Gender Balance in Geography
Steve Brace, Head of Education at the Royal Geographical Society (one of our Supporter organisations) writes about gender and geography, and how having gender-balanced entry does not solve all gendered issues in a subject.
There was much written in the press in November 2019 about university level geography and whether the subject had equal appeal to both female and male students. Lurid press headlines characterized the subject as being for ‘white, posh and dim boys’. Such comments echoed the debate from 100 years ago, around the admittance of women as Fellows to the Royal Geographical Society, with the author of a letter to the Times declaiming that “We contest in toto, the general capability of women to contribute to scientific geographical knowledge.”
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Personal Practice CPD: Know your anchoring from your attribution
It was brilliant to welcome around 30 educators to our Personal Practice workshop recently. Throughout the course of 2019 as we’ve been out and about presenting and networking at events, and speaking to practitioners and teachers in our Supporter schools, many people have requested the chance for some quality CPD on unconscious bias, gender stereotyping, and strategies to lessen their effects in the classroom.
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What is intersectionality?
For Black History Month, Georgina Phillips, School Recruitment and Relationships Officer for Gender Action, has written an introduction to the concept of intersectionality.
“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” - Audre Lorde
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Top tips to tackle gender stereotypes in education
Check out our great new video on how to challenge gender stereotypes in nurseries, schools and colleges.
We asked the facilitators at our launch event to tell us where they would tell teachers to start in tackling stereotypes in their setting and this is what they said.
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Gender Stereotypes in Children’s Books
Annahita de la Mare is an independent children’s book author, creating naturally inclusive picture books with inspiring female lead characters. She is also an advocate for the Gender Equality Collective.
A few years ago, the Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls team released a video ahead of their book release, showing a girl and her mother in front of a bookcase, seeking out children’s books with speaking female characters who aspired to more than marrying a prince…
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Why do we need to challenge gender stereotypes in the early years?
Listen to CEO of London Early Years Foundation June O’Sullivan MBE discuss why she thinks challenging gender stereotypes in the early years is so important and why your nursery should sign up to Gender Action.
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Check out our Youtube Channel!
Check out our YouTube channel!
As well as uploading our own videos, such as this one by Professor Becky Francis, we are also collating useful videos into playlists.
This includes playlists on some of our focus areas…
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Talking Equality
Sarah is a co-founder at TogetherEqual.com, who produce conversation cards which challenge social stereotypes. The cards raise money for charities while having a social impact through conversation. Follow Sarah and Together Equal @betogetherequal @sarahairdmash.
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Professor Becky Francis on why Gender Action is a force for good
Professor Becky Francis is an expert on inequalities in education and is currently the Director of the UCL Institute of Education, one of our founding partners. She was one of Tes' 10 most influential people in the world of education in 2018. Following her keynote speech at our launch, Professor Francis spoke to us about inequalities in education and the power of Gender Action.
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Tackling stereotypes in early years
We have written a piece for PACEY - the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years - about how Gender Action can work in early years settings, making reference to our focus areas and Glyn Hawke’s blog for us.
You can read our article here.
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More Alike Than Different
Megan Perryman is a teacher in Hackney with a background in managing projects for the public and not-for-profit sectors. She is a co-founder of Let Toys Be Toys, a campaign group that challenges gender stereotypes in childhood. Since the campaign began, fifteen major UK retailers have stopped signposting toys specifically for boys or girls and eleven children’s publishers have agreed to stop marketing books explicitly to boys or girls.
An afternoon lesson in Year One and we’re acting out Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I invite the children, one row at a time, to stand at the front of the class and act out each section of the story…
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Challenging your own practice
At Rye Oak, our journey began by examining our role as practitioners in either challenging or reinforcing gender stereotypes. In the initial stage, we unpicked our training and the ‘assumptions’ that had become 'fact' in our daily practice. We shared stories we had heard over the years, particularly around boys and writing, which reinforced the assumption of innate biological differences between boys and girls. These stories included hearing that…
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Lessons learnt from the Gender Action Launch Event
I can’t believe it has been nearly two months since we launched Gender Action with teachers at City Hall. The event was exciting, not only as we got to hear from Professor Becky Francis, and educators and activists on our panel and leading our workshops, but also because we had such quality conversations with teachers and practitioners, from nurseries up to colleges. This was an enriching experience, and confirmed the need for Gender Action…
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Feeling 10% braver with #WomenEd
Gender Action were kindly invited to #WomenEd’s unconference at Regent High School in London., the day after International Women’s Day 2019. Vivienne Porritt, National Lead for #WomenEd spoke at our launch event in February and we were excited to attend a#WomenEd event in return. There were over 300 educators present as well as a series of facilitators conducting workshops throughout the day.
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Gendered Language in Schools
We were delighted to run a workshop for primary school teachers at the Gender Action launch event last month, addressing gendered language in schools, why it matters and strategies for dealing with it. We chose to address language as language runs through the heart of children’s learning about the world and – intended or otherwise – conveys profound and lasting messages to children about how they should look and behave, what they should aspire to, what and who they should play with.
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Embedding equality in education in Islington
On 1 March 2019, Gender Action was invited to participate at a training event for teachers from Islington Council at City and Islington College. This was a great opportunity to meet teachers interested in gender equality work, as well as other organisations in Islington working in similar fields.
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Assessing the Problem
A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Esther Mander and I delivered a session as part of the Gender Action launch in London. It was fantastic to meet teachers who are so passionate and committed to achieving gender equality for young people.
In our session, we focused on how to start approaching gender imbalance in schools through using data. Although this session was originally designed for secondary school staff, there were some key messages which were useful for early years and primary staff which I thought I would share with you through this blog post.
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Gender Action Teacher Launch Event Overview
On Saturday 9 February, Gender Action successfully launched its programme with teachers at City Hall.
The launch event opened with a keynote from the Director of UCL Institute of Education, Professor Becky Francis, who spoke about her extensive research in the field of gender and education. She highlighted the importance of considering intersectionality when trying to tackle gender stereotypes – considering how issues of gender intersect with issues around other forms of identity such as race, class and religion.
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Gender Action launches at Equal Play event
The capital will lead the way in championing gender equality in schools by funding a new Gender Action award. Developed by the Institute of Physics (IOP), King’s College London (KCL), UCL Institute of Education (IOE) and University Council of Modern Languages (UCML), the Gender Action award encourages the entire school to unite to challenge gender stereotypes by putting gender equality at the heart of all aspects of school life.
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