This research examines the issue of gender based discrimination in education. The issue is described, and actions to deal with the issue at both the state (Texas) and federal levels of government are reviewed.
The Issue of Gender Based Discrimination in Education
Gender equality emerged as a salient political and legal issue in the United States in the 1960s (Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 62). The issue of gender equality was not new at the state government level, as state law historically had "defined the political and civil rights and the legal capacities of women" (Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 63). What was new was federal initiatives with respect to the issue of gender equality with the enactment federal laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the Education Act Amendments of 1972.
Gender equality, or the reverse side of the coin, gender based discrimination, as an issue, emanates from the social subordination of women. The social subordination of women in society has occurred through the process of social learning. The subordination of women provides both the philosophical basis for a justification by a patriarchal society and a basis for economic practices that facilitate the development and maintenance of societal inequities between females and males within a society (Barry, 1979, p. 9). In an economic context, a major problem in capitalist societies is the tendency to treat everything as a commodity. This approach, based on a positivist conception of capitalist economic theory, is, thus, generally able to view child labor and female sexual services in the same general context as grain production. Female sexual services, thus, are often viewed as a commodity in a capitalist economy (Donovan, 1992, p. 53).
Prostitution may be expected to flourish in an economy where a prostitute can earn as much in one night as a woman in...