Activities

Gender and Job Inequality

Applied Strategy: Inquiry-based Learning

By Elliot Kerr, Dawson College

At a Glance

Discipline

Social Sciences

Instructional Level

College & CEGEP

Course

Sociology
Individual and Society

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

Individual
Group
Whole Class

Type of Tasks

Collecting & seeking information
Discussing
Analyzing
Reading
Writing
Presenting

Technical Details

Class size

Small (20-49)

Time

Brief segment of class period (< 20 mins)

Instructional Purpose

Consolidation & metacognition
Application & knowledge building

Socio Affective Engagement

Array
Array

Overview

After establishing general knowledge about gender roles through various modes (i.e. readings, in class lectures, film analyses, etc.), students are split into groups of 4-6 to list characteristics associated with each of the professions given by the teacher (nurse, engineer, teacher, manager, flight attendant, lawyer).

Students are then asked to discuss what qualifies a person as being good or bad in their job in order to better understand the qualifications underlying each profession. The instructor then stops the activity around half way through and asks the students to identify which jobs pay more or less. In order to answer ...

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After establishing general knowledge about gender roles through various modes (i.e. readings, in class lectures, film analyses, etc.), students are split into groups of 4-6 to list characteristics associated with each of the professions given by the teacher (nurse, engineer, teacher, manager, flight attendant, lawyer).

Students are then asked to discuss what qualifies a person as being good or bad in their job in order to better understand the qualifications underlying each profession. The instructor then stops the activity around half way through and asks the students to identify which jobs pay more or less. In order to answer this they take into account qualifications and statistics/additional research provided.

As a group, students are asked to identify patterns between the list of gendered characteristics or stereotypes and the monetary value they assigned each job. Each group then gives a brief presentation to the class about their reasoning for the characteristics and any patterns they saw.

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Workflow & Materials

CourseFlow tool

Gender and Job Inequality - Activity Workflow - CourseFlow

Elliot Kerr

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

The use of easily identifiable professions allows students to come into the activity with their own preconceived notions of stereotypes that they can question during the activity
Students begin to think more deeply about the link between socialization and labor. This helps them question why certain jobs have great gender imbalances and the reasons behind this (actual intellectual/physical difference or the result of socially learned behaviours)
Discussions over qualifications and learning to actual pay of certain jobs helps them think about how we assign value to certain roles over others (rational versus emotional intelligence)

Challenges

The choice of jobs may seem arbitrary since the measure of comparison between the jobs is somewhat problematic given that they require different skill level or education (for example comparing a flight attendant to a doctor.)
A general counterpoint or additional perspective to explore when looking at the link between gender and pay gap is the level of education required for each job. Students may want to discuss the way in which this could be used to assign value to jobs

Tips

Carry out the activity in discrete stages separated by questions as prompts in order to get students to first identify their own assumptions. Then try and associate gender stereotypes and pay gap with the way they described each job intuitively
It’s important to establish some previous knowledge first about gender roles. If this is a discussion about gender stereotypes it’s important that gender stereotypes are established in a previous class or in the reading

Applied Strategies

Comments

Sam says:

2020-03-02 at 08:44

The lesson has clearly cherry-picked jobs, to paint a biased view. Why not use “male” jobs that don’t pay as well, like garbage men. Why not use doctor instead of nurse, since 40% of doctors are women, and every year more women enter the field.

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Published: 30/10/2019

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