Boys Rule and Girls Drool?
When people think of sexism, they typically think of sexism towards girls. Many people overlook the other side of sexism towards boys. Sadker (2009) touches on this in Still Failing at Fairness, “Gender bias was not about girls only: boys where also being shortchanged and confined to an even tighter gender role of what was, and was not, acceptable behavior,” (p.5). Boys are taught to concentrate in math and science, while girls concentrate on English and history and to be more creative.
The sexism that is talked about here is the stereotypical roles of men and women. It is often seen that women receive courage for pursuing and making accomplishments in fields that they typically are not know to be in. What are not often seen is men succeeding in professions that women typically pursue. The reasoning behind this is sexism itself. Men are thought of as less superior if they take on jobs that are mostly occupied by women. One of these professions is teaching. The National Center of Education Statistics (2015) released a stat saying that 76 percent of public school educators are females (p.1). Because of this majority of females in the profession, men are drawn away from the profession. This is a stereotype that needs to be broken. Some of the more traditional female jobs need a male influence. Racism is often the biggest proponent when it comes to diversity, but sexism also plays a role. If as a society we want professions to be more diverse, then why do we keep these stereotypical roles for men and women?
An article on the Huffington Post (2016) shows different examples of how sexism affects men.
If someone had told me when I was younger that I would major in education in college, I would have laughed in their face. I always thought that I would go into business or scientific fields because I was always good at those subjects and most of the guys I was friends with wanted to go that same route. For my senior year of high school I did not know what I wanted to do in life, so I decided to take a bunch of career based classes. I decided to take Teacher Cadet just to see what being a teacher was about. When I walked in on the first day of class, I was one of 4 guys in a 25-person class. The stereotypical side of me wanted to say that I did not belong in this class. I quickly came to find that I could not have been any more wrong. I immediately feel in love with teaching.
Many men have trouble expressing their feelings. The stereotype of a being a strong man prevents men from expressing their true feelings. The video below is a great example of a male student finally being able to express himself. The character Todd from the movie Dead Poet’s Society is a boy that is scared to express himself through poetry. It takes the teacher to show him his true potential as a great poet. Throughout this whole movie the teacher challenges the students to think for themselves and not what society expects them to be. Males should be able to be comfortable to express what THEY want and not what others expect. Every man should see his true potential and be able to break the barriers of the stereotypical male to figure out what he wants in life, not what society wants him to become.
[Bi-Polar-Bear]. (2015, Feburary 11). Dead Poets Society- Todd’s poetry scene. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqiZopj-zLA
Fast Facts. (2015). Retrieved May 31, 2016, from http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28
Hodali, A., & June, J. (2016). What Are Some Common Forms of Sexism That Men Face? Retrieved May 31, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/quora/what-are-some-common-form_b_4473062.html
Sadler, D., & Zittleman, K. R. (2009). Still Failing At Fairness: How Gender Bias Cheats Girls And Boys In School And What We Can do About It. Simon and Schuster.
