Is there still gender inequality? Really?

In a century filled with advancements in everything from technology to equality, are gender issues still relevant to our students? In Diane Waff's article "Romance in the Classroom: Inviting Gender Discourse and Power" for The Quarterly, she argues that gender issues are more alive than ever. Teachers should be aware that yesterday's bias is continuing to be today's problems. As role models to our students, we should be aware that even our smallest descisions are effecting the way our students view gender. Waff says about her own classroom, "Girls have revealed their dissatisfaction with a wide range of practices including school curriculum, discipline policy and biased teacher-student interactions. They have said they were tired of reading adventure stories featuring only males in heroic roles, that they were fed up with being called epithets like 'bitch' and 'whore,' that they disliked having their desires sacrificed for the male 'majority.'" This issue that Waff's female students rose will effect me, as an English teacher, greatly. Waff approached the gender issue by having students journal each day. She found out that her students submitted to stereotypes and looked at each other with resentment. Her female students wrote about feeling like a victim while her male students wrote about power and sex. She decided, then and there, to present her classroom with materials, and therefore ideas, that would help them emerge from these stereotypes. Waff wrote about her new gender-empowerment curriculum, "What's different is that I have incorporated into classroom discourse issues surrounding gender and power—what has been called by the American Association of University Women the 'evaded curriculum.' I have done this by using traditional and non-traditional literature, discussion, and written reflection. The effect has been to improve the lives of individual students and the social well-being of the wider school community."

As a new teacher, I am terrified of how my actions, even the smallest ones, will effect the way my students see the world. I hope to use materials that encourages empowerment and abolishes stereotypes. To do this, I know I will have to constantly research new ideals and works that highlights those ideals. I hope to be as brave as Diana Waff was, to be able to say "no" to the way things were and introduce the way things should be. I want to encourage my female students not to be victims, to embrace their power. I want to show my male students that kindness and equality is the only way to true respect. I think Ms. Waff said it best, "I am committed as a woman teacher to model strategies of resistance to gender, racial and cultural bias by asking students what they think and insisting they reflect on diverse perspectives."



Waff, Diane. "Romance in the Classroom: Inviting Discourse on Gender and Power." Quarterly. 17.2 (1995): Online