Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Topic: Gender

Great Books on gender diversity:

Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Gender with Courtney

Jenny Woo: Welcome to 52 essential conversations. I'm Jenny Woo and we're sitting next to Courtney Jackson to talk about implicit bias from a gender perspective. Courtney is a high school Humanities teacher who is passionate about supporting LGBTQ+ students and helping to make schools less homophobic and heteronormative. She has a master’s in liberal studies from Dartmouth and a Master's degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education in Learning and Teaching. Welcome, Courtney.

Courtney Jackson: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Jenny Woo: So tell us, what does implicit bias mean to you from a gender perspective.

Courtney Jackson: Implicit bias regarding gender to me basically comes down to our understanding of gender and gender stereotypes and roles, and how those affect the way that we think about ourselves and others, in the way that those understandings affect the way that we engage with each other.

Jenny Woo: How does that reflect in the schools where you teach?

Courtney Jackson: In the schools where I've taught gender comes up in a lot of areas. It comes up in the dress code of how students are expected to look. Girls are expected to wear more skirts and dresses, they're allowed to wear pants. Boys are expected to wear pants, collared shirts for formal occasions, jackets, and ties whereas girls are supposed to wear a certain kind of shoes and just the way that students are expected to look varies between the two genders. In terms of curriculum, I think one thing that schools need to think about is what authors, say in the English classroom, I'm a humanities teacher so I'll stick to English. Does an English curriculum have mostly male authors or other female authors? What kinds of characters are portrayed for students or a lot of the male characters’ leaders and the protagonists? And are women just playing supporting roles or are there women in lead roles and then if they are in lead roles how are they portrayed? Are they independent and strong and creative and innovative, or are they broken in some way, and do they rely on other people to sort of save them? I think it's important to think about the messages that students are getting from. Who are the teachers in their school? Or, are there mostly men in the sciences and most women in the humanities? Or within the administration of a school, is the principal a male and all of the teachers are women? You know think dynamics like that. And then within the curriculum, within structural things like dress code. I'm a boarding school teacher, so even within the dormitories: dorms are largely separated by sex so that girls in one dorm boys and another. And actually, a couple of schools have already started gender-inclusive housing for trans and non-binary students or students who just don't feel quite right in a single-sex dorm to create a safer option for them and their allies, which is really cool and a trend that I hope to see continue.

Jenny Woo: Yeah that sounds really promising. I can tell you from a personal perspective I have boy-girl twins and they've always played the same thing. We've treated them entirely the same, but I do notice even starting as early as two years old, three years old and it really diverges even the way that they're being talked to. It just seems like there's more delicacy in terms of how my daughter is being handled, the way she's being talked to and the princesses are starting to come about, whereas the boy is supposed to be toughened up and playing with certain toys. It's so rampant so I'm wondering what you can give us in terms of advice in navigating this tension between the social-cultural expectations and still empowering our children to have that freedom of expression.

Courtney Jackson: I think one thing that parents can do is to just help their children understand that those cultural norms exist similarly to you would want to let your students know that racism exists and then how to not just navigate that but then how to work against it and to change it. Similarly, with gender, gender is a social construction and it's the way that we put meaning on physical bodies. If you are born male. The doctor says it's a boy and then we expect that boy to grow up to be a man and be masculine and adhere to all of the sorts of masculine qualities that exist in our culture. The same thing with if you're born female then we expect you to be a little girl play with certain toys just a certain way, love princesses like you said, and grow up to be a feminine woman. We get those messages from not just our parents, but from the media with how people are portrayed in commercials. Even like cereal commercials that are targeting children. You could look at them and see how they affect gender. Toy commercials. And I think if we help our students and our children question those messages that they're receiving. If they say, "Tommy can't play with that, that's not a boy toy." You can say "well why, explain to me what makes that a boy toy" and have them question the assumptions that they make and think about the messages that they're getting. That can come down to the books that you read with them before bedtime. Forgetting the name of the book, but there's one book where the protagonist is a boy who loves to dance, and he gets made fun of at school but he's really very good at dancing. And so then at the end of the school year, there's a talent show, and he performs, and because he's so good everyone says "Wow he's so talented he's so good at dancing." And then the fact that people made fun of him for doing something that wasn't stereotypically male to them kind of goes away. And it pushes back on those expectations that boys should act a certain way and girls should act a certain way or do certain things. Helping our kids see that and raising up the messages that they're getting is primary. Then, I think that we can help them experiment with their own gender identity as they're learning what it means to be themselves, not necessarily what it means to be a little girl or a little boy but what it means to be them in this world. If you have a girl who wants to play with trucks, let her do that. And similarly, if there is a boy who wants to play with a dollhouse. I watched a video for one of my graduate classes and there was a boy who interviews a fourth-grader and he said that when he was younger, he used to love wearing his sister's dresses. But then at a certain point, his parents stopped letting him wear dresses to school. It was clear that boys shouldn't wear dresses. But he said he's talked with a lot of friends at school and if it wasn't weird for boys to wear dresses, we all would be wearing them. Not only dresses but dresses would be part of their wardrobe because they're comfortable, they're floaty. And so again children will tell us what they want and what feels right to them and it's parents who get nervous about the social expectations that exist outside of their home and they kind of hamper that freedom of expression. And I think another thing that's important for parents to remember is that however their child is, is not their fault. I think a lot of times if a child acts in a way that is not normative, the parent feels "oh what did I do wrong." And I think that's a really unfortunate and kind of harmful way to think. And I think we should celebrate our children and their multiplicity. I think we're seeing that gender itself with the increase in visibility of transgender and non-binary people specifically in schools. I think in a lot of ways students and children are the change agents. They're really saying like this is who I am, and society needs to adapt like you need to accept me for who I am. I think in a lot of ways, adults are the ones who are nervous around gender and children are the ones who we can really look to you to be leaders because they haven't totally been affected by the norms yet, and so they're still just being themselves. And if we can listen to them more and let them take the lead and set the tone for us, I think we can learn a lot from them and help them help us change. 

Jenny Woo: That's such a powerful message. Often, we as parents think that norms are something we need to conform to, it sets the tone for everything. Yet, we also complain about our children for being complacent and not self-motivated when right before our eyes they are the change agents. They know what they want. They know what they need. They know what it's functional. To create a safe space for them and allowing them to showcase their self-motivation and drive to experiment and show their identity is so powerful. With that, I'm wondering if you could give us some specific language or tools that we can say or do when the "why" that you mentioned is turned back to us. Say, when a child comes to us and says, "why mommy, why is this boy in dresses?" What can we do? Because I can see myself at times I wonder "is it time yet." What message should I say? Are they too young? What can we do? 

Courtney Jackson: Adults often avoid those kinds of conversation because they're uncomfortable and they don't know how to have them. I think part of that is because we're in a new place with gender and we're just talking about it in a way that we haven't before. And so I think if your child sees someone who they perceive to be a man or a boy and then that person is dressed in a way that isn't consistent with their idea of how boys should dress and they ask you about it, I think you can just say that that sometimes boys wear dresses and that's OK. You also don't know the gender identity of that person. There's a difference between gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity is how someone feels about themselves. And that again is regardless of what their biological sex is. You could be born male and identify in your own mind as a female or as neither or as something in between. Regardless of what your gender identity is, you express yourself in a way that is either consistent or inconsistent with your identity because of where you are and if it's safe or not safe or so. For example, if you identify as a boy but you like to wear dresses, you might know from growing up that wearing a dress would cause you to be made fun of and it would cause you to lose friends. It would cause you to maybe get beaten up and experienced physical harm or verbal abuse, and so you conform to those gender norms, Or, if you know you're in a place where people are more accepting, then you might wear dresses. Children often also engage in play and so you might have a boy wear dresses for a period of time and then stop doing it. It doesn't mean that something grander than just that that they're experimenting. So, I think if your child comes to you and says, "Mommy why is that boy wearing a dress?" You can say "because sometimes boys wear dresses and that's OK". I as a woman often rarely wear dresses, so I often wear shorts and pants. If I was the mom, I would say "you know, you probably think that he should be wearing pants, but like I wear pants and I'm a woman. Women wear pants all the time. And so why couldn't a boy wear a dress." I think in the US that's something interesting too is that women tend to have more flexibility around their gender expression than men do. Women are allowed to be athletes and also artists. But if a boy wants to be a ballet dancer, we get nervous about that a little quicker than if a girl wants to play ice hockey. Catching ourselves in those moments can help us realize implicit biases about why is it that we allow girls more flexibility and fluidity around their gender than we do a little boy and how that affects how adults engage with each other too, especially in light of the #metoo movement and gender expectations and gender inequality in certain fields that are dominated by men versus women. But I think if a little girl says "Oh, Susie just got a boy haircut." You can say "well, grandma has short hair and she's not a boy." You can usually with smaller children find examples of the opposite that make them think oh right that's OK. And even with colors like the whole association with blue being for boys and pink being for girls. Up until the 1940s, it was actually the opposite. Pink was associated with boys because pink was associated with red, which was a power color for men. And blue was associated with flowers and therefore with girls. During World War 2, when the Nazis paired the pink triangle with homosexuals, mostly men, who were described as feminism, then pink started being associated with femininity, and then the colors kind of change. But when I was doing work on my thesis at Dartmouth on gender, I came across an article from Better Homes and Gardens that was very explicit about blue is for girls and pink is for boys, and that really surprised me. I think if you if you look at the historical evolution of gender, it really becomes clear how much of it is socially constructed and how much of it is not natural but how we treat it as something that is very natural and expected. When someone moves outside of what we think of as being very natural, we get nervous. But when you think about it as a social construction--when someone moves outside of it, it becomes easier to accept and easier to think about the ways in which sometimes your own gender made you uncomfortable or made you feel like you couldn't do something. Or, made you make a decision that if you could go back and do it again, you would do something different. I think when our kids come to us with questions, it's important to engage those questions and to think about them. It's also OK to not know the answer because gender is something that again, we often think of as being very natural and we are not prompted to think about it critically. But as parents, you can do the reading. I'll mention some sources at the end of places you can go to learn more about gender. I think it's definitely good to not be too nervous about it, but then to definitely think about the questions that your kids ask you. Just maintain those open lines of conversation and to not shy away from talking about gender.

Jenny Woo: These are such good examples. I really love that your example showcases that we can use this as an opportunity--these questions--to investigate together and understand where those social norms came from in the first place and recognizing that they can't be changed. There is no gold standard set in stone. I'm wondering if I'm selecting a school, a high school for example, for my children and I'm looking for a school that really fosters a safe environment, safe and inviting in terms of gender identifications and expression. What should I be looking for?

Courtney Jackson: I think a school should always back up its actions with good policy. And so I think the first thing you can do is go to the school's mission and you know what kind of language does it use. If it has a nondiscrimination policy where it protects gender identity and sexual orientation, just like you would with race or age or ability. I think that if a school has a Director of Inclusivity. A lot of schools increasingly have people whose job it is to make sure that the school is bringing in guest speakers or looking at the curriculum and making sure that in all of the classes, their curriculum is inclusive and that teachers are thinking about race and gender and sexual orientation and all those things. It's really important that students see themselves reflected in the curriculum. It makes them feel seen and valued. Particularly in U.S. schools, this has been a problem around race where students of color don't see themselves particularly in the history curriculum, and so they feel like their identity is being erased in that they aren't important and they're not included. I think in terms of gender, having students who are trans or nonbinary or even cisgender. Cisgender means that your gender identity corresponds with your sex. If you're cisgender like I was born female and identify as a woman, I'm a cisgender woman. All students. I think having a curriculum that includes a variety of identities is important and I think sometimes schools think about doing certain programming around gender as a way to care for the very small percentage of students for whom those identities are true. So trans students are nonbinary students, but it really helps all of the students. Like we said before if the gender binary of man and woman is making some students feel like they have to conform to a certain idea of what a man is or what a woman is. Specifically, in adolescence in middle school, and in high school, students are really trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be and who they can be and who their friends are and how they want to express themselves and navigate the world. If schools can be inclusive and talk about gender in a more complex and nuanced way in language and in the curriculum, then all students will benefit, because even if a student cisgender they're going to feel like they can express themselves in a wider variety of ways than they might have had the school been more normative. I think too in terms of traditions like pep rallies or proms, I think having a dress code that is more gender-neutral could be really empowering, and maybe having instead of a Prom King and Queen having you know a Royal Court and not really having distinct identities within that. Again, having a good mission statement and nondiscrimination clauses will show that the school is invested in protecting students and making students and teachers from all identities feel safe, and actually not just safe but included at school. To have schools not just safe but also affirming. Whereas my professor Gretchen Brion-Meisels at Harvard calls for schools to be loving spaces, so not just safe but loving. Beyond tolerance and moving more into accepting and affirming and good school culture. There's a National School Climate Survey that schools can take and that can address a wide variety of things like peer-to-peer relationships teachers-to-student relationships. Any School can take the climate survey and get a diagnostic baseline of what their school culture is like. Based on that feedback, you can target areas for growth. But I think aside from that, another thing that's important, even if a school is inclusive, is professional development for teachers around issues of diversity. A lot of times faculty meetings will focus on technology or more sort of curricular things, but I think it's important to remember that students are again specifically in middle and high school, very much aware of their identities and they're trying to figure out who they are. If we only focus on math and science and language and English and history and we don't address the human aspect of what our students are going through and what our children are going through, then we're going to miss out on a huge opportunity to address something like gender that exists very systemically in our culture. If a school is committed to that and committed to teaching the student as a whole person, not just the academic brain, to prepare them for college, I think that that would be really important things.

Jenny Woo: So well said. These are really helpful things to look for and not just as parents but also as teachers. Would you like to leave us with any parting words or resources that you can use?

Courtney Jackson: Yes. A couple of TED talks that I'd like to share. One is called Bring on All the Female Superheroes! By Christopher Bell. Christopher Bell talks about his daughter who loves superheroes. She wants to see all the Avengers movies, Thor and The Incredible Hulk, and she's obsessed with superheroes. But when it was Halloween and they went to the store to get a costume, the only costume they could find were superheroes in male characters. Scarlett Johansson was in a movie, but when they went to get an action figure of her, she actually wasn't even one of the toys that were made. The only action figures that were made were male. So the message that his daughter was getting sent was that superheroes and all the things that they stand for are for boys not for her. So he talks about the implicit messages that we're getting through the media and about what is OK for girls and what is OK for boys. He does a nice job talking about those issues.

Courtney Jackson: The next one is called To Raise Brave Girls, Encourage Adventure and that's by Caroline Paul. She addresses why bravery isn't expected of women. She's someone who is a firefighter and talks about her own upbringing and how she was never expected to be brave from a lot of people but her mom, who expected her to be brave and gave her opportunities to take risks and to challenge herself and to make herself nervous but then realized that she could do it. But a lot of the time on a playground you'll hear parents say to girls "are you OK? Be careful and watch out." For boys, they'll say "Oh he'll be fine. You can do it. Go for it." If a boy falls down, they'd say "you're OK," which is different than "are you OK?" Because of that, girls often get the sense that they're fragile and that they need to be protected and taking risks is harmful or might be harmful, whereas boys are encouraged to get out there and give it a try and to maybe scrape their knee, but that will make them stronger. She addresses those kinds of dynamics that exist.

Courtney Jackson: In terms of parenting, one interesting movement I don't know if you've heard about is the gender-neutral parenting movement. This one couple who has a child named Zoomer has a website called Raising Zoomer. They talk about how they are raising Zoomer in a totally gender-neutral environment. The only people that know Zoomer's sex is Zoomer's doctor and parents. They use plural pronouns for Zoomer so they, them, and they're. They dress Zoomer in all kinds of different clothing. Zoomer plays with all different kinds of toys and has different kinds of friends and that they really believe that gender-neutral parenting is that is really key in transforming the way that we think about gender. I would also say that GLSEN. The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network is an organization that works to create safe inclusive and affirming schools by championing LGBTQ issues in K12 education. GLSEN Has tons of resources for teachers and schools but also for parents and for students and children themselves if they want to start an organization at their schools like a GSA gender and sexuality alliance. They have tons of resources that parents can access and teachers.

Courtney Jackson: One book that would be interesting is called Becoming Nicole. Nicole Maines is a transgender woman from Maine who has a twin brother. From the earliest of ages, she really demanded that her parents recognize her as a girl and that her school recognized her as a girl. Nicole Maines is one of the first people to bring a lawsuit around bathroom use access in the country. And she won her case and is now at the University of Maine. I think the book is really well done because it goes from birth through her 18th birthday and describes everything she's struggled with and her family struggled with as she claimed and fought for her identity, and how their school and wider community engaged with them based on her identity. It also talked about the lawsuit and issues around bathroom access, and the difference between gender and sexuality, which often gets conflated. It also goes into the biology of how gender as part of our identity actually develops biologically and socially and how those two things interact. The last thing is anything by Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling. She's a biologist but writes a lot about gender. Three of her books are: The Myths of Gender, Sexing the Body, and Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World. Her books are really wonderful and would be a good resource. Probably a little more academic in nature but also pretty accessible. If parents want to do a deep dive, then this would be a good option.