tend to prefer careers that align with socially perceived gender roles, but they do not show differential interest in entrepreneurship.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Barone, C. (2011). Some things never change: gender segregation in higher education across eight nations and three decades. Sociol. Educ. 84, 157–176. doi: 10.1177/0038040711402099

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Black, D. A., Haviland, A. M., Sanders, S. G., and Taylor, L. J. (2008). Gender wage disparities among the highly educated. J. Hum. Resour. 43, 630–659. doi: 10.3368/jhr.43.3.630

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Bradley, K. (2000). The incorporation of women into higher education: paradoxical outcomes? Sociol. Educ. 73, 1–18. doi: 10.2307/2673196

Breen, R., Luijkx, R., Müller, W., and Pollak, R. (2010). Long-term trends in educational inequality in Europe: class inequalities and gender differences. Eur. Sociol. Rev. 26, 31–48. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcp001

Charles, M. (2011). A world of difference: international trends in women's economic status. Ann. Rev. Sociol. 37, 355–371. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102548

Christie, P., and Michael, S. (2001). Educational attainment and the gender wage gap: evidence from the 1986 and 1991 Canadian Censuses. Econ. Educ. Rev. 20, 165–180.

Google Scholar

DiPrete, T. A., and Buchmann, C. (2013). The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Dollmann, J., and Weißmann, M. (2020). The story after immigrants' ambitious educational choices: real improvement or back to square one? Eur. Sociol. Rev. 36, 32–47. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcz042

England, P., Levine, A., and Mishel, E. (2020). Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 117, 6990–6997. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1918891117

Griga, D., and Hadjar, A. (2014). Migrant background and higher education participation in Europe: the effect of the educational systems. Eur. Sociol. Rev. 30, 275–286. doi: 10.1093/esr/jct031

Hadjar, A., and Berger, J. (2011). “Geschlechtsspezifische Bildungsungleichheiten in Europa: Die Bedeutung des Bildungs- und Wohlfahrtsstaatssystems,” in Geschlechtsspezifische Bildungsungleichheiten , ed A. Hadjar (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften), 23–54. doi: 10.1007/978-3-531-92779-4_2

Hägglund, A. E., and Leuze, K. (2021). Gender differences in STEM expectations across countries: how perceived labor market structures shape adolescents' preferences. J. Youth Stud. 24, 634–654. doi: 10.1080/13676261.2020.1755029

Jacob, M., Iannelli, C., Duta, A., and Smyth, E. (2020). Secondary school subjects and gendered STEM enrollment in higher education in Germany, Ireland, and Scotland. Int. J. Comparat. Sociol. 61, 59–78. doi: 10.1177/0020715220913043

Jonsson, J. O., and Rudolphi, F. (2011). Weak performance—strong determination: school achievement and educational choice among children of immigrants in Sweden. Eur. Sociol. Rev. 27, 487–508. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcq021

Kao, G., and Tienda, M. (1995). Optimism and achievement: the educational performance of immigrant youth. Soc. Sci. Quart. 76, 1–19.

PubMed Abstract | Google Scholar

Kristen, C., and Dollmann, J. (2010). Sekundäre Effekte der ethnischen Herkunft: Kinder aus türkischen Familien am ersten Bildungsübergang,” in Vom Kindergarten bis zur Hochschule , eds B. Becker and D. Reimer (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften), 117–144. doi: 10.1007/978-3-531-92105-1_5

Levanon, A., and Grusky, D. B. (2016). The persistence of extreme gender segregation in the twenty-first century. Am. J. Sociol. 122, 573–619. doi: 10.1086/688628

Mann, A., and DiPrete, T. A. (2013). Trends in gender segregation in the choice of science and engineering majors. Soc. Sci. Res. 42, 1519–1541. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.07.002

OECD (2017). Education at a Glance 2017: OECD Indicators. Paris: PISA, OECD Publishing . Available online at: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2017_eag-2017-en

Relikowski, I., Yilmaz, E., and Blossfeld, H. P. (2012). “Wie lassen sich die hohen Bildungsaspirationen von Migranten erklären? Eine Mixed-Methods-Studie zur Rolle von strukturellen Aufstiegschancen und individueller Bildungserfahrung,” in Soziologische Bildungsforschung , eds R. Becker and H. Solga (Wiesbaden: Springer), 111–136. doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-00120-9_5

Richardson, S. S., Reiches, M. W., Bruch, J., Boulicault, M., Noll, N. E., and Shattuck-Heidorn, H. (2020). Is there a gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)? Commentary on the study by Stoet and Geary (2018). Psychol. Sci. 31, 338–341. doi: 10.1177/0956797619872762

Rosenfeld, R. A., and Kalleberg, A. L. (1990). A cross-national comparison of the gender gap in income. Am. J. Sociol. 96, 69–106. doi: 10.1086/229493

Salikutluk, Z. (2016). Why do immigrant students aim high? Explaining the aspiration–achievement paradox of immigrants in Germany. Eur. Sociol. Rev. 32, 581–592. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcw004

Shavit, Y., and Blossfeld, H. P. (1993). Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries Social Inequality Series . Boulder: Westview Press.

Steinmetz, S. (2011). The Contextual Challenges of Occupational Sex Segregation . Wiesbaden: Springer.

Stoet, G., and Geary, D. C. (2018). The gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Psychol. Sci. 29, 581–593. doi: 10.1177/0956797617741719

Stoet, G., and Geary, D. C. (2020). Corrigendum: The gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Psychol. Sci. 31, 1–2. doi: 10.1177/0956797619892892

Turner, S. E., and Bowen, W. G. (1999). Choice of major: The changing (unchanging) gender gap. Indus. Labor Relat. Rev. 52, 289–313. doi: 10.1177/001979399905200208

Uunk, W., Beier, L., Minello, A., and Blossfeld, H. P. (2019). “Studienfachwahl MINT durch Frauen–Einfluss von Leistung in Mathematik, Lebenszielen und familialem Hintergrund,” in MINT oder CARE? Gendersensible Berufsorientierung in Zeiten digitalen und demografischen Wandels , eds E. Schlemmer and M. Binder (Weinheim: Beltz Juventa), 185–199.

Van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2017). Gender segregation across fields of study in post-secondary education: trends and social differentials. Eur. Sociol. Rev. 33, 449–464. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcx040

Ware, N. C., and Lee, V. E. (1988). Sex differences in choice of college science majors. Am. Educ. Res. J. 25, 593–614. doi: 10.3102/00028312025004593

Weeden, K. A. (2019). State of the Union: Occupational Segregation. The Poverty and Inequality Report 2019 .

Zhu, L., and Grusky, D. B. (2022). The intergenerational sources of the U -turn in gender segregation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 119, e2121439119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2121439119

Keywords: inequality, gender, education, labor market, gender segregation

Citation: Blossfeld PN, Pratter M and Uunk W (2023) Editorial: Gender-specific inequalities in the education system and the labor market. Front. Sociol. 8:1254664. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2023.1254664

Received: 07 July 2023; Accepted: 11 July 2023; Published: 24 July 2023.

Edited and reviewed by: Kath Woodward , The Open University, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2023 Blossfeld, Pratter and Uunk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Pia N. Blossfeld, pia.blossfeld@uibk.ac.at

This article is part of the Research Topic

Gender-Specific Inequalities in the Education System and the Labor Market

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Original Language Spotlight
• Alternative and Non-formal Education 
• Cognition, Emotion, and Learning
• Curriculum and Pedagogy
• Education and Society
• Education, Change, and Development
• Education, Cultures, and Ethnicities
• Education, Gender, and Sexualities
• Education, Health, and Social Services
• Educational Administration and Leadership
• Educational History
• Educational Politics and Policy
• Educational Purposes and Ideals
• Educational Systems
• Educational Theories and Philosophies
• Globalization, Economics, and Education
• Languages and Literacies
• Professional Learning and Development
• Research and Assessment Methods
• Technology and Education
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Gender and sexual diversity in teacher education.

• Bethy Leonardi Bethy Leonardi University of Colorado Boulder
•  and  Sara Staley Sara Staley University of Colorado Boulder
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.281
• Published online: 25 February 2019

Generations of education scholars have positioned issues that affect LGBTQ youth as critical to conversations about equity, diversity, democracy, and social justice in schools. Those voices, for generations, have been relegated to the periphery of those conversations at best and have been silenced at worst. Relatedly, university-based teacher education programs have been remiss in their attention to issues of gender and sexual diversity, systematically sending teachers into the field largely unprepared to create contexts that are safe for LGBTQ youth and to affirm gender and sexual diversity. With growing attention to issues that affect LGBTQ youth, both in educational research and practice as well as in the larger sociopolitical discourse, teachers are on the front lines. They are charged with navigating the complexities of students’ identities, the contexts in which they teach, local politics, and their own deeply held beliefs—and they are often, unsurprisingly, doing so with little or no support. That support needs to start much earlier.

Teacher education programs—and teacher educators—are implicated as central in changing the discourse around what counts as (non)negotiable in learning to teach. By supporting preservice teachers’ learning around gender and sexual diversity, their processes toward that end, and their engagement in queer practices, teacher educators and teacher education programs can work toward paying down the debt owed to teachers in the field and to LGBTQ students and families who have long suffered the consequences of silence.

• teacher education
• gender and sexual diversity
• queer pedagogy
• preservice teachers

Introduction

In 2015 , the American Educational Research Association (AERA) released a report on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues in education in an effort to “give voice to the research, to expand our understanding of LGBTQ issues, and to foster scientific and scholarly inquiry that draws upon solid theoretical models and methods” (Wimberly, 2015 , p. 3). Framing the basis for this new report of a not-so-new research agenda, AERA pointed to “recent legal, social, and policy shifts in support of LGBTQ people [that] are causing educators and education researchers to address LGBTQ issues with a new sense of legitimacy and urgency” (Wimberly, 2015 ). In the report’s introduction, for example, Wimberly cites “the enhanced social status of LGBTQ people and the increased visibility of LGBTQ issues across societal and cultural domains” as well as “changes in family structures and dynamics” as factors that “have led to an increased relevance and awareness of LGBTQ issues in schools or educational contexts” (p. 1). While it may be true that more youth and families are coming out and calling on their communities for positive recognition, we contest the notion that the legitimacy and urgency of LGBTQ issues in education is new. In fact, education researchers, including many who contributed their “extant knowledge” (Wimberly, 2015 , p. 16) to AERA’s report, have documented the relevance of LGBTQ issues in education contexts for over three decades (Kavanagh, 2016 ) and have argued for the value of including gender and sexual diversity in policies, practices, and systems that aim toward equitable education (Quinn & Meiners, 2011 ). Perhaps a more accurate and honest assessment of the state of LGBTQ issues in education involves admitting that the conversation has always been urgent, but in many contexts, including educational research, it has been shoved to the periphery at best and silenced at worst. As we will develop, silence is a recurring theme in this field of study. In this article, we focus specifically on that theme as it relates to teacher education, but we call attention to a broader question that AERA’s stance raises: Researchers in this field have long been speaking, but who has been listening?

This question raises an important tension as we turn toward how teacher education and educational research have attended to gender and sexual diversity. Discourse matters; that is, being included (or not) in what counts as important, nonnegotiable, legitimate, and urgent in the discourses of research on teaching and teacher education matters. Gender and sexual diversity’s marginal inclusion has shaped not only the trajectory of knowledge building of issues affecting LGBTQ youth in PK-12 schools, but also the pathways by which that knowledge has been disseminated to broader educational communities. Undoubtedly, that marginal inclusion also has been consequential to if, when, and how university-based teacher educators have “give[n] voice” to gender and sexual diversity in their support of preservice teachers (PSTs). Further complicating matters, scholars have been discouraged outright from conducting research on sexual orientation and gender identity. Sarah-Jane Dodd ( 2009 ), for example, cautioned that the “highly charged and highly personal” nature of LGBTQ-focused research “makes it vulnerable to bias and predetermined results” (p. 483). Citing a recommendation from the literature that researchers with strong personal beliefs in support or opposition of LGBTQ individuals should refrain from engaging in research on the topic, Dodd argued that the degree of bias may be difficult to protect against. Queer-identified scholars also have been warned of being “too close to the issues,” that presenting a research agenda centered on gay and lesbian issues would potentially affect their marketability, and that this agenda might best be saved until post-tenure (Donelson & Rogers, 2004 , p. 132). We highlight these instances of gatekeeping because it is within the context of these institutional barriers that the field of research on LGBTQ issues in teacher education has developed. Thus, as we endeavor to explore the driving questions, puzzles, and dilemmas of research in this field and argue for future directions that mind the complexity and messiness of enacting queer interventions in teacher preparation, it is also crucial to consider how the field has been positioned in the broader context of educational research.

In this article, a critical perspective is provided on LGBTQ-focused research in teacher education. Given the decades of research that have shaped the field thus far, this article certainly is not the first to take on that task. To note a couple of examples, in Kissen ( 2002 ), 28 scholars took a complex look at the “landscape” of teacher education with respect to “lesbian and gay awareness” (p. 11). Contributors explored how lesbian and gay (LG) issues have been positioned in “the multicultural enterprise” (p. 103) and shared experiences of teachers, teacher educators, and school administrators’ “struggles in trying to integrate LGBT awareness in teaching and teacher education” (p. 159). As a more recent example, Quinn and Meiners ( 2011 ) provided a summary of research on teacher education programs’ efforts to include LGBTQ people and topics. Theirs included a rich historical account of teacher accreditation practices, a topic not addressed in this article. Because this article is not framed as an exhaustive review of the literature, readings of this article’s perspective are encouraged alongside available others. The approach here involves focusing on some key problems, questions, and puzzles that have driven the field. Specifically, the following are addressed: What are key questions and puzzles that have driven research in this field? What can we learn from the insights, tensions, and dilemmas yielded by that research? In other words, guided by the wisdom of existing scholarship, what are generative directions for future research that the field might pursue? Readers will notice that those questions organize this discussion.

To begin, the discussion is grounded in theoretical perspectives on heteronormativity and the ways in which that violent construct is institutionalized in school spaces. From there, the discussion turns to three categories of research in this field: the nature of inclusion and exclusion in teacher education programs, course syllabi, and texts; PSTs’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs related to LGBTQ people and topics; and the nature and impact of LGBTQ-inclusive instructional interventions. Reflecting on the insights generated along these dimensions of inquiry, greater attention is called for toward the complexity and messiness involved in learning to disrupt heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia in education. Looking beyond the nature of teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, it is argued that future directions center PSTs’ processes of engagement, including resistance to and questions about what learning and unlearning (Britzman, 1998 ) does to students in education programs (Luhmann, 1998 ).

Heteronormativity

An important theoretical construct to understand in relation to how scholars have approached research in this field is heteronormativity. Michael Warner ( 1993 ) conceptualized heteronormativity as a cultural system of belief that “thinks of itself as the elemental form of human association, as the very model of inter-gender relations, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction without which society wouldn’t exist” (p. xxi). Put another way, heteronormativity is a powerful discursive framework that organizes commonsense understandings of what counts as “normal” with respect to gender, sexuality, relationships, families, and a whole host of other things. It is always and everywhere. On the one hand, through its presumption of heterosexuality and binary gender as the norm, heteronormativity privileges certain individuals (i.e., heterosexual, cisgender people) and arrangements (e.g., traditional family structures and romantic relationships); on the other, it positions antinormative sexualities and gender configurations as deviant. In this way, heteronormativity promotes homophobic and transphobic attitudes and behaviors, including anti-LGBTQ bullying and gendered harassment (Meyer, 2008 ). Researchers have written extensively about the heteronormative, heterosexist, homophobic context of schooling, including, for example, the ways in which heteronormativity is institutionalized in education spaces through language and discourse practices, policies, and everyday actions of administrators, teachers, and students (Blackburn & Smith, 2010 ; DePalma & Atkinson, 2010 ; Meyer, 2007 ; Wickens & Sandlin, 2010 ) and the violent consequences of unsafe school environments for LGBTQ youth (Human Rights Watch, 2001 ; GLSEN & Harris Interactive, 2012 ; Kosciw, Greytak, Giga, Villenas, & Danischewski, 2016 ). Disproportionately higher rates of violence committed against students who identify or are perceived to identify as LGBTQ is a persistent problem plaguing schools in a variety of national contexts and also one of the driving forces of research in this field. Reporting those trends is beyond the scope of this article, but interested readers are directed to data reported by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Network’s (GLSEN) National School Climate Survey , a report published every two years that indexes national trends on how LGBTQ youth experience school. Over the years, those data have provided the field crucial touchstones for contextualizing the nature and impact of school climate and culture on LGBTQ youth in the United States. 1

Heteronormativity is therefore a prominent theoretical lens that frames many problems, questions, and puzzles pursued by LGBTQ-focused educational research. One problem linked to heteronormativity that orients much of that research concerns a discourse of silence surrounding LGBTQ identities and experiences in PK-12 and teacher education. Given research that suggests teachers can play important roles in making LGBTQ youth feel safer and more connected at school (Greytak, Kosciw, & Boesen, 2013 ), calls to break the silence in teacher preparation have grown louder in the past decade. In 2007 , for example, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) published a resolution on strengthening teacher knowledge of LGBT issues. In spite of a trend during the previous decade that saw more inclusion of diversity issues in teacher education programs, NCTE’s position statement emphasized that LGBT issues were generally omitted or given very little attention. Describing effective teacher preparation programs as those that support teachers to make sense of and realize their professional obligations, which, the authors note, include preparing students for citizenship in a diverse society, NCTE resolved a commitment to providing leadership for the inclusion of LGBT issues in all teacher preparation programs. A decade since that resolution, the sound of silence continues to surround LGBTQ topics in teacher education. As Gorski, Davis, and Reiter ( 2013 ) put it, “[Scholars] overwhelmingly agree that silence persists in teacher education programs when it comes to LGBTQ concerns (Bower & Klecka, 2009 ; Clark, 2010 ; De-Jean, 2010 ; Hermann-Wilmarth & Bills, 2010 ; Jennings, 2007 ; Szalacha, 2004 ; Vavrus, 2009 )” (p. 229). A driving question in the field concerns what happens when teacher education coursework breaks the silence by broaching topics of gender and sexual diversity. In other words, what does inclusion look like? How do PSTs respond? What kinds of resistance should teacher educators be prepared for?

What Are the “Problems,” Questions, and Puzzles That Have Driven the Research?

Turning toward questions and puzzles that drive this field, this discussion is organized around three categories that comprise a bulk of related research. The first category are investigations of the nature of LGBTQ inclusion and exclusion in teacher education coursework. Then studies of PSTs’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs related to LGBTQ people are examined and gender and sexual diversity in the classroom are addressed. Last, research on LGBTQ-focused instructional interventions in teacher education is reviewed. Important to note is that while these studies fall under the LGBTQ umbrella, many focus solely on sexual diversity, homophobia, and heterosexism. In a review of LGBTQ research in higher education, Renn ( 2010 ) takes care to separate LGB and T to mark the ways that “research on sexual orientation and gender identity examines substantively different concepts” (p. 135). She notes that alliances built by LGBT people for the purposes of political, social, and intellectual projects have led to the conflated understanding of gender and sexuality. This article aligns with Renn’s perspective. Research on LGBTQ issues in education has made valuable contributions toward destigmatizing lesbian, gay, bisexual sexualities, and transgender and nonbinary gender identities. However, as Renn asks, how might this research also be constructing LGBTQ people as a monolithic community? Gender and sexuality identity categories, and the people who identify with them, “vary crucially ” (Alexander, 1999 , p. 288) and, therefore, require different consideration.

What Is the Nature of LGBTQ Inclusion in Teacher Education Coursework?

To understand how gender and sexual diversity have been taken up systematically, or not, in teacher education programs across the United States, scholars have looked to teacher educators, course syllabi, and salient texts. In 2007 , Jennings gathered data from 142 public university, elementary, and secondary teacher licensure programs (by surveying faculty directors, coordinators, and department chairs) in an effort to understand the degree to which programs attended to issues of diversity, broadly speaking. He found similar patterns across elementary and secondary programs in which the most emphasis was on race and ethnicity, followed by attention to special needs, language diversity, and social class. Gender and sexual orientation were the least emphasized, with 11.6% of secondary and 8.6% of elementary programs reporting that they ignored sexual orientation altogether. Questioning the “safety” of addressing sexual orientation compared to addressing race, Jennings wondered about sexual orientation’s “controversial ties to heterosexism, traditional gender roles, and oftentimes the religious beliefs of both faculty and students” (p. 1265). He also wondered about the dominant discourse in the field and specifically in multicultural education. Importantly, he pointed to Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (Banks & Banks, 1995 ), which was meant to provide a significant review of multicultural education research. Jennings reported that “neither ‘sexual orientation’ nor ‘homosexuality’ even earned a mention in the book’s subject index covering a text of nearly 900 pages” (p. 1265). In the revised and expanded volume of 1,200 pages (Banks & Banks, 2004 ), neither sexual orientation nor homosexuality received substantive attention.

In a related study, Macgillivray and Jennings ( 2008 ) analyzed the most widely used foundations of education textbooks for LGBT content. Asserting that these textbooks often exclude LGBT content or reinforce harmful stereotypes, they were interested in whether gender and sexual diversity were included, how they were included, and the potential consequences of inclusion. They situate their curiosity in what they call “the systematic neglect of the needs of LGBT youth and families within teacher preparation coursework [that] is rooted in heteronormative assumptions that present heterosexuality as the only legitimate sexual orientation” (p. 171). For example, they report that in the United States, 44.4% of elementary and 40% of secondary teacher preparation programs fail to include topics of sexual orientation program-wide (Jennings & Sherwin, 2008 ; Sherwin & Jennings, 2006 ). Their findings suggest that while all of the textbooks analyzed ( N = 8) included LGBT topics, coverage was inconsistent insofar as content and depth were concerned. Furthermore, inclusion was at times problematic. For example, they found that the “student-as-victim” narrative was used, presumably to build support for inclusion as well as knowledge about the lived experiences of LGBTQ students in schools. They warned, however, that this narrative “has the effect of essentializing and pathologizing LGBT identities (Talburt, 2005 ; Rasmussen, 2005a , 2005b ; Rofes, 2005a , 2005b ), rendering them as hapless victims with no self-determination or agency (Blackburn, 2005 )” (p. 182). Jennings and Macgillivray ( 2011 ) found similar trends when they analyzed multicultural textbooks ( N = 12), as did Gorski, Davis, and Reiter ( 2013 ), who, perhaps based on the contested nature of the inclusion of gender and sexual diversity in the multicultural education movement, were also interested in multicultural education courses. They performed a content analysis of 41 syllabi from multicultural education courses taught in the United States, looking for inclusion or exclusion of LGBTQ concerns. They also collected survey data from 80 multicultural education instructors in order to “uncover both the likelihood that, and the nature by which, they incorporated LGBTQ concerns into their courses” (p. 224). They found that LGBTQ concerns were often invisible and that when those concerns were included, they were undertheorized, not done so in context, and instead served to mask heteronormativity; this finding has persisted for over a decade (Letts, 2002 ). When teacher educators treat some groups or issues of equity as worthy of attention and others as not, Jennings ( 2007 ) points to this “obvious danger”: PSTs’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices will likely follow suit (p. 1259).

What Is the Nature of Teachers’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs about LGBTQ People and Teaching LGBTQ Content?

Over time, studies have been interested in the relationship among PSTs’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and perceived and anticipated behaviors as they relate to LGBTQ-inclusive practices and students who identify as LGBT. Perhaps this interest came from a study by James Sears, first published in 1991 . Sears was interested in prospective teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about homosexuality and how those personal beliefs interacted with their “professional attitudes,” which Sears defined as teachers’ willingness to take a proactive stance toward supporting LGB youth (e.g., by encouraging classroom discussions of sexuality and integrating sexual diversity into the curriculum). By analyzing survey and questionnaire data from 258 PSTs, Sears found that 80% of participants held negative views about lesbian and gay people. While many respondents maintained that they could keep their personal beliefs and professional behaviors separate and that they should be proactive as professionals in the field, Sears found that few were willing to take a proactive stance in supporting the unique needs of LGB students. He attributed this discrepancy to PSTs’ prejudicial attitudes, lack of knowledge, and fear. Over a decade later, Mudrey and Medina-Adams ( 2006 ) emulated Sears’s study with 200 PSTs. In particular, they were interested in knowledge gains, attitude differences, and perceptions of homosexuality. What they found, in their words, “was rather shocking” in that they obtained similar results. While PSTs in their study were more knowledgeable about homosexuality, “their personal attitudes and feelings were not reflective of this knowledge” (p. 86).

Since Sears’s study, many researchers have echoed that PSTs tend to lack knowledge and preparation around topics and issues related to sexual diversity and that they struggle with negative attitudes about gays and lesbians (Blackburn & Donelson, 2004 ; Butler, 1994 ; Jennings & Sherwin, 2008 ; Riggs, Rosenthal, & Smith-Bonahue, 2010 ; Robinson & Ferfolja, 2001 ; Shelton & Barnes, 2016 ; Szalacha, 2004 ). Researchers have also learned that PSTs’ attitudes and motivation to support LGBTQ students can change as they learn more about issues that affect LGBTQ students in schools.

What Is the Nature and Impact of LGBTQ-Focused Interventions in Teacher Education?

One interpretation of Sears’s ( 1991 ) findings is that the more knowledgeable teachers are about sexual diversity, the less likely they are to hold negative attitudes and beliefs about LGB people. Given that respondents overwhelmingly reported having little to no exposure to homosexuality in their high school experiences or beyond, Sears’s study points to an important implication for teacher education—that is, in the service of increasing knowledge and combating homophobia, teacher education becomes an obvious site for exposure to LGBTQ topics to begin. Less obvious, however, is what counts as “effective” exposure. Keep in mind that Sears also cautioned that gaining access to adequate and accurate knowledge may lessen prospective teachers’ negative attitudes, but it neither “eliminate[s] them” (p. 55) nor guarantees that teachers will assume proactive stances. In other words, interventions that focus solely on cognitive gain (e.g., increased knowledge and awareness of LGBTQ people and issues) are unlikely to disrupt the deeply embedded nature of homophobic personal beliefs and attitudes or motivate teachers to take LGBTQ-affirming action. This was also reflected in the findings reported by Mudrey and Medina-Adams ( 2006 ).

Indeed, questions regarding what antiheterosexist, antihomophobic, and antitransphobic educational interventions should include, how they should unfold, and how sustained their impacts might be remain unsettled. Previously, that uncertainty could be attributed to a dearth of research on interventions in PST learning (Szalacha, 2004 ). Sears, for example, put it this way: “Since there are relatively few studies on the effectiveness of particular educational interventions, it is difficult to specify [the critical elements of homophobia education] with precision” ( 1997 , p. 24). Drawing on insights from his previous research, Sears ( 1997 ) called for interventions that target thought, feeling, and action while also attending carefully to the unique contexts and sociocultural backgrounds of their learners. As research on interventions in teacher education has proliferated in the 2000s, studies are increasingly reporting positive effects of LGBTQ-inclusive coursework on PSTs’ knowledge and attitudes about LGBTQ people and their sense of responsibility to address gender and sexual diversity in the classroom (e.g., Clark, 2010 ; Richardson, 2008 ; Schmidt et al., 2012 ; Swartz, 2003 ; Taylor, 2002 ). What follows are a few examples of diverse approaches to instructional interventions that teacher educators have enacted.

Athanases and Larrabee ( 2003 ) conducted one of the first studies of PSTs’ responses to instruction regarding lesbian and gay issues in schools. In a course focused on the relationship between cultural diversity and education, students read articles that addressed topics such as the challenges that LG youth face, the lived experiences of LG adults, and the challenges of being virtually outed as a teacher; watched a video about key LG figures in U.S. history, including civil rights leader Bayard Rustin; and listened to an out, gay middle school teacher who visited the class as a guest speaker. The authors found that when afforded a safe discussion space and insiders’ perspectives, through readings by LG authors and exposure to LG-identified people, most students began to wear the mantle of advocacy for LG youth by semester’s end. A small number of other students, however, met the LG content with resistance because of religious convictions. Athanases and Larrabee therefore caution that instructors seeking to teach similar content must be prepared when students express “extreme resistance” (p. 256). Resistance is an important recurring theme in the literature (e.g., Allen & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2004 ; Hermann-Wilmarth, 2007 ; McConaghy, 2004 ; Robinson & Ferfolja, 2001 , 2002 ; Staley & Leonardi, 2016 ; Thein, 2013 ; White, Oswalt, Wyatt, & Peterson, 2010 ) (see “Why Do Students Resist?”).

In the context of four different elementary and secondary teacher education courses, Elsbree and Wong ( 2007 ) explored the possibilities of using The Laramie Project , a play based on interviews held with community members of Laramie, Wyoming, after the antigay murder of Matthew Shepard, to disrupt PSTs’ homophobic attitudes and support students to develop pedagogical strategies for organizing safe schools and classrooms. In the courses under study, The Laramie Project was part of a broader focus on sexual diversity that included the following activities: reading about LGBTQ identity, watching It’s Elementary: Talking about Gay Issues in Schools (Chasnoff & Cohen, 1996 ), attending a live performance of The Laramie Project , and engaging in class discussions of how homophobia impacts schooling and teachers’ responsibilities to engage in antihomophobia work. Pre- and postsurveys assessed the play’s impact on students’ knowledge, comfort, and personal and professional attitudes about LGBTQ issues. Results indicated positive shifts in knowledge and a moderate impact on attitudes, though the authors note that “impact” does not necessarily mean that positive change occurred. In fact, one third of respondents reported that the intervention did not change their personal beliefs and attitudes about LGBTQ topics. Nearly half of the students, however, reported that the intervention did change their professional attitudes and supported them to see their educational responsibilities to support LGBTQ youth. The authors conclude that affective interventions (e.g., attending a live performance of The Laramie Project ) might be more effective in disrupting homophobia than taking a solely cognitive approach (e.g., reading and discussing LGBTQ topics in class), though they underscore the importance of both types of interventions in preparing teachers to create safe, affirming classrooms.

Taking a different approach, Sykes and Goldstein ( 2004 ) explored the pedagogical possibilities of performed ethnography, that is, the process of turning ethnographic data and texts (e.g., interview transcripts) into scripts that are performed in front of audiences, as an antihomophobia educational tool for PST preparation. The central text, Wearing the Secret Out , was a 25-minute video-recorded theatrical performance informed by life history interviews that Sykes conducted with physical education teachers who identified as lesbian, gay, and queer. The performance addressed issues such as coming out, struggle, identity, homophobic violence, and same-sex desire. In addition to watching the performance, students read a complete interview transcript with one of the teachers featured in the video and worked collaboratively to create and perform their own original compositions that drew on select excerpts from the transcripts. Sykes and Goldstein report how performed ethnography enabled students to explore their fears of engaging in antihomophobia work and their desires to protect students from homophobic harassment from a “safe(r) distance” (p. 54), because those homophobic and antihomophobic discourses were raised by characters in the play rather than by students themselves.

As queer scholars and teacher educators in this field, the authors are indebted to the legacy of scholarship that broke the silence around sexual diversity in teacher education. The work of Sears, Athanases, Larrabee, and many others was groundbreaking, and that word is used deliberately; that is, the authors recognize the risk and labor involved in breaking the silence around gender and sexual diversity in educational research, which has long been an inhospitable context. What’s more, that research clearly demonstrated that including LGBTQ content across teacher preparation coursework is a crucial first step toward strengthening teachers’ knowledge of gender and sexual diversity. And here, significant distinctions are underscored between gender and sexuality that were underemphasized in the reviewed literature. Encouragingly, that situation seems to be changing. Studies focused explicitly on the school experiences of transgender and gender-expansive youth are on the rise (e.g., Greytak, Kosciw, & Diaz, 2009 ; McGuire, Anderson, Toomey, & Russell, 2010 ; Singh, 2013 ), as are inquiries that aim to support pre- and in-service educators in learning about and affirming transgender identities in PK-12 contexts (e.g., Greytak, Kosciw, & Boesen, 2013 ; Case & Meier, 2014 ; McWilliams, 2015 ; Meyer & Pullen Sansfacon, 2014 ; Ryan, Patraw, & Bednar, 2013 ). Regarding future directions for research, more thoughtful, critical attention is suggested toward gender identity and the unique issues that transgender, gender-expansive, and nonbinary youth and educators experience.

Before exploring where future directions might lead, it is noted that as scholars the authors have learned more about the affordances and constraints of opportunities of exposure to LGBTQ topics in coursework and many are challenging inclusion as an effective approach; that is, scholars are calling on ways in which inclusion often fails to challenge heterosexuality as a normative construction and are calling for pedagogies and interventions that “mov[e] beyond inclusion” (Blackburn & Smith, 2010 ). Blackburn and Clark ( 2011 ), Martino ( 2009 ), Schieble ( 2012 ), Macgillivray and Jennings ( 2008 ), and others caution that inclusion can have unintended consequences, for example, reinforcing heterosexism and homophobia and providing a “sentimental education” (Britzman, 1995 ) that erases differences by insisting that “gay and lesbian people are just like straight people” (Blackburn, Clark, & Nemeth, p. 2). Drawing on queer theoretical perspectives, these scholars argue for “queering” (Letts, 2002 ) teacher education, that is, for enacting “queer interventions” that “unmask heteronormativity” (Martino, 2009 , p. 386) and support students to develop critical habits of mind for deconstructing binaries and questioning how heterosexuality and binary gender become normalized in everyday practice. Enacting queer interventions that disrupt novice teachers’ notions of what counts as normal and also implicate them in systems of oppression is vulnerable, emotional work that involves “resistance and risk” (Allen & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2004 ) and requires unique approaches.

What Can We Learn From the Insights, Tensions, and Dilemmas of That Research?

Some key questions have been discussed that have driven the field in the service of asking: What can we learn from the insights, puzzles, and tensions that animate the scholarly conversation as it has unfolded in the past three decades? One conclusion to be drawn is that given the deeply embedded nature of heteronormativity in the discourses, pedagogies, and everyday practices of school, the work of preparing teachers to consistently affirm gender, sexual, and family diversity is neither easy nor straightforward. It involves transgressing a discourse of silence that still hangs heavy in many schools of education as well as working to strengthen teachers’ knowledge through thoughtful, deliberate integration of LGBTQ content and queer approaches across teacher education coursework. As research has resoundingly declared, these are complex endeavors that can be challenging to negotiate. Robinson and Ferfolja ( 2001 , 2002 ), for example, write powerfully about their difficult experiences including LG content and supporting PSTs to develop critical understandings of the systemic and structural nature of social inequities. The authors note that while students demonstrate varying degrees of resistance to social justice issues raised in their courses, sexuality and LG content “always incur the greatest resistance, due to the controversy and cultural taboos surrounding non-heterosexual or minority sexualities. This is reflected in some PSTs’ attitudes, interests and willingness to participate in various topic areas” ( 2001 , p. 124). They point to students’ tendencies to separate issues of gender and sexuality from the “mechanics” of teaching and to see them not as priorities for teacher education, but as negotiable topics that do not belong in the content classroom. Robinson and Ferfolja describe this opposition as a form of resistance that poses pedagogical, professional, and personal concerns for the teacher educator.

These challenges and resistances resonate with the current authors’ experiences as teacher educators oriented toward queer-affirming practices. Because heteronormativity so often goes unchallenged in PK-12 schools, the authors have themselves struggled with the task of disrupting PSTs’ well-formed notions of what counts as normal and appropriate with respect to gender and sexuality and what counts as important and (non)negotiable in learning to teach. They also have experienced the ways in which teacher educators’ assumptions, beliefs, and practices related to the way we “do” equity and diversity in teacher preparation are shaped by heteronormativity, homophobia, transphobia, and silence. They have felt pangs of frustration from well-meaning colleagues’ repeated invitations to visit their courses during LGBTQ week and lead the discussion rather than taking on the challenge themselves. And they have been heartened by the willingness of other colleagues to puzzle their way through gender and sexual diversity as new instructional terrain. In these ways, the wisdom of their inquiries, practice, and lived experiences working with thousands of pre- and in-service teachers and teacher educators prompts them to get curious about the challenges, resistances, and emotional labor involved in disrupting and deconstructing dominant discourses that perpetuate myths, stereotypes, and oppression. Those challenges are addressed in the next section and framed as productive sites for queer interventions and scholarly inquiry. The authors foreground the important relationship between emotion and resistance in the learning process and call on queer pedagogy as a source of inspiration and possibility.

Queer Pedagogy as Possibility

From the literature already reviewed, two points are clear: teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and actions sit in a complex relationship, and changing PSTs’ personal beliefs and motivating them toward action can be elusive goals. While building teachers’ knowledge and awareness of gender and sexuality as issues can support some positive changes, research cautions that instructional interventions cannot predict whether and how teachers will take future action in classrooms and schools. This begs the question, why? And what might resistance have to do with it? In the service of digging into those questions, the voices of queer and poststructural theorists are raised who encourage educators and researchers to ask: What does learning, and un learning (Britzman, 1998 ), do to students (Luhmann, 1998 )? And what can we learn about supporting PSTs to enact affirming and disrupting practices by digging into their processes of learning? Queer perspectives are elevated as a generative tool for doing that work of excavation.

Why Do Students Resist?

With respect to the why , Kevin Kumashiro’s ( 2000 , 2001 ) writing on the role of emotional crisis in anti-oppressive education, or teaching in ways that challenge multiple forms of oppression, is a useful place to start. Kumashiro ( 2000 ) cautions against assuming that “consciousness-raising” or building knowledge around particular issues of equity will lead to action or personal transformation. From this perspective, PSTs could theoretically learn about how heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia are institutionalized in schools and be introduced to the negative consequences for LGBTQ youth, and still, as professionals in the field, they could choose not to take action that affirms gender and sexual diversity. Calling on Britzman’s ( 1998 ) argument that all learning involves un learning, Kumashiro ( 2001 ) explains it this way:

I argue that learning about oppression and unlearning one’s worldview can be upsetting and paralyzing to students…. Though paradoxical and in some ways traumatic, this condition should be expected: by teaching students that the very ways in which we think and do things can be oppressive, teachers should expect their students to get upset. (p. 44, emphasis in original)

This perspective emphasizes that education that works against oppression must disrupt what students already know and have previously taken for granted as normal. In this way, unlearning can lead to “a state of ‘crisis’ or paralysis (such as feeling emotionally upset)” (Kumashiro, 2001 , p. 38). Kumashiro argues that educators must take seriously the roles of emotional crisis and resistance in students’ processes of engaging in anti-oppressive education, because if left unattended, crisis can exacerbate resistance and preclude the possibility of change. In order to move toward a desire to take action, then, educators must support students to work through crisis. Kumashiro encourages educators to be curious about students’ resistances and to make space for the emotional upset that attends anti-oppressive education.

To put this perspective into context, an example of a queer intervention is given that was enacted by the authors as part of a study conducted in a semester-long secondary literacy methods course in which Staley and Leonardi acted as lead instructors (Staley & Leonardi, 2016 ). Across course meetings, readings, and activities, they integrated topics of gender and sexual diversity, including heteronormativity and queer-inclusive literacy practices. Initially, they were interested in how students would respond, but were struck by the ways that the curriculum put several students into crisis. Using Kumashiro’s framework to make sense of the emotional overtones of students’ responses, they learned that foregrounding gender and sexual diversity invited complex emotional responses as students both resisted and engaged with the process of unlearning previously taken-for-granted assumptions. For example, learning that school is not a safe place for all students and that teachers have been complicit in making schooling unsafe for LGBTQ youth incited strong emotional responses. Also upsetting to students was not knowing how to address LGBTQ topics and issues in spite of their motivation to do so. Analysis suggested that discomfort shaped students’ responses to the curriculum in important ways. Some students were willing to move toward discomfort (called a move to “lean in”) (Chödrön, 2009 ). Others resisted discomfort altogether. Reflecting on the findings, Staley and Leonardi wondered what might have happened if they had anticipated a crisis of learning and invited students to connect with and critically attend to their emotional responses. What if the students had been invited to lean in to discomfort along the way? How might that have supported students through moments of crisis and resistance?

In the service of digging a little deeper into the why , the authors also looked to queer pedagogy as a productive tool for examining the complex relationship between emotion, resistance, and the self. Playing with what queer pedagogy might mean, and what it might mean to queer pedagogy, Luhmann ( 1998 ) wonders, “What if queer pedagogy puts into crisis what is known and how we come to know?” (p. 147). She argues for a pedagogy that moves from “what should be learned and how to teach this knowledge” to “how we come to know and how knowledge is produced in the interaction between teacher/text and student” (p. 147). Luhmann encourages educators to ask: “What does being taught, what does knowledge do to students?” This question orients educators toward an important shift away from a focus on what is being taught and by which methods and toward “an inquiry into the conditions for understanding, or refusing, knowledge (Felman, 1987 ; Lusted, 1986 )” (p. 148). In other words, queer pedagogy is less concerned with the text or topic that anchors a lesson than with the process through which students engage and resist that text and the conditions that make those interactions possible. Central to Luhmann’s argument is consideration of what students can bear to know and what they might refuse when they refuse certain identifications (e.g., the oppressor). She says, “What is at stake in this pedagogy is the deeply social or dialogical situation of subject formation, the processes of how we make ourselves through and against others” (Luhmann, 1998, pp. 153–154).

When Does Change Become Possible?

The question of when is connected to Kumashiro’s caution that knowledge building promotes change in the individual. Kumashiro ( 2000 ) doesn’t leave us to just sit in the warning, however; he suggests that anti-oppressive education must involve self-reflexivity, which he defines as “a change of the individual” (p. 45). Engaging Britzman’s ( 1998 ) thinking, he says that “efforts to challenge oppression need to involve changing the self, rethinking who one is by seeing the Other as an ‘equal’ but on different terms” (p. 81). Consciousness-raising, knowledge-building, and self-reflection are part of the process puzzle, but, Kumashiro argues, via Felman ( 1995 ), that “teaching and learning really take place only through entering and working through crisis, since it is this process that moves a student to a different intellectual/emotional/political space” (p. 44, emphasis in original). Attending to crisis and supporting students to reflect on how they are implicated in systems of oppression is as crucial as attending to self-reflexivity and facilitating students’ critical reflections on how that knowledge bears on their sense of self. As Kumashiro contends, it is only when students are willing to “think differently” about their sense of self and “significantly chang[e] how they see themselves and who they are” (p. 45) that taking anti-oppressive action becomes possible. Therefore, in order to navigate the challenges of enacting queer interventions in teacher education, pedagogies need to be used that pay close attention to the “conditions of learning” (Luhmann, 1998 ) that our interventions create and to how those conditions expand and foreclose opportunities for students to enter into crisis and engage in self-reflexive work.

So, what might it look like to bring this perspective to bear in practice? What if, as researchers and teacher educators, we drill down and place a lens of curiosity not so much on the what of students’ attitudes, resistance, advocacy (e.g., what is the nature of students’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs?), but on the why ? Why do students resist? And, in their resistance and moments of crisis, when do they get curious? When do they “lean in” to discomfort? What’s my role in facilitating that introspective curiosity? Assuming that such an inquiry stance requires that we get curious about the conditions of learning, we should ask, as Luhmann ( 1998 ) does: What is this learning doing to students? What kinds of identifications are at stake in this process? What structures these identifications? How do identifications become possible? What prevents them, and ultimately, makes learning (im)possible? What will this information, knowledge, and conversation do to students’ senses of self? What will the knowledge ask students to reconsider about themselves and the subject(s) studied? How will students insert themselves in this discussion? What positions might they refuse? Which ones might they find desirable?

In practice, this looks like not centering questions such as: Do you think it’s appropriate to affirm queer identities in PK-12 curriculum? Rather, the questions are: What comes up for you as you consider your role in affirming LGBTQ identities in your curriculum? What is it that you are responding to? Where are your “no’s” (e.g., resistances, defenses) and “yes’s” (e.g., openness, willingness to engage)? How do you know? What do you feel? Where do those feelings come from? Where are you, personally, in this conversation? How do you see, identify, or recognize yourself? How does this conversation affect, disrupt, or support your ideas of what counts as normal? Different? Appropriate? Do you notice binaries and oppositions coming up (e.g., us/them; good/bad; oppressed/oppressor; normal/abnormal; tolerant/tolerated)? How might an inquiry into these questions bolster or add layers to Mudrey and Medina-Adams’ ( 2006 ) findings (perhaps the why of what they found) that PSTs were more knowledgeable, but that their attitudes and feelings were not reflective of this knowledge?

With respect to gender and sexual diversity, there is no doubt a relationship between on-the-ground practices of teacher educators and the long-standing fight for relevancy in the discourses of educational research and practice, broadly speaking. For this reason, this article echoes Quinn and Meiners ( 2011 ) in saying, “rather than simply proposing more ‘on-the-ground’ research of local attitudes and prejudices, we again remind readers to study up by focusing on structures, systems, and power” (p. 145). As the literature review suggests, there are many PSTs who never get the opportunity to engage with gender and sexual diversity because of programmatic and institutional silences. Gender and sexual diversity are often left out of course syllabi and texts, even those specifically focused on diversity and multicultural education. And much of what PSTs encounter in terms of diversity, as Jennings ( 2007 ) noted, “are reflections of the values and beliefs held by teacher education faculty” (p. 1266). Therefore, it is essential to continue to confront the reality that in many programs, conversations about LGBTQ people still don’t exist. In addition to studying up and challenging those institutional structures, teacher educators and researchers are encouraged to drill down—that is, to consider how students are interacting with their learning as well as the kinds of spaces being created for them to navigate learning as a messy, emotional, and personal process. No doubt, this requires that we, as teacher educators and researchers, lean in to the vulnerability of learning ourselves.

• Alexander, J. (1999). Introduction to the special issue: Queer values, beyond identity. International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies , 4 (4), 287–292.
• Allen, J. , & Hermann-Wilmarth, J. (2004). Cultural construction zones. Journal of Teacher Education , 55 (3), 214–226.
• Athanases, S. , & Larrabee, T. (2003). Toward a consistent stance in teaching for equity: Learning to advocate for lesbian- and gay-identified youth. Teacher and Teacher Education , 19 , 237–261.
• Banks, J. A. , & Banks, C. A. M. (1995). Handbook of research on multicultural education . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Banks, J. A. , & Banks, C. A. M. (2004). Handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Blackburn, M. V. (2005). Agency in borderland discourses: Engaging in gaybonics for pleasure, subversion, and retaliation. In M. L. Rasmussen , E. Rofes , & S. Talburt (Eds.), Youth and sexualities: Pleasure, subversion, and insubordination in and out of schools (pp. 177–200). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Blackburn, M. V. , & Clark, C. T. (2011). Analyzing talk in a long-term literature discussion group: Ways of operating within LGBT-inclusive and queer discourses. Reading Research Quarterly , 46 (3), 222–248.
• Blackburn, M. V. , Clark, C. T. , & Nemeth, E. A. (2015). Examining queer elements and ideologies in LGBT-themed literature: What queer literature can offer young adult readers. Journal of Literacy Research , 47 (1), 11–48.
• Blackburn, M. V. , & Donelson, R. (Eds.). (2004). Sexual identities and schooling. Theory into Practice , 43 (2), 99–167.
• Blackburn, M. V. , & Smith, J. M. (2010). Moving beyond the inclusion of LGBT‐themed literature in English language arts classrooms: Interrogating heteronormativity and exploring intersectionality. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy , 53 (8), 625–634.
• Bower, L. , & Klecka, C. (2009). (Re)considering normal: Queering social norms for parents and teachers. Teaching Education , 20 (4), 357–373.
• Britzman, D. P. (1995). Is there a queer pedagogy? Or, stop reading straight. Educational Theory , 45 (2), 151–165.
• Britzman, D. P. (1998). Lost subjects, contested objects: Toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Butler, K. L. (1994). Prospective teachers knowledge, attitudes, and behavior regarding gay men and lesbians . ERIC Document #ED379251.
• Case, K. A. , & Meier, S. C. (2014). Developing allies to transgender and gender-nonconforming youth: Training for counselors and educators. Journal of LGBT Youth , 11 (1), 62–82.
• Chasnoff, D. , & Cohen, H. (1996). It’s elementary: Talking about gay issues in school [Videotape]. San Francisco, CA: Women’s Educational Media.
• Chödrön, P. (2009). Taking the leap . Boston, MA: Shambhala.
• Clark, C. T. (2010). Preparing LGBTQ-allies and combating homophobia in a US teacher education program. Teaching and Teacher Education , 26 (3), 704–713.
• DeJean, W. (2010). Courageous conversations: Reflections on a queer life narrative model. Teacher Educator , 45 , 233–243.
• DePalma, R. , & Atkinson, E. (2010). The nature of institutional heteronormativity in primary schools and practice-based responses. Teaching and Teacher Education , 26 (8), 1669–1676.
• Dodd, S. J. (2009). LGBTQ: Protecting vulnerable subjects in all studies. In D. M. Mertens & P. E. Ginsberg (Eds.), The handbook of social research ethics (pp. 474–488). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Donelson, R. , & Rogers, T. (2004). Negotiating a research protocol for studying school-based gay and lesbian issues. Theory into Practice , 43 (2), 128–135.
• Elsbree, A. R. , & Wong, P. (2007). The Laramie Project as a homophobic disruption: How the play impacts pre-service teachers’ preparation to create anti-homophobic schools. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education , 4 (4), 97–117.
• Felman, S. (1987). Jacques Lacan and the adventure of insight: Psychoanalysis in contemporary culture . Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Felman, S. (1995). Education and crisis, or the vicissitudes of teaching. In C. Caruth (Ed.), Trauma: Explorations in memory (pp. 13–60). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• GLSEN & Harris Interactive . (2012). Playgrounds and prejudice: Elementary school climate in the United States—A survey of students and teachers . New York, NY: GLSEN.
• Gorski, P. C. , Davis, S. N. , & Reiter, A. (2013). An examination of the (in)visibility of sexual orientation, heterosexism, homophobia, and other LGBTQ concerns in US multicultural teacher education coursework. Journal of LGBT Youth , 10 (3), 224–248.
• Greytak, E. , Kosciw, J. , & Boesen, M. (2013). Educating the educator: Creating supportive school personnel through professional development. Journal of School Violence , 12 , 80–97.
• Greytak, E. A. , Kosciw, J. G. , & Boesen, M. J. (2013). Putting the “T” in “resource”: The benefits of LGBT-related school resources for transgender youth. Journal of LGBT Youth , 10 (1–2), 45–63.
• Greytak, E. A. , Kosciw, J. G. , & Diaz, E. M. (2009). Harsh realities: The experiences of transgender youth in our nation’s schools . New York, NY: GLSEN.
• Hermann-Wilmarth, J. M. (2007). Full inclusion: Understanding the role of gay and lesbian texts and films in teacher education classrooms. Language Arts , 84 (4), 347–356.
• Hermann-Wilmarth, J. M. , & Bills, P. (2010). Identity shifts: Queering teacher education research. Teacher Educator , 45 , 257–272.
• Human Rights Watch . (2001). Hatred in the hallways: Violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students in U.S. schools . New York, NY: Human Rights Watch.
• Jennings, T. (2007). Addressing diversity in US teacher preparation programs: A survey of elementary and secondary programs’ priorities and challenges from across the United States of America. Teaching and Teacher Education , 23 , 1258–1271.
• Jennings, T. , & Macgillivray, I. K. (2011). A content analysis of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender topics in multicultural education textbooks. Teaching Education , 22 (1), 39–62.
• Jennings, T. , & Sherwin, G. (2008). Sexual orientation topics in elementary teacher preparation programs in the USA. Teaching Education , 19 (4), 261–278.
• Kavanagh, S. S. (2016). From contagious to resilient and beyond: A periodization of four decades of educational research on LGBTQ issues. International Journal of Multicultural Education , 18 (3), 95–113.
• Kissen, R. M. (Ed.). (2002). Getting ready for Benjamin: Preparing teachers for sexual diversity in the classroom . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Kosciw, J. , Greytak, E. , Giga, N. , Villenas, C. , & Danischewski, D. (2016). The 2015 National School Climate Survey: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth in our nation’s schools . New York, NY: GLSEN.
• Kumashiro, K. K. (2000). Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education. Review of Educational Research , 70 (1), 25–53.
• Kumashiro, K. K. (2001). “Posts” perspectives on anti-oppressive education in social studies, English, mathematics, and science classrooms. Educational Researcher , 30 (3), 3–12.
• Letts, W. (2002). Revisioning multiculturalism in teacher education: Isn’t it queer. In R. M. Kissen (Ed.), Getting ready for Benjamin: Preparing teachers for sexual diversity in the classroom (pp. 119–131). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Luhmann, S. (1998). Queering/querying pedagogy? Or, pedagogy is a pretty queer thing. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Queer theory in education (pp. 141–155). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Lusted, D. (1986). Why pedagogy? Screen , 27 (5), 2–14.
• Macgillivray, I. K. , & Jennings, T. (2008). A content analysis exploring lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender topics in foundations of education textbooks. Journal of Teacher Education , 59 (2), 170–188.
• Maney, D. , & Cain, R. (1997). Pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward gay and lesbian parenting. Journal of School Health , 67 (6), 236–241.
• Martino, W. (2009). Literacy issues and GLBTQ youth. In L. Christenbury , R. Bomer , & P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 386–399). New York, NY: Guildford Press
• McConaghy, C. (2004). On cartographies of anti-homophobia in teacher education (and the crisis of witnessing rural student teacher refusals). Teaching Education , 15 (1), 63–79.
• McGuire, J. K. , Anderson, C. R. , Toomey, R. B. , & Russell, S. T. (2010). School climate for transgender youth: A mixed method investigation of student experiences and school responses. Journal of Youth and Adolescence , 39 (10), 1175–1188.
• McWilliams, J. M. (2015). Trans* literacies: Designing for gender fluency and transmedia literacy in the elementary classroom (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University.
• Meyer, E. J. (2007). But I’m not gay: What straight teachers need to know about queer theory. In N. Rodriguez & W. Pinar (Eds.), Queering straight teachers (pp. 15–32). New York: Lang.
• Meyer, E. J. (2008). Gendered harassment in secondary schools: Understanding teachers’ (non) interventions. Gender and Education , 20 (6), 555–570.
• Meyer, E. J. , & Pullen Sansfacon, A. (2014). Supporting transgender and gender creative youth . New York, NY: Lang.
• Mudrey, R. , & Medina-Adams, A. (2006). Attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of pre-service teachers regarding the educational isolation of sexual minority youth. Journal of Homosexuality , 51 (4), 63–90.
• National Council of Teachers of English . (2007, December 1). Resolution on strengthening teacher knowledge of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues . Urbana, IL: NCTE.
• Payne, E. , & Smith, M. (2011): The reduction of stigma in schools: A new professional development model for empowering educators to support LGBTQ students, Journal of LGBT Youth , 8 (2), 174–200.
• Quinn, T. , & Meiners, E. R. (2011). Teacher education, struggles for social justice, and the historical erasure of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer lives. In A. Ball & C. Tyson (Eds.), Studying diversity in teacher education (pp. 135–151). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Rasmussen, M. L. (2005a). Becoming subjects: Sexualities and secondary schooling . Oxford, U.K.: Routledge.
• Rasmussen, M. (2005b). Safety and subversion: The production of sexualities and genders in school spaces. In M. L. Rasmussen , E. Rofes , & S. Talburt (Eds.), Youth and sexualities: Pleasure, subversion, and insubordination in and out of schools (pp. 131–152). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Renn, K. A. (2010). LGBT and queer research in higher education: The state and status of the field. Educational Researcher , 39 (2), 132–141.
• Richardson, E. M. (2008). Using a film to challenge heteronormativity: South African teachers “get real” in working with LGB youth. Journal of LGBT Youth , 5 (2), 63–72.
• Riggs, A. , Rosenthal, A. , & Smith-Bonahue, T. (2010). The impact of a combined cognitive-affective intervention on pre-service teachers’ attitudes, knowledge, and anticipated professional behaviors regarding homosexuality and gay and lesbian issues. Teaching and Teacher Education , 27 , 201–209.
• Robinson, K. , & Ferfolja, T. (2001). “What are we doing this for?” Dealing with lesbian and gay issues in teacher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education , 22 (1), 121–134.
• Robinson, K. , & Ferfolja, T. (2002). A reflection of resistance discourses of heterosexism and homophobia in teacher training classrooms. In K. Robinson , J. Irwin , & T. Ferfolja (Eds.), From here to diversity: The social impact of lesbian and gay issues in education in Australia and New Zealand (pp. 55–64). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.
• Rofes, E. (2005a). A radical rethinking of sexuality & schooling: Status quo or status queer? Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Rofes, E. (2005b). Martyr-target-victim: Interrogating narratives of persecution and suffering among queer youth. In M. L. Rasmussen , E. Rofes , & S. Talburt (Eds.), Youth and sexualities: Pleasure, subversion, and insubordination in and out of schools (pp. 41–62). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Ryan, C. L. , Patraw, J. M. , & Bednar, M. (2013). Discussing princess boys and pregnant men: Teaching about gender diversity and transgender experiences within an elementary school curriculum. Journal of LGBT Youth , 10 (1–2), 83–105.
• Schieble, M. (2012). A critical discourse analysis of teachers’ views on LGBT literature. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education , 33 (2), 207–222.
• Schmidt, S. J. , Chang, S. P. , Carolan-Silva, A. , Lockhart, J. , & Anagnostopoulos, D. (2012). Recognition, responsibility, and risk: Pre-service teachers’ framing and reframing of lesbian, gay, and bisexual social justice issues. Teaching and Teacher Education , 28 (8), 1175–1184.
• Schniedewind, N. , & Cathers, K. (2003). Becoming allies for each other: An inclusive approach for confronting heterosexism in school, Equity & Excellence in Education , 36 (2), 184–193.
• Sears, J. T. (1991). Educators, homosexuality, and homosexual students: Are personal feelings related to professional beliefs? Journal of Homosexuality , 22 , 29–79.
• Sears, J. T. (1997). Thinking critically/intervening effectively about heterosexism and homophobia: A twenty-five year research retrospective. In J. Sears & W. Williams (Eds.), Overcoming heterosexism and homophobia: Strategies that work (pp. 13–48). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
• Shelton, S. A. , & Barnes, M. E. (2016). “Racism just isn’t an issue anymore”: Preservice teachers’ resistances to the intersections of sexuality and race. Teaching and Teacher Education , 55 , 165–174.
• Sherwin, G. , & Jennings, T. (2006). Feared, forgotten, or forbidden: Sexual orientation topics in secondary teacher preparation programs in the USA. Teaching Education , 17 (3), 207–223.
• Singh, A. A. (2013). Transgender youth of color and resilience: Negotiating oppression and finding support. Sex Roles , 68 (11–12), 690–702.
• Staley, S. , & Leonardi, B. (2016). Leaning in to discomfort: Preparing preservice teachers
• for gender and sexual diversity. Research in the Teaching of English , 51 (2), 209–229.
• Swartz, P. C. (2003). It’s elementary in Appalachia: Helping prospective teachers and their students understand sexuality and gender. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education , 1 (1), 51–71.
• Sykes, H. , & Goldstein, T. (2004). From performed to performing ethnography: Translating life history research into anti‐homophobia curriculum for a teacher education program. Teaching Education , 15 (1), 41–61.
• Szalacha, L. A. (2004). Educating teachers on LGBTQ issues: A review of research and program evaluations. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education , 1 (4), 67–79.
• Talburt, S. (2005). Intelligibility and narrating queer youth. In M. L. Rasmussen , E. Rofes , & S. Talburt (Eds.), Youth and sexualities: Pleasure, subversion, and insubordination in and out of schools (pp. 17–40). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Taylor, C. (2002). Beyond empathy: Confronting homophobia in critical education courses. Journal of Lesbian Studies , 6 (3–4), 219–234.
• Thein, A. H. (2013). Language arts teachers’ resistance to teaching LGBT literature and issues. Language Arts , 90 (3), 169–180.
• Vavrus, M. (2009). Sexuality, schooling, and teacher identity formation: A critical pedagogy for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education , 25 , 383–390.
• Warner, M. (1993). Preface. In M. Warner (Ed.), Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory (pp. vi–vii). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• White, C. S. , Oswalt, S. B. , Wyatt, T. J. , & Peterson, F. L. (2010). Out on the playing field: Providing quality physical education and recreational opportunities for lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. Physical Educator , 67 (1), 46.
• Wickens, C. M. , & Sandlin, J. A. (2010). Homophobia and heterosexism in a college of education: A culture of fear, a culture of silence. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education , 23 (6), 651–670.
• Wimberly, G. (2015). Introduction and overview. In G. Wimberly (Ed.), LGBTQ issues in education: Advancing a research agenda (pp. 1–22). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Retrieved from http://www.aera.net/Education-Research/Issues-and-Initiatives/LGBTQ-Issues-in-Education .

1. Visit www.GLSEN.org to read the most recent report, published in 2016.

Related Articles

• Gender, Sexuality and Youth in Global Context

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Education. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 23 April 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|162.248.224.4]
• 162.248.224.4

Character limit 500 /500

• Dissertation
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Book Report/Review
• Research Proposal
• Math Problems
• Proofreading
• Movie Review
• Cover Letter Writing
• Personal Statement
• Nursing Paper
• Argumentative Essay
• Research Paper
• Discussion Board Post

TOP 100 Gender Equality Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Need ideas for argumentative essay on gender inequality? We’ve got a bunch!

… But let’s start off with a brief intro.

What is gender equality?

Equality between the sexes is a huge part of basic human rights. It means that men and women have the same opportunities to fulfil their potential in all spheres of life.

Today, we still face inequality issues as there is a persistent gap in access to opportunities for men and women.

Women have less access to decision-making and higher education. They constantly face obstacles at the workplace and have greater safety risks. Maintaining equal rights for both sexes is critical for meeting a wide range of goals in global development.

Inequality between the sexes is an interesting area to study so high school, college, and university students are often assigned to write essays on gender topics.

In this article, we are going to discuss the key peculiarities of gender equality essay. Besides, we have created a list of the best essay topic ideas.

What is the specifics of gender equality essay?

Equality and inequality between the sexes are important historical and current social issues which impact the way students and their families live. They are common topics for college papers in psychology, sociology, gender studies.

When writing an essay on equality between the sexes, you need to argue for a strong point of view and support your argument with relevant evidence gathered from multiple sources.

But first, you’d need to choose a good topic which is neither too broad nor too narrow to research.

Research is crucial for the success of your essay because you should develop a strong argument based on an in-depth study of various scholarly sources.

Equality between sexes is a complex problem. You have to consider different aspects and controversial points of view on specific issues, show your ability to think critically, develop a strong thesis statement, and build a logical argument, which can make a great impression on your audience.

If you are looking for interesting gender equality essay topics, here you will find a great list of 100 topic ideas for writing essays and research papers on gender issues in contemporary society.

Should you find that some topics are too broad, feel free to narrow them down.

Powerful gender equality essay topics

Here are the top 25 hottest topics for your argumentative opinion paper on gender issues.

Whether you are searching for original creative ideas for gender equality in sports essay or need inspiration for gender equality in education essay, we’ve got you covered.

Use imagination and creativity to demonstrate your approach.

• Analyze gender-based violence in different countries
• Compare wage gap between the sexes in different countries
• Explain the purpose of gender mainstreaming
• Implications of sex differences in the human brain
• How can we teach boys and girls that they have equal rights?
• Discuss gender-neutral management practices
• Promotion of equal opportunities for men and women in sports
• What does it mean to be transgender?
• Discuss the empowerment of women
• Why is gender-blindness a problem for women?
• Why are girls at greater risk of sexual violence and exploitation?
• Women as victims of human trafficking
• Analyze the glass ceiling in management
• Impact of ideology in determining relations between sexes
• Obstacles that prevent girls from getting quality education in African countries
• Why are so few women in STEM?
• Major challenges women face at the workplace
• How do women in sport fight for equality?
• Women, sports, and media institutions
• Contribution of women in the development of the world economy
• Role of gender diversity in innovation and scientific discovery
• What can be done to make cities safer for women and girls?
• International trends in women’s empowerment
• Role of schools in teaching children behaviours considered appropriate for their sex
• Feminism on social relations uniting women and men as groups

Gender roles essay topics

We can measure the equality of men and women by looking at how both sexes are represented in a range of different roles. You don’t have to do extensive and tiresome research to come up with gender roles essay topics, as we have already done it for you.

Have a look at this short list of top-notch topic ideas .

• Are paternity and maternity leaves equally important for babies?
• Imagine women-dominated society and describe it
• Sex roles in contemporary western societies
• Compare theories of gender development
• Adoption of sex-role stereotyped behaviours
• What steps should be taken to achieve gender-parity in parenting?
• What is gender identity?
• Emotional differences between men and women
• Issues modern feminism faces
• Sexual orientation and gender identity
• Benefits of investing in girls’ education
• Patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes in family relationships
• Toys and games of girls and boys
• Roles of men and women in politics
• Compare career opportunities for both sexes in the military
• Women in the US military
• Academic careers and sex equity
• Should men play larger roles in childcare?
• Impact of an ageing population on women’s economic welfare
• Historical determinants of contemporary differences in sex roles
• Gender-related issues in gaming
• Culture and sex-role stereotypes in advertisements
• What are feminine traits?
• Sex role theory in sociology
• Causes of sex differences and similarities in behaviour

Gender inequality research paper topics

Examples of inequality can be found in the everyday life of different women in many countries across the globe. Our gender inequality research paper topics are devoted to different issues that display discrimination of women throughout the world.

Choose any topic you like, research it, brainstorm ideas, and create a detailed gender inequality essay outline before you start working on your first draft.

Start off with making a debatable thesis, then write an engaging introduction, convincing main body, and strong conclusion for gender inequality essay .

• Aspects of sex discrimination
• Main indications of inequality between the sexes
• Causes of sex discrimination
• Inferior role of women in the relationships
• Sex differences in education
• Can education solve issues of inequality between the sexes?
• Impact of discrimination on early childhood development
• Why do women have limited professional opportunities in sports?
• Gender discrimination in sports
• Lack of women having leadership roles
• Inequality between the sexes in work-family balance
• Top factors that impact inequality at a workplace
• What can governments do to close the gender gap at work?
• Sex discrimination in human resource processes and practices
• Gender inequality in work organizations
• Factors causing inequality between men and women in developing countries
• Work-home conflict as a symptom of inequality between men and women
• Why are mothers less wealthy than women without children?
• Forms of sex discrimination in a contemporary society
• Sex discrimination in the classroom
• Justification of inequality in American history
• Origins of sex discrimination
• Motherhood and segregation in labour markets
• Sex discrimination in marriage
• Can technology reduce sex discrimination?

Most controversial gender topics

Need a good controversial topic for gender stereotypes essay? Here are some popular debatable topics concerning various gender problems people face nowadays.

They are discussed in scientific studies, newspaper articles, and social media posts. If you choose any of them, you will need to perform in-depth research to prepare an impressive piece of writing.

• How do gender misconceptions impact behaviour?
• Most common outdated sex-role stereotypes
• How does gay marriage influence straight marriage?
• Explain the role of sexuality in sex-role stereotyping
• Role of media in breaking sex-role stereotypes
• Discuss the dual approach to equality between men and women
• Are women better than men or are they equal?
• Sex-role stereotypes at a workplace
• Racial variations in gender-related attitudes
• Role of feminism in creating the alternative culture for women
• Feminism and transgender theory
• Gender stereotypes in science and education
• Are sex roles important for society?
• Future of gender norms
• How can we make a better world for women?
• Are men the weaker sex?
• Beauty pageants and women’s empowerment
• Are women better communicators?
• What are the origins of sexual orientation?
• Should prostitution be legal?
• Pros and cons of being a feminist
• Advantages and disadvantages of being a woman
• Can movies defy gender stereotypes?
• Sexuality and politics

Feel free to use these powerful topic ideas for writing a good college-level gender equality essay or as a starting point for your study.

No time to do decent research and write your top-notch paper? No big deal! Choose any topic from our list and let a pro write the essay for you!

An acid rain research paper free sample

Writing a Good Tornado Research Paper

Pro tips on how to write money cant buy happiness essay.

Thesis Helpers

Find the best tips and advice to improve your writing. Or, have a top expert write your paper.

131 Gender Research Topics To Attain Top Grades

Are you looking for a gender topic to use for your research project, research proposal, thesis, or dissertation? You are definitely at the right place. We have 131 diverse gender research topics that will lead you to a point of research to get to the bottom of a certain phenomenon.

As students in college, you need to provide high-quality assignment output to increase the possibility of getting top grades.

These topics can help you dive more into research and even provide a bridge for your career. While doing research you might meet different stakeholders that can help you get a better understanding. You can also get thesis help from us online.

What Is Gender?

Gender is portrayed by the socially constructed characteristics found in males and females. Gender defines the behaviors, norms, and gender roles of males and females. However, it differs in certain societies. However, gender can lead to specific social and economic inequalities in society.

The other popularly confusing phenomenon is sex which refers to the unique biological and psychological characteristics of males, females, and intersex persons. Hugely, gender influences people’s experiences and access to different social amenities.

If gender issues interest you, you can consider doing gender development and gender studies courses or units in college. You will get a better understanding of the relationships between one’s gender and society.

The Different Parts Of A Thesis

A thesis has three major parts which include the introduction, body, and last part.

• Introductory Part The thesis introductory party should entail the cover page, description page, table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables. This may differ based on the kind of thesis that you are doing.
• Body The body content can vary based on the topic of gender that you are doing. If you are doing a research report topic; it should contain the introduction of the topic, theoretical basis, project implementation, research results, and discussion. If you are doing a development project report the body should contain the introduction, objectives, project background, theoretical basis, project implementation, and discussion.
• The last part This part should contain a list of references and appendices.

Gender Research Topics

Are you searching for ideal topics on gender? You can consider using any of these for your research paper, project, or assignment. You can’t miss an ideal one to use for your paper:

• General impacts of globalization on experiences around gender.
• Dynamics found in gender development.
• Effects of discrimination based on gender at jobs and careers.
• Promotion of gender equality in the world in the 21 st
• The known social construction of gender roles.
• Discuss whether gender is natural or acquired from the surrounding.
• Is gender a role, biological sex, or culturally acquired?
• How does gender impact social media interactions?
• Evaluate the changing gender roles in families.
• How are gender roles portrayed in cartoons?
• Effects of gender biases in the workplace.

Topics About Gender

Do different topics about gender interest you? Then consider any of these for your research project, research paper, proposal, and much more:

• The best modes to use to teach students about gender equality.
• Evaluate women’s empowerment in society.
• Common challenges faced by women in the workplace.
• Classification of gender dysphoria.
• Evaluate sex, gender, and inequalities
• Evaluate gender stereotypes and misunderstandings.
• Importance of mass media in solving gender issues.
• How does society portray gender and sexuality?
• Influence of gender stereotypes in individuals.

Gender Topics

Equality should be achieved in schools, workplaces, and social places. We are social beings and need to find a way to boost equality in society to prevent anyone from feeling left out:

• Gender disparity in science.
• Evolution of discrimination in society in the previous centuries.
• Similarities between racism and gender inequality.
• Social roles men and women.
• Gender roles in the current society.
• Why is discrimination dominant in certain places?
• How has LGBT evolved?
• The rights of single mothers in society?
• Gender role definition.
• The advantages of feminism in the growth of society.

Gender-Related Topics

Here are any gender-related topics which you can use for your thesis, dissertation, proposal, or project. If you have an interest in the field, what are you waiting for?

• The relation between culture and body self-image.
• Forms of gender violence in society.
• Gender role in medicine and science.
• Role of women in the progress of the world economy.
• The possibility of reaching gender equality in modern society.
• The kind of stereotypical depictions of women in the media.
• Role of women on Earth.
• How does religion diminish male roles in society?
• Division of labor for different genders in the workplace.
• Does gender influence income inequality?

Gender Studies Research Topics

Gender studies courses and the unit have gained popularity in different universities. The world is growing with each passing day, and it is important to understand how different genders interact in different institutions:

• The reality of the gender pay gap in the current society.
• Relation between culture and gender stereotypes.
• The root of gender stereotypes.
• Gender stereotypes are found on TV.
• How does gender inequality affect kids’ upbringing?
• Gender barriers faced by women in educational establishments.
• Causes of gender-based violence in the world.
• Family issues are caused by the gender disparity globally.
• The attitudes towards gays and lesbians.
• The Importance of maternal and paternal leaves for the newborn baby.

Gender Inequality Research Paper Topics

The world should provide a safe space for everyone. Therefore, you can use these gender inequality research paper topics to dig deeper into the kind of inequalities people go through:

• Gender concepts integrated into Artificial Intelligence.
• Gender diversity roles in scientific discovery.
• Major causes of gender imbalance.
• Relation between sports, women, and media institutions.
• The advantages and disadvantages of being a feminist.
• Importance of parents’ investment in girls’ education.
• Factors that cause inequality in the workplace.
• How gender misconceptions affect behavior.
• Steps that can be taken by parents to achieve gender parity.

Sociology Research Topics On Gender

Sociology entails the study of social interactions. If that interests you then these sociology research topics on gender will do the trick:

• The genderized occupations in society.
• Gender stereotypes in different regions.
• How are men and women treated differently in law?
• The known gender roles in the family.
• Women’s rights history in different countries.
• Advantages and disadvantages of gender identification in society.
• Mental perception of gender in society.
• Legalization of LGBT in families.
• How does gender studies impact self-esteem?
• The origin and dangers of feminism.

Gender Topics For Research

Gender equality, and achievement will play a huge role in improving productivity in the workplace, school, and social places. Advocating for gender equality for both men and women is crucial:

• Why are girls more likely to fall victim to sexual exploitation?
• Key obstacles that prevent girls from accessing quality education.
• Methods that can be used to promote equal opportunities for women and men in society.
• Impact of gender diversity in scientific innovations.
• Common gender-neutral management practices.
• The contrast of the wage gap between both genders.
• Evaluate gender roles in society.
• Can men fight for their rights as feminists do?
• Evaluate gender discrimination and promotion over time.
• Can education help solve inequality issues?

Gender Issues Topics For Research Paper

What resources do you use for research? You can search on the internet, and use scholarly articles, documentaries, books, and PDFs to get the information that you need:

• Evaluate work-home conflict as a result of gender inequality.
• Factors influencing inequality in developing countries.
• Best way to address gender-based issues at the workplace.
• Relation between gender and leadership in education.
• Bullying issues in education based on gender.
• A social perspective on gender issues and sexuality.
• Best modes of addressing gender equality.
• Relation between globalization, liberalization, and gender equality.
• Major gender issues in international relations.
• How does gender influence the recruitment of individuals in the workplace?

Best Gender Research Paper Topics

Which gender issues have you encountered in society? These are some other topics that can bring you into the limelight. Attaining gender equality in society is important:

• Scarcity of water and effect on gender inequality.
• Unequal division of economic growth in society.
• Factors that lead to gender inequality in the workplace.
• Gender inequality in retirement and employment.
• Relation between poverty and gender.
• Gender inequalities that lead to women’s rights movements.
• Gender stereotypes issue and contribute to gender inequality.
• Effects of gender inequality in economic development.
• Dire consequences of gender inequality.
• The importance of women fighting for gender equality.

Gender Research Paper Topics

You can use any of these gender research paper topics to make your proposal, project, thesis, or dissertation, which will help to make your paper really good. But if this whole writing process is difficult for you, you can find dissertation writers for hire .

• Manifestation of gender inequality in society.
• From your perspective is it possible to fully achieve gender equality?
• Future outcomes of the present gender inequality.
• How does gender blindness impact gender inequality?
• Economic aftermaths of gender inequality.
• Relation between gender equality and politics.
• Evaluate gender inequality from a psychological perspective.
• Best modes to tackle gender inequality at home.
• How is gender inequality portrayed in sports?
• Should women and men perform specific roles?

Women And Gender Studies Research Topics

When it comes to gender issues, women are the most affected. Therefore, there is a need to balance the issue so that both men and women can share the same rights:

• Women’s views on long-existing gender stereotypes.
• How are gender roles portrayed in movies, news, and TV shows?
• Gender stereotypes in children
• Evaluate gender as portrayed in literature
• Gender mainstreaming in institutions.
• Gender role effects on childhood development.
• How are gender stereotypes developed in families?
• Parents’ gender roles and children’s aspirations.
• Emotional perception of gender inequality.
• The disparity between gender stereotypes in the Eastern and Western culture

Research Topics On Gender Inequality

If you are planning to do a research paper on gender. These are the perfect topics to start with. You can find data for different topics easily on the internet:

• Gender stereotypes in athletic management.
• Effect of globalization on gender norms and experiences.
• Feminization and gender issues in education
• Relation between gender equality and women’s rights.
• The global perception of female leadership and gender equity.
• The effects of gender discrimination in social media and how it affects individuals.
• Transgender and gender non-conforming in children.
• Race and Gender public relations.
• Gender socialization and ageism.
• Gender differences in financial knowledge acquisition.

Get The Best Thesis Paper Help

Do you need professional thesis paper help? The company Name is here for you. Not only will you get thesis writing help but also editing help. We have the best-rated expert writers that work toward doing the best research at an affordable price.

Our packages are cheap to ensure you don’t feel too much pressure as a student. Just consult us online and get help on the various gender roles topics. Your grades will shoot up, and the professor will be pleased with your work. So, what are you waiting for?

Make PhD experience your own

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Gender stereotypes in schools impact on girls and boys with mental health difficulties, study finds

Gender stereotypes mean that girls can be celebrated for their emotional openness and maturity in school, while boys are seen as likely to mask their emotional distress through silence or disruptive behaviours.

Children and teachers who took part in the study said they feared the mental health needs of boys might be missed at school, which makes them an 'at risk' group.

Researchers have warned of the negative impacts on girls where the manifestation of emotional distress such as crying or self-harm could become "feminised and diminished," so taken less seriously.

They have called for increased awareness of the role of gender in mental health services offered in schools and resultant inequalities.

The study was carried out by Lauren Stentiford, George Koutsouris, Tricia Nash and Alexandra Allan from the School of Education at the University of Exeter. They interviewed pupils at two secondary schools in England to ask them: 'Do you think that girls and boys experience mental health in the same way?'

One school was a mixed grammar school in a predominantly white, middle-class rural area and another was a mixed comprehensive school in a predominantly white, working-class urban area. The research took place in autumn 2022.

Researchers spoke to 34 students aged between 12 and 17. Seventeen students identified as female, 12 as male, and 5 as gender diverse. They also interviewed 18 members of staff, including a headteacher, school counsellor, SENCO, and classroom teacher.

The majority -- 43 out of 52 -- felt girls and boys experienced mental health in different ways because of stereotypes that girls are open about their emotions, but boys will hide them.

One pupil, Willow, said: "Girls are more inclined I feel to talk to each other about [mental health] because we're not told to repress our emotions." Another, Kayla, said: "Boys just don't, they barely tell anyone anything that they don't want to talk about because they feel like they'll be looked at and be told the phrase 'man up' or 'boys don't cry."

The phrase 'man up' was referenced multiple times by different staff members and students in both schools.

Participants spoke of persistent and troublesome expectations that boys should not show their emotions.

Dr Stentiford said: "There was a perception that girls are at an advantage over boys in receiving mental health support.

"Students and staff members tended to position girls as above boys in the hierarchy for mental health support because of their perceived emotional openness. Girls were seen as being more emotionally mature than boys and would actively look for help when they needed it.

"There was also evidence of participants understanding emotional distress as manifesting itself differently in girls and boys in school, with girls more likely to cry or withdraw, and boys more likely to engage in off-task or disruptive behaviours such as 'messing around' in class.

"The implications were that girls are seen as more likely to be identified quickly as in need of mental health support, whereas boys could be 'missed' because their disruptive behaviours are misinterpreted. Both girls and boys therefore remain 'trapped' in unhelpful gender stereotypes around mental health.

"The research suggests there is a new and emerging form of gender inequality, set against the context of a perceived growing mental health 'crisis' amongst young people.

"There are dangers around devaluing girls' wellbeing if 'emotional' girls are seen as unfairly advantaged and taking up time and support for mental health difficulties at the expense of boys, who are seen as particularly 'at risk' and a hidden problem."

• Gender Difference
• Child Psychology
• Mental Health
• Child Development
• Educational Policy
• Poverty and Learning
• STEM Education
• Public Health
• Emotional detachment
• Limbic system
• Intellectual giftedness
• Mental illness
• Social psychology

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Exeter . Original written by Kerra Maddern. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Lauren Stentiford, George Koutsouris, Tricia Nash, Alexandra Allan. Mental health and gender discourses in school: 'Emotional' girls and boys 'at risk' . Educational Review , 2024; 1 DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2024.2306947

Cite This Page :

Explore More

• This Alloy Is Kinky
• Giant Galactic Explosion: Galaxy Pollution
• Flare Erupting Around a Black Hole
• Two Species Interbreeding Created New Butterfly
• Warming Antarctic Deep-Sea and Sea Level Rise
• Octopus Inspires New Suction Mechanism for ...
• Cities Sinking: Urban Populations at Risk
• Puzzle Solved About Ancient Galaxy
• How 3D Printers Can Give Robots a Soft Touch
• Combo of Multiple Health Stressors Harming Bees

Trending Topics

Strange & offbeat.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Research: How to Close the Gender Gap in Startup Financing

• Malin Malmström,
• Barbara Burkhard,
• Charlotta Sirén,
• Dean Shepherd,
• Joakim Wincent

Three ways policymakers, financiers, and other stakeholders can mitigate gender bias in entrepreneurial funding.

A global analysis of previous research over the last three decades shows that women entrepreneurs face a higher rate of business loan denials and increased interest rates in loan decisions made by commercial bankers. Interestingly, the data also reveals that the formal and informal standing of women in a particular society can provide clues to some of the true hurdles to positive change. This article reviews these hurdles, and offers three recommendations for change.

Gender disparities persist in entrepreneurship and statistics reveal the severity of the issue. Globally, only one in three businesses is owned by women . In 2019, the share of startups with at least one female founding member was a mere 20% .

• MM Malin Malmström is a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Luleå University of Technology, and a director of the research center Sustainable Finance Lab in Sweden.
• BB Barbara Burkhard is a postdoctoral researcher of entrepreneurship at the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St.Gallen.
• CS Charlotta Sirén is an associate professor of management at the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St.Gallen.
• DS Dean Shepherd is a professor of entrepreneurship, management, and organization at The Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame.
• JW Joakim Wincent is a professor of entrepreneurship and management at the Hanken School of Economics and the Global Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of St.Gallen.

Partner Center

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Partisan divides over K-12 education in 8 charts

K-12 education is shaping up to be a key issue in the 2024 election cycle. Several prominent Republican leaders, including GOP presidential candidates, have sought to limit discussion of gender identity and race in schools , while the Biden administration has called for expanded protections for transgender students . The coronavirus pandemic also brought out partisan divides on many issues related to K-12 schools .

Today, the public is sharply divided along partisan lines on topics ranging from what should be taught in schools to how much influence parents should have over the curriculum. Here are eight charts that highlight partisan differences over K-12 education, based on recent surveys by Pew Research Center and external data.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to provide a snapshot of partisan divides in K-12 education in the run-up to the 2024 election. The analysis is based on data from various Center surveys and analyses conducted from 2021 to 2023, as well as survey data from Education Next, a research journal about education policy. Links to the methodology and questions for each survey or analysis can be found in the text of this analysis.

Most Democrats say K-12 schools are having a positive effect on the country , but a majority of Republicans say schools are having a negative effect, according to a Pew Research Center survey from October 2022. About seven-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (72%) said K-12 public schools were having a positive effect on the way things were going in the United States. About six-in-ten Republicans and GOP leaners (61%) said K-12 schools were having a negative effect.

About six-in-ten Democrats (62%) have a favorable opinion of the U.S. Department of Education , while a similar share of Republicans (65%) see it negatively, according to a March 2023 survey by the Center. Democrats and Republicans were more divided over the Department of Education than most of the other 15 federal departments and agencies the Center asked about.

In May 2023, after the survey was conducted, Republican lawmakers scrutinized the Department of Education’s priorities during a House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing. The lawmakers pressed U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on topics including transgender students’ participation in sports and how race-related concepts are taught in schools, while Democratic lawmakers focused on school shootings.

Partisan opinions of K-12 principals have become more divided. In a December 2021 Center survey, about three-quarters of Democrats (76%) expressed a great deal or fair amount of confidence in K-12 principals to act in the best interests of the public. A much smaller share of Republicans (52%) said the same. And nearly half of Republicans (47%) had not too much or no confidence at all in principals, compared with about a quarter of Democrats (24%).

This divide grew between April 2020 and December 2021. While confidence in K-12 principals declined significantly among people in both parties during that span, it fell by 27 percentage points among Republicans, compared with an 11-point decline among Democrats.

Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to say teachers’ unions are having a positive effect on schools. In a May 2022 survey by Education Next , 60% of Democrats said this, compared with 22% of Republicans. Meanwhile, 53% of Republicans and 17% of Democrats said that teachers’ unions were having a negative effect on schools. (In this survey, too, Democrats and Republicans include independents who lean toward each party.)

The 38-point difference between Democrats and Republicans on this question was the widest since Education Next first asked it in 2013. However, the gap has exceeded 30 points in four of the last five years for which data is available.

Republican and Democratic parents differ over how much influence they think governments, school boards and others should have on what K-12 schools teach. About half of Republican parents of K-12 students (52%) said in a fall 2022 Center survey that the federal government has too much influence on what their local public schools are teaching, compared with two-in-ten Democratic parents. Republican K-12 parents were also significantly more likely than their Democratic counterparts to say their state government (41% vs. 28%) and their local school board (30% vs. 17%) have too much influence.

On the other hand, more than four-in-ten Republican parents (44%) said parents themselves don’t have enough influence on what their local K-12 schools teach, compared with roughly a quarter of Democratic parents (23%). A larger share of Democratic parents – about a third (35%) – said teachers don’t have enough influence on what their local schools teach, compared with a quarter of Republican parents who held this view.

Republican and Democratic parents don’t agree on what their children should learn in school about certain topics. Take slavery, for example: While about nine-in-ten parents of K-12 students overall agreed in the fall 2022 survey that their children should learn about it in school, they differed by party over the specifics. About two-thirds of Republican K-12 parents said they would prefer that their children learn that slavery is part of American history but does not affect the position of Black people in American society today. On the other hand, 70% of Democratic parents said they would prefer for their children to learn that the legacy of slavery still affects the position of Black people in American society today.

Parents are also divided along partisan lines on the topics of gender identity, sex education and America’s position relative to other countries. Notably, 46% of Republican K-12 parents said their children should not learn about gender identity at all in school, compared with 28% of Democratic parents. Those shares were much larger than the shares of Republican and Democratic parents who said that their children should not learn about the other two topics in school.

Many Republican parents see a place for religion in public schools , whereas a majority of Democratic parents do not. About six-in-ten Republican parents of K-12 students (59%) said in the same survey that public school teachers should be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers, including 29% who said this should be the case even if prayers from other religions are not offered. In contrast, 63% of Democratic parents said that public school teachers should not be allowed to lead students in any type of prayers.

In June 2022, before the Center conducted the survey, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a football coach at a public high school who had prayed with players at midfield after games. More recently, Texas lawmakers introduced several bills in the 2023 legislative session that would expand the role of religion in K-12 public schools in the state. Those proposals included a bill that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every classroom, a bill that would allow schools to replace guidance counselors with chaplains, and a bill that would allow districts to mandate time during the school day for staff and students to pray and study religious materials.

Mentions of diversity, social-emotional learning and related topics in school mission statements are more common in Democratic areas than in Republican areas. K-12 mission statements from public schools in areas where the majority of residents voted Democratic in the 2020 general election are at least twice as likely as those in Republican-voting areas to include the words “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion,” according to an April 2023 Pew Research Center analysis .

Also, about a third of mission statements in Democratic-voting areas (34%) use the word “social,” compared with a quarter of those in Republican-voting areas, and a similar gap exists for the word “emotional.” Like diversity, equity and inclusion, social-emotional learning is a contentious issue between Democrats and Republicans, even though most K-12 parents think it’s important for their children’s schools to teach these skills . Supporters argue that social-emotional learning helps address mental health needs and student well-being, but some critics consider it emotional manipulation and want it banned.

In contrast, there are broad similarities in school mission statements outside of these hot-button topics. Similar shares of mission statements in Democratic and Republican areas mention students’ future readiness, parent and community involvement, and providing a safe and healthy educational environment for students.

• Education & Politics
• Partisanship & Issues
• Politics & Policy

About 1 in 4 U.S. teachers say their school went into a gun-related lockdown in the last school year

About half of americans say public k-12 education is going in the wrong direction, what public k-12 teachers want americans to know about teaching, what’s it like to be a teacher in america today, race and lgbtq issues in k-12 schools, most popular.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy