The instructor asked us to go around the room and name some important people in history. After some 60 students answered we stopped and thought about how many of those people were females. I found the following statistics in this article amazing. In classes, boys are twice as likely to be seen as role models, five times as likely to receive teachers attention and twelve times as likely to speak up in class. In textbooks, one-seventh of all illustrations of children are girls.
Teachers choose many more classroom activities that appeal to boys than to girls.
Boys tend to he portrayed as clever, brave, creative and resourceful, while girls are depicted as kind, dependent, and docile. Girls read six times as many biographies of males as of females. Even in animal stories, the animals are twice as likely to be males. . . . Analysis of classroom videos shows that boy s receive more classroom attention and more detailed instruction than girls. They are called on more often than girls and are asked more abstract, open-ended and complex questions.