Differenze di genere, politiche europee e realtà del sistema scolastico italiano

The essay addresses the issue of equal opportunities and gender discrimination in the remit of school and education by examining the educational policies implemented at European level to that aim, their impact on the Italian school system. To this end, we tried first to reconstruct the historical reasons for the hostility towards a full women’s participation to the world of knowledge, especially at its highest levels. This phenomenon has represented, even in the history of Western culture, one of the most persistent and long lasting forms of discrimination. While noting that today in Europe, including Italy, equal access to education has been largely achieved on an institutional and legislative level, the contribution highlights that many forms of discrimination still persist in practice, including in the form of educational self-segregation when girls choose their paths of study. Indeed, it emerges that, with respect to these problems, the educational systems do not play a very incisive role. Moreover, the problem is aggravated because of the absence of teacher trainings devoted to gender-related issues coming from the persistence of old cultural prejudices.