Gender Awareness Week should seek to accomplish several goals. First, the week of seminars and workshops will inspire all of us to think more cogently about gender. What does gender mean to us and to our identity? How has gender identity affected our behaviors, our relationships, our reactions to external events? How has our gender identity affected the way others relate to us? I would encourage all students to become more aware of gender in their daily lives. We need to pay attention to instances in which gender is particularly salient. For example, do males react differently to a woman wearing a skirt and heels than to a woman wearing jeans and Doc Martins?
Second, Gender Awareness Week should stimulate more media literacy. The media promotes and reinforces gender norms. For example, a recent Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show included brief biographies of their models. Each of them stated...
Being a full-time mother is an admirable job, but does not represent the goals and dreams of a large number of females. Soley-Beltran's article "Modeling Femininity" touches on this issue in depth. Thinking differently about women's potential as human beings is a major key to gender awareness.
Third, Gender Awareness Week encourages us to think more about the interface between gender and sexuality. Homosexuality and bisexuality as well as transgender issues can be interesting if not touchy subjects. Our relationships with members of the same sex reflect on our ideas of gender. Why are so many people homophobic: not to the extent of committing hate crimes but at least to the extent that some people cringe when touched by a person of the same gender. Thus, Gender Awareness Week has the power to transform our social norms, one step at a time.
