How human ecology education can counter learned social hierarchies (Second of 3 parts)

An Education in Complying with Social Norms

From childhood, we are subjected to standards of how we should dress, eat, and conduct ourselves, and are rewarded for conformity and bullied for non-normative features. Children are easily influenced, both at home and in school. They are exposed to implicit bias and social categorization before they can even name what is happening.

In high school, appearance often creates a “you are in or out” shorthand, using triggers such as the big-muscle ideal or the “dumb blonde” stereotype. Confirming this, The Hawk Eye newspaper, produced by students from Hebron High School, states, “Many teenagers tend to change their appearance so that they can please others.” Pointing out how the rampant use of social media by children has made a bad situation worse, the article adds, “Following trends may bring satisfaction to those who follow them, but there are still many teenagers who don’t follow the beauty standard. Teenagers who don’t conform to trends tend to get bullied by other people who see them as outcasts.”

The blind adherence to these appearance standards leads to some body types becoming the default preference in society. Medical schools and researchers have long used the male body, often implicitly white, as the default model of the human body. A systematic review of sex inequalities in medical research found that data collected from male participants are often generalized to females, producing real disadvantages for female patients, according to a study published in Women’s Health Reports. The Association of American Medical Colleges has also summarized how gaps in women’s health research continue to affect diagnosis and treatment.

Educational curricula also support gender ideology. From the early school years, children are encouraged to pursue a specific field of study based on widely accepted gender norms. Some examples of this include athletics and STEM courses. Both of these are often seen as “appropriate” fields for boys compared to girls. “Despite the recent increase in women in higher education, men and women are still concentrated in different educational programs and occupations. Such gender segregation results from persisting gender differences in educational choices, which lead to different educational opportunities and labor market prospects. Educational choices already differ in early adolescence, with boys being more likely to choose mathematics and science tracks and girls tending to choose non-science tracks,” states a 2016 article published in Educational Studies.

Maintaining equal education for all, grounded in the human need to learn and grow, is not possible when opportunities are denied through discrimination.

Even though these beliefs undermine stated commitments to equality, they run on autopilot. “The social environment in which boys and girls grow up (i.e., peers, parents, media, school) conveys cultural beliefs about what is ‘appropriate’ male or female behavior. Adolescents internalize these gender role expectations in their gender ideology,” adds the 2016 article.

The Costs of Learned Social Hierarchies

The social patterns described earlier exact a high price in health, opportunity, and income from individuals and nations. Companies may hire based on gender, race, age, or even the label on a jacket, thinking that a business comprising like-minded people will be more cohesive and efficient. On its face, that is an attractive proposition for executives working under cost and speed pressure. But the result can be exclusion dressed up as organizational fit.

The burden is especially damaging for women because of the beauty premium and the plainness penalty. This topic was researched by economists Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle in 1993, who found that such considerations add another layer of judgment for women, handicapping them in both employment and earnings. Once “dress for success” becomes the ideal, counteraction follows: jeans in the C-suite and pajamas as a sign of protest.

Differential Treatment Under the Law

Contemporary politics and legislation often turn human difference into a prey-and-predator game. Throughout U.S. history, legal structures such as voting restrictions, property laws, and the doctrine of coverture have created false hierarchies affecting women and people of color. Under this legal doctrine, a married woman’s legal identity and many of her economic rights were subsumed into those of her husband, shaping women’s property rights and civic status for generations.

During World War II, women “manned” factories, and it seemed like the United States was taking a major leap toward equality, albeit under duress. After the war, the country pushed women back into the kitchen as unpaid “happy housewives”. It promoted large families, clearing the way for men to reclaim economic power in the public sphere.

When I graduated from college in the early 1970s, I could not obtain a credit card or sign a mortgage in my own name because women were routinely denied those rights. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 began changing that. Yet the broader project of securing equal legal rights remains unfinished. As of 2026, the Equal Rights Amendment still has not been fully incorporated into the U.S. Constitution despite being introduced in Congress in 1923.

Meanwhile, just like any other profession, the rules of appearance apply to politics as well. Image consultants and media systems, driven by business cycles, create trends and favorites, and the public conforms in voting booths. Running for high office now often requires stylists, cosmetics, and visual discipline. As philosopher Crispin Sartwell states in his book Political Aesthetics, “Not all art is political, but all politics is aesthetic; at their heart political ideologies, systems, and constitutions are aesthetic systems, multimedia artistic environments.”

This takes away focus from the real people, stories, and human needs that should be the focus of a person’s candidacy and policy decisions. Eventually, this homogenized mold of visual discrimination becomes part of the national government and the economy. Even legal decisions in the highest courts can reflect socially constructed gender and color beliefs rather than a shared justice rooted in human worth. As Michele Goodwin, former Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, wrote, “judges may possess cognitive awareness of a past or present harm against a vulnerable group and yet refuse to intervene to avert the continuance of harm or discrimination.”

Hierarchy Beyond Politics

In the real world, socially constructed hierarchies become especially risky. Collaborative efforts to ensure climate adaptation and the sharing of resources to sustain life are often undermined when maintaining existing hierarchies within nations and across the world becomes the deciding factor in who is heard and helped, and who receives support and supplies already in short supply.

If these hierarchies are learned rather than natural, then they can also be unlearned. The question becomes about where people acquire their deepest assumptions about human value, competence, and social role. For most people, that process begins in childhood and continues through education. If schools help perpetuate social hierarchies, they can also help interrupt them. This possibility points toward a different educational framework: human ecology.

Sandra Ericson is an author and former chair of the Consumer Arts and Science Department at City College of San Francisco, where she led the department for nearly three decades. She is a contributor to the Observatory. This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.