Title: Studying Gender Roles in Literature and Life

Source/Author/Date:  Teaching Tolerance, by Jeremy Knoll on September 28th, 2016

URL Link:  http://www.tolerance.org/blog/studying-gender-roles-literature-and-life 

Relevance: While American culture today does not view women as property, classic literature and today's media portraits women as objects to be admired by men. The amount of media propaganda through advertisements and shaming cause...
young female (and male) students anxiety. Our society still maintains firm grasp on the idea of gender roles. Most of society believes men should act a certain way and women should act a certain way. Knoll highlights the point that as teachers, we have an obligation to teach students about the injustices and unfairness of our modern societal way of thinking. While we have made progress from viewing women as property, society still portraits women as objects meant to look pretty and perfect for a man's pleasure. It is important to have conversations with students when appropriate to convey that each individual is not set to follow a societal gender expectation. Both women and men deserve to feel, think and act according to what makes them feel complete.

Key Points: Classic literature like Romeo and Juliet and To Kill a Mockingbird have inherit sexist and racist expectations/outlooks of their time. Instead of avoiding this, embrace it and challenge students to examine whether or not this ideology still exists. Have students examine and discuss expectations of gender roles and whether or not those expectations are just. Use the curricula to give students a better understanding of the past and present so that ultimately they can be agents of change.