ELE - Contexts
Gender Issues
Extension Activities:
Your Mission:
- Investigative the changing roles for Women from 1900s - 1990s
- Investigate whether there are areas in which women are still struggling to attain equality with men, or where they are still being exploited
- What other groups have suffered discrimination on the grounds of social class, sex, marital status and education?
Resources
Check out these links to help
Equal pay has been the law since 1963. But today, nearly 45 years later, women are still paid less than men—even with similar education, skills and experience.
'European Commission' 59% of university graduates are female and you’ll begin to wonder why things are stagnating rather than moving with the times.
What are Gender Issues ?
People, whether male or female must learn how to question the most basis assumptions about normality in order to reopen the possiblities for development which have been successively locked off by centuries of conditioning. [The concept that we are all equal is a misnomer, as there is still discrimination on the grounds of sex, martial status, social class, and education.]
Many young people during the 1970s challenged the values of those in authority. The contraceptive pill released in 1961, meant women could delay or avoid childbearing. [growing awareness of the lack of women's rights motivated women to commit themselves to the cause of women's suffrage.]
Both the First and Second World Wars changed ideas of what women were capable of achieving. [Yet men still had sole rights of the custody of their children.]
Outcome:To recognise and understand society's lasting and changing aspects.
Project Question:
Why is the fight for women's suffrage significant in a study of equality for women and minorities?
Develop your own area of interest and formulate questions that you want answered and relate to your understanding of 'equal pay for equal work'. For example
1. the different experience for women and minorities, or
2. research the types of jobs that were considered to women's occupations of for those less skilled and explain the rationale behind these views, or
3. study the effect of the two world wars then comment on the following quote - "the purpose of the minimum wage law was to ensure that female workers could earn a living wage—one sufficient to "preserve the health, morals and efficiency" of working women."
Outcome:
To explore an understanding of globisation is heigtening gender inequalities .
Project Question:
How easy was it for women to fight for equality during the twentieth century?
Overview:
Students will develop their own understanding of individual rights and how they can be achieved: -
- Slow road to success
- Significance of equal pay for equal work [equal pay may not mean equality]
- Rights of Minorities (especially 'outworkers' who continue to be exploited)
- Rights against discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, colour, national origin, and religion.
- The process of gender equity
- Understanding of why the root causes of gender discrimination can be traced to culture, which is the quality in every society that shapes the way ‘things are done’
This unit of study focuses the experiences of women's liberationists and other minority groups lobbying for equality.
References
Related Links:
