Casey Keeley

Student, University College Utrecht, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

In an effort to truly get to the root of knowledge discrepancies between different groups, we must first acknowledge the role that education has in perpetuating fundamental differences in knowledge between males and females. This must also be taken a step further to understand what part this plays in determining career and financial differences in the future. Countless societies today value different types of knowledge depending on your gender.

This individual knowledge that we accumulate growing up differs based on the societal norms around you. It has been shown that local schools serve to not only maintain but encourage these differences. Today, 90% of students in higher education studying to be elementary school teachers are female. Four out of five engineering students are male. Many females are not accepted in stereotypically masculine jobs, by both peers and faculty. Males then experience this in commonly female dominated fields. In the USA, for example, secondary schools acting on the faulty assumption that males and females are ‘wired differently’ are creating separate classrooms and teaching different subjects for boys and girls.

The SDGs are focused on including girls in education, but this must be taken a step further to ensure students have equitable access to all types of knowledge.