Gender - DTT

Six Key points from the pre-reading  - Blurring the edges- Yelland and Grieshaber and constructing the gendered infant - Greishaber

- Identifying gender is a way of dividing the labour and economy in a family unit. Lorber and Farrell (1991)

- Davies and Boldt talked about 'gender bending' to different circumstances you find yourself in.

- Oakley, Taylor and Boyden conducted a study of 20 parents on how gender is constructed at the micro level - finding out gender before birth. Father's want a son to carry on the family name and to play sports with - they saw the infant as an older child rather than a baby. The mother tended to go along with the father in finding out the gender or which gender they wanted. Mother's were generally happy for a healthy baby. Father's tend not to want a girl for fear of her safety. Hegemonic masculinity prevails.

- We can look at academic results to see how the genders differ but Moore argues that education alone can account for the shift. Wider society plays a much bigger part - locally, nationally or globally. This has happened over the last 100 years, but moreso since Thatcher.

- Social class plays a bigger part in education than gender does.

- Thatcher wanted to go back to Victorian values when she came to power. Victorians saw men and women in 2 diferent spheres: women at home and men socially at work. In education girls were taught the same as boys. In 1862 they started to introduce more subjects for girls which were based around domesticity, but more maths, reading and writing for boys. They shifted the concept of the 'perfect lady' to the 'Good Woman'.

- Education was based on class, higher class women were taught music and etiquette but working slass learnt laundry and sewing.

- Through Victorian times there was a worry that a woman's intellect was antagonistic to her biological destiny - Delamont and Duffin (1978)

- Another educational view was that women are different from men, biologically, socially, intellectually and psychologically, they needed education specific to their roles in society.

John Barrowman - The Making Of Me Documentary

Fantastic documentary!!!

He undertook loads of tests to find out if he was born gay or made gay. He spoke to his parents to find out if he always played with girls toys etc, if they were forced on him by his sister etc. They did say that they dressed him up as a girl once for a competition, but he was the one who chose girls toys over his own boys toys.

He spoke to his nephew who he used to dress up as a girl all the time and asked him if he was gay, but his nephew confirmed he was straight. He also visited a set of twins who were both boys, one liked to play with action figures etc but the other one liked barbies and care bares. Their mum confirmed that she had brought them both up exactly the same but one of them just wanted different toys!

In the final test, John found out that being gay can be determined by how much testosterone is taken by the foetus from the womb and as he had 2 older brothers, this was the reason he decided to take. He also did a test with the length of the ring finger to the index finger. Women tend to have their ring finger slightly smaller than their index finger and a scientist found that over 2000 gay men had the same.