Blurring the edges.... Chapter on Gender.

Found this a really interesting read. It was kindly passed on to me from Saudah :-)

This chapter starts by looking at the definition of Gender and how it differs to Sex. Gender is society view's what is the Norm... For instance Girls have long hair/boys have short hair. Sex is the physical difference between boys and girls.

There are lots of different topics that are covered in this chapter , politics, homosexuality , ethnicity and much more.

There were a few points that really caught my attention. The first being the concept of children's identity in school. After thinking about this I found a study about same sex education and it's effect on a child's 'Gender'.
The study is of Secondary School pupils , male and female , from both same sex and co-ed schools. From the conclusion made in this study , females had a better sense of belonging in same sex schools , where as it made no relevant difference to males.
Is this because secondary schools are male dominated.... I think the authors of this chapter would say so.

From this I also found that although much has been done for gender equality in Secondary education it has yet to be addressed in Early years. This then leads into the idea that if children were taught in a 'Genderless' manner from an early age , there would be no need for equality policies in secondary schools.

If i'm honest I find this a strange concept.... I'm not sure how it would work and if there would be a positive or negative outcome for our children?!?

At the end of the chapter there is a study of 1st time expectant parents. The study follows the parents through pregnancy and concentrates on the preference of their child's sex. Parts are written in the parents own words , I was surprised about how dated and , dare I say , sexist some of their opinions were!

Tried to be as to the point as possible , there were many more questions that came to mind whilst reading this. If this was a book club I would be recommending this to my friends :-)


http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2081421~S7





http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/uploads/docs/680048.pdf