Maddalena Colombo

M. Colombo, Gender’s dreams. Inequalities and resources in the imagined future of the teenagers What and how do adolescents make dreams about their future? How much are they prepared to social competition? Are they aware of gender inequalities and differences operating within the system of choices? Do they exploit these differences for reaching their targets? Through the data set of a national enquiry «Prin 2005 – Adolescents and Life chance», this essays makes distinctions between the «female» and the «male» way to live the present as a condition and a preview of the future, also underlining the existence of gendered resources to imagine the future itself. If nowadays adolescents live in a frame of increasing «de-differentiation» (boys and girls having same targets, similar psychological states, and tacitly agree with the issue of gender parity), with no doubt they are greatly influenced by discriminating rules and mechanism of the system of chances. Girls are requested of a long-time commitment until the graduation in order to obtain security and personal realization. Boys instead are requested to make projects of work, earning and professional career, with a short-term life planning, in order to overtake the «test of future». At the present, girls and boys live together and exchange continuously their visions in a sort of coeducation: material and cultural consumption are the features of the female-side, large network of relations and distance from institutions of the male-side. Key words: gender differentiation, educational choices, orientation towards future, gendered patterns of life planning, gender inequalities.

This essay is focused on gender differentiation processes in education, with specific regards to the issue of inequality in educational attainment. After a brief review of the main sociological approaches (functionalism and conflictualism), the article moves to describe recent findings on the issue emerging from field studies, both in developed and developing countries. Then it considers how socialization processes are affected by gender stereotypes, mainly through the adult-child interaction and pair group dynamics. Some basic differences between females and males in scholarship are underlined, such as, the higher attainment scores achieved by females, the higher levels of attention reserved from teachers to male students; the persistence of sexism expressions in pair relations at school. A rising issue is put under focus by interactionist approach: everyday practices in teaching and learning usually do not take into account the student’s and the teacher’s gender. In addition to that, there is a new challenge emerging from globalization and pluralization processes: the combination between gender and ethnical differences will create new agents and new issues in educational resources distribution. A short look to recent inquires shows as foreign students are now facing both inequality (like gender-race gap) and differentiation dynamics (like diversity in motivation for studying).