Gender Gap Activity

[Dark Lady]

I'm really sorry if this is not entirely relevant to this forum but I don't know where else to ask/look.

I'm doing my Post-Graduate Diploma in Education for Secondary English and in one of my more general classes (for all people doing the PGDE, not just English) I'm in a group that has to come up with an hour-long Student-Led Seminar. So far the planning's going pretty well. The topic we've been given is linked with the gender gap in education; more specifically 'Motives for Laddishness and Fear of the Feminine'.

The problem we have is that we're supposed to come up with a twenty minute activity for the class (about twenty people, not including us) that's relevant to the seminar topic. However, there is only one guy in the class and he's in our group so we need something that could be done with only females but will address the gender gap from boys' point of view!

If anyone has any ideas or links etc it would be greatly appreciated. The seminar isn't until early next year but we're trying to plan ahead to minimise stress around a time when we'll have a lot of assessments due.

[The Comedian]

You could have one or several of you play the role of a young lad. This role-play could give you double the amount of material to discuss/work with. . . as you could discuss how you had to play the male's perspective and how that experience taught (or not) you all a thing or two about how the male perspective is 100% correct all time. No questions. No doubt. ;)

Okay so the last part of that is a goof, but seriously, role-play -- especially to a different gender -- is a really effective strategy.

[Dark Lady]

Thanks for the super-fast reply!

Yeah, we'd discussed some sort of role-play. I'm just not sure exactly how we'd go about structuring it. The specific paper we had to read was all to do with how boys associate acedemic work with 'the feminine' and so want to give the impression of not working hard (for tests/homework etc) even if they secretly do the work.

I'm trying to figure out how that could best be used in role-play.