Image: Women’s equality charity (The Fawcett Society)
From a biased sex ratio at birth to a low representation of women in leadership positions, women in China are still at a great disadvantage in many areas, according to a new Chinese government report. While most of the unpaid work is done by women, men still dominate important positions in the political system, top academies, and judicial systems, according to the report, "Women and Men in China, Facts and Figures 2019". These reports point to problems with continued gender inequality in China.
As a designer, I always think about what I can do against gender bias in China, so I spent a lot of time getting to know the ideas and research of gender equality. Also, I found that more and more educators look into the Importance of Gender Equity and Equality in the classroom, and they are trying to look for ways to promote Gender Equity and Equality in Education.
To answer why gender equality education is important, a survey involving over 2,000 children ages 4 to 16 found that children make assumptions that confirm gender stereotypes from an early age. According to Today's Parent writer Gordon Nore, children are often already thinking about their gender and how it relates to the world around them since three years old. Children learn how to think about themselves and others from the messages they hear in society. These messages often include stereotypes about gender that stick with them for the rest of their lives.
In the classroom, students often encounter implicit or explicit assumptions about gender. For example, girls interested in STEM (defined here as science, technology, engineering, and math) may be discouraged if others say such topics aren't very "feminine" pursuits. And the prevalence of this stereotype may be linked to the fact that more than 50% of all women in STEM ultimately leave their field due to hostile work environments. Also, 75% of all transgender students report feeling unsafe at school, which affects their academic achievement in very serious and harmful ways.
In recent years, the priority for girls' education in China has shifted from access and parity to empowerment for sustainable development. However, now that access issues are less acute for girls, gender issues in educational processes and outcomes have become almost invisible. There is little known about what girls and boys are experiencing in school, particularly in early education settings, even though most Chinese children spend the whole day in school starting at age three.
After understanding the gap of gender education globally, I begin to know what kind of design I want to do to help facilitate kids' thoughts and discussions in healthy ways. And in my opinion, the most important point in my design is to promote better understanding among the kids for those who are different from themselves and understand the world's diversity. I want to encourage kids to be an individual who they want to be.
Overall, I think this project will make to think about designers' responsibility; it will also give me a new perspective to suppose what a designer can do and the role to play to improve society.
Plans
Research Firstly, I decided to conduct a literature review using many sources such as books, research, and documentaries. My research stages were mainly divided into: (1) Naturalistic Observation; (2) In-depth Interview; (3) Drawing Experiments; and (4) Prototyping. After the secondary research, I need to investigate how education incorporates different methods to engage and enhance kids' awareness of gender equality through some experiments. The primary research is mainly made of observations, interviews. I will conduct some interviews with teachers to know about the current educational model in Chinese Kindergartens first. Implementing gender equality education and I will try to understand whether teachers have sufficient awareness in gender equality education. Finally, I would like to participate in the class to observe kids' behaviour when they listen to the teacher, and I will also pay attention to how teachers express some information in the class. In preschool education, teacher-child interactions and supervised peer interactions are essential in the gender socialization process. Furthermore, there are few studies on the gender socialization experience of non-Western children in the existing literature. Naturalistic Observation allows me to learn more about people in a specific social or cultural background when I can not gather the information any other way. Besides, In-depth interviews will be used to conduct focus groups to understand teachers' and parents' attitudes toward Gender Equality Education, this is because in-depth interview allows the researcher to learn about people through their stories, in an open-ended style (McCormack, 2004).
Concept
In this phase, I will transfer the research findings into a final design. I will begin to brainstorm based on the finding and then I need to narrow down the direction and decide what I prefer to design. In this stage, I may need to share my thought and ideas with my classmate to catch some interesting points.
Secondly, I will start to develop my idea and try to conduct some depth interview with the stakeholder; I can get more detailed information from the conversation and that may help me to define the role of my design, while I also need to think about the interaction between users and the outcome.
Finally, I will create the prototype and conduct enough field tests to have design verification testing.
Concept
In this phase, I will transfer the research findings into a final design. I will begin to brainstorm based on the finding and then I need to narrow down the direction and decide what I prefer to design. In this stage, I may need to share my thought and ideas with my classmate to catch some interesting points.
Secondly, I will start to develop my idea and try to conduct some depth interview with the stakeholder; I can get more detailed information from the conversation and that may help me to define the role of my design, while I also need to think about the interaction between users and the outcome.
Finally, I will create the prototype and conduct enough field tests to have design verification testing.
Reference
Grant, J., Mottet, L., Tanis, J., Herman, J.L., Harrison, J. and Keisling, M., 2010. National transgender discrimination survey report on health and health care.
Roy, R., 2017. Why we need gender equity now. Forbes.
Smith, M. J., & Payne, E. Binaries and biology: Conversations with elementary education professionals after professional development on supporting transgender students. The Educational Forum, 2016, 80(1), pp. 34-47.
Chi Jin., (2018). Why a gender perspective is important for early childhood educators in China, [online] Available at: <https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/08/13/why-a-gender-perspective-is-important-for-early-childhood-educators-in-china/].