Why Do Children's Peers Face Gender Stereotypes?

When you send your children off in the morning to go to school, no matter what grade they are in whither it be elementary, junior high, or senior high, you expect that they will receive the best education that they can get. They should be asked challenging questions, encouraged and called upon to participate in class, they should also be given as much help as they need to secede by the teacher. However, this is most commonly not the case. Parents and the children themselves are unaware of what is going on because gender bias is not a noisy problem. Most people are unaware of the secret sexist lessons that occur every day in classrooms across the country. In this essay I will use two essay's from the reader:

The idea of gender roles has been prominent throughout not only American History, but world history as well. Everyone understands that men are the ones who provide for their family while women are responsible for household work such as taking care of the children, cleaning, and cooking. The United States has come a long way in demolishing these gender constructs from presenting women the right to vote to recent strives in pop culture such as Benny’s gender crushing single and music video, Little Game, but the nation is still not quite to the point of completely shattering the often harmful gender roles that are set upon children and adults in society. As a means to prevent damage to future generations, parents should not assign gender roles to their children at birth.

Ever since the beginning of history, women have been discriminated because of their gender. They were not allowed to attend school much of the time, couldn 't vote, couldn 't possess anything and couldn’t even work for themselves. Such denial of freedom has made females seem weak and unequipped for making their own decisions. Kids start to take in their sex roles at an extremely young age. Boys must identify what men do, what they like, and even how they think and feel. The girls do the same as they take in the parts for the women.

Chapter two deals with distinct policies and strategies put in place since the 1970s in order to identify common trends to tackle gender inequalities. Most of the policies mentioned in the text explain that “’gender’ was a part of a more general inclusion policy and not dealt with explicitly” (Forde, p.15) but all do nevertheless try to create a ‘positive ethos’. In this chapter, it is shown that although policies did not have a focus on gender, when children participated in gender “played role” (Forde, p.17) stereotypical views would arise. “Girls thought that boys got more attention and both boys and girls agreed that girls were better learners” (Forde, p.17) this emphasizes and

While in fact, in today's society, more often than not, these gender roles have switched. I believe that in order to create a change we need to start to teach children more flexibility in applying gender-role

A week ago, I observed couples in the food court at the mall displaying characteristics of gender. However one, in particular, stood out. A presumed Hispanic couple with three children demonstrated a perfect example of gender norms and distinguished interactions between both partners. The couple sat directly across from each other and engaged in a conversation with their primary language being Spanish. The woman dressed in a light teal colored shirt, concealed with a black jacket on top of it and also wore faded colored jeans along with everyday white boots. The man wore a dark blue shirt and jeans alongside black boots and sunglasses resting on his head. Both partners acquired brown hair and shared a Chinese meal together while the children

The challenges that are faced in the perspective of gender are principally down to the failure to instill the critical ethoses about the topic in the children at an early stage. There is a better chance of attaining excellent results manifesting in the form of the impact that is likely to be attained (Bigler & Signorella 660). This is in the event there is the primary focus on incorporating the valuable principles in the children. Such would be tantamount to nothing less than the development with all the requirements deemed ideal engraved in their minds.

Watters writes, “…individuals tap that cultural storehouse of knowledge simply by mimicking (often unconsciously) the behavior and the of ways thinking of those around them” (500). Children are sponges at young age. They take all that they see that’s happening around them. To have healthy gender development, society must avoid assumption that each gender is not interested in other gender’s activity. It also important in having a gender-neutral language, stopping the division among the children allows them to feel included, regardless of their gender. This also shows a variety of roles, allowing them to have the freedom to choose what they want to be.

When a child enters school, educators can either continue to reinforce patterns of gender stereotyped behaviors or they can look to break the gender behavior expectations. Unfortunately for the educators that are trying to disrupt society’s gender expectations, attitudes and values about appropriate gender roles are entrenched in school curriculum. In elementary schools with mainly female teachers, some may look to reinforce maternal roles and obedience. In some classrooms, boys and girls are often treated differently when receiving feedback and encouragement in their work (Gollnick & Chinn, page 87). In the classroom, boys sometimes control conversations when answering questions. Resulting in teachers praising boys for their academic responses

A pregnant mother begins her nesting process. The color scheme for her sweet baby's new nursery becomes crucial. A sky blue for her baby boy, a pale pink for her sweet little girl or perhaps the mother prefers a cheesecake yellow for a more gender neutral affect. But more often than not, our nesting mothers select blue for a boy, pink for a girl. Color assignment is something that has over time become the root of gender stereotypes. If you ask a young child, perhaps a toddler or a child of kindergarten age what their favorite color is you wouldn't be wrong to presume that most children will prefer their stereotyped color palette. So, are pink and blue still stereotypical gender color choices in high school? We chose this experiment because we were curious to know if this iconic gender stereotype would still hold true today. The variables we chose for the experiment were the genders of our volunteers and the color of the markers they would be signing with. The objective of our experiment was to let boys and girls choose the marker of their preference and see if what they chose added up with their particular gender stereotype. We did this by

Rough Draft One: How do gender stereotypes affect the decisions our youth makes and ultimately their careers?

Parents are probably the first to acknowledge gender amongst their children. They are there to witness the birth and hear the doctor say the sex of the baby immediately after giving birth. From that moment on, the child has an identity and parents begin to stereotypetext annotation indicatortext annotation indicator that child. After birth, the parents will delegate clothing based on gender. A little girl will wear hair bows and dresses for church. A little boy will wear pants and a dress shirt. If a little girl is in trouble, the parents could take away her baby dolls. If a little boy is in trouble, the parents will take away the toy trucks. Parents are constantly teaching their children about genders and may not even be aware of it.

From the media to their own families, children are surrounded with influences that can shape their behavior and perceptions, gender being one of them. For example, parents’ behavior towards their children change depending on gender. According to Sarah Witt from her article, “Parental influence on children's socialization to gender roles,” she discusses parents behavior change stating “one study indicates that parents have differential expectations of sons and daughters as early as 24 hours after birth,” (Witt, 1997). Another study found that children as young as two years old begin to “generalize gender stereotypes” to items, professions, and activities (Witt 1997). Parents influence their children on what they wear, what toys they play with and what activities they participate in. This is shown in a recent study that examined kids’ rooms and chores around the house. The study found that the majority of girls’ rooms were filled with the color pink while the boys’ room had a lot more blue (Witt 1997). The study also found boys are more likely to perform “maintenance chores” such as mowing the lawn and painting (Witt 1997). On the other hand, girls completed domesticated tasks like washing the dishes and doing the laundry (Witt 1997). Other studies have found males and females are treated differently in school. For example

Gender stereotypes are simplifications about the acts of adjectives. Gender roles are usually neither positive or negative. They are generally mistaken generalizations of the male and female aspects. Since each human being has contrasting ambitions, opinions, and spirits, disregarding their gender, these stereotypes are strangely condensed and do not all characterize the properties of every person of both genders. Most people recognize that stereotypes are not true, but a lot still make expectations placed on gender. There are many stereotypes that all beings might be at fault for, an example is assuming that women should only marry, have children, and become a housewife and another one is that all men should love sports and work. No

Gender stereotypes, while often seen as barriers to progress, are actually strong indicators of improvement because it takes the cumulative efforts of a large mass of people over a long period of time in order to change the perceptions held by society. Therefore, gender stereotypes are not barriers to be built but rather barriers to be knocked down, and they are essential in providing incentive as well as motivation for large groups of individuals to evaluate their efforts in order to change or maintain a perception that society has of them. In essays “Housekeeping” and “Turkeys in the Kitchen,” Wells and Barry both rely on the topics of good kitchen skills and education to define gender stereotypes; however, Wells places more emphasis on the defining of stereotypes through feelings of responsibility over parenting in her female audience, whereas Barry focuses on establishing his authority as the average male.