Rhetorical Analysis

We know how critical it is that institutions traditionally controlled by men reshape their policies and priorities to support gender equality and the well-being of women, children, and men. And we know that a critical part of that is to reshape the world of men and boys, the beliefs of men and boys, and the lives of men and boys.

Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls explored the differences in how boys and girls were treated when growing up in America. As the narrator is getting older, she is realizing that girls are expected to act differently than boys. Today in American society, gender equality has come a long way, but boys and girls are still expected to act different ways and play with different things. Gender equality has changed for the better throughout the years in America, but with the biological differences between males and females, it may be impossible to achieve absolute equality.

This image (Azman, Pia) demonstrates gender roles because it shows the different expectations for women compared to men. Marjane Satrapi faces challenges as a girl that her male family members and friends do not have to worry about. For example, the veil requirement. Marjane and her family listen to a man on television say, “Women’s hair emanates rays that excite men. That’s why women should cover their hair” (Satrapi 74). This shows gender roles because instead of shaming men, he says women should cover themselves for their own protection. Similarly, there was an incident with Marjane’s mother that was very hard on her and her family. Two men assaulted Marjane’s mother for not wearing a veil, and said she should be raped and then thrown in the garbage (Satrapi 74). This changed Marjane’s perspective because she was personally impacted. She also has a different perspective on this incident than a male would because women are treated as inferiors by men in

‘As readers they are asked to adopt a masculine perspective, while as women they are excluded from the masculine experience determined by such a perspective.’

In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” she tells a story, through narration about society’s profound unfairness of gender-role stereotyping, and the effect this has on the stages into adulthood is presented. On society, many women battle ideas, beliefs and stereotypes placed on being a woman from what roles they play in society to how they should act and what roles they play in society they begin to feel trapped within these ideologies and they conform. We are not all the same it’s like, “trying to fit a square peg in a round hole”. The main conflicts in the story are the different expectations between a girl and a boy, but also the struggle for a young girl to find an identity of her own. Through the internal struggles and battles of the main character, the

“The boys and girls live in separate worlds”(Cisneros, 8). This is a very powerful line in showing the differences between gender construction and gender roles. Gender creates a certain status, and the stratification system ranks these statuses differently, so that men are ranked above women (Lorber, 66).

Society for Research in Child Development found that from a very young age children think boys are academically inferior to girls, and they believe that adults think so. This show that if we believe that boys will not enjoy reading especially “girl books” this will affect how they are think and will start to believe what people are saying about those type of books. If we keep discouraging boys that reading girl books are shameful from when they were a kid, it’s helping this stereotype, that “girl books” are unworthy to read by boys, become a

Solken’s (1995) argument links very closely with Watson et al.(2007) who proposed that popular explanations often focus on boys’ ‘biological make-up’. They claim that evidence shows that ‘hegemonic masculinity is central to ... the struggles boys face as literacy learners’ (Watson et al. 2010: 357). Rowan et al (2002) also believes that ‘boys are biologically different to girls and that this biologically difference is the cause of behavioural differences’ (Rowan et al. 2002, cited in Watson et al. 2010:357). He believes that due to these biological differences, boys and girls are defined by inherent masculinity and femininity characteristics and in order for educational success this must be acknowledged and accommodated for. This is an important assertion to consider for

Throughout time our subjectivity is constantly changing and so is our identity. Our identity is shaped by the discourses through culture and what others identify us as being. According to Robinson and Jones-Diaz (2016), children from a young age are generally fixed within categories according to their gender through discourses and social practices. Once we start experiencing things in our life, we start taking up the position of discourses which impacts us and also the people around us. Jordan (1995) indicated that girls are expected to achieve high marks at school, they get pressured to refrain from masculine activities and behave in way that are feminine in order to keep their family and the society happy. Women have never given the power to be strong and are always pressured by the societal expectations.

As a result, many parents chose to place their daughters in less-demanding education. In these times women who were well educated were often perceived as less attractive and education was not of importance because their “purpose” was to bear children and be homemakers. According to the textbook, the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was a law that came into place when the women’s movement gained momentum which prohibited discrimination in schools, employment, and much more (Banks & McGee Banks, 2016). This chapter also opens the reader's eyes to the sexism issues we still face today in our schools. Educators today suffer from “gender blindness,” which results in the lack of “the perspectives and tools necessary to challenge sexism in school” (Banks & McGee Banks, 2016, p. 81). Today we face the issue of our literature consisting of people in traditional gender roles, which causes children to fall into stereotypical roles. Also, much of our literature is male dominant beating out female characters two to one (Banks & McGee Banks, 2016).

The placement between the two genders reinforces ideas of a patriarchal society, as the women are strictly placed in an opposite social position, compared to men.

When gender issues arise, it is often assumed that women are the central focus. However, gender affects not only women, but men as well. Botelho and Rudman allude to this idea when they make the point that like women, males are approached with similar gender expectations. Unfortunately, women have always made considerably less money than men. In 2005, a study revealed that women earned 78 cents to every dollar that men earned. While these numbers are shocking, men have to endure extreme gender expectations. If a man accepts a position as a nurse or a teacher, he is not taken as seriously as a woman who has obtained the same position. Gender issues exist in children’s literature. For example,

When a coach mocks his students in a male auto-shop class for not being strong enough, or precise enough, the coach establishes a standard for the class that “boys are supposed to be strong, precise, smart, systematic” and so on. When a female teacher asks the boys in the class to hand out condoms that they hid in their wallet, she establishes even more complex notion about sex and gender (which will be addressed in the Sex and Gender section).

examines the influence of gender on the way literature is written and read. Men and women are different; therefore, they write differently, read differently, and write about their reading differently.

Men and women develop differently because they are driven to view the world from different perspectives. From the period of childhood to adulthood males and females experience and go through different things in different ways. The father nurture’s the son while the mother nurture’s the daughter. Small differences emerge because of the approach each male and female is provided.