As the parent of a DS and a DD I can say that I have seen many differences in how they are treated within our school district. My DS experienced poor treatment by a male teacher that had an issue with athletes. Until I pointed out how hard he was making it for me to parent, he discouraged my insistence that my DS could be both athlete and good student–there was no need to choose. I suspect that this pressure to choose an “identity” is part of what discourages young men from college. Even I could see that if forced to choose, it was “safer” for my DS to choose athlete as his identity even if he chose not to participate in some stereotypes about athlete social behavior. So he kept his academic success relatively quiet and surprised all with his class rank and scholarships at graduation but was known by most as only that 3 sport varsity athlete. The truly awful part were the coaches that he had that looked down on him for being smart. Poor kid got all kind of mixed messages. Just more pressure to only have one “identity”.
My DD on the other hand, has been discouraged from being good at science very publicly when being given the award in a more traditionally “female” subject, even though her fellow students all knew she had the highest GPA in the science. The science teacher’s speech to all in class the next day about wishing she could give all of them an award did nothing to smooth that over with my DD or make her classmates less jaded about the process. They all can tell that the awards are discussed by the teachers in advance and “spread out” in an attempt at motivation but this process is only succeeding in reducing the value of the awards. My DD’s response to this treatment is “I’ll show them” and she works even harder academically. I see that response in lots of the young women that I know. They count on the grades to prove to all, but especially themselves, that they really can achieve excellence, despite the negative messages about where do, or do not, belong. My DD is also an athlete and the lack of resources and attention paid to her sport is glaring.