Insert Title of Project Here

Gender: A Matter for Global Sustainability

Research question

What is the relationship between the increase of women’s presence in leadership positions with the reduction of gender stereotypes found within the Canadian higher-educational system?

Student researcher names

Fiorella Vargas

Serina Tanabe

Yuki Hashiuchi

Project proposal summary

While doing our research, we found an article explaining how high-school students considered that male-gendered students were more likely to stand up in math courses whereas female-gendered students were more likely to be outstanding in communication courses. Therefore, we started to think about how in UBC (so far) we have met more male-gendered professors than female-gendered professors and we reflected on what is currently the figure that women represent in leadership positions within the Canadian educational industry. After finding out that even when the number of female-gendered professors increased, the figure regarding leadership’s positions remained low, we questioned whether there was a relationship between the presence of women in leadership positions and the stereotypes found in Canadian higher-educational institutions. To explore this question, we decided to use a quantitative method (an online survey) that will help us verify the correlation between our two main variables (the presence of women in leadership positions and the reduction of gender stereotypes in the Canadian educational system).

Literature Review

As women have been associated with a biological role, most stereotypes towards them claim their main task to be family-care whereas men should work to sustain their families. Consequently, workplace is considered to be dominated by hegemonic culture, explained as a feature that keeps growing along with the overt sex discrimination towards women, leading companies to be more willing to hire men rather than women (Klasen, 2020). In the Canadian educational realm, Van Anders (2004) supports the presence of hegemonic dominance culture by introducing research which shows that even though the curriculum vitae presents identical skills, men are more likely to be hired than women because of overt sex discrimination

Although inequality gap has been decreasing, women still facing challenges in becoming leaders within the Canadian educational system due to the barriers imposed by this issue (Robinson et al., 2020). Statistics Canada (2016) revealed that “women hold 75% of all elementary and secondary teaching positions but hold 58% of all principal positions” (As cited in Robinson et al., 2020). The chance of women to pursue their careers in the educational realm has increased, but the access they have to leadership positions within it seems to be a goal far away from being achieved. Thorpe (2018) supports by claiming that “the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions in educational organizations remains a significant issue” (136); while most teachers are female, most principals are male-gendered.

On the other hand, as stereotypes are explained to be mental representations constructed to facilitate society members to distinguish one social group from another (Bordalo et al., 2016). Unfortunately, gender stereotypes within the Canadian educational system are considered a problem that influences the formation and reinforcement of several social issues by not teaching that gender does not define the role each performs within society. Plante et al., (2009), for instance, developed and ran off a questionnaire that aimed to identify which tasks students considered to be dominated by male and female. Results showed that whereas mathematics was perceived as a course dominated by male students, language was perceived to be more dominated by females (401).

Contribution to the Knowledge Gap

Despite Canada being considered to be on track to achieve most of the UN’s SDG, women are still fighting against their male counterparts and society in general. Research has explored gender inequality and identified different factors that influence its enforcement, but few has focused on exploring this issue within the Canadian educational system.Additionally, although different scholars agree on women's under-representationin this realm, as well as the different barriers that they must face if they want to enter, or succeed, in the educational labor field, few dedicate to explaining why it is important to pay attention to this problem, and above all, propose solutions to it.

We believe our question will contribute to filling the knowledge gap because it proposes to investigate gender stereotypes in an area of research that researchers have not made a priority of: the Canadian educational system. It is important to see this problem in educational institutions because, in our opinion, many of them do not realize the role they have in educating and forming the students’ values, causing them to be sometimes the first on spreading gender stereotypes that generate the permanence of social and economic inequalities.

References

Anders, S. M. van. (2004, November). Why the academic pipeline leaks: Fewer men than women perceive barriers to becoming professors -sex roles. SpringerLink. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-004-5461-9

Bordalo, P., Coffman, K., Genaioli, N., & Shleifer, A. (2016). Stereotypes. Retrieved June 20, 2022, from https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/pdf.pdf?m=1455816262

Klasen, S. (2020, January 5). From 'Me too' to Boko Haram: A Survey of levels and trends of gender inequality in the world. World Development. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1930511X?via%3Dihub

Plante, I., Theoret, M., & Eizner, O. (2009). Student gender stereotypes: Contrasting the perceived maleness and femaleness of mathematics and language. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved March 20, 2022, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01443410902971500

Robinson, I. M., White, R. E., & Robinson, D. B. (2019, February 22). Indigenous women in educational leadership: Identifying supportive contexts in Mi'kmaw kina'matnewey. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13603124.2018.1562103

Thorpe, A. (2019). Educational Leadership Development and women: Insights from critical realism. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from