Gender Roles

Yesterday I listened to one of the CLIP podcasts entitled Pokemon & Popular Culture. One of the topics Vivian discussed with the young students was color representations and gender roles within the Pokemon characters. The students’ initial reaction was to describe the “boy” (although Pokemons are apparently genderless) characters in blue and green and the “girl” characters in purple, and pink. As I stated in my comment, my students still fall victim to gender roles that seem so antiquated. I was shocked at a conversation that some of my seniors had one day in class.

A class of 8, I see my AP biology students are falling victim to “senioritis” and keeping them on track towards the AP exam is often a daunting task. However, one thing that grabs their attention is talking about their plans for next year, all are college bound, and their goals for their careers. Of the 8 students, 3 are male 5 female and because this is AP biology, future goals are mostly involved with healthcare. All three male students want to be doctors. 3 of the female students want to be nurses. 1 female student wants to be a doctor, and the final student wants to go into advertising.

One day in class, I was teaching some AP test taking strategies. A particularly outspoken student asked me:

“Why do we need to know how to take standardized tests? I do ok on them. Then after this we never need to take standardized tests again.”

In response, I asked the students their future plans, and the above responses are what I heard. I had hoped to make a connection between their plans, and the numerous standardized tests they would have to take to get there. My AP strategies would help them on the MCAT, GRE, NCLEX, or anything else the future may hold, and I had hoped to relay that with this discussion. However, the discussion turned to why the female student would want to be a doctor.

The various cons that the female students came up with included:

she would never get married
she would not be able to have a family
she would potentially make more money than a man

and finally, the future nurses came to the census that women should be nurses and not doctors. I tried to reason with these girls, and even the boys in the class did as well, but nothing would dispel their view. I realize that nursing is a very noble profession, and those young ladies will be great nurses, but the idea in their brain that women should not be doctors was disturbing.

This was over a month ago, and I still am no closer to convincing them otherwise. I hope that something could dispel this gender role that these girls hold onto. Even the boys in the class were more progressive. It is horrible to see this notion extend from the pink v blue argument, to professions. Maybe I can convince them otherwise, but part of me thinks it may be helpless.