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overall and, since that time, girls have gone onto close the gap with boys at maths and science(although boys still outperform girls at higherlevel maths), while boys as a group continue tolag behind at language and literacy.This has precipitated a now long-standingstream of media comment bewailing boys’‘underachievement’. Such has been theobsession among media and policy-makersthat feminists branded the preoccupation withboys’ educational attainment a moral panic,identifying how, in searching for explanations,commentators frequently constructed boys asvictims of a feminised schooling system, feministeducators, or the crisis in masculinity. Feministresearchers conversely mobilised evidence todemonstrate several key points; for example,that educational attainment is informed byother factors such as ethnicity and social class(the latter being the strongest predictor ofachievement in the UK), so that some groupsof boys continue to outperform other groupsof girls; and that an obsession with overallpan-subject statistics masks wide variations inachievement in different subject areas. They alsoobserved that there had been no national outcryand panic in the preceding period when boyswere seen to be outperforming girls!Nevertheless, the concern with boys has beensustained, and demands and ensuing strategiesto ‘raise boys’ achievement’ have generatededucation policies, materials, diktats to schools,snake oil consultancy and research funding.Moreover, the phenomenon has been mirroredin a number of other countries, most notablyAustralia (and more recently others, including theUnited States). Much research has demonstratedhow the focus on boys and direction of materialsand resources towards them has been detrimentalto girls’ education, and sometimes to that ofboys too. 4 There tends to be an assumption incommentary on ‘boys’ underachievement’ that allgirls are now achieving and, hence, they are nota concern as their needs are being met. However,not only does research show that certain groupsof girls – including white and minority ethnicworking-class girls – continue to underperformin comparison with other particular groups ofgirls and boys, but also evidence shows thatgirls continue to face a host of issues in theirschooling.Schools continue to perpetuate genderinequalityAnyone who spends time in the classroom isaware that pupil behaviour is affected by gender.Girls and boys tend to sit and play separately, 5unless organised differently by the teacher.Moreover, as groups, girls and boys also tend tobehave in quite different ways. Bronwyn Davieshas analysed how, from pre-school ages onwards,children understand that gender forms a keypillar of social identity, and engage in what shebrands ‘gender category maintenance work’ toproduce these behavioural differences. 6It is important to sound a note of cautionin discussing such gender differences. Theretends to be an assumption that biologicalsex differences programme boys and girls tobehave in different ways – from this perspective,distinctions in classroom behaviour amonggroups of girls and boys are taken to be simply‘natural’ expressions of sex differences. But, infact, evidence of biological differences that mightlead to behavioural differences is extremelyslight. On the other hand, a large body of childdevelopmentaland sociological evidence showshow children (and adults) actively constructtheir gender identities. Gender research haspresented an increasingly nuanced conception ofgender, illustrating the illusory nature of genderboundaries, the diversity within gender groups,and the highly complex relationship betweenbiological ‘sex’ and socially constructed ‘gender’(with research demonstrating the often sociallyconstructed elements of ‘sex’ allocation, and theblurriness of boundaries here). Indeed, giventhe illumination of gender diversity in researchsuch as my own, 7 it becomes a challenge forfeminist researchers to simultaneously analysethe continued resonance and impact of ‘sex’categories for patterns of inequality. Yet as Iobserved above, real inequalities remain. Indeed,they are especially evident in the educationsystem, which often continues to organise pupilsinto ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories, and to arrangeclassrooms and activities accordingly. And theperpetuation of gender distinction throughschooling has a significant impact on future lifechances and experiences – not just in occupationalsegregation and remuneration outcomes and soon (important though these are), but also for value4 Christine Skelton and BarbaraRead, ‘Male and female teachers’evaluative responses to genderand the learning environments ofprimary age pupils’, InternationalStudies in Sociology of Education,16(2), 2006, p.105; and EmmaCharlton, Martin Mills, WayneMartino and Lori Beckett,‘Sacrificial girls: a case study ofthe impact of streaming andsetting on gender reform’, BritishEducational Research Journal, 33(4),2007, p.459.5 Of course, there are exceptionsto this trend, including properfriendships formed among aminority of girls and boys, andsome heterosexual romanticrelationships between pupils.6 B. Davies, Frogs and Snails andFeminist Tales: Preschool Childrenand Gender, Allen & Unwin, 1989.7 See for example Becky Francis,‘Teaching manfully? Exploringgendered subjectivities and powervia analysis of men teachers’gender performance’, Gender andEducation, 20(2), 2008, p.109;and Becky Francis, ‘Re/theorisinggender: female masculinity andmale femininity in the classroom?,Gender and Education, 22(6),2010, p.477.Education for the good society | 23