The Teaching Tolerance website has put together a variety of classroom resources in many social justice domains and on multiple topics. The mission of this organization is “to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy” by providing them free resources. The four-lesson unit Female Identity and Gender Expectations explores “different aspects of gender for today’s girls and women. Each lesson identifies barriers that limit girls’ and women’s opportunities and asks students to explore how those barriers can be dismantled.” The unit has been adapted for the needs of this project, but you can find the original activity here.

This unit on female identity, gender expectations and gender stereotypes unfolds in three lessons described below. Each lesson plan can be downloaded in the “Documents” section below.

Lesson 1, The Importance of Female Voices, examines the gender discrepancy among Wikipedia contributors. Students create their own class wiki in order to discover why, despite Wikipedia’s policy of openness, girls and women comprise only around 15-20% percent of Wikipedia contributors and why so many articles about notable Indigenous women are still missing.

Lesson 2, Girls, STEM and the leaking pipeline presents excerpts from a recent Girl Guides Canada study looking at the underrepresentation of women and girls in STEM fields, specifically looking at differences between white and racialized women.

Lesson 3, Gender and Jobs: Women in the Workforce helps students identify the industries in which women work, their rate of pay and how that pay compares to men’s pay using data from the Department of Labor of the United States as well as an infographic from Statistics Canada. Students question whether stereotypical ideas about women contribute to women’s work choices and why women still earn less than men in virtually every industry.