When does gender come in?

[Photo courtesy of Miramax Films]
There has been much discussion about single-sex education in the major papers in the past week, which has inevitably led to prickly discussions about gender and gender politics.

While these articles have focused on the adolescent mind and how a single-sex education can shape it, I can offer you a different perspective: that of a female who attended co-ed schools throughout her formative years and found herself in a single-sex environment for “higher education”.

Straight off the bat, I can tell you that unless you are a lesbian or bisexual or contemplating testing the waters, the social life at a women’s college is going to suck. The options are limited, particularly since most of the remaining women’s colleges are nestled in tree-filled forests and often a lengthy bus ride away from civilization and/or the opposite sex.

Sure, there are parties (or mixers, which some of the more traditional parties are called) on campus to which males from the East Coast over flock towards. But again, anyone willing to squeeze 16 to a station wagon from Princeton, New Jersey to middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts is something most people would call “desperate”. Alas, whether they are desperate or not, they are labeled as such and most girls and boys wind up going home alone, however far away it is.

Now that we’ve established that fact, let’s take a look at the reason most people go to college and the reason your parents are thunking down 160 thou or more. It’s true, academic life without the opposite sex is sweet. But probably not for the reasons you may expect: if you wish to become less timid in the classroom, chances are you would have already developed as such in middle or high school. The timid ones stay timid, unfortunately, and the contrast may be even more drastic at a women’s college, because students who opt to attend such a school are self-selecting. What you have, then, is a stigma placed around “that girl”, which often number more than just one per class and often reach nearly 50% of the class total, depending upon discipline. Which, from an optimistic standpoint, is good: you are competing against the cream of the crop. If you’re in the competition at all.

What a women’s college offers you that cannot be said for most other colleges, is the lay of the land when it comes to extracurricular activities. Because so few women wish to attend a women’s college, the top rungs of each extracurricular ladder is easier to reach. But beware of the politics upon ascension, and above all, watch what you say.

Those are the basic answers to the basic questions everyone seems to have if they are thinking of attending a women’s college. I’ve been out now for 9 months and I’m adjusting (which is a whole other story for another time). In skimming the articles and comments readers made on single-sex education, these are my thoughts on single-sex primary and secondary education: it is ideal.

More than at college or university, gender roles and politics really come into play in primary and second education. (Sensitivity to gender and gender politics is another blessing of going to an all-women’s liberal arts college.) Do you want to send your child to a school where they will pretty much be taught in accordance with either sexist or feminist ideals? Most public schools subscribe to the gender roles society seems to have predetermined for us. Those who have gone to single-sex primary and secondary schools say that they were offered much more of an opportunity to explore the arts and theatre, things that boys would likely have shied away from in a co-ed environment. Of course, if you are afraid of loosening gender roles too much, single-sex environments may not be the best for your child.

But for educational purposes, and to “make” your child more worldly, a single-sex education is ideal. Boys and girls are “made” differently, though this in and of itself could be a cause and an effect of the patriarchal society we live in, and should be catered to accordingly. But ultimately, if we’re going to undo any of the society-instilled gender roles that we have been born into, a single-sex education is the best way to go about it. Never mind being deprived of socializing with the opposite sex: he or she can make up for it when they reach college. Who cares if single-sex educated girls are particularly promiscuous in college? There’s no better time than college to live life on the edge, that's what I’ve learned.