Sexism and sex discrimination in education

In the decade following the 1972 passage of Title IX,1 girls and women have actively sought legal redress through anti-discrimination suits brought against school systems, colleges, and universities. While minimally successful in altering school structures, these legal actions have resulted in a mass of evidence clearly documenting discrimination in many forms: sex bias in texts and curricula; biased patterns of staffing (women in the lower ranks of teaching and administration, men in the higher ranks); and sexist hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions in post-secondary education. While documentation of these practices is critical, many forms of institutional sexism, equally damaging, have not been well documented. This is primarily because the most insidious forms of discrimination are the most elusive. The best records of these damaging practices are not in school system archives. Rather they are evident in studies of the sexist language, attitudes, and behaviors which pervade classrooms and corridors in all educational institutions. In this article we turn our attention to both the public, legal record and to the research evidence to characterize institutional sexism. In ex