Education, diversity of the most able students and gender stereotypes

Abstract

This work analyses data from two consecutive studies carried on the same sample during the academic courses: 2000-01 and 2003-04, and its objective is to know the perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and values of this sample about the situation of the more able students from the gender's perspective . The sample was chosen through the criterion of being students that have earned the Baccalaureate Extraordinary Award. These valuations were gathered by means of free discussion in small groups. In the first study we also gathered their parents’ opinions, together with the ones from a group of their baccalaureate teachers. The main conclusion drawn is that school does not attend to these kinds of students, but on the contrary, it keeps on repeating and repeating, and despite of the advance towards the equality of gender, stereotypes and prejudices that double discriminates most capable women still prevail. The advancement has been greater among the younger and more cultivated population as well as in the most educated and open contexts like university and cities, but even in in this population and under the "politically correct”, we still find buried redoubts of machismo