Gender Roles & Stereotypes Unit Rationale

Valerie Guzman

Gender Roles & Stereotypes Unit Rationale

For this unit, 8th grade students will be exploring gender roles and stereotypes as

social constructs which have been present in our society for centuries. The unit will persist

over a three week period and contain two texts and one film that explore gender roles and

how they dictate the behaviors that our society deems normal or acceptable based on a

person's sex. The three texts I’ve chosen are an article called “Gender Roles in Media” by

seventeen year old Allison Lantagne, the film version of The Duff by Kody Keplinger, and

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Each text elaborates on the idea that one must adhere to a set

of rules based on their known or perceived gender and how that concept has affected youth

in detrimental ways. In this Unit, students will gain an understanding of gender roles, as

well as form their own definitions for gender roles, stereotypes, and bias. Through

analyzing the world they live in and the three texts students will be reading, they will look

at how the three concepts shape society and determine how they can affect them on a

personal level.

Throughout the Unit, students will be writing journal entries as we cover each topic

and move through the various texts. As Samgorinsky states, on page 175 of his book

Teaching By Design: How to Create and Carry Out Instructional Units, “The act of writing can

promote reflection about important experiences that will help the students relate to the

problems confronted by the characters in the literature.” My goal for the texts and media

I’ve chosen is to work with material that students will find relatable. The journals will help

me not only gage whether students have been keeping up and understanding the material,

but also help them get down concrete ideas on how they relate to a character, situation, or
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sentiment. The guided journal prompts will also help students to look deeper into a

character or a scene in order to get a better understanding of the character, text, or theme.

The unit will begin mid October so that the opening discussion, which looks at the

difference between male and female Halloween costumes, will be relevant to students lives.

I will pull up a series of images centered around female and male costumes, to which

students will respond to in a vocal discussion. After the discussion students will be asked

to make two lists in their journals in response to the question “what does it mean to be a

girl/boy?” Once each student has at least three things written in their journals for each list,

we will comprise a longer list as a class. Lastly, students will be given a vocabulary sheet

with a list of words we will define as a class and use throughout the unit.

During the first week, through reading the “Gender Roles” article, watching gender

stereotypical commercials, and responding to various journal prompts related to the

theme, students will gain a general understanding of gender roles and stereotypes. As a

class we will produce working definitions of gender roles, gender bias, and gender

stereotypes, using the media presented throughout the week. Students will be able to fill

out the first section of their vocabulary sheet using these definitions. During the final two

days, students will connect all we have discussed to their own life experience and write in

their journals about a time they encountered gender bias or had been stereotyped based on

their gender. The week will end with an introduction to the film adaptation of The Duff by

Kody Keplinger.

During the Second week we will focus on the female gender stereotypes and how

they are being broken. I will give them a brief history of female oppression and feminism

so that they have a background with which to approach the film. I chose the film version of
 Gender Roles & Stereotypes Unit Rationale

The Duff because it provides a visual of both female and male gender stereotypes. The

main characters represent the stereotypical personas that we see repeatedly in books and

media targeted towards teens. Bianca is the unpopular, tomboy girl who has to undergo a

makeover in order to be accepted or seen as beautiful. Her two best friends, Casey and

Jess as well as resident popular/mean girl Madison, fit the tall, vapid, unblemished, and

seemingly perfect standard of beauty.

The movie fits into the media portrayal of the intelligent, athletic, strong minded

female as unhappy and undesirable. Students will use the movie to engage in a discussion

of the single view of femininity that this stereotype offers, by contrasting the main

character, Bianca, and her two best friends, Casey and Jess. Throughout the week students

will also look at female characters in today’s media who they either identified with or

disliked. They will create a list of characteristics for these characters and analyze why they

identify with or dislike them. This activity will help students realize whether they judge

females based on a certain gender stereotype and how those stereotypes affect them

personally.

During the third and final week we will focus on the male gender stereotypes and

toxic masculinity while reading S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. I will provide a definition

of toxic masculinity so that students can apply it while reading the book. I chose The

Outsiders because it provides a multifaceted view of male gender stereotypes and how they

can affect men of any age. The main character, Ponyboy, is often made fun of for displaying

feminine qualities. He likes school and writing; however his older brothers don’t think

those are characteristics of being masculine. They believe he should learn to fight instead

of worrying about his school work. Towards the end of the novel, not only has one of
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Ponyboy’s closest friend’s died due to the senseless violence perpetuated by the greasers

and their idea of toughness, but his grades also begin to slip as well. The novel shows how

Ponyboy essentially loses who he is and what is important to him because he wished to fit

into the masculine standards set by his brothers and friends.

Students will further explore the characteristics of each male in Ponyboy’s group in

order to distinguish their masculine traits from those perceived by them to be feminine.

They will create a character profile and use scenes from the novel to back up their ideas.

They will then decide whether each character has fallen victim to “toxic masculinity” and

write a journal entry on how they believe this has affected the specific character. This will

drive home the harm that societal conventions of gender can have on an individual.

As a child who was told I could never be president, be good at sports, or become a

doctor because I was a girl, I feel the subjects of gender roles and stereotypes are

important. I wish to educate my students on what gender roles are and how they create an

environment where we are limited in what we can achieve. I wish to show them that

gender roles are a social construct created at a time where people needed to label parts of

their society in order to understand and control how it worked. In doing so I hope to

convey that gender cannot hinder students from achieving success in any aspect of their

lives, so that they don’t go through life believing that they can’t be or do something because

they are girls or boys. My main goal is to impart to students that, no matter their gender,

they are capable of achieving success and to educate them on the harm gender stereotyping

can do. By understanding these lessons, my hope is that they will go through life with an

enhanced understanding of gender roles and stereotypes and refrain from furthering this

social construct and from allowing it to hinder them.

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References

Smagorinsky, P. (2008). Teaching English By Design: How to Create and Carry Out

Instructional Units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.