Casual sexist remarks at school/college that stayed with you?

mooth - your dad was actually right - studies show that people's educational attainment is more closely linked to their mother's than their fathers. So it was factually accurate even if it was meant as sexist.

Zazzles that is awful. BUT I doubt very much the teachers would be 'horrified' to know you had done so well. I hear this sort of thing a lot but I'm always delighted when I hear of the achievements of ex-students, even if they were difficult and especially if they weren't 'expected' to go on to great things.

Oh, I remember one from my last year in high school. I was recommended for an admin role in a small accounting firm by my male maths teacher (who at the time I respected ), because that was all I was expected to live up to. My response - "Don't they know I'm going to go to university???" I am sure they would be horrified to learn that since high school I've earned 2 degrees, one of those a very difficult post-grad, with mostly distinctions.

Another sexist teacher at my school was the male English teacher who allowed, permitted and encouraged the boys in the class to over-run and to speak at the expense of the all girls in the class. Used to shit me to no end that English classes were just a long drawn out affair of him speaking to the boys, and no one else's voices being heard. .

No teacher ever made a remark like these in my hearing. Also, I have never been harassed or put down by anyone for being female while I was in school or Uni (3 degrees). I grew up in NYC, finished school in 1982, and any such remarks from a teacher would have been considered deeply offensive by girls and boys alike.

I don't remember anything in particular - no doubt there were many. I was very oblivious in school. But am at these remarks.

There was an issue in our area with girls having men make rude, threatening and overly sexual comments to school girls when driving/walking past. The girls were called to a special assembly to discuss it. The deputy head said, "of you didn't all wear such short skirts..."

I was outraged. Not least because it has happened to me the day before on my way to a sports event. It was freezing and I was wearing a track suit, with an extra jumper.

I remember at 14 having to learn a scene from Julius Caesar for English class with my friend for homework. I adored English and really respected my (male) teacher at that point.

We worked really hard on it. We were playing Brutus and Cassius and put loads of expression into it. When we finished performing the teacher just said 'It's funny, no matter how good it is it just sounds like housewives gossiping over the fence, doesn't it?'

That was in 1993!

I had a Biology teacher who told us (all girls school) that a marriage could only work if both partners felt able to have their say but, ultimately, one partner always had to give in to the other. No prizes for guessing which partner she suggested had to do the giving in. She also said that she believed this so strongly that in her own marriage vows she had promised to obey.

I had respected her very much up to that point but I remember being shocked and outraged. What really upset me was that she was relatively young, not one of the old fuddy duddies. About a month later, she came to the school play with her husband and was very obviously "loved up" - head on his shoulder, arms draped around him etc. After what she had said, it made me feel sick. I've never forgotten it.

I have to admit that even at the time I was a bit caught between indignation at her basically saying it was my fault for drawing attention to myself, or conceding that, practically speaking, she may have had a point.

I was going to say that nothing like that really sticks with me, but the legs talk has reminded me of a very brisk teacher I whined to told about being bitched about by a group of girls at sixth form. She suggested I should consider wearing longer skirts.

In my first week back at medical school after taking a year old to have dd, I was asked why I wasn't at home looking after my dd, like his wife, who was a good mother.

This was 2011.

When I was 15, I turned up to school with a shaved head after the Christmas break. My mum had cancer at the time and my younger sister and I shaved our heads in an impromptu gesture of solidarity. We spent a blissful festive season together, all bald and loved up. Mum made a full recovery some years later and all our hair grew back.

The school's reaction was something else. My favourite teacher stared at me in disbelief and asked me why I made myself ugly on purpose. I remember being a bit stunned by her reaction - it was only hair and why did it matter to others what I looked like anyway? To this day I think this experience of her shock makes me check my appearance against the expectations of others, which I really dislike doing.

We had deportment stars.

Guess who never got one because she "walked like a boy"

I was terribly unladylike.

My headmaster at primary school told me boys were more intelligent and had more potential than girls as they grew older .

My home economics teacher asked me if my mother ever showed me how to cook because clearly I was useless at it and it was my mother's job to sort that out. She was far and away the worst teacher I ever had. She'd really invested in the patriarchy. Several levels of cognitive dissonance going on. I solved her problem of being shit at cooking and bagged a husband who does it for me. .

And yes 'ladylike' was something I never achieved. Another disappointment for Home Ec teacher. I'm gutted I tell you, gutted.

Things were so bad in the 70s, I seriously thought Woman was a dirty word, I couldn't quite believe I would one day be one, anyway, these two stick out:

At school 'You Woman' as an insult
1st driving instructor, women can't reverse, they lack a specific mechanism in their brain

Bloody hell.

Another one that stuck with me..

The head teacher (a nun in an all girls' school) talking about my choice of career. Bright girls like you should be teachers, the kind ones should be nurses and the others should be secretaries. She didn't approve of my choice of career. So she managed to insult everyone in one single sentence.

I'm wondering if these are more likely to happen at mixed sex schools compared to single.

I went to an all girls, with a brilliant (though terrifying) female head and a good balance of female and male teachers and I can't recall hearing any remarks like that.

On telling the school my desired career at the time - 'you can't do that because you're a girl'.

Art teacher (male) used to make the girls in the class stay behind to tidy up.

When I was about 15, my form tutor, upon me informing him I wanted to study medicine said, 'I think you should do nursing?'. I was one of the top 5 at school in science, there wa no bloody reason why I couldn't have done medicine if I wanted. Nursing is brilliant and academically challenging career too, but he was a dinosaur (and taught woodwork) so this was about suggesting a career that he felt was more appropriate for a GIRL, not helpfully thinking it a suitable career path.

I laughed it off at the time, but perhaps it does explain why I dropped A level chemistry for being 'too hard' (i.e. something I had to work at for the first time in my life).

Mind you, it was a school that had major issues with aspiration anyway. The Head of Upper School's 'inspirational' speech was about how much she looked forward to 'seeing the girls with their babies in prams in a few years'. This was in about 1997. Not long ago, really.

'Careers ' master " what do you want to do O levels for ? You're a pretty girl you will get married " I was only about 12 ( in the 1970s) but I remember being really cross.

I remember my Dad saying to me as a teenager, "you don't do anything. You can't even cook!" (I doubt he ever said that to my brothers).

And he always said it was worth sending me to university because if "you educate a woman, you educate a family".

And my Biology teacher "typical reaction from a girl!"

My History teacher "girls always want to work with animals or children don't they?!"