Sex Stereotypes in Society

from: Language Arts for Gifted Middle School Students

Brief Description
Students research the part that sex roles play in society.

Objective
To become aware of sexual stereotypes.

Procedures
Ask students to choose from the following list of activities, or have them design their own projects about sex stereotypes.

  • Write a report or make a booklet on Women in Advertisements. Select several advertisements form television, magazines, or radio, and use them to show how women are viewed by the people who create advertisements.

  • Make a collage of advertisements using appeals based on stereotypes.

  • Analyze the advertising appeals of the ads in at least one popular magazine. Include in your analysis only those ads covering one-half page or more. Tally your findings and present them in chart form.

  • Do a comparative analysis of advertising appeals directed toward men or toward women in two different magazines. For example, compare the advertising in Sports Illustrated and Ms. Do advertising appeals directed at a given sex differ, depending on the magazine?

  • Tally the occupations of the different sexes as presented in illustrations in your textbooks.

  • Analyze the story problems in a math book. What activities are males and females engaged in? Draw conclusions and present your findings to the class.

  • Give an oral report on women's rights from the suffrage movement to the present. Discuss past and current leaders in this movement, the date of women's right to vote in national elections, tactics used to gain this privilege, and arguments used against women's suffrage.

  • Prepare a written oral report on the status of women in politics today.

  • Prepare a talk about a woman famous in some profession. Emphasize any obstacles this woman had to overcome to reach her position.

  • Interview an influential career woman in your community.

  • Design a flag or banner as a symbol for people's rights in a nonsexist society.

  • Create a mural on sex role stereotyping of males, females, or both.

  • Write and present a play on an historical event in the suffrage movement.

  • Write poems or short stories on such subjects as how parents train children to act like men and women, or ways in which society expects males and females to behave.

  • Survey the career plans of girls and boys in kindergarten and those of students in fourth grade. Is there a difference?

  • Survey the favorite school subjects of boys and girls in an early grade and compare these with the favorite school subjects of children in later grades.

  • Collect adult cliches about men and women, e.g., men are logical; women are intuitive. lead a discussion ont he validity of each of these expressions.

Extension
Discuss how stereotypes are formed.

Source
ED 162 471
Landis, Melodee. The Class Menagerie: A Compilation of Exciting Activities for Secondary School Students. Nebraska State Department of Education, Lincoln, NE. 1978. 553 pp.

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