About 41.4% of all families headed by females live below the poverty line. The comparable figure for families headed by men is only 10.4%.

---

Options Unlimited A Role Modeling Program to Expand Career Options Classroom Activity #1 Student Handout Prescribed Learning Outcome Students will examine gender stereotyping by themselves and their classmates by assigning genders to workers in five selected occupations Students will determine what characteristics / skills are necessary to perform well in the five selected occupations Students will determine which jobs have requirements specific to gender. This activity is appropriate as part of the personal or occupational safety curriculum. it also works well in English / Writing / Language Arts Curriculum. By gearing the activity to subject matter such as occupational safety or grammar, students are not altered that the gender they assign to the worker is what is being analyzed in the exercise. Have students number off 1 to 5. Write the following five occupations on the blackboard: 1 Nurse 2 Plumber 3 Helicopter Pilot 4 Bank Teller 5 Police Officer Ask each student to write a descriptive one-page account of a frightening or dangerous incident which could happen in the course of the working day of a person in the field with the number they were assigned. It is important to have the account written in the third person, so that the gender of the worker is not specified and could be either male or female regardless of the writer's sex. Do not give away the fact that the point of the assignment is to examine possible gender stereotypes. If you are studying personal or occupational safety issues, ask students to identify what might have led to the incident, and any preventative or corrective measures the person could have taken before, during, and after the incident. Encourage the use of descriptive language to provide details of the location, the characters involved, and the incident itself. The exercise therefore provides opportunities for learning in the personal and career safety unit, and is less likely to alert students to the fact that gender is a key component of the exercise. Ask students to read their compositions to the class. Write the nature of the danger involved in the occupation under the title on the board. Discussions of personal and work safety are useful here. mark assignments based upon whatever criteria you set out (i.e. use of descriptive language, analysis of safety issues, etc.) Only after debriefing on the safety issue (possibly in a subsequent class session prior to introducing women role models in TTO - trades, >technical and operations) should you analyze the gender each student assigned to each occupation. If the majority of students identified the nurse as a woman and the plumber as a man, have students brainstorm reasons for this.

Kootenay WITT WITT Careers WITT Resources GETT Camps WITT Branches Other Resources Order Information Kootenay WITT WebManager

---

Copyright - Kootenay Women in Trades and Technology