Throughout my childhood, I noticed a divide between boys and girls. From first thing in the morning when we were called to line up, the divide was noticeable. Boys stood at one side, girls at the other. The girls are asked to go first and boys are expected to respect this and follow behind. In the classroom, it is the same. If a teacher needed help to carry heavy boxes to another place in the school, it was often the boys that are asked to do this. While if it was a task such as taking a note to another teachers, girls were often asked.
Outside of the school environment I felt a divide. The boys were considered dirty and messy. We would go to the park and while the girls stood at the swings and other equipment at the park, the boys would be playing football or playing in the woods. As a class, we were close and all got along but we often split into girls and boys. I feel this is due to being in such a big class, we had 30 people in our class and the ratio was fairly even, only with slightly more girls to boys.
Even though we weren’t aware of “gender inequality” it was still clearly an issue in my primary school. It wasn’t until we spoke about it on Wednesday, that I realised it was an issue. I feel like it is still an issue in today’s primary schools.
Reading this just shows how easy it is to divide people based upon their gender. For me a gender divide wasn’t that noticeable but it was good to read about someone’s experience of gender being different to mine.
Adele
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Interesting reflections here. I wonder if, as educators, we are facing an uphill struggle to overcome gender bias (and gender sorting) in wider society. I particularly like this campaign – http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/ – which challenges this stereotyping. Great post.
I would agree with your post Jessica. There are so many things in primary school that I never even noticed were causing a gender divide until we were recently reflecting on it. Hopefully as teachers we will be able to overcome stereotypes!