Inquiry into SDG’s: Gender Equality

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here

With International Women’s Day last week, I thought this would be a great time to publish the Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality. This goal aims to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.”

Women and children are vulnerable in a myriad of ways, including child marriage, sexual violence, access to education, and presence in leadership, and equal pay. These resources are meant to help students consider what this global goal means to them and how they can be part of the solution.

Resource #1: #IWasTold by Ultimate Software

Resource #2: by International Women’s Day 2018 by Vodafone

Resource #3: Trailer for She Started It Movie

Resource #4: Dream Crazier by Nike

Resource #5: Equality, Sports & Title IX ~Erin Buzuvis & Kristine Newall by TedEd

Resource #6: Malala’s Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai and Kerascoet

Provocation Questions:

  • What is gender equality?
  • How do gender equality issues look different around the world? How do they look similar?
  • How is gender equality changing?
  • Whose responsibility is it to make things more equal for all people?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Inquiry into SDGs: Reduced Inequalities

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here

This week’s global goal aims to reduce inequality in and among countries. It is rooted in the fact that 10% of the world’s population earns up to 40% of the total global income, and it challenges leaders to consider ways we can ensure access to the local and global economy regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity. Share these resources with students to consider what this issue might mean for them and their communities. 

Resource #1: Do Not Read This by Room to Read

Resource #2: Remote Area Medical by Focus Forward Films

Resource #3: My Magic Mum by Stefan Hunt

Resource #4: Corto Ian by Fundación Ian

Resource #5: It’s Mine by Leo Lionni

Provocation Questions:

  • What does inclusion mean?
  • What does economic inclusion mean?
  • How does equality in literacy connect to equality in the economy?
  • How does access to medical attention connect to equality in the economy?
  • How does the video about the boy in a wheelchair connect to the concept of economic inclusion?
  • How/why are certain groups denied equal access to the local or global economy?
  • How is the amount of income people have changing today?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Gender & Education: 4 Crucial Points for Change

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change” (Eckhart Tolle).  That’s why we’re contributing to the dialogue on gender differences in education.


#1: Challenges exist for both genders

Author and literacy advocate Pam Allyn has written several powerful articles that rally the public to recognize educational barriers to girls’ education across the globe, such as this one here, here, here, and here.  She urges us to take action on terribly serious realities, including the fact that two-thirds of those who are illiterate are female.  She has established “LitWorld’s girls’ LitClubs that meet around the world, sometimes in secret, to read together and write together” (“For These are All our Girls”). With all this action on behalf of girls, one might expect that Pam’s work is limited to that sex.  But it’s not.

She has also written Best Books for Boys, in which she highlights several obstacles to boys’ reading, including the following: “the testing mania and the idea in our culture that learning is symbolized by children sitting quietly in their seats has been, in some cases, defeating for active boys” (p. 21). She regularly writes articles about all children, and the stories they have to share (such as this one, or this one).  She even founded the Books for Boys literacy program.

There’s an important pattern here: one of recognition and action for all children.  Those of us involved in children’s education must be willing to acknowledge that academic barriers exist for boys and girls alike.

#2: The challenges for each gender are different

Evidence of the unique educational challenges for both genders is mounting.  We list a few points below.

GIRLS:
  • Girls often receive cultural messages that undermine their self-images as learners, explorers, and thinkers. A recent commercial by Verizon illustrates this:

  • In the developing world in particular, girls are also faced with lower rates of enrollment due to a variety of cultural reasons.  GirlEffect.org released a powerful video highlighting that cycle:

BOYS
  • Boys often receive cultural messages in the classroom that passions and dispositions common to their gender do not belong. A recent video by Prager University summarizes the way this impacts boys’ education:

  • The rates for post-secondary degrees are consistently lower for males than females.  Some of these numbers are shown in the infographic by National Student Clearinghouse below:

National Student ClearingHouse
National Student ClearingHouse

#3:  76% of teachers are female (source)–and that really matters!

Author Leonard Sax extensively researches gender differences, and has cited several ways female teachers might pay closer attention to the differing needs of their male students.  One such difference lies in what’s more visually appealing to females than males.  Says Sax:

“…boys are more likely to draw a scene of action, such as a monster attacking an alien; girls are more likely to draw people, pets, flowers, or trees, with lots of colors. The people in the girls’ pictures usually have faces, eyes, hair, and clothes; the people in the boys’ pictures (if there are any people) often are lacking hair, clothes, often the boys draw mere stick figures in one color. How come? The usual answer “Because that’s what we teach them to do” is unpersuasive, as I explain in Why Gender Matters. On the contrary, many of these boys insist on drawing these pictures not because teachers tell them to draw such pictures, but in spite of the teacher’s repeated pleas, “Why do you have to draw such violent pictures? Why can’t you draw something nice – like what Emily drew?” (source)

Another difference he discusses is hearing, even citing it as a possible contributing factor for the more frequent ADHD diagnoses for boys over girls.  “…the average boy may need the teacher to speak more loudly–roughly 6 to 8 decibels more loudly–if the average boy is to hear the teacher as well as the average girl hears” (source).  Teachers need to be aware of such differences to ensure they do not unintentionally favor their female students.

(For more on the ratio of male teachers to female teachers, check out our post, “Elementary teachers less than 25% male in US”).

Awareness Point #4:  Comparing which gender struggles more is unproductive to progress

As author William S. Wilson wrote:

“Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared.” (from “Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read”)

Articles like Bryce Covert’s “Enough Mansplaining the ‘Boy Crisis’ — Sexism Still Holds Back Women at Work,” offer criticism when concerns are raised for one gender, because they feel the other gender is more victimized.  However, such comparisons undercut our collective efforts for children; we need “all hands on deck” in order to address the educational struggles facing all our youth.  With objectivity and compassion, let us endeavor to understand and improve the state of education for children everywhere.

Featured Image Credit: 

UNICEF Ethiopia