Parents, daughters and education : when gender makes a difference

Abstract

There have been, in recent years in Malta, a number of studies that have explored the relationship between gender and education, focusing on the ways in which the formal school system differentiates between boys and girls, or in the way school and classroom processes lead girls to choose particular clusters of subject options (see Darmanin, 1991,1992,1997). There has been less attention given to the way the family provides a powerful socialising setting which influences male and female siblings in their relationship to educational matters. This chapter attempts to address that lacuna, by looking closely at the way parents discriminate between - and act differently towards - their sons and daughters in a number of areas related to schooling. This is an important question to ask, given the evidence that we have regarding the persistence of the division of roles along gender lines in Maltese society.