Families and friends gather to wait for and celebrate the grand finale: pink or blue. The color of a cake or confetti popper means more than just this moment. It will determine whether the future holds Barbies and dance or Legos and sports. The tradition of gender reveal parties showcases the binary depiction of gender that many hold today, a depiction that oftentimes leads to stereotypes and inequality. To combat this, many propose single-gender education, allowing young children and adults to grow up in an environment where their gender is not the most important factor. However, this single-sex education system subscribes to the same binary limits that can be found in gender reveal parties, excluding members of the LGBTQIA+ community who do not identify with the binary system. Inclusion in single-gender learning environments should be expanded to be based on gender identity rather than biological sex in order to offer psychological benefits to all students.

While separating boys and girls into classrooms based on gender has been claimed to improve students’ academic performance, studies show otherwise. A meta-analysis that collected the results of hundreds of studies performed to determine the academic effects of single-gender education found that it “generally produced only trivial advantages” as compared to co-educational environments and that benefits are only shown “in studies with inadequate methods” (Pahlke 1064-1065). Proponents of single-sex schooling typically laud its academic offerings, but the results of a thorough psychological study show that they have been misinformed. Students gain the same learning in both co-educational and single-sex environments, and without academic benefits, single-sex environments lose a large part of their appeal.

However, single-gender classrooms can offer significant psychological benefits to students. A controlled study done to find the effect of single-gender education on students’ perceptions of school showed that “a classroom composed of peers from the same gender can provide a nonthreatening environment,” as “there is a certain comfort and security inherent in interactions with our own gender groups” (Hart 44-45). As each gender is pushed to fulfill certain roles in society, the pressure to uphold these gender stereotypes can lead to tension. Men are expected to be better at STEM subjects, while women are supposed to be more proficient in reading. Boys should be aggressive to prove their masculinity, and women should be quiet and demure. The consistent presence of these stereotypes, even subconsciously, can affect the behavior of each gender in the presence of the other. A single-gender environment, however, can begin to alleviate these pressures by creating an atmosphere of equality. Rather than trying to maintain a specific role, students who feel comfortable knowing that they are surrounded by a likeminded community who understands the nuance of their specific gender can focus on learning and the positive social aspects of school.

Legally, single-gender classrooms as they are currently defined violate legislation put in place to ensure equality and inclusion. The No Child Left Behind Act, which is intended to improve education for all students, directly violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as it allows for the creation of classrooms based on biological sex despite the fact that “not all students learn in accordance with their sex stereotypes” (Turner 219). In single-sex classrooms, there is no guarantee that both genders will reap equal academic benefits and receive the equal opportunities that would be required for them to be legal under Title IX. Additionally, by this allowance, the No Child Left Behind Act excludes transgender students who identify with a different gender and therefore do not learn according to their biological sex. Even with provisions to ensure that boys and girls are given the same opportunity, the act’s insistence on using only the binary gender system does not allow the LGBTQIA+ community to be included. Under the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, amendments to Title IX made in 2006 are unconstitutional, as the Court’s decision determined that offering separate but equal academic experiences was not sufficient to justify separation in the first place, partially on the grounds that “separating students from their peers of similar age and qualifications produces feelings of inferiority” (Turner 227). Without this guarantee, single-gender classrooms could cause more gender discrimination by leading students to question why the sexes are separated and furthering stereotypes.

For transgender students, single-sex classrooms create a dilemma of gender identity in a binary system. By separating genders, single-sex classrooms become places where transgender students experience “fear of ridicule resulting from nonconformance to a sex stereotype” (Turner 232). Rather than eradicate differences between gender, single-gender classrooms force transgender students to succumb to roles that they do not identify with, highlighting the differences between their identities and what society narrow-mindedly expects the norm to be. Rather than continue to separate classrooms by gender as it is defined by biological sex, the terminology and implications of sex versus gender should be examined and reevaluated. Sex refers to “biological femaleness and maleness” while gender references “culturally-mediated expectations and roles associated with masculinity and femininity” (Lips 2). Determining inclusion based on gender identity allows for wider acceptance of the LGBTQIA+ community, counteracting the legal violations of the No Child Left Behind Act and the 2006 amendments to Title IX. Shifting to single-gender classrooms rather than single-sex classrooms broadens the scope of who is included in a particular learning environment.

Redefining single-gender learning environments can be a complex process, requiring careful analysis of ideology to ensure that past problems with single-sex classrooms are addressed and corrected. If educational institutions are not authentic in their fight to create inclusive learning communities, single-gender learning will not shift as it needs to, but rather stay stagnant in past definitions of sex and gender. While examining one educational organization’s transformation to a wider view of what single-gender environments mean, Cohen highlights the importance of acknowledging “the myriad of learning curves for even the most well-informed members of [the] community,” stressing that, as policymakers work to define change, they need to do so with humility, recognizing that they cannot fully understand the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community (695). Without this humility, leaders in education will fail to create truly inclusive environments, instead making assumptions about the experiences of others and forming classrooms that are just as narrow-minded in their idea of inclusion as before. Additionally, those developing new policies for single-gender education must be willing to defend a wider definition of inclusion and act on what they create. Rather than follow in the footsteps of many organizations who, when urged to create diversity, meet the criteria that outside viewers would consider “diverse” without putting effort or action behind it, the redefinition of single-gender learning environments needs to be enacted consciously.

Single-gender classrooms can provide psychological benefits to their students, but they also must stay conscious of how they include or exclude students. As the LGBTQIA+ community continues to fight for rights and to try to find a voice in modern society, examining issues like single-gender education that are discriminatory largely through their binary nature becomes more important. If situations such as the separation of education based on biological sex as opposed to gender identity are left unchecked, those who stand with the LGBTQIA+ community cannot make progress in gaining the equality and acceptance that they deserve

Works Cited

Cohen, Beth Douthirt. “Reimagining gender through policy development: the case of a ‘single-sex’ educational organization.” Gender and Education, vol. 24, no. 7, December 2012, pp. 689-705.

Hart, Laura. “Benefits Beyond Achievement? A Comparison of Academic Attitudes and School Satisfaction for Adolescent Girls in Single-Gender and Coeducational Classrooms.” Middle Grades Research Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, 2015, pp. 33-48.

Lips, Hilary M. Gender: The Basics: 2^nd Edition. Vol. Second edition, Routledge, 2019.

Pahlke, Erin, et al. “The Effects of Single-Sex Compared With Coeducational Schooling on Students’ Performance and Attitudes: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 140, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1042-1072.

Turner, Bryana. “Sex-Parate But Equal – The Legality of Single-Sex Public Schools and Their Discriminatory Effect on Transgender Students.” Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender, vol. 20, no. 1, 2013, p. 203-234. HeinOnline.