This term, our topic question came from the pupils: What makes men and women different, if indeed anything does? You can read a blog post calling for recommendations, and introducing our project here.
We started with a true/false quiz to introduce some shocking statistics about gender inequality. We discussed why these things might be happening, and then moved onto the broader question of why gender inequality happens. We identified many potential causes, and voted on which we would like to look at in more detail. Different classes did different investigations, based on their interests:
Do traditional fairy stories give young children sexist messages about what girls and boys should do?
Do adverts for toys make young children think they have to want to play with certain toys?
Do women's magazines make us feel better or worse about ourselves?
Do music videos portray a good image of women for teenagers to look up to?
After a lesson on fairy stories one pupil suggested we design our own princesses (who were going to be black, or ugly, or gay, or in a wheelchair) and write stories for them. Other pupils' suggestions were to send our ideas to Disney, to "help them be less sexist", and to host an exhibition in school (or somewhere else if possible) displaying our work on the messages girls and boys get, to "raise awareness so that other teenagers can think critically like we are trying to". We are hoping to put all these ideas into action!
Lastly, we looked at Naomi Wolf's argument in the Beauty Myth.
We started with a true/false quiz to introduce some shocking statistics about gender inequality. We discussed why these things might be happening, and then moved onto the broader question of why gender inequality happens. We identified many potential causes, and voted on which we would like to look at in more detail. Different classes did different investigations, based on their interests:
Do traditional fairy stories give young children sexist messages about what girls and boys should do?
Do adverts for toys make young children think they have to want to play with certain toys?
Do women's magazines make us feel better or worse about ourselves?
Do music videos portray a good image of women for teenagers to look up to?
After a lesson on fairy stories one pupil suggested we design our own princesses (who were going to be black, or ugly, or gay, or in a wheelchair) and write stories for them. Other pupils' suggestions were to send our ideas to Disney, to "help them be less sexist", and to host an exhibition in school (or somewhere else if possible) displaying our work on the messages girls and boys get, to "raise awareness so that other teenagers can think critically like we are trying to". We are hoping to put all these ideas into action!
Lastly, we looked at Naomi Wolf's argument in the Beauty Myth.