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Gender Issues in the UK An Article for a Magazine
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Gender and Society As we have seen in class, gender could be described as the specific features that define men and women in specific contexts, that means that men and women may adopt different (gender) roles in society. But these (gender) roles are far from fixed, they vary according to the context or the community of practice in which we have contact with other people. Think, for example, about a mother who is also a well-known worker in her field. Nowadays we know countless stories of very hard-working women who do not sacrifice their personal achievements in the pursuit of dedicating their lives to taking care of their families and houses. On the other hand, we all know men who are far from the traditional macho stereotypes and who view women as equal to men in all senses. That is why it is not surprising, as it was some years ago, to find men who take care of their children, their physical appearance and who do not feel ashamed of sharing feelings and emotions. Obviously, these changes in the way we see the role of men and women in society have an impact in our own behaviour in every field of life, for example, work, personal relations, studies, attitudes, aims, etc. and we are, therefore, changing the world in which we live. However, not everybody sees these changes in the same way or, on the other hand, not everybody may see these changes at all (either in a positive or negative sense). This is why, although we are dealing here with a very controversial issue, I think it is a great opportunity to set up our minds in relation to this topic. In class we have been dealing with some of the traditional gender stereotypes in our country and culture. As gender is a very important part of every culture, and culture is, in turn, a constitutive part of every language, I think its time we learnt something about the traditional gender roles in the English culture. Task This worksheet aims at providing different points of view about the gender situation in England. You should write a magazine article in which you express your opinion about this aspect. To do so, you have to use some of the resources listed in the Links section, or any others you may find interesting. Procedure To write the magazine article, you can use the following structure: - Catching title - Paragraph 1: Introduction (you can describe what gender is and your opinion about its relation to society and the way we live) - Paragraph 2: Write about the real situation of men and women in England (you can talk about how society sees their relation to work, studies, childcare, housework, etc.) - Paragraph 3: Write about how you think the situation should be (remember that in this case you will be talking about hypothetical situations so it is a great opportunity to introduce second conditionals) - Paragraph 4: Conclusion (show your opinion about the real situation of men and women in England, is it the same or different to that in Spain? Evaluation This writing task will be evaluated taking into account different aspects: - Adequacy to the task (20) - Cohesion (20) - Coherence (20) - Language (40) |