The overall objective of this lesson, in terms of infusing
gender equity into the classroom, is to enable students to recognize that they may already
have biases in their views, and that they may need to reconsider these. Students need to
acknowledge that there are few trait differences between males and females relative to
capabilities to do jobs or have career success.
STANDARD: All students will be able to identify career areas which are
non-traditional for their gender.
GRADE LEVEL:3-6, Guidance
OBJECTIVE(S): Students will be able to:
- define specific jobs as traditionally feminine or masculine.
- express their own occupational preferences without regard to gender.
- research people with non-traditional jobs for their gender
- graph the class’s preferences
- use higher order thinking and reasoning skills: comparison, induction, deduction, and
inquiry.
TIME: Two class periods with time for a homework assignment between them.
MATERIALS: library books, newspapers.
PROCEDURES:
- Give children the following riddle to solve. A father and his son are in a car accident.
Both are rushed to the hospital and the boy is wheeled into the operating room. The
surgeon looks at the boy and says "I can’t operate on my own son!" How can
this be?
- If the children do not immediately see that the surgeon is the boy’s mother,
discuss why they did not. Elicit the response that most people do not think of surgeons as
being women so they have difficulty solving the riddle.
- Using the class’s suggestions, make a list of occupations. Then have each student
designate every occupation as F, M or both.
- The class then shares their responses.
- The teacher helps students conceptualize the format for a table to show their opinions.
Which occupations were mostly seen as female? As male?
- Ask the students to identify the qualities needed to be successful in each of the
‘male’ jobs. List these on the blackboard. Ask students:
- does the class know any women with these qualities?
- would they be successful in the career also?
Do the same thing with the ‘female’ jobs until the class realizes that gender
should not determine what careers to which people should aspire.
- Discuss people the students know with nontraditional careers. If possible, invite them
into the classroom to discuss the difficulties related to gender that they have
encountered on the job, and how they have overcome their difficulties.
- Using books and newspaper articles, have students write reports on people with
nontraditional careers and present them to the class.
- As their final assessment, each student should select a non-traditional job for their
gender and tell why it interests them. Their work may be evaluated on the basis of whether
or not they can see themselves in such a career.
EXTENDED ACTIVITES: Elicit non-gender specific names for occupations such
as fireman, mailman, policeman, paperboy, maid, and stewardess. Ask questions that enable
students to determine (deduct) how these words discourage girls and/or boys?
