Resolution Adopted by the CCAR
Gender Equitable Education
Adopted by the 104th Annual
Convention of
the Central Conference of American Rabbis
Montreal, Quebec, June 1993
“And
God created Adam in God’s own image, in the image of God was Adam
created; Male
and female God
created them. (Gen 1:27)”
Background:
Excellence in education cannot be fully addressed without
confronting the issue of
inequities
within the classroom. These classroom problems with regard to gender
have
been well documented in the
past few years, most recently in a 1992 study published
by the American Association of University
Women (AAUW). This study documented the persistence
of blatant and subtle sexism in American school
systems. It found that teachers pay
less attention to girls on a daily basis, that girls are still
far behind boys in math and science achievement, and that many school
textbooks still ignore girls and
women and still engage in gender
stereotyping.
Excellence in education is firmly
tied to educational equality. The AAUW study confirmed
that children’s ideas of gender bias are
developed and legitimized in the classroom.
The Commission and the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations cannot support women’s equality without also actively
endorsing equality for females in all aspects of
education.
In 1975, the CCAR urged Reform
congregations to rid religious school textbooks and
curricula of gender stereotypes. In the 1970s, the
Religious Action Center of Reform
Judaism undertook a review of the most popular UAHC textbooks
to identify and eliminate racial, sexual and ethnic stereotypes. That
study led to significant improvements
in the elimination of such images. Although the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations
has
strong positions on both the equality of the sexes and on excellence
in education, it does not directly address the integrally related
issue of gender equitable education.
Therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED,
that the Central Conference of American Rabbis:
1. Endorse legislation that funds the promotion of
gender equity in education;
2.
Urge congregations and all institutions of Reform Judaism to examine
their own
approaches to gender
equity in their Religious and Hebrew schools. These approaches
include, but are not limited to,
the selection of textbooks that have appropriate
images of women and girls and men and boys, the
equitable treatment of girls and boys by Religious
and Hebrew school teachers.