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Seminar: Saturday 20 October 2012 Athens, Greece 10:30 – 14:30 FEMALE AND MALE VALUES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS: FACT OR MYTH?CHALLENGING GENDER ROLE STEREOTYPES AT SCHOOL "I introduce the word stereotype with some caution because it is subject to misunderstanding on two counts, both related to believing a stereotype to be true: First, a stereotype is not believed by everyone, but since it is recognized by everyone, it is powerful – even for disbelievers… Second, when a stereotype is believed to be true, counter-evidence makes little impact… So, a stereotype is still believed to be true, no matter what is believed about individual women and men and whatever individuals believe about women and men in general." (Morwenna Griffiths, 1995) 1. KEY WORDS • YIN – YANG ΥΙΝ: dark, black, passive, weak, soft, moon, North YANG: light, white, warm, active, hard, sun, South • RIGHT – LEFT BRAIN HEMISPHERES RIGHT LEFT emotion, intuition, empathy, visual perception communication,artistic expression order, discrimination super-conscious language, reason – logical/analytical serial perception of time, conscious • INTERNAL / PRIVATE – EXTERNAL / PUBLIC PLACE 2. REFERENCES TO FIELDS OF STUDY • BIOLOGY "Studies of infants have shown greater activity and aggression among boys and evidence about this greater capacity of energy suggests that they may be born that way." (Matteson, 1975) • ANTHROPOLOGY Even when so-called "third sexes" exist, as for example, the Plains Indians Berdache and the Omani Xannyith, conventional male and female types are still strongly differentiated. So the question of continuities in gender imaging must go beyond genetic endowment to encompass cultural norms and moral scripts." (Gilmore, 1990) • SOCIOLOGY The split between rationality and emotion that exists in western culture tends to propel men into the role of thinker and doer, rather than experiencer of feelings. This tends to make them bad at relating to people and leaves them rather isolated and cerebral. (Ηorrocks,1994) • PSYCHOLOGY – ARCHETYPES "For purely psychological reasons I have in other of my writings tried to equate the masculine consciousness with the concept of Logos and the feminine with Eros. By Logos I meant discrimination, judgement, insight and by Eros I meant the capacity to relate." (Jung, 1989) • RELIGION Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism – all attribute various qualities and values to men and women. • ART A participant, who is a professional painter and primary school art teacher, gave us a beautiful account of the representation of The woman in Art throughout different historical periods, showing us paintings by male and female artists. 3. REASONS FOR THE CONTINUATION OF STEREOTYPES • Role models – social learning • Imitation – reinforcement • Media – advertising "Typically, men are portrayed as active, adventurous, powerful, sexually aggressive and largely uninvolved in human relationships. Just as consistent with cultural views of gender are depictions of women as sex objects who are usually young, thin, beautiful, passive, dependent and often incompetent or dumb…." (Julia Wood,1994) • Lifestyle • Relationships – Reproduction of roles in the family "For many children, Dad becomes a sepulchral figure who returns from work late in the evening, just before they go to bed. But for boys, this separation from father is critical for the development of their male identity… The father is needed to rescue the boy from the female world, so that he can identify himself as male. In many cultures this transition is marked as a solemn, highly charged ritual." (Horrocks, 1994) 4. SCHOOL AND STEREOTYPES "The organization of the curriculum, the timetable, the school culture and hidden curriculum, classroom interactions between pupils and between teacher and pupils were all shown to have been built upon assumptions of gender categorization and hierarchies." (Arnot,1997) LANGUAGE IN BOOKS As teachers we need to be vigilant about discriminating language and images in school books. PERFORMANCE Girls have been found to do better in Maths and Science in girls’ schools, thus indicating that they adopt a more "female" persona when in mixed-gender schools. LOCUS OF CONTROL Certain studies indicate that girls tend to have an external locus of control keeping in tune with the traditional role of women which is subsidiary, defined by the expectations and evaluation of others. RELATIONSHIPS – PEER CULTURE "Rewarding individuals for behaving in non-stereotypical ways may be an ineffective approach. Since boys reward each other for complying with gender stereotypical behavior and punish each other for behaving in ways that do not conform to these stereotypes, it may be necessary to change boys' peer culture values before it is possible to modify them." (Grossman & Grossman,1993) 5. STATISTICS • Distribution of certain characteristics • Polarized distribution among males • More balanced distribution among females "Finally, Abrams et al (1985) found that females, the majority of whose siblings were male, were particularly likely to have abandoned science subjects at school (a polarization effect)." Baker(1989) Leventhal (1970 ) found that "Men who only had sisters were more masculine than men who only had brothers." 6. STRATEGIES/TOOLS OF SENSITIZATION AGAINST PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPES Discussion – presentation of scientific data – personal accounts – activities of self and other gender exploration through challenging stereotypical views. 7. FURTHER ACTIVITIES • TEACHER SELF-CHECK: 3 QUESTIONS As a student, were you treated differently due to your gender? As a teacher, record the way you treat girls and boys in class, the time that you allocate to each gender, the consequences, "punishments", that you set for boys and girls. Check your own stereotypical views by answering the questionnaire. • REFERENCES TO LITERATURE • DRAMA/COMMUNICATION: GENDER PRESENTATION IN PLAYS Miss Julia (A. Strindberg) Locandiera (C. Goldoni) Romeo and Juliet (W. Shakespeare) The Taming of the Shrew (W. Shakespeare) 8. QUESTIONNAIRE In order to explore our own stereotypical views as teachers, we answer the following questions. Which of the following characteristics do you consider mainly genders? female, mainly male, or common to both F 1. Willingness to take risks 2. Affectionate behavior 3. Ambition 4. Self-confidence 5. Sensitivity to the needs of others 6. Capacity for action 7. Warmth in contact with others 8. Kindness M C 9. Independence 10. Strong will 11. Practicality 12. Aggressiveness/Anger 13. Self-centeredness 14 . Sentimentality 15. Competitiveness 16. Reliability 17. Patience 18. Ability to dominate 19. Understanding 20. Sociability 21. Inventiveness 22. Objectivity 23. Subjectivity 24. Stubbornness 25. Perseverance / sticking to goals This questionnaire could be given to students and function as a springboard for exploration and discussion. 9. CONCLUSION Some points based on the above: A) Certain biological differences between the sexes exist at birth. B) These differences cannot determine specific sex-roles, unless they are found to serve these roles and thus are reinforced by society. C) Social treatment of these differences could acceptable and desirable. change behavioral patterns towards what is thought D) Teachers function as models for students. So, they can actually confirm or challenge/ disturb students' ideas of the way society is organized. Therefore ,teachers could become agents of change if they chose to. "In human beings pure masculinity or femininity is not to be found in either a physiological or biological sense. Every individual, on the contrary, displays a mixture of the character traits belonging to his/her own and to the opposite sex and he shows a combination of activity and passivity whether or not these last character traits tally with his/her biological ones." (Sigmund Freud, 1905 in Three essays on Sexuality (Gilmore,1990) ) "Love represents one kind of energy: drawing together, conversing, holding, nurturing, trusting, protecting. Strife represents the other: pulling apart, separating, discriminating, penetrating, dispersing, attacking, judging, achieving. Although, at first glance, it may appear that the archetype of love comes closer to the traditional image of the feminine, and that of strife comes closer to the traditional image of masculine, in closer observation it becomes clear that these opposites exist within every person. Moreover,they are needed by all of us, for were we to be only an expression of love, we would be utterly vulnerable, and were we to be only an expression of strife, we would be at odds with everyone including ourselves. The archetype of androgyny is the expression of the two-in-the-one, the paradox that an inner union requires an ongoing dynamic relationship of the opposites within. Wholeness can only be achieved if nothing is left out. The androgyne accepts the inner opposites – not necessarily as points of internal conflict, but rather as parts that need each other to function, in order to maintain the whole." (June Singer, 1989)