Teacher Blog: Carol

Debate Club

Week 2 (5 males, 14 females)

Question: Do we need the women’s equality party?

Responses:

• It’s very exclusive to have a women only party.
• Normal political parties should have more women. Women need to be more assertive & stand up for themselves in politics.
• Women have some different concerns to men, for example men just think about war or business and women think about the NHS.

Concern about:

• Unequal pay
• The way women are shown in the media particularly sport
• Unequal divide of labour at home

Stereotypes:

• Expectations start early at school.
• There are gender stereotypes: men do physical jobs e.g. electrician. Nurses are female and doctors are male. There are different male and female roles at home.
• Women are limited by having to look after kids, where as men have their work as their main focus.
• Women are not strong enough and feel intimidated in male dominated fields.
• Concern from a boy about males being expected to be more violent and being treated unfairly as a result.
• From the ‘olden days’, men were always taught to be a gentleman and to look after women as if women needed looking after. This could be why women may feel less confident.

Media:

• In adverts, women are mainly seen as looking nice and doing proper jobs.
• Girls & boys do separate PE and women’s sport gets very little coverage. There are not many role models.
• Positive examples: the Virgin campaign shows women in sport and the ‘This Girl Can’ campaign.