Monthly Archives: March 2019

FOUR REASONS WHY GENDER SHOULD BE PART OF THE UK SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Sara-Jane Luke

‘Boys in schools want to learn about gender, it matters to them, it’s important in their lives’- Raewyn Connell

It is undeniable that the UK school system is taking steps in the right direction regarding sex, relationship and sexuality education, with health and wellbeing education becoming a mandatory part of the curriculum by 2020. However, even with this progress the curriculum still neglects to educate the nation’s children about a fundamental aspect of human life: Gender. False ideology and misconceptions surrounding gender have been the source of the oppression of women, and LGBTQ+ people for centuries and yet this is a topic that we still fail to treat with appropriate importance within the education system.

To combat gender inequality

Since the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1961 gave women more autonomy over their bodies and life choices, there has been great improvement in gender equality. However, gender inequality is still a substantial issue within our society. For example, within the BBC there are no Women in the top ten highest paid presenters and only two in the top twenty. This is something that is also evident in our everyday work environments with the IFS 2016 finding that the hourly wage for women is still 18% lower than men’s on average.

Children internalise the stereotypes that perpetuate this inequality at a very early age.

For example, in the Channel 4 series: The Secret Life of Five Year Olds, in which some of the boys demonstrate a historically held view by boys that they belong to a ‘club’ exclusive of girls and that the girls can only join in if they ‘cook’ for them. This shows enforced gender roles, i.e. that women do the cooking while the men ‘hunt’, from the age of five. This is problematic because not only do the boys have this opinion regarding the domesticated role that women ‘should’ play but this sends the girls the message that they may only join in in this ‘male’ world on the boys’ terms. This demonstrates that whether we are conscious of doing so or not, we are sending children extremely problematic messages. For this reason, it essential that we teach our children of both genders that they have equal value from an early age.

To prevent bullying

Bullying relies on the exploitation of people’s differing attributes. Many young people suffer from poor mental health as a result of discrimination, scrutiny and a lack of comprehensive gender education for young people. For example, 52% of LGBTQ+ young people reported self-harm either recently or in the past compared to 25% of heterosexual non-trans young people.

Gender education leads to a more accepting society where people can feel safe and secure in their own skin. We cannot expect children to be understanding of difference and diversity if we tell them that this diversity does not exist. Until gender is discussed openly and honestly from an early age, children will be fearful and confused about these differences both within themselves and others.

To enhance children’s self-understanding

Lack of self-understanding leads to a fear of what others perceive us as and an introversion of our views and understanding of others. Encouraging children to experiment with different groups of toys and clothing regardless of gender allows the child to develop understanding and appreciation of differing views and cultures. Although it may be said that it is the job of the parents to decide what their children play with, school is the only place in which we can ensure that every child is given the appropriate tools to navigate our social world. Making this sort of experimentation a compulsory part of the curriculum ensures through policy that self-knowledge is fostered and embraced.

To tackle Toxic Masculinity

The danger of society requiring men and consequently boys to prove themselves as strongly masculine is that it steers them towards restricted options. To excel intellectually or to find another physical way to succeed in expressing this ‘masculinity’. This puts restrictive pressure on boys and creates friction between and within the genders. It creates segregation between those who express their masculinity intellectually and those who express their masculinity in a more physical way. This differentiation leads to exclusion of ‘gentle’ academic boys and girls, and a lack of academic confidence and support of the boys who express this physical masculinity.

By teaching boys at a young age that showing emotion and being kind is not a weakness but a strength, we will put them on the path to self-knowledge and healthy relationships.

I hope to have provided in brief four of many reasons for making gender education a compulsory part of the curriculum for children in key stage one (aged 5-7). This is the time to lay the fundamental building blocks for future discussion and healthy development for the individual children and society as a whole.

Why is Ed Sheeran so popular at weddings?

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Studying sociology is a great opportunity to try to answer life’s big questions – why do people fall into patterns of behaviour? What enables some groups to wield power over others? And why do so many people enjoy the music of Ed Sheeran?

Sheeran is not only one of the most popular musicians in the UK right now, he’s also the most popular at weddings. Spotify recently released data on the top 10 “first dance” songs chosen by UK couples and he features three times in this list, twice for two versions of the same song (Perfect, released in 2017). Does Ed Sheeran have a formula for writing a successful wedding song?

Ed Sheeran Perfect video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vv-BfVoq4g

Wedding music as a public but intimate choice

Making personal music choices for a public occasion is a tightrope walk, as anyone who’s planned the music for a wedding or funeral knows well. In a social setting, something like Perfect ticks all the boxes: it sets the scene, everyone knows it, it’s the right tempo for an easy waltz, and it’s middle-of-the-road enough not to cause offence. But there might be other reasons for using it that have more to do with the history of gender-segregated domestic duties.

Wedding planning as “women’s work”

Although there’s disagreement over the rate of change in the last 100 years, it’s widely accepted that domestic labour is still largely the woman’s domain in a heterosexual relationship (this 2016 report from the Office for National Statistics found that women still do 60% more unpaid work than men). Of course, domestic labour isn’t just hoovering and doing the dishes – it’s diary management and planning social engagements too, and wedding planning is often an extension of this, done almost exclusively by women (there’s academic research on this, by Tamara Sniezek and D.H. Currie, but there’s also this clip from when Monica and Chandler planned their wedding in Friends).

In 2005, Tamara Sniezek interviewed heterosexual engaged couples about their wedding planning. She found three things that are relevant to my Ed Sheeran question:

When you ask couples about the detail of who did each part of the practical planning work, you will find that women do the overwhelming majority of it
But when you ask vague questions like “how was the wedding work divided?” they often claim it was 50/50, and every couple interviewed by Sniezek repeatedly described it as a joint enterprise
Couples generally use the details of their wedding, including the music, to express their “couple identity”, and this is often based around an idea of equality and teamwork… even if the person arranging all these details is doing the overwhelming bulk of the work in the face of apathy from their partner.

Perhaps this cognitive dissonance speaks to some mixed feelings about entering into the institution of marriage. The situation for women in marriage is still unfair, and still carries with it certain expectations of doing unpaid work in the home – the modern bride may be looking out for ways to say “I’m not that kind of wife, I’m this kind of wife.” To the congregation and, perhaps, to her new husband.

Using wedding music to tell a story

Aside from the speeches, the ‘first dance’ is a couple’s first opportunity to set out their stall as a respectful equal partnership, expressing their identity in opposition to the generations that have gone before. Ed Sheeran’s Perfect is the, ahem, perfect example of a pop song that gives the “right message”:

“Well I found a woman, stronger than anyone I know
She shares my dreams, I hope that someday I’ll share her home
I found a love, to carry more than just my secrets
To carry love, to carry children of our own”

It emphasises the bride’s strength, refers to her home, and tells a story of teamwork and sharing. But perhaps the couples who dance to it are unwittingly revealing some more traditional views as well. In other lines, like “I found a girl beautiful and sweet” / “the someone waiting for me” / “Be my girl, I’ll be your man”, Perfect is no different from any other romantic pop ballad, reducing the female character to a pretty “girl” with no agency.

As a whole, the song represents a balance between the traditional roles some may still see as romantic, and the modern ideal of equality.

The Perfect relationship?

We live in confusing times, where our behaviours don’t necessarily line up with our attitudes. Although most heterosexual couples want to be seen as a balanced partnership, their division of all kinds of unpaid labour are unlikely to live up to this utopia. They give us a specific public narrative at their wedding to paper over the cracks, or perhaps to create a vision of how they would like their relationship to be.

When Ed Sheeran wrote Perfect, he gave marrying couples a gender-equal message to use for this purpose, within a framework of all the familiar male and female roles, in a society where wedding planning is still part of an uneven set of wifely expectations we are clearly uncomfortable with.

Leah Boundy

The Office

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“The term ‘sex’ should be understood as an individual’s biological make-up and ‘gender’ as culturally learnt and enacted by individuals”. (Oakley, 1985)

If you were to picture in your mind, a typical office setting, what would it look like? I bet you pictured something a little like this: several desks with computers on and staff members sat at them, as well as a few separate offices for managerial staff. Having imagined this, what sex are the staff members sat at the desks and the managerial staff in separate offices? If you imagined the desk staff as female and managerial staff as male, you imagined correctly, or at least how I expected you to anyway. This is something Blackburn et al (2002) deem as vertical segregation, as a hierarchal arrangement within an occupational setting, particularly in the case of the sexes.

It is precisely for this reason that I invited you to engage in the previous hypothetical situation, as it is one that is similar to my own workplace; the place that I work weekly alongside my University studies and on a full-time basis during holidays. I have worked at this Wholesaler and family-run company for nearly five years and have always been consciously aware of how the company is segregated on the basis of sex, but only now have I began wondering why this segregation has persisted.

For the purpose of my case study, we are going to focus on the telesales and area sales representative staff of the company. In the telesales office, there are ten individuals; one manager and nine whose responsibility it is to deal with customer queries and process orders by answering and making phone calls. The responsibilities of the six area sales representatives involves the managing of customers and acquiring more business, with the office being at their disposal to use.

Out of the telesales staff, three are males, with the office manager being male. Out of the six area sales representatives, all are male. Therefore, we are presented with figure 1. Given these observations, you would think that my office is relatively symmetrical in terms of sex distribution. This is not the case, well not in terms of the roles that are performed by each staff member anyway. For example, all seven superior roles are those that the office manager and area sales representatives occupy (figure 2).

Why is it then that my workplace assigns females in different positions than their male counterparts? I have a few suggestions for you to ponder your thoughts upon.

In figure 3, it is shown that all staff members, excluding two, work full-time.

Ironically, both these individuals, one male and one female, occupy the more passive roles within the company. Often, it is argued that women occupy more part-time roles than men and thus accounts as to why so few have managerial roles within the workplace.

On the contrary, Hakim (1995) argues that part-time roles are accredited and account for individuals such as students, not just exclusively women. This example shows that if women occupy part-time roles, there are often explanations as to why they do – being a student myself is living proof. Although, this is not to say that all women have the same experience.

I will now focus on a broader and more prevalent issue: patriarchal society. This society inevitably generates norms and values that individuals adhere to, which remain engrained into their consciousnesses. Though progress has been made, the fact is that men continue to be viewed as the superior sex, which applies to my workplace, given the lack of female authoritative figures within it. Building upon this view, West and Zimmerman (1987) describe ‘gender’ as a set of normative conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities, i.e. we are likely to view traits of leadership and confidence as qualities that men tend to adopt; to be empathetic and nurturing on the other hand, are qualities that we would associate with women. Despite both sexes having the capacity to adopt both sets of traits, the first are deemed as inherently male and more valuable within the workplace. From this, gender can be seen as constructing an individuals’ position in the social structure (West and Fenstermaker, 1995).

Overall, one may argue that certain individuals genuinely possess more desirable attributes that a position requires, and this may very well be the case as to why men and women differentiate in their job prospects and positions. However, I do not believe this to be the case in my workplace. Without any disrespect intended, but the females, including myself, are just as capable of performing the senior roles that the males occupy.

At the end of the day, it is about being more accepting and willing of individuals by not limiting them to positions based on their sex or their ‘gendered’ qualities.

*NB: if you are interested in the issue of sex segregation, look at this report by the European Institute for Gender Equality: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-14624-2017-ADD-2/en/pdf.

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Emily Atkins

References

Blackburn, R., et al. (2002) Explaining gender segregation. British Journal of Sociology. 53(4), p513-36

Hakim, C. (1995) Five Feminist Myths about Women’s Employment. The British Journal of Sociology. 46(3), p429-55

Oakley, A (1985) Sex, Gender and Society. Gower: Maurice Temple Smith

West, C., Fenstermaker, S. (1995) Doing Difference. Gender & Society. 9(1), p8-37

West, C., Zimmerman, D. (1987) Doing Gender. Gender and Society. 1(2), p125-51.