The profession that I am planning to enter upon graduation is that of an elementary school teacher. Our textbook states that 97 percent of pre-secondary school teachers are women, making this a female-dominated field. To become a teacher according to the US Department of Labor Statistics, one has to be licensed granted by the State Board of Education or a licensure advisory committee. Requirements for a license vary by state, but all states require a Bachelors degree and completion of an approved teacher training program, as well as supervised practice teaching. Some states also require a Masters degree in education in a specified time period after beginning teaching. A majority of the states require applicants to be tested for competency in basic skills, as well as exhibiting proficiency in their subject area. After receiving a license, one can begin teaching. Teaching conditions usually vary from school to school, such as older school buildings, or use of technology. Teaching can be a very stressful field. This stress comes from the kids’ behavior and motivation or the heavy workloads. The US Department of Labor Statistics also says that teachers can develop stress due to accountability standards; meaning they are expected to produce students that exhibit satisfactory performance on standardizing tests in core subjects. All of this information I have found on the US Department of Labor’s statistics website: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htm#top.
The National Education Association, http://www.nea.org/student-program/about/state.html, provides state by state information on teaching, such as the salary, job outlook and certification requirements. For Virginia a teacher just starting their career makes an average of $33, 815 where as the average teacher salary is $43,823. I searched the internet but I could not really find differences in salary based on gender, specifically for teaching. The national average salary for elementary school teachers is $47,897(http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_ED03000010.html) compared to a secondary school teachers median salary of $41,400 to $45,970 (http://careers.stateuniversity.com/pages/739/Teacher-Secondary-School.html). The US Department of Labor statistics website also says that in most cases teachers can raise their salary by coaching sports or working with kids in extracurricular activities, receiving a Masters degree or nation certification, as well as teaching summer school.
Our textbook has divided teaching into two categories: elementary/middle school and secondary. The book also gives the percent of women in each field. The elementary/middle school teachers are 96.7 percent women and secondary school teachers are 54.8 percent women. Although I could not find separate gender salaries for teachers I would think that in some cases a man’s salary could be higher in secondary school. I think this because of a teacher’s ability to raise salary by coaching sports. At my high school most of our coaches were men, even in many of the female sports. I think as a culture we generally stereotype men as athletes so we place them into coaching positions as well. For example, at my high school our varsity girls basketball coach was a man and our jayvee girls basketball coach was a female. I feel that both coaches were equally qualified, but the woman got placed in the jayvee position where the man got the varsity position. For the most part however, I can only speculate that salaries in this profession are for the most part equal.
Even though salaries are pretty much equal, women advancing into higher positions in this field are, I feel very gender biased. I say this based on what I have seen in my own high school. We have always had 1 principal and three assistant principals. Every principal that I can remember has been a male in my high school and two of the three assistant principals have been male as well. I have also heard that they only reason that we have one female assistant principal is because she has to deal with all the female issues. One of the assistant principals is also our athletic director, who is a male as well. Our superintendent of schools is also a male and our county school board is made up of mostly males. I feel that our culture’s stereotypes of males and females are the reason for this. The gender constructions that we have learned since birth tell us that men make better leaders than women. We see more men in leadership roles than we do women, so it makes sense for us to see men as typically better leaders, even if this in not the truth. So by placing a male in an administrative position in a school, we assume that he could do a better job than a woman could. Even though this in not the truth, I feel that this is why we see more men in higher positions in the school systems than we do women.
One aspect that I have found interesting in researching this career is the need for teachers in the maths and sciences. I think that this is attributed to the gender construction as well. I think that there is such a need for teachers in these subjects because of the lack of women in working in occupations that deal with math and sciences. These fields are traditionally male dominated fields where as teaching is a female dominated field. Since this is the case, we do not see many women in the maths and sciences, so we do not see the teachers in the maths and sciences either. Basically the professions of teaching and occupations in math/science are I suppose a Catch-22.
I think that we see more women in teaching because, as the book says, it is a pink collar job. Working with and teaching kids are an extension of a women’s role in the household. In the household women perform most of the work raising the children than the men do. Women, first of all, give birth to the children and are the ones that do most of the feeding, changing, and taking care of the child. Even though in today’s world we see more men helping more with raising children, we still think of the children being a woman’s first priority. Since society considers children a “woman thing,” we see more women teaching in schools than men. I feel that we learn more in elementary school than we do in secondary school, so it makes sense to me that 96.7 percent of the teachers in elementary school are women. This is because learning in elementary school is an extension of the development at home, which we also see as more of a “woman thing.”
I think a good comparison of women and men’s roles in the schools is that of roles in the home. As I stated before, we think taking care of children is a woman’s job in the home. We have also been taught by the gender construction that a man’s job in the home is to kind of oversee everything. I think that this is a good analogy for the schools. We see more men in the administrative position because they are seen as the “fathers” who oversee the “home.” Where as we see more women the teaching positions because they are the “mothers” whose main priority is to take care of and teach the children. I think that it is hard for women to break into the administrative fields, because we view them like this. I do not think it is the fact that women do not want to break into this field, but it is possible that they find it more rewarding working with the students rather than working with the teachers teaching the students.
While researching, I did not find any women’s organizations in the teaching field, although I did find that there were some organizations for female teachers on college campuses. I think that the reason that I could not find any women’s organizations is because teaching is a female dominated field, so any teaching organization that is set up, will be a female dominated field. I could also not really find any information on improvements organizations have made to make women more equal to men in the teaching profession. I also think that the only aspect that needs to change about the school systems is to see more women in administrative positions. I feel that the only improvement I can make when I enter this field is just to show that I am just as smart and capable of being a leader as a man is. Also, to show that a woman can be successful in an administrative position and can deal with more problems other than the “female problems.”

In this interview, I decided the best people to talk to were the ones that are closest to me. I talked to my mother, father, boyfriend, and sister. I found the information from the women’s center at Virginia Tech and decided since I was a college student this would be the best statistics to discuss. When I first showed each of them the statistics I found on the Tech website, they were all shocked. My mother and father both seemed to be the most worried. They could not believe the rape and stalking statistics and made them more nervous about me being on campus alone. My boyfriend how ever was shocked that the stats for rape were not higher. The statistics also made my sister a little apprehensive because she lives by herself in Myrtle Beach and she figured that the statistics would be the same if not higher. I also shared with my father and boyfriend, the white ribbon campaign. They both had not really heard of it, but they thought it was pretty cool that so many men were speaking out against violence against women.
I feel that this experience has made me more aware of the violence that surrounds women. I had always known that it was a major issue; I however had never really read any statistics. I find it amazing that one out of twelve women will be stalked in their lifetime where as one in forty five men will be stalked in their lifetime. I just never realized how one-sided violence is when it comes to gender. I also feel a little safer about being on campus because I had always thought that the rape statistics would be higher. However, I still feel that it is unsafe for a female to walk alone on a campus as large as ours is.

I feel that certain gender constructions we have learned are the roots of sexual violence, especially against women. I think because we have been taught that women are the weaker sex opens the door for violence against us. In the world today many people prey on those who are weaker than they are, so if women are viewed to be weaker then we are the prime candidates for harassment and other acts of violence. One thing that I find interesting is that there are many cases of sexual violence and rape against men, we however hardly hear of it. In one of the training video’s we have to watch for orientation there is a scene of sexual harassment with a male the victim. This was the third time I have been through orientation, but this was the first time that we saw a man in the victim role. I feel that the gender constructions we believe are a main reason why certain gender violence is publicized.
One aspect that I do not agree with are the women who say that they have been raped, but have really just woken up the next morning and decided they have made a mistake. I feel that for one, this could ruin an individual’s life and not only that but demeans the women who have actually been raped. I feel that these women are looking for an excuse for their behavior and find it easier to say that they have been sexually abused rather than saying they have made a mistake. I feel that all sexual violence is a serious issue, but for a woman to ruin a man’s life because she woke up the next morning and felt she had made a mistake is just wrong.

Activity 5

I feel that this film is saying that society has a beauty ideal where you can’t be on magazines or television unless you are “fake”. Watching the video, the woman who sat down to have her picture taken I feel was not the same women who ended up on the billboard. She had her make-up done, her hair done, and she was air brushed retouched and digitally enhanced. This video is saying that the contemporary beauty ideal is not what it appears to be. Every commercial or advertisement you see is not naturally that way. Women sit in chairs for hours of make-up and hair to be what we see on the television or magazines and billboards.
I feel that our beauty ideal has become so distorted because of the media that we view. If you look through the channels on TV you do not come across many ugly people. By seeing this we feel that we will not be as atheistically pleasing unless we are super skinny, or tan, or have a flawless face. When we play into the standards of beauty we teach our children to do the same thing. I was watching a show on child beauty pageants and I could not believe the things that the children had done to win these pageants. They were spray tanned, and hair sprayed and had so much make up on they looked like teenagers. In these beauty pageants, the children even have fake teeth that they used when they were competing. I feel that this is exactly why our beauty image is distorted, because we learn from a young age that to be successful you have to embody the standards of beauty that society has formed.

Gender, the way most people view it, is the absence or presence of a penis. Most people consider sex to be the same. After reading Kate Bornstein’s work, one realizes that sex is simply the act and gender to be more than having a penis. Gender can also be considered anything that categorizes a person. Sex, as Bornstein says, will forever be linked to gender because who we are attracted to will defines our gender identity. So who we are attracted to becomes part of our gender identity.
Social construction is one framework we use to make sense of gender. In reading 20 “The Social Construction of Gender,” how we “do gender” is discussed. Lorber explains that doing gender is placing males and females in roles that are typical. For instance, he discusses seeing two different babies and not being able to tell if it was a girl or a boy. When the father placed a ball cap on one he assumed it was a boy but then he noticed earrings and figured out it was a girl. This is what I feel it means that gender is socially constructed. As a society there are certain norms that we place on genders, such as earrings on girls and ball caps on boys. When we see someone who has deviated from the norm we tend to look at them strange or “do gender.”
Another framework we used to make sense of gender is biology, more specifically anatomy. As I stated before, most people see gender as having a penis or not. This framework is hard to categorize, as Bornstein explains, sometimes because you have individuals who have switched genders and for instance removed their penis. Where do we place these individuals? They were born with a penis which makes them a male but then they decided to remove their penis. Does this make them a woman? Since biology looks at gender as the presence or absence of a penis, then they should be considered women.
One more framework we can use to make sense of gender is culture. The culture that we are raised in can develop our ideas of gender. One example that comes to mind is a little boy in the toddler room of the day care I work at. We see him come to school with little shoes with flowers all over them and pink and purple long underwear on. When I first noticed this I thought how weird it was that a parent would dress their son in these typically girl colors and shoes. His parents are both from Russia and in a lot of countries their culture does not distinguish pink and purple as “girl” colors and shoes for small children as male or female. This is how I feel that culture can frame our understanding of gender. If in our culture we are raised to think that men raise the children and do the housework while women take the corporate world by storm, then this is how we are going to behave if we move into a different culture.

Activity 4

Kate Bornstein is the author of My Gender Workbook. Kate understands gender as more than male and female. She sees gender as more than the presence or absence of a penis. She feels that how we identify ourselves determines our gender.
I scored a 170 on the Gender Aptitude Test. This test made me feel very confused, but not confused in a gender way. I just felt that some of the questions didn’t make sense and I didn’t agree with some of the answers that we were given a choice of. I think that someone would design a test this way because the questions and answers are both very ambiguous. Phrasing the questions and answers this way makes it hard to choose the result you want. In many tests, you can figure out the direction of the questions and answers and make the test come out the way you want it to. This test is the exception to this, so it shows what you truly think. I think something we can learn from this testing product is that gender can be more ambiguous than we think. It shows that there many be more genders than just male or female and that it might be more than the presences or absence of a penis.

What is equality and how does one determine it? I think it is a matter of personal opinion and personal situation that determines equality. The very first sentence of chapter two says “Women are as different as they are alike,” and I feel that this statement can be used to explain this. Some people have the opinion that gender equality already exists and we no longer need to work towards this goal. I think that some people have this opinion because of the situations that they have experienced. For example, one person could have a mother that is CEO of a successful company and to that person equality exists. On the other hand, one could have a mother that is a secretary or housewife and to that person, they might feel that the need for gender equality is still present. I feel that the statement at the beginning of chapter two exemplifies my opinion. Equality for one woman or feminist might not be the same for another.
Another reason that a person might have this belief is discussed in chapter 2 as well; this topic is that of hierarchy and privilege. Chapter two discusses how certain groups are ranked higher than other. For example, literate is placed above non-literate and male over female. Depending on which groups society assigns to you could depend on how you determine the equality. A white, wealthy woman would experience more privilege than a black, working class woman; this therefore has an influence on how these women are affected by equality.
Personally, I feel that gender equality for me exists, but for women as a whole we still need to work towards this goal. I say this because I have never really experienced discrimination because I am a female and I can not recall anyone that I know of who has. For example, I was discussing some of these issues with my boyfriend and he said that he views me as is equal and values my opinions more so than his guy friends. This is not the only situation that makes me feel as though I, as a female, am considered an equal to males. Since my summer job has started, I have been placed in charge of basically training all of the new servers that have come down to the pool bar to work for the summer. I was placed in charged because I along with another male employee have been at the pool bar the longest. I feel that the fact that I was chosen over the male employee shows that gender equality does exist. In the unpack your knapsack activity, I am a white, middle class, young heterosexual female. This could be part of the reason why I have not experienced any gender discrimination. I have not really been placed in too many situations where the need for gender discrimination exists, because of my statuses. These statuses could be a large part of why I feel that equality exists for me. I have also mentioned before that I have an, I guess you could say “old-fashioned” mindset when it comes to the roles of women and men. For myself, in the future I would be happy to be a stay at home mother while my husband brings in the majority of the money. I do not think that a woman’s place is in the home, I just feel that in the future it will be for me. This I also feel is a reason why I have not experienced inequality, because I do not see it that way. I can not think of a situation in which I have been discriminated against, but there could be a few that I have overlooked because of this mindset.
On the other hand however, I know that there are many females who do not have the privilege of experiencing gender equality. I know that there are women who are struggling to break the glass ceiling that exists between them and their male co-workers. I know that there are women who get passed over for promotion after promotion because they are female. For some women, they are not even placed in this position because they are in a situation where they can not even break into the professional world; instead they are working a low paying job just to make ends meet. This is why I feel that as a whole gender, equality is still and issue that needs to be worked towards.

I was one that was not surprised by the results of the IAT’s results. I feel as though the website made you feel biased toward certain things. I took the Age test and in the beginning it stated that most people prefer younger rather than older. So going into the tests you already had the pre-set images. I also didn’t understand exactly what it was trying to prove, I don’t feel that I had certain biases towards things, I just feel the way the tests switched the categories made it hard to switch the words so quickly. I do understand however why you used these tests in a women’s studies course. I feel that bias is a major part of women’s studies, especially for the men taking the courses. I feel that this course could open some people’s eyes to certain biases that they might not know they have, but for the most part I feel that some of the tests subliminally message the results that the testers want. I feel that it is important to look at prejudices and biases because these things hold us back. As humans we naturally have prejudices and biases towards something, some more major than others. Some people are prejudice towards women where as some people, vegetarians, are biased to veggies. If you look at prejudices and biases this way I feel that some are not as bad as another person’s can be. I also feel that certain prejudices and biases cannot be helped. I say this because a lot of the biases we develop depend on how we are raised and where we grow up. For instance, if you grow up in a small southern town, some could be more likely to develop prejudice towards African Americans or Gays. However if you were to grow up in say L.A., you probably wouldn’t think twice about either of these. I feel that a lot of our biases develop from the environment we are surrounded in. When I chose to take the tests I did, I mainly looked at the blurbs underneath each test and decide which ones sounded like fun.

Activity 2

For this assignment the three people that I chose to interview were my boyfriend, my sister, and my mother. When I first told them that I was taking a women’s studies course, each had a positive reaction. My mother and sister both thought that it was a good course to take and they felt that it is educational to learn about the different strong women that have impacted women’s rights and opportunities so much. My boyfriend also thought that it would be a good experience for me, although he did not really know much of what the course was about. One thing that I have learned from talking to both genders is how they perceive the word and idea of feminism. When I asked my sister, she said that the word feminist brings to mind a woman or person that has strong feelings of equality between women and men in all aspects of life. My mother felt the same way but also added the idea of a person that also works to achieve the equality between men and women. My boyfriend however, had a more negative connotation of the word feminist. He told me that when he hears the word feminist he thinks of an ultra liberal woman who believes in equality between sexes in life aspects that benefit themselves and against equality that place them at a disadvantage. He attends the U.S. Naval Academy, where he sees a lot of this type of behavior. An example he gave me is that he hears a lot of girls saying that a female can do anything a male can do, but then complain that there is no way that a female can uphold the same standards of physical fitness due to their weaker nature. What it comes down to, when he hears the word feminist, he thinks of a woman that is a hypocrite. As for their opinion as to me being or wanting to be a feminist, both my sister and my mother feel that it would be a good thing because in today’s world you have to be a strong woman to survive. My boyfriend thinks that it would also be a good thing for me to want to be a strong woman, as long as I didn’t turn into the hypocritical feminist that he comes into contact with on a daily basis.
My opinions of women’s studies and feminism are a mix of all the opinions of the people that I interviewed. As for my perceptions of feminism, as I said in my introduction I have a negative connotation of the word when I first hear it as well. I agree with my boyfriend in the fact that if women want to attend the military academies, they should be held to the exact same standards as the men are. I think it is amazing that they want to serve our country on the battle lines, but I also feel that in wartime such as now, the Iraqis are not going to give them a break because they have a weaker physical nature. I also feel that these women who are being hypocritical somewhat hinder women’s progress. I feel that the hypocritical women are the ones that give the word feminist a negative connotation to some people. I however feel that feminism is, on a bigger scale, an amazing thing. There are so many women in history as well as today that have made strides in advancing women’s rights and roles. My perception of women’s studies is a course that tries to turn the negative connotation feminism into a positive thing and show women that you can be strong and opinionated, but you don’t have to hate men and blame everything on them.
As for considering my self a feminist, I would say that I am one to some extent. I consider myself to be a strong woman with opinions who wants equality between both sexes. I say that I am one to a certain extent because though I consider myself to be a strong woman; I am not one that wants to go and conquer the world. In my future, I would be happy being a mother and wife, doing the house cleaning and cooking. I feel that some people think that women such as me are the ones that set us back to the times when a woman was supposed to be seen and not really heard. I do not feel that by wanting to be a traditional housewife is setting women back at all, but this is why I do not consider myself to be a full fledged feminist.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Haley Unroe and I guess I can call myself a senior now. I am an interdisciplinary major with minors in PK-6 Math and Social Studies. I am from Covington VA, a small town about two hours away from Tech. I am at home for the summer to work as well as take this course. When I graduate I hope to enter the education field and teach kindergarten and possibly younger. One thing that many people find interesting about me is I have never flown on a plane in my entire life. I have not taken any women’s studies classes before this, and am excited to see what this course has to offer. There is nothing specific that I hope that we cover, I am more interested in finding out what I can take away from this class. The only reservation I have about this course is being able to keep up with the course work. I will be working two jobs during the summer and hoping I can find time to keep up with this course. I think they only stereotype I have about feminists is that the majority of them bra-burning, man-hating women that have a chip on their shoulder. I do know however that the majority of feminists are not like this, but are strong women who stand up for what they believe in. This stereotype is just what comes to mind when I think of the world feminist. I think you used the cartoon at the top of the page because this, to me, is a slight bit of a stereotype of a feminist. I feel that when a lot of individuals think of the word or idea of a feminist, they think of a woman who wants to blame a man for everything that has gone wrong. So by saying that “if you use your imagination you can blame men for anything” places women in the man-hating mold.