Sex segregation, sex separation, sex partition, gender segregation, gender separation, or gender partition is the physical, legal, or cultural separation of people according to their gender or Sex at any age. Sex segregation can simply refer to the physical and spatial separation by sex without any connotation of illegal sexism. In other circumstances, sex segregation can be controversial. Depending on the circumstances, it can be a violation of capabilities and human rights and can create economic inefficiencies; on the other hand, some supporters argue that it is central to certain religious laws and social and culture histories and traditions.The World Bank. 2012. "Gender Equality and Development: World Development Report 2012." Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
Sex segregation is a global phenomenon manifested differently in varying localities.Grusky, David B., and Maria Charles. 2001. "Is There a Worldwide Sex Segregation Regime?" Pp. 689-703 in Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective (Second Edition), edited by David B. Grusky. Boulder: Westview Press. Sex segregation and integration considered harmless or normal in one country can be considered radical or illegal in others. At the same time, many laws and policies promoting segregation or desegregation recur across multiple national contexts. Safety and privacy concerns, traditional values and cultural norms, and belief that sex segregation can produce positive educational and overall social outcomes all shape public policy regarding sex segregation.
In the United States some scholars use the term sex separation and not sex segregation.
The term gender apartheid (or sexual apartheid) also has been applied to segregation of people by gender, implying that it is sexual discrimination. If sex segregation is a form of sex discrimination, its effects have important consequences for gender equality and equity.
Sex segregation rooted in safety considerations can furthermore extend beyond the physical to the psychological and emotional as well. A refuge for battered mothers or wives may refuse to admit men, even those who are themselves the victims of domestic violence, both to exclude those who might commit or threaten violence to women and because women who have been subjected to abuse by a male might feel threatened by the presence of any man. Women's health clinics and women's resource centers, whether in Africa or North America, are further examples of spaces where sex segregation may facilitate private and highly personal decisions. may be similarly intended to provide autonomy to women's decision making.
From a policy perspective, theocracy and countries with a state religion have sometimes made sex segregation laws based partially in religious traditions. Even when not legally enforced, such traditions can be reinforced by social institutions and in turn result in sex segregation. In the context, one institution conducive to sex segregation, sometimes but not always rooted in national law, is purdah.Asha, S. "Narrative Discourses on Purdah in the Subcontinent." ICFAI Journal of English Studies 3, no. 2 (June 2008): 41–51
The Muslim world and the Middle East have been particularly scrutinized by scholars analyzing sex segregation resulting from the consequences of Sharia, the moral and religious code of Islam that, in the strictest version, Muslims hold to be the perfect law created by God. Saudi Arabia has been called an epicenter of sex segregation, stemming partially from its conservative Sunni Islamic practices and partially from its monarchy's legal constraints. Sex segregation in Saudi Arabia is not inherent to the country's culture, but was promoted in the 1980s and 1990s by the government, the Sahwa movement, and conservative and religious behavioral enforcers (i.e. police, government officers, etc.).
Israel has also been noted both for its military draft of both sexes and its sex-segregated Mehadrin bus lines.
In the United States in particular, two federal laws give public and private entities permission to segregate based on sex: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972. These laws permit sex segregation of contact sports, choruses, sex education, and in areas such as math and reading, within public schools.
Studies have analyzed whether single-sex or co-ed schools produce better educational outcomes. Teachers and school environments tend to be more conducive to girls' learning habits and participation rates improve in single-sex schools.Bauch, P.A. 1988. "Differences among single-sex and coeducational high schools." Momentum 19:56-58.Lee, V.E. and A. S. Bryk. 1986. "Effects of single-sex secondary schools on student achievement and attitudes." Journal of Educational Psychology 78:381-395.Riordan, C. 1990. Girls and boys in school: Together or separate? New York: Teachers College Press.Beebout, H. 1972. The production surface for academic achievement: An economic study of the Malaysian secondary education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison. In developing countries, single-sex education provides women and girls an opportunity to increase female education and future labor force participation.Lycette, M.A. 1986. Improving basic educational opportunities for women in developing countries. Washington, DC: International Center for Research on Women. Girls in single-sex schools outperform their counterparts in co-educational schools in math, average class scores for girls are higher, girls in single-sex math and science classes are more likely to continue to take math and science classes in higher education, and in case studies, boys and girls have reported that single-sex classes and single-sex teachers create a better environment for learning for both sexes.Younger, Michael Robert and Molly Warrington. 2006. "Would Harry and Hermione Have Done Better in Single-Sex Classes? A Review of Single-Sex Teaching in Coeducational Secondary Schools in the United Kingdom." American Educational Research Journal 43(4):579-620.Clark, Roger. 2001. "Slingshot or Popgun? And the Goose and Gander Problem: Short-Term and Long-Term Achievement Effects of Single-Sex Math Classes in a Coeducational Middle School." Feminist Teacher 13(2):147-155.Shapka, Jennifer D. and Daniel P. Keating. 2003. "Effects of a Girls-Only Curriculum during Adolescence: Performance, Persistence, and Engagement in Mathematics and Science." American Educational Research Journal 40(4):929-960.Jimenez, Emmanual and Marlaine E. Lockheed. 1989. "Enhancing Girls' Learning Through Single-Sex Education: Evidence and a Policy Conundrum." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 11(2):117-142. "Keep Boys and Girls Together, New Research Suggests". Aftau.org (April 11, 2008). Retrieved on 2011-06-13.
Critics of single-sex schools and classes claim that single-sex schooling is inherently unequal and that its physical separation contributes to gender bias on an academic and social basis. Single-sex schooling also allegedly limits the socialization between sexes that co-educational schools provide. Coeducational school settings have been shown to foster less anxiety, have happier classrooms, and enable students to participate in a simulated social environment with the tools to maneuver, network, and succeed in the world outside of school.Dale, R. R. 1974. Mixed or single-sex school? Volume III: Attainment, attitudes, and overview. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Marsh, H.W. 1989. "Effects of attending single-sex and co-educational high schools on achievement, attitudes, behaviors, and sex differences. Journal of Educational Psychology 81:70-85.Schneider, F.W. and L. M. Coutts. 1982. "The high school environment: A comparison of coeducational and single-sex schools." Journal of Educational Psychology 74:898-906.Smith, I. 1996. The impact of co-educational schooling on student self-concept and achievement. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Even in co-ed schools, certain classes, such as sex education, are sometimes segregated on the basis of sex. Parallel education occurs in some schools, when administrators decide to segregate students only in core subjects.Horne, Donald, Susan Mardsen, Alison Painter. 1993. "A Hidden Australian Cultural Resource." Monash University, National Center for Australian Studies. Segregation by specialization is also evident in higher education and actually increases with economic development of a country. Cambodia, Laos, Morocco, and Namibia are countries with the least amount of gender segregation in tertiary studies while Croatia, Finland, Japan, and Lithuania have the most.
In elementary and secondary education, sex segregation sometimes yields and perpetuates gender bias in the form of treatment by teachers and peers that perpetuates traditional and sex bias, underrepresentation of girls in upper level math, science, and computer classes, fewer opportunities for girls to learn and solve problems, girls receiving less attention compared to the boys in their classes, and significantly different performance levels between boys and girls in reading and math classes. Sometimes in elementary schools teachers force the students to sit boy, girl, boy girl. Sex segregation in educational settings can also lead to negative outcomes for boys such as boys in co-educational classrooms having academic scores higher than boys in single-sex classrooms. On the contrary, girls in single-sex classrooms have academic scores higher than girls in co-educational classrooms. Boys academically benefit from a coeducational environment while girls do from a single-sex environment, so critics and proponents of both types of education argue that either single-sex or coeducational classrooms create a comparative disadvantage for either sex.American Association of University Women. 1998. Separated by sex: A critical look at single-sex education for girls. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.LePore, Paul C. and John Robert Warren. 1997. "A Comparison of Single-Sex and Coeducational Catholic Secondary Schooling: Evidence from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988." American Educational Research Journal 34(3):485-511.Tyack, D., and Hansot, E. 1990. Learning together: A history of coeducation in American public schools. New Haven: Yale University Press. Athletic participation and physical education are examples where appeals to differences in biological sex may encourage segregation within education systems. These differences can impact access to competition, gender identity construction, and external as well as internalized perceptions of capabilities, especially among young girls.
Separation of by sex is very common around the world. In certain settings the sex separation can be critical to ensure the safety of females, in particular schoolgirls, from male abuse. At the same time, sex segregated public toilets may promote a gender binary that excludes transgender people.The Ethics of Gender Segregated Bathrooms. Ethical Inquiry, May 2012. Brandeis University Unisex public toilets can be a suitable alternative and/or addition to sex-segregated toilets in many cases.
A special case presents with choirs and choruses, especially in the tradition of the choir school which uses ensemble and musical discipline to ground academic discipline. Male and female voices are distinctive both solo and in ensemble, and segregated singing has an evolved and established aesthetic. Male voices, unlike female voices, break in early adolescence, and accommodating this break in an educational program is challenging in a coed environment. Coeducation tends to stigmatize males, as is often the case in expressive arts, unlike athletics.
During the Taiping Rebellion (1851–64) against the Qing dynasty, areas controlled by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had strict sex separation enforced. Even married couples were not allowed to live together until 1858. Okinoshima is a Japanese island where women are not allowed. Mount Athos is a Greek peninsula where women are not allowed.
The preference of same-sex friendships (homosociality) compared to cross-sex friendships differs by country and is associated with sex segregation.
Other gender disparities via sex segregation between men and women include differential asset ownership, house and care work responsibilities, and agency in public and private spheres for each sex. These segregations have persisted because of governmental policy, blocked access for a sex, and/or the existence of sex-based societal gender roles and norms. Perpetuation of gender segregation, especially in economic spheres, creates market and institutional failures. For example, women often occupy jobs with flexible working environments in order to take on care work as well as job responsibilities, but since part-time, flexible hourly jobs pay less and have lower levels of benefits, large numbers of women in these lower income jobs lowers incentives to participate in the same market work as their male counterparts, perpetuating occupational gender lines in societies and within households. Schultz (1990) article indicates that "working-class women have made it a priority to end job segregation for they want opportunities that enable them to support them and their families." (Schultz, 1990:1755) Additionally, economic development in countries is positively correlated with female workers in wage employment occupations and negatively correlated with female workers in unpaid or part-time work, self-employment, or entrepreneurship, job sectors often seen occupied by women in developing countries. Many critics of sex segregation see globalization processes as having the potential to promote systemic equality among the sexes.
In China, deputies to the National People's Congress and members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee proposed that the public should be more attentive to widespread instances of occupational segregation in China. Often employers reject specifically women applicants or create sex requirements in order to apply. The Labour Contract Law of the People's Republic of China and Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women state that no employer can refuse to employ women based on sex or raise application standards for women specifically, but also do not currently have clear sanctions for those who do segregate based on sex. China has also begun to encourage women in rural villages to take up positions of management in their committees. Specifically, China's Village Committee Organization Law mandates that women should make up one third or more of the members of village committees. The Dunhuang Women's Federation of Dunhuang City, in China's Gansu Province, provided training for their village's women in order to build political knowledge.
In March 2013 in the European Union, a resolution was passed to invest in training and professional development for women, promote women-run businesses, and include women on company boards. In Israel, the Minister of Religious Services, Yaakov Margi Shas, has recently supported removal of signs at cemeteries segregating women and men for eulogies and funerals, prohibiting women from taking part in the services. The Minister agreed with academic and politician, Yesh Atid MK Aliza Lavie, who questioned him about segregation policies enacted by rabbis and burial officials, that governmental opposition to sex segregation was necessary to combat these practices not supported by Jewish or Israeli law.
In other cases, sex segregation in one arena can be pursued to enable sex desegregation in another. For example, separation of boys and girls for early math and science education may be part of an effort to increase the representation of women in engineering or women in science.
Sometimes, countries will also argue that segregation in other nations violates human rights. For example, the United Nations and Western countries have encouraged kings of Saudi Arabia to end its strict segregation of institutions such as schools, government institutions, hospitals, and other public spaces in order to secure women's rights in Saudi ArabiaLe Renard, Amélie. 2008. "'Only for Women': Women, the State and Reform in Saudi Arabia," Middle East Journal, 62(4):610–629. Even though the removal of certain religious and government heads has made way for liberal agendas to promote desegregation, the public largely still subscribes to the idea of a segregated society, while institutions and the government itself still technically remain under the control of Wahhabism. Reform is small in size, since there is no constitution to back up policy changes concerning sex segregation. The Saudi people refer to this segregation as Khilwa and violation of the separation is punishable by law. This separation is tangibly manifested in the recently erected wall in places that employ both men and women, a feat possible by a law passed in 2011 allowing Saudi women to work in lingerie shops in order to lower female unemployment rates. The public views the 1.6 meter wall favorably, saying that it will lead to less instances of harassment by men visiting the expatriate women in the shops. The Luthan hotel in Saudi Arabia was the country's first women's only hotel, acting more as a vacation spot for women than a mandated segregated institution. Upon entering the hotel, women are allowed to remove their headscarves and and the hotel employs only women, calling their bellhops the world's first bellgirls, providing opportunities for Saudi women in IT and engineering jobs where, outside the Luthan, are quite scarce.
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