While the performance of girls in Science has been researched
extensively in response to the perceived and real discrimination
in this subject area, little research has been carried out on
the gender issues relevant to Humanities areas. Crump (English
in Australia December, 1988) described the performance of girls
in English school-based courses noting - atypically - that, in a
computer course, the self-confidence and skills of female
students was higher than that of the males. In this article, we
wish to explore the perceptions of Year 9 students participating
in singles-sex Science project in a secondary school in a large
country town (Minesville) in New South Wales. This article
raises a number of gender issues for the classroom teacher.
These issues have generally been overlooked as government policy
- and funding - have focussed on Science and Maths. Is the de
facto assumption that girls are 'doing O.K.' in the Humanities
sustainable? There is a wealth of data on the experiences of
girls in science-based