Gender Stereotyping In The Classroom

Great Essays
Introduction
From an early age children develop ideas about their gender and how they should behave. These ideas come from a child’s background, the media, advertising and within the classroom (Reay, 2001, p.155; Skelton, 2001, p.100). This guide is for early learning educators is and will describe and discuss the issues associated with gender stereotyping. This guide will also provide a strategy to address the issues within early learning and provide a professional development activity to help teachers better understand gender stereotyping. This guide will illustrate how gender stereotyping occurs in the classroom, why it is important for educators to understand the issues, how relationships and behaviour are affected and the limiting nature
…show more content…
Emotions
Men do not share emotions and they should not cry, but women are very emotional and it is ok to cry.

Interests
Men like sport, fishing, 4WDriving, and women like gossip magazines, shopping and make-up.

(Rayne, 2015)

Gender stereotyping in the classroom.
From a very early age your students have well developed ideas about what boys and girls ‘should’ feel, like, do, and behave (National Union of Teachers, 2013, p.6). As an educator you may be reinforcing gender stereotypes in the classroom, either implicitly or explicitly.

Here are some questions to get you thinking about how you may be reinforcing gender stereotypes in the classroom:
• Do you give blue stickers to boys and pink stickers to girls?
• Do you choose girls for cleaning tasks, and boys for more physical tasks?
• Do you describe the boys in your class as being more boisterous than the girls?
• Do you encourage the girls to play with the dolls and the boys to play with the building blocks?
• Do you pick different types of books to read to girls or boys?

(Portfolio, 2014)

Why do educators need to know about gender
…show more content…
This has led researches to ask how schools have influenced this gender inequalities. The school environment can either encourage or discourage the view that masculinity is anti-social and oppositional to authority. If the school environment does not challenge the dominant masculinity represented in popular culture then it is very unlikely academic success will be associated with being masculine, and therefore seen as a sign of weakness (Skelton, 2001, p.114; Legewie & DiPrete, 2012

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Sexism

    • 409 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In our society today, there are still many techniques of discrimination that one would think had been eradicated years ago. One of these techniques is sexism, which is the act of prejudice, stereotyping, and/or intolerance on the basis of gender. Sexism has taken control over the way people think and it affects the job industry, government decisions, the media, and unfortunately, education. Children begin to experience sexism at a young age, typically in elementary school. An example of a subliminal sexist message that they might experience would be a teacher scolding a female student for acting in an unorthodox fashion that does not fit the ‘calm, respectful, and neat’ stereotype for girls, but then excusing the same actions of a male student, using the overused, disgusting statement ‘boys will be boys.’…

    • 409 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gender roles and stereotypes have always been an issue in society, and they still are to this day. Although feminism and woman’s rights have come so far in the past years, there is still more progress to be made and the sexist labels do not only happen to women. Having gender stereotypes, that begin when we are young, creates the platform for many of these sexist issues that women, as well as men, are still facing. The article “Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls” written by Katha Pollitt expresses the ideas of male and female stereotypes along with feminism.…

    • 965 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Legally Blonde: A Meditation of Stereotypes Gender stereotypes are simplistic. Stereotypes do not bother to take account of the thoughts, behaviors, and individual desires of a person, merely taking interest whether or not the person is male, female, or nonbinary. In film franchises, such as Legally Blonde, writers and directors insist on propagating stereotypes despite the ongoing evolvement of archetypes in current society. Although in the final moments of the flick, Elle Woods surpasses such stereotypes and displays aberration, the number of cliches in the movie serves to reinforce negative gender identities.…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gender Neutral Toys

    • 1551 Words
    • 6 Pages

    There have been quite a few scientific studies on young children playing with gender neutral toys and being raised without stereotypes. Many sociologist agree that children playing with gender neutral toys is actually very beneficial to their development. According to Dr. Stephanie Sweet, a sociologist and lecturer at the University of California, Davis, “Studies have found that gendered toys do shape children’s play preferences and styles. Because gendered toys limit the range of skills and attributes that both boys and girls can explore through play, they may prevent children from developing their full range of interests, preferences, and talents.”…

    • 1551 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Almost immediately children become gender aware. They start creating generalizations, which they apply to themselves as well as other people, slowly forming their personalities. (Martin and Ruble, 2004). The role of schools has become major in the lives of children younger than 5 years old (Sales, Spjeldnes, and Koeshe, 2010). Two fundamental parts of the early childhood environment influence perceptions of young children’s gender and gender stereotypes: classroom materials and the instructions of EYPs (Well and Hmm, 2005).…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Title IX On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln gave the famous Emancipation Proclamation stating that all slaves should be set free and they shall be treated equally with white people. 109 years later the United States finally passed a law that stated women should be equal to men in government funded programs or activities. This law is called Title IX, according to the article “Triumphs of Title IX” which was posted in Ms. Magazine, Patsy Mink, Edith Green, and Bernice Sandler were the first women to start pushing for this law to be passed in the early 1970’s. These women started creating this idea after each one of them had been discriminated because they were women.…

    • 1726 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Little girls are expected to pretend to be princesses and mommies, and little boys assume the roles of soldiers, firemen, or football players. When they start school, coeducation classrooms tend to reinforce these stereotypes. In a study by a professor and her student, preschool children showed an increase in gender stereotypes when they played and chose toys. In the prepared setting, the teacher was instructed by the researcher to line the children up and then separate them by gender. The teacher then asked the students to work separately.…

    • 1570 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    For one, they slightly believe that the component of a male’s biology is distinctly different from a females but they also do take note that a contributing factor maybe the way gender is defined socially and culturally in society make a tremendous impact. For example, the authors note the comparison of males becoming the inferior sex results in societal imbalance which is demonstrated as a moral threat to society. Because of this result, many of the feminization within schools provides an unfair advantage for schools as they are considered in inferior when compared to girls in standardized testing. As solution the boys’ literacy underachievement, oppressors of the feminized schooling system supports the idea of “cater[ing] to boys’ natural learning interests and strengths” (Watson, 2010). This idea includes proving more males jobs in the work place as teachers.…

    • 1689 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hidden Lessons Analysis

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages

    American University professors David and Myra Sadker work together to expose gender bias in the education system. In the excerpt “Hidden Lessons,” from their book Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls (1994), the Sadkers shed light on social injustices within the education system. They use examples from controlled simulations to show their audience how gender bias happens right before their eyes. Their argument says that there is gender bias in schools, but many teachers, parents, and students aren’t even aware of it.…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Many stereotypes exist regarding gender and it is commonly thought that women are only recognized as the weaker sex; they are highly demoted in terms of career, social status, physical strength, and wealth. Men have always been seen as superior to women, but in recent days, women have become more independent, self-sufficient, powerful and less-sacrificing. In a world in which equality is becoming more feasible, it is important to remember that the root cause lies in childhood which will outline how a person will live the rest of their life. Since child ‘X’ is not categorized as a boy or as a girl, it will not have to face the numerous stereotypes that come along with having a gender and will be better off. From an intersectional approach, children should not be defined by their gender alone, just as they should not be defined by their race, religious background, class or any other characteristic.…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stereotypes Of Women Essay

    • 1937 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Women Stereotypes Women have been stereotyped as the homemaker for years. The typical nurturing, maternal ability they have encourages men to view woman as a caretaker. Cleaning, cooking, and raising the children are all thought of as “womanly jobs”. Men, as well as other women, constantly apply this stereotype to those around them. There are certain expectations that women are required to meet when it comes to this typical womanly role which pressures them to feel as if they must meet these qualifications, even if the woman does not want to.…

    • 1937 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gender stereotypes that are placed on children by society are impacting the way children think and act, (National Union of Teachers, 2013, p.3). These gender stereotypes are formed by what society deems acceptable. For instance it is acceptable for girls to wear pink but not boys or trucks and cars are toys for boys not girls. Having children think and act in accordance with gender stereotypes is limiting their self-expression. By having children learn gender stereotypes at…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    From a young age girls and boys are unconsciously taught that they are different physically, emotionally and intellectually and that they should expect different things out of life (Paechter, 2007). Girls and boys may pick up on subtle cues from teachers about how well they should be performing and what subjects they should be interested in based on their gender. The combination of different social factors, especially gender related issues, can have an influential effect on a student 's ability to achieve certain subjects, some of which these influences are developed within the classroom (King et al, 2010). Schools have a large role in constructing, defining and reinforcing positive gender images and one of the roles of a teacher are to prevent gender-based discrimination in schools and aim to expand student’s views of gender. The Queensland College of Teachers [QCT] (2011) Professional Standards for Queensland Teachers was created to provide teachers an outline of what is expected of them, in order to gain a teacher’s registration.…

    • 1829 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The media is present around us everywhere we go, may it be in newspapers, advertisements, social networking or magazines. Our mind ingests and registers these images without us having a say in it. Whether we want or not to view these images our subconscious uses them to build our social behavior. Not only do these bias images invade our minds but they also shape the way in which we see the world. Media plays a meaningful role in entertaining, informing, and introducing values to diverse audiences in society.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gender Roles in Society Gender roles are very prevalent in today’s society. Gender roles are a set of societal norms dictating the types of behaviors which are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for people based on their actual or perceived sex or sexuality. In fact, every baby at birth, they are categorized into male or female. “Gender represents a spectrum of sociocultural roles, identities, and orientations that are distinct from one 's biological sex determined by genes, anatomy, gonads, and hormones” (as cited in Juster, Paul, Preussener, and Jens). Gender roles can affect not only how one views someone, but also how one might act towards one another.…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays