In connection with the government policy and curriculum, three things in common were noted in the responses in England and Vietnam, which were: that the government policy espoused the importance of gender equality, the curriculum was equal for both sexes, and the influence of curriculum in the students’ choice of career.
The confirmation of government policy regarding gender equality related to the claim of Hausmann, Tyson and Zahidi (2011) that the government had made efforts to gain gender equality in education and England had been more successful in gaining such equality in education than many other countries; therefore, government policy for the education of girls had improved (Arnot and Phipps, 2003). This fortified the influence of government policy to gender issues. Similarly, in Vietnam, the Gender Equity Law and Education Law assert equity in opportunities for all people. However, rules relating to gender equality were said to be general about citizen’s rights (Pham, 2007). This issue was supported by respondents in Vietnam, who believed that they did not see any policy giving attention to gender equality in education or because the policy was not implemented effectively in practice. Therefore, there was a gap between the policy and practice in Vietnam.
Vietnamese respondents also commented about the comparatively fixed number of women in the managerial positions - yet two opposing viewpoints were held. From the managerial positions, a vice principal and a Head teacher confirmed that it was the positive attention to gender equality but teachers perceived that it was the inequality because if it was equal, then no women’s ratio should be set up like that. The issue of the limited number of women in senior posts was researched in the literature of the Western countries which indicated that there should be 30% of women board members in the coming years and this ratio should be increased to 40% by 2020 (Filsinger and Worth, 2012: 112). Likewise, in Vietnam, the research raised the necessity of targets for women’s roles (RCGAD, 2007). The researcher agreed with the opinions of teachers that there should be no fixed ratio of women in managerial positions but if gender equality had not been secured and there was no such target for women then the ratio of women in managerial positions would be very small or
negligible. At this point, it was notable that the research showed that gender inequalities remained in Vietnamese society (Tran, Hoang and Do, 2006: 15) and Vietnamese women have less potential in promoting in most areas of jobs than men (Tran, Hoang and Do, 2006: 179).
Respondents in England asserted that the current curriculum was equal for both sexes and it was guaranteed in terms of gender equality issues. This partly concurred with the work of Francis (2000: 36) that the National Curriculum resulted in the reduction of gendered subject choice among students. However, there was a big contrast between the assertions of English respondents with the work of Paechter (2000). Most respondents believed that there was no need to change the curriculum because it was good enough yet the work of Paechter (2000) discovered that boys still dominated and some particular subject knowledge was labelled by gender. This was in-line with the responses from Vietnam when staff stated that boys learned natural science subjects better than girls and vice versa and it was similar to the previous analysis about subject choices of boys and girls above. In addition, Vietnamese respondents perceived that though the curriculum was equal to both sexes, it was too difficult, boring and impractical. There is currently a dearth of research in this respect, identifying an area worthy of further research. Moreover, respondents in Vietnam raised the issue of the necessity of letting students know the outcomes of learning. Though no literature touched on this the researcher believed this was a very valuable recommendation when amending the curriculum since there was research showing that girls did not want to learn boys’ subjects and the negative scenario when half of the population did not understand the daily life knowledge of science (Manthorpe, 1989: 129). Furthermore, one respondent even stated that there was gender bias in the literature textbooks. This was substantial evidence, which confirmed the work of Ngo (2007) that there were continuing gender biases in the textbooks for high school students in Vietnam, which represented that women had low positions, were dependent and oppressed. Besides, Vietnamese boys asserted that social subjects were difficult for them whilst girls claimed that natural subjects were difficult. This assertion revealed that the curriculum or the teaching pedagogies (or both) were problematic. Nonetheless, it could be that the gender stereotypes had made male students believe that ‘girls’ subjects’ were not suitable or difficult for them so they found them hard. The gender stereotypes might have been so deeply embedded that it became naturalized as reproduction of the status quo (Dillabough, 2004: 495) in students’ mind.
Equally, Vietnamese high school girls stated that they found natural science subjects difficult to learn. In addition, Vietnamese teaching staff also suggested amending the curriculum and government policy to be better in terms of gender equality and to be more practical. This reflected that teaching staff in Vietnam were not very satisfied with the current curriculum and the government policy though some of them asserted that the policy did pay attention to gender equality. Moreover, respondents in the two countries claimed that the curriculum had an influence on the career choice of students, which concurred with the work of Francis et al (2003) in the review.
5.4 The influence of teaching pedagogies on gender equality in education
Data from the two countries indicated that teaching pedagogies did have an influence on students’ achievement. This perception was consonant with the works of Stanworth (1983), Seidel and Shavelson (2007) which revealed that teachers’ activities and behaviour influenced the achievement of students. So, teaching pedagogies were considered to be very important to the performance of students at schools. Furthermore, staff in both Vietnam and England believed that teachers treated students equally. This statement was a notable feature in much of the debate about the attention of teachers to gender. Masculinists have warned that teachers gave more attention to girls than boys (Myhill and Jones, 2006: 111) whilst feminists’ research showed that teachers gave more time and attention to boys than girls (Stanworth, 1983). Interestingly, whilst all teaching staff in Vietnam affirmed that they themselves and other teachers did treat students in an equal way responses from Vietnamese students made it clear that teachers gave more attention to girls in social science classes and to boys in natural science subject classes. Noticeably, a girl said that mathematics teacher behaved better towards boys than girls but that this was acceptable because she admitted that boys were better than girls. This affirmation exposed some interesting things. Firstly, data revealed that girls had a lower participation in learning in mathematics. It also showed that teachers treated students differently in terms of gender. The evidence based on the work of Aikman, Unterhalter and Challender (2005: 47) confirmed this phenomenon when they stated that teachers paid more attention to boys in ‘masculine subjects’; consequently it could discourage girls to participate in the subject. Therefore, it contradicted what the staff had claimed. Thirdly, it showed that the girl had low confidence in her learning ability and less attention by teachers to her could reinforce her belief (Aikman, Unterhalter and
Challender, 2005: 47). Lastly, from the liberal feminism perspective, it could be seen that teachers did not treat students equally nor give girls equal opportunities and they somehow pushed the girls back from pursuing natural science subjects. More interestingly, from the reproduction feminist perspective, it could be seen that teachers were naturally unequal in the ways they treated students, thus they presumed that they treated equally yet this was not right.
Mathematics teachers and homeroom teachers were considered to influence gender equality by Vietnamese respondents. It could be speculated that the different educational system in England caused both the English respondents in the study and the evidence in the Western literature to ignore these factors when discussing gender equality in schools but the exact nature of this cultural difference was difficult to define. However, the fact was that in Vietnam there were more male mathematics teachers than females and as indicated in the previous analysis, people had a tendency to believe that mathematics required a high mentality which was more suitable for males who were said to be cleverer than females. A research study in Mozambique shared the same conclusion (Aikman, Unterhalter and Challendar, 2005: 47) when they declared that although women outnumbered men in teaching staff, there were few women in high status subjects. In addition, respondents in Vietnam appreciated the role of homeroom teachers in educating gender equality for students as there was more time for homeroom teachers in the curriculum of all schools. This revealed that staff were not ready to promote gender equality among students in their schools. Rather, they wished to entrust it to homeroom teachers. Again, this showed that teachers were conservative.
There were highly questionable explanations from responses in Vietnam for this imbalance in terms of gender issues, such as the influence of families on children when orientating careers for them, the requirement for greater innate intelligence in learning mathematics and the time needed to understand key concepts, which might make women find mathematics difficult to pursue. Naturally, the researcher disagreed with these explanations in terms of the discriminatory aspersions on the intellectual ability of women in relation to mathematics but they were very revealing about prevailing attitudes. It could be seen that this had a connection to the previous analysis about subject choices of different genders and about the influence of families on career choices. In addition, the explanations showed the strong
gender stereotypes among Vietnamese teachers about mathematics when they misjudged the ability of females.
Moreover, although respondents said that they supported gender equality in education, they themselves held gender bias. For instance, a highly experienced teacher asserted that boys had a better mentality than girls or another male teacher who had many years’ experience of teaching natural science subject declared that people perceived women as a minority regardless of the fact that they built up approximately half of the population. At the same time, respondents emphasized that the good learning results of girls were attributed to hard work rather than their cleverness. This statement confirmed the findings in the work of Walden and Walkerdine (1985) which indicated that in the UK, the achievements of girls in mathematics were said to be hard working rather than understanding and it was in line with the first part of the analysis above about theories of gender and education. This was an issue of low expectation by teachers of girls in mathematics which related to the work of Aikman, Unterhalter and Challender (2005), Murphy and Whitelegg (2006) and Ma (2008). They discovered that despite the fact there was no difference in mathematical scores between boys and girls, teachers still thought that boys were much more able than girls and they held higher expectations of boys. So, both the data in Vietnam and the literature review indicated that there were gender bias issues in mathematical subjects.
One interesting theme that emerged from the data in Vietnam was of the relation of the qualification of teachers with gender issues in education, although neither the data in England nor any strand of the literature mentioned this issue. Vietnamese respondents emphasized the qualification of teachers as the important factor in the achievements of students. Some teachers even believed that it was more important than the curriculum because it was up to teachers to impart the knowledge. The researcher considered that this was a valuable reference especially in Vietnam, where the low salary of teachers was highly controversial and there were debates about the entry requirement of pedagogy universities for trainee teachers.