Gender Stereotyping in the Media

As I was browsing the Media Smarts website, which I highly recommend checking out, I searched for lesson plans on gender representations in the media because it’s a subject that I’m passionate about and that I care deeply about. I think children should be guided, by their teachers, into recognizing that the media doesn’t speak the truth and doesn’t accurately nor fairly represent people. In the lesson plan that I chose, which you can read here, students from Grade 3 to 6 look at how girls and boys are represented in television shows that are aimed at young audiences, such as themselves. Students discuss what they don’t particularly like about the way that boys and girls are portrayed in the shows that they watch. In the follow up activity, students describe and write about the way in which they would like boys and girls to be shown on TV by inventing a TV character.. They can describe the kinds of traits, characteristics, and appearances that they feel should be represented on television, in addition to a sketch of this particular character that they have in mind. I like this lesson and would use it in my classroom because it links school to students’ real lives, which deepens learning experiences. There’s an interesting TED talk by Andrea Quijada, in which she talks about the need to incorporate media literacy instruction for creating critical thinkers. She explains that media literacy instruction can help students connect what they learn in school to what they experience at home. She also describes some ways to get students involved with media literacy by using advertisements, which I touch upon in my lesson ideas below.

In order to integrate the Media Smarts lesson into my classroom (and possibly at a higher level, such as Grade 6), I would use it for a larger unit on gender representations in the media because I would want to delve deeper into this topic. Understanding gender representations in the media and how they affect our own gender perceptions is a big part of being media consumers, which is why children should become familiar with these ideas as soon as they are ready. While this lesson is solely about television, I would invite students to think about gender representations in all kinds of media they’ve been exposed to, like film, advertisements, books, magazines, songs, comic books, and television as well. Some of my initial activities would involve a lot of brainstorming about how students feel the media handles gender, and I would talk about the word stereotypes and how it relates to the media’s portrayal of gender roles. Students would be invited to share examples of movies, books, songs, etc. in order to help them explain how they think the media shows gender. Students would get into groups and talk about what it looks like when media doesn’t fairly represent boys and girls. I would model my next activityy based on an assignment that I actually completed in high school. My teacher asked us to bring in advertisements that we thought were representing gender, in both positive and negative

ways. We had to write about why we chose those advertisements and how they were portraying gender. I brought in a highly sexist magazine ad about car safety (which I found on a Tumblr blog and can be seen on the left). In adapting this assignment for elementary school, I wouldn’t expect nor ask students to bring in advertisements that were this sexual in nature. We then had to create our own original advertisements that were either gender neutral or that positively and accurately represented gender. This activity was really eye opening for me as a learner because I realized how easy it is to just passively receive and take in the messages that the media sends. Therefore, I would ask my students to complete a similar activity by bringing in advertisements that portray gender in different ways and to create their own advertisements about how they would want boys and girls to be represented, which is similar to the original Media Smarts lesson plan. In order to help students recognize how media constructs their own unfair reality of gender, I would ask students, in teams, to role play a scene that portrays gender roles in the way that the media would. For example, students could role play a scene with a married couple, in which the man has a job and acts as the breadwinner and the woman is a domestic housewife. In seeing these scenes acted out, my goal is for students to realize how the media doesn’t represent things accurately and that their gender representations shouldn’t always be trusted. Overall, I would evaluate students based on their understanding of the media’s portrayal of gender stereotypes, the creation of their own advertisement, the links they made to their lives and their use of gender in the role play.

Finally, as a way of making this issue especially relevant, I would introduce students to the newly launched HeForShe campaign, which wad founded by UN Women. This is a movement fighting for gender equality, an important issue that the media consistently contrib

utes to. In negatively representing gender roles and setting unfair standards for how men and women should be, the media serves as an obstacle to gender equality. However, because this campaign deals with mature content, I would keep it for a Grade 6 audience. I think it would be interesting to explore this campaign’s movement online by looking at he hashtag #heforshe.

Overall, I feel like developing these lesson ideas on media’s gender representations has helped me practice skills in relation to several professional competencies. For instance, I’ve grown in Competency 3 because I though a lot about how to create lesson ideas on gender in the media that present a reasonable level of complexity. In order to develop this competency further, I would think more about the differentiation techniques I would use for students as well as the obstacles that might present themselves. Nevertheless, I have already started to adapt the original lesson plan for an older audience and I feel like I have based my lesson on some pedagogical research, since the Media Smarts lesson was based on research by Maya Gotz. As for the social differences in my classroom, I think both gender could benefit from learning about this issue, and although gender is viewed differently in various cultures, I still think there are fair and unfair ways to portray men and women, and that would be the goal of my lesson. Next, I think I’m growing in relation to Competency 4 because I have created conditions that allow students to engage in a meaningful and relevant social problem. I would also guide students in selecting their resources (the media pieces they need to look at) and I would have examples of gender representations in the media to show students what I’m talking about and for students who had a difficult time finding their own examples. Before, I might not have thought about incorporating the twitter hashtag, which I think shows my growth in relation to Competency 8. Since the beginning of my studies, I’ve wanted to make it a habit to incorporate technology in my teaching practices, and I think I’m working towards developing this habit, as evidenced by my inclusion of technology in this lesson.

In order to address the issue of gender representations in the media, I would explore the topic through a Learning Evaluation Situation because I think I could compete several activities and tasks with my students on this particular topic. It’s an important and relevant issue that I feel very passionate about. I would do it with older students because they have to be mature enough to understand the implications of gender in the media and how it relates to their own lives. I think an obstacle might be parents who don’t want their children to be exposed to sexualized ideas of women in the media, but I would tell parents beforehand about my teaching plans and how I intend to approach the topic.

MediaSmarts. (2012). TV Stereotypes. Retrieved from: http://mediasmarts.ca/lessonplan/girls-and-boys-television

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