Talk about someone you know who has experienced gender discrimination. Discuss what happened and why you think it happened. If the same situation were...

This
assignment is asking a student for a personal response to a situation. There is no right or
wrong answerrather, it asks a student to reflect on real situations and to think through your
own reactions to them and how you might, as an individual, behave. It is an opportunity for
self-reflection.

One area that might offer possible themes for such an
assignment is careers. Even if you have not experienced gender discrimination, you might talk
with older members of your family, such as your grandparents and ask if gender expectation
influenced their choices. For example, you might have a grandmother who wanted to be a doctor
but settled for nursing school instead or a grandfather who would have preferred to be a
stay-at-home dad but felt obliged to be a "breadwinner."

You then
might think through ways in which gendered expectations influence your own decisions about your
career and then reflect on how to make choices based on your actual talents and desires rather
than gender expectations. For example, more men are now considering professions such as nursing
or primary school teaching while women are having success in trades such as plumbing or areas
such as engineering.

Another possible area which you could investigate would
be sports. You could think about ways in which your school discriminates by gender in sports.
You could recount some examples of how students have just accepted such expectations and how you
might do something differently, such as trying out as a cheerleader as a man or for the football
team as a woman. You might also think about how you could personally support people you know who
are trying to break such barriers.