Equity in Career and Technical Education. Myths and Realities.

The career and technical education (CTE) system before Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 has been characterized as traditionally dominated by gender segregation and discrimination. The most damaging consequence of such gender bias is to limit females' access to the benefits of CTE--the living wage that provides females the same economic self-sufficiency that males have long enjoyed. Thirty years later, there are still striking gender disparities in guidance and counseling practices, CTE program enrollment, level and quality of classes available in traditionally male and traditionally female CTE programs, and wages earned by female and male graduates. In the United States, females continue to out-perform males in reading and writing, and males continue to outperform females in math and science in elementary and secondary grades; enrollment in postsecondary undergraduate and graduate degree programs remains fairly gender traditional; and females are still underrepresented in professional degree programs. Some individual state reports (from Louisiana, Virginia, and New Jersey, for instance) show a certain amount of movement toward gender balance in CTE enrollments. Access to CTE and its benefits is not perfectly equitable but is apparently better than it used to be; efforts to improve access by eliminating gender bias, segregation, and discrimination have not been completely effective, but have had some effect. (Contains 14 references) (YLB)