Minutes of Mosaic Meeting Thursday March 14, 2019
The most recent Mosaic meeting featured a presentation by Feminist Future, a Hunter College High School student organization dedicated to women’s rights, issues and concerns both local and global. FemFuture meets in room 314 during Activities period on Mondays.
Seven members spoke to the assembled parents in honor of International Women’s Day. They referenced an opinion piece from the New York Times (“Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office” https://nyti.ms/2DYFnj2) and shared a list of startling statistics about the gap between female achievements in school versus in the workforce:
- Internationally, girls earn higher grades than boys in all school subjects.
- More than 130 million girls across the world are prevented from going to school every day.
- Girls account for 70% of high school valedictorians.
- On average, American women earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues.
- In recent years, women have earned 57.4% of all bachelor’s degrees.
- Men will apply for a job if they meet 60% of the qualifications listed, while women will only apply if they meet 100%.
- Female students receive 58% of academic awards given by 4-year institutions.
- Men hold 95% of the top positions in the largest public companies.
- If every girl around the world received 12 years of quality education, the global economy would grow by $30 trillion.
The FemFuture representatives reported that they had a discussion about these data points in their meeting and came up with some interesting parallels based on their experience at Hunter.
- Girls feel they need to be perfect in order to respond, while boys don’t.
- Boys in social settings tend to more freely discuss cheating; girls don’t.
- Girls perceive that boys cheat more often than girls, by copying girls’ work during exams and on homework. That leads to the perception that boys are doing reasonably well with less work and effort by taking advantage of the hard work and effort of the girls.
- Girls do a lot of apologizing that isn’t necessary.
- Boys tend to “wing it” more in class than girls do.
They then opened the discussion to the Mosaic parents for comments and questions, divided the group into smaller student/adult talking groups, and asked what the parent experience was regarding gender behavior and result differences in the workplace.
Dr. Fisher asked whether the FemFuture students see anything that Hunter teachers or administrators unwittingly do that favors boys over girls.
FemFuture responded that girls are less likely to raise their hands because they feel they’re not 100% prepared, while boys feel free to raise hands with incomplete information. Boys therefore get rewarded more often for class participation, which gives them greater positive reinforcement during the class hours. Perhaps teachers could work to encourage more participation by the girls.
Perhaps parents and faculty alike could help reinforce the message to girls that they don’t have to be perfect to succeed, especially at the cost of profound loss of sleep, etc., and suggest to them that perhaps they could still do just as well on their work while doing “a little less.” In fact, FemFuture members who saw boys “winging it” on presentations in class believed that girls SHOULD practice winging it themselves.
Another student mentioned “the Hermione effect.” In one of the Harry Potter books, Hermione writes a paper two scrolls longer than everyone else’s, but she gets criticized for the extra work, rather than being praised. Conversely, Harry does just fine by getting by with the minimum. The student’s point was that her fellow female students are working much harder than the male ones.
As part of the discussion of the feeling girls have that they have to look really good physically to go to school (i.e., with makeup, hair and clothing carefully prepared), whereas boys don’t, a parent mentioned the advice of author Zadie Smith, who told her daughter she’s only allowed to look at herself in the mirror 15 minutes a day. Over time, this effort given to appearance unevenly and significantly impacts the amount of sleep girls get.
Dr. Fisher mentioned that his wife, who works in TV journalism, has long observed that men there ask for raises far earlier than women do.
He also added that in the most recent Hunter Life survey (2016), more students overall reported feeling pressure to succeed than in the 2013 survey, and more girls than boys responded to the question about feeling pressure to succeed.
FemFuture members suggested that parents can help to break the gender-difference cycle that plays out as students grow to adulthood by telling their female students “this is enough; you can go to bed now.” Make sure that all kids know that they don’t need to be perfect all the time. Make sure that boys and girls are told this equally. Also make sure boys are advised to take inspiration from the good work girls do, and girls are encouraged to practice being more assertive in asking for credit, or later, for raises.
There was a strong feeling that even small actions can have a meaningful impact in changing everyone’s understanding over time. FemFuture members concluded by reminding their audience that you have to call out and object to misogyny and unequal treatment of women every time you see it, because it’s so pervasive. Only by doing so will people gradually get the message that it has to be stopped.
Looking ahead:
Thursday April 11, 8:30am Mosaic Meeting: Franny Choi – queer Korean American spoken word artist /poet, will give a reading and presentation. Geared to parents and high school students.
Wednesday April 17th, 4:30: Ballet Hispanico will visit the school to do two workshops with parents, faculty and students in the auditorium.
Friday March 22, 6pm Multicultural Night – this is a wonderful school event; please come!
May: Planning Meeting
The meeting was adjourned at 9:45am.