One of the big problems that for women in the workplace is the notion that men are better at working than a woman would be. This notion does not only exist in the workplace but in various other places like sports and education. Gender roles are not something that a teacher or parent directly presents to children. It is clearly in various multimedia and underlying tones that are seen everyday for many children. In order to remove these notions that men are supposed to succeed while women are meant to stay at home and take care of the children, we must change the minds of the future generations. This clearly will not fix the problem immediately, but the next generation will have the ability to live outside of these gender roles that are present in society. According to the Riggs Institute, a child who learned how to play an instrument will play it better 20 years later than an adult starting out. In order to get children to get into the habit of having women be successful and leaders we have to set up a program in elementary schools.
The program in elementary school would be focused on spending at least half an hour a day focused on empowering women. While this does not need to happen very explicitly in classrooms it needs to be done. To make this program appealing having the government gives extra money to schools that undertake the program. This will give many schools incentives for going through this program. A very integral part of the program would be that the boys would also need to be present along with the girls. Simply altering the girl’s perceptions would not be enough to remove these gender roles. Having both men and women participate in these activities would force both the boys and girls face the fact that both men and women are equal. If these men are later in their lives found in positions of power, they will look at women without any bias due to the program.
The activities that would be done during the half hour period could involve watching shows where there is a female protagonist or holding a sports competition like football or soccer. Having girls play sports has actually been seen to increase the confidence that women. The Huffington Post covered a story where teenagers were playing football on a regular basis. Usually in sports there is a different division for both men and women, but these teenagers were playing against other boys. The experience of playing football really showed them how gender roles are all in their mind. Another big activity would be to half would be to bring in female parents come and talk about their jobs. Hopefully, some of the parents brought in are in some of the popular dream jobs for children like police officers, firefighters and doctors. This will bring children to learn that both men and women can undertake these jobs. In order the change the gender roles in the future we have to change the minds of the future.
Sources:
http://www.riggsinst.org/brainpower.aspx
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-alice-stephenson/football-taught-twelve-year-olds-girls_b_6681262.html
I like your idea except for the part where you say it has to empower women (wait, it’s not as bad as it sounds). Instead, it should just be a program that empowers children, meaning bring in an equal number of people of both genders with various job types, and watch programs where there can be a male and female protagonist, or alternate shows so the gender of the protagonist is equally represented. While the goal is to help decrease the stereotypes that hurt women, focusing on only them at such a young age could be detrimental. It could cause girls improve, but boys to decline because they aren’t focused on as much and don’t have classes devoted to just them in a similar fashion. It could also have a reverse effect, where the children start thinking that if girls need an entire extra class to show them that they are capable, then they must start out lacking something boys have. Showing children that they are all capable of becoming leaders and successful people regardless of their gender would eliminate these risks.
I agree with your idea to attack societal perceptions of women early on. Similar to my solution, you decided that the optimal time to do this would be in a child’s early years in elementary school. I like your idea that female empowerment should be taught implicitly because I don’t think it would be as effective if forced upon children. This is especially true since children at that age like to separate themselves by gender, thinking that the other group is ‘gross.’ While teaching about female successes in fields such as math and science, subjects often generalized as masculine, I think that your emphasis on co-ed sports is important. Team reliant activities such as sports often break through previous conflicts because of a shared interest in winning. In 1966, Muzafer Sherif conducted a psychological study at a boys camp that showed previously made rivalries and conflicts quickly become inconsequential when a competition pitted the boys against another camp. Using sports and other team competitions to reduce gender biases in children can be extremely effective.
You have an interesting idea that allows more opportunities in the future for women. I really like it in that it tackles the problem of gender inequality and our current mindsets of the gender roles. I have a similar solution in which it attempts to nullify this inequality as a mean to provide a paternity leave as well as the current maternity leave. I do enjoy the fact that you emphasize that boys were also to be present in these elementary school programs, since some other solutions I have read only thinks about boosting women’s place in society. It always makes me think what if women take over the CEO jobs or are benefited by the wage gap? Wouldn’t we have the same problem over again with men being the victims? I like how your solution is pretty simple in which it pretty much encourages women into “male” sports and allows this equality to nullify in attempt to generate gender equality and hope it will affect women in the workplace later on in life.
Your idea is very similar to mine of empowering women at a young age. It is in elementary school where children absorb a huge amount of information that stays with them for the rest of their lives. Treating men and women as equals is the way to go to eliminate gender prejudices and create and equal gender atmosphere for the future. I agree with your idea of having parents come in and talk about their jobs. At such a young age, every child wants to join the police, be a firefighter, become President, become a doctor, or an astronaut. In order for them to be able to reach these goals and beyond, they need to be empowered for a change at a young age when their minds are most accepting of change. This is the best way to approach the problem because like you said, in order to change the future, we have to change the minds of the present.