Gender Discrimination: when does it start?

For this week's post, my articles were focused on when gender disparities begin to appear in education. These differences are apparent when a child hasn't even been born! Parents are often anxious to find out whether or not they will have a boy or a girl in order to paint a baby's room, buy clothing and other responsibilities that come with being a parent. Whether or not it is obvious to them, a parent who buys their son a blue outfit with a red firetruck saying "future firefighter," those parents have just implemented a gender stereotype upon their child. These occurrences are extremely typical and yes, often adorable as well, but are parents setting their children up to be "filed" into categories based on gender? The three authors I have chosen to focus on this week may agree with that statement.

Paul Hamaker discusses this gender discrimination in his article Gender Discrimination Begins in Elementary School. For those of you who are elementary school teachers, please bear with me as the following statistics may make you a bit uneasy, or they might just turn on a light bulb. Hamaker mentions a research study completed at the University of Georgia where "“The data show, for the first time, that gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favor girls. In every subject area, boys are represented in grade distributions below where their test scores would predict.” The study goes on to discuss why this discrepancy exists and found that often teachers grade based on behavior rather than performance. With these gender differences beginning so early, how are students supposed to overcome these obstacles later in life when it's all they've known since beginning elementary school?

Not only do children suffer from gender discrimination when it comes to grading, but students are also often categorized based on gender; So what happens to those students who are transgender? Martha Irvine tackled this difficult topic in her article Transgender Youth Presenting Challenges for Schools, where she discusses what changes schools are beginning, and need to start making, to make school a safe and accommodating place for transgender students. Irvine mentions a study in her article that gave a staggering fact "According to a 2010 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 41 percent of transgender people surveyed said they had attempted suicide. That figure rose to 51 percent for those who said they'd also been bullied, harassed, assaulted or expelled because they were transgender or gender nonconforming at school" (Irvine, M. 2013).  These students need a safe place just as much, if not more, than all other students.

With so many of today's societal problems focusing on gender, Sara Wood takes a different approach in her own life, which she discusses in Gender Neutral. Wood has decided to not let her gender define who she is, at work or at home. She describes herself as "Adventurer, mother, friend, colleague, type A, liberal, oversharer, Southerner, donut-lover, yes, but never "woman" (Wood, S. 2013). I admire her view on how much our gender identity "defines" us, even if that definition doesn't match up to who we are as individuals. If only more people, men and women alike, could adopt this view and thought of identifying more with who we are rather than what we are, men or women, we might all begin to close the gender gap.

For the full links please see the list below:

Hamaker, P. (2013, January 3). Gender Discrimination Begins in Elementary School. In Examiner. http://www.examiner.com/article/gender-discrimination-begins-elementary-school

Irvine, M. (2013, May 28). Transgender Youth Presenting Challenges for Schools. In Huffington Post.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/boy-or-girl-gender-a-new-_n_3345965.html

Wood, S. (2013, May 30). Gender Neutral. In Huffington Post Women. 

         http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sara-wood/gender-neutral_b_3354305.html

The Gender Gap and Equal Pay

For this week's posting I found three articles related to the gender gap and equal pay. In today's society it is startling that men and women still are not earning equal pay for the same work being done. If a woman is in a position of leadership within a company or school, she should be earning the same amount of money as a man in her same position. We encourage our young girls growing up to "dream big" and to go after their goals, no matter what it takes, so they can become successful later in life; but how can these girls achieve their dreams if the gender gap continues to hold them back?

The articles I found focus specifically on the gender gap in both higher education and the rest of the working world. The first article written by Kate Michelman, How Long Will Equal Pay Take to Achieve?, focuses on on why there is still such a wide gap in pay between genders when the equal pay act has been in place for over 50 years. Michelman states that "Pew Research Center reported that women are the sole or primary source of income in 40 percent of American households with children under age 18" (Michelman, K. 2013). Such disparities in wage are simply unacceptable in today's society and this gender gap does not seem to be getting any smaller, or seem to be closing anytime soon. In order to bring about change in our society, we must do something to ensure that women are getting paid a fair, equal amount as their male counterparts.

In Gender Roles and Wage Gaps in Higher Education, Shaadi Shoubaki discusses potential reasons why women are in these lesser paying jobs, specifically because of the occupational gender segregation that is evident when choosing a major in college. The article goes on to discuss how women are consistently choosing "women-appropriate majors" even though the idea of gender inequality is believed to be a problem of the past. When I reflect on my experiences at UW Oshkosh, I go back to hearing friends of mine saying there was only one male in their nursing classes, or only a handful of males in their education courses. On the other hand, I have good friends who are the only females in a few of their finance or science courses. Gender disparities are seen throughout a college campus, and with the consistent wage gaps, female students in higher education are being set-up to earn less after graduation.

Finally, Gregory Linton discusses why these gender gaps in higher education need to be discussed in Higher Education Gender Gap Deserves Attention.  While many articles seem to focus on disparities against women in the gender gap, Linton focuses on how males are struggling through this phenomenon. A staggering fact he states is "Since 2000, a little more than 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees were conferred on women each year. By 2020, that will increase to 58.5 percent. In the next 10 years, 2.78 million more women than men will receive bachelor’s degrees" (Linton, G. 2013). With the gender gap affecting both men and women, it is something that needs to be addressed not only in higher education, but also in K-12 as well. 

The gender gap is not something of our imagination, nor is it something that is going away on its own. It is something we all need to think about in our daily lives, not only at work, but also at home. What stereotypical gender roles are we, or family, or friends, implementing on our children, and more importantly, how can we set them up for success no matter what their gender.

For the complete articles, please see the links below:

• Michelman, K. (2013, June 10). How Long will Equal Pay Take to Achieve?. In Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-michelman/how-long-will-equal-pay-to-achieve_b_3417743.html
• Linton, G. (2013, March 23). Higher education gender gap deserves attention. In Knox News. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/mar/23/gregory-linton-higher-education-gender-gap/
• Shoubaki, S. (2013, April 11). Gender Roles and Wage Gaps in Higher Education. In Examiner.  http://www.examiner.com/article/gender-roles-and-wage-gaps-higher-education

Introduction

Hi everyone,

My name is Amanda Sunila and I am excited for this summer 2013 semester of Dialogues in Social Justice. I am excited for the semester to begin as I will be graduating this August!

Throughout the summer I will be focusing my blog posts on gender issues as they relate to the topics discussed in this course.

Amanda