Life
It's not very often this rambles away from educational life, but today it is. There was one day in the summer sometime in high school my dad took me to a local soccer camp. This day they let me play with the boys, I can't remember what the girls were doing or how this decision came about, but we were scrimmaging. I left that day at camp mad. Even one of the coaches clued into me being mad. After the practice my dad goes "I know why you are mad; you are mad because the boys didn't pass you the ball and you were wide open and they looked and chose not to."
He knew exactly what was going through my head it wasn't a choice of ability, but this was the first instance I can recall where I knew that yes I was the girl and being female a decision was made because of my gender.
In college at EWU I sat in an outdoor recreation course (I minored in Recreation Management) and gender and race equality came up. EWU was fairly diverse for being in the Eastern Washington Region and the class was probably 60% white and 40% other and only a handful of females. The topic of the day was equality; I do not recall how it was related back to the lesson or why it came up, but I remember people being very argumentative that gender or race equality was not a very big issue in the NW or the US. There were a handful of students who verbally sided with that argument, and I remember being awestruck. I couldn't believe someone would voice that, more sided on that female and male were treated equal in the US than the race issue, but I was still awestruck by this (I am a white female ...And I can't imagine how hard some days would be for females of color/or different ethnicity)
Today, I teach in a poverty area and work in an outdoor recreational field where I am one of very few females who actively guide. I will say it is very difficult to get respect in the field still from a large number of male guests and there are times where I hate being female with even the people I work with. To give just one example when I try to opt out of a trip because I know I won't be respected by guests I get told that I need to overcome it, it's a societal issue, and that I am really needed. My thoughts were ok.....point missed or point not cared or ignored.
Anyways that's my rant....
He knew exactly what was going through my head it wasn't a choice of ability, but this was the first instance I can recall where I knew that yes I was the girl and being female a decision was made because of my gender.
In college at EWU I sat in an outdoor recreation course (I minored in Recreation Management) and gender and race equality came up. EWU was fairly diverse for being in the Eastern Washington Region and the class was probably 60% white and 40% other and only a handful of females. The topic of the day was equality; I do not recall how it was related back to the lesson or why it came up, but I remember people being very argumentative that gender or race equality was not a very big issue in the NW or the US. There were a handful of students who verbally sided with that argument, and I remember being awestruck. I couldn't believe someone would voice that, more sided on that female and male were treated equal in the US than the race issue, but I was still awestruck by this (I am a white female ...And I can't imagine how hard some days would be for females of color/or different ethnicity)
Today, I teach in a poverty area and work in an outdoor recreational field where I am one of very few females who actively guide. I will say it is very difficult to get respect in the field still from a large number of male guests and there are times where I hate being female with even the people I work with. To give just one example when I try to opt out of a trip because I know I won't be respected by guests I get told that I need to overcome it, it's a societal issue, and that I am really needed. My thoughts were ok.....point missed or point not cared or ignored.
Anyways that's my rant....
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