Tag: Julia Heffernan

The No Outsiders Classroom Project

Presenter: Jessica Miller

Co-presenters: Kalynn Jaramillo, Rhue Buddendeck, Ana Osorio, Antonina Pevzner

Mentors: Julia Heffernan, Education Studies; Maure Smith-Benanti, LGBTESSP

Creative Work Presentation: C5 (Gumwood Room)

Major: Psychology

Queering the Teacher’s Desk: Education Studies 111 focuses on issues and problems in education. As a culminating critical pedagogy activity in the fall of 2014 every discussion section for this course decorated an old school desk to represent themes in public education. A single section of EDST 111 was filled entirely with LGBTQ students living in the UO Gender Inclusive Student Housing. This group maintained an academic focus on gender and sexuality studies in education. The LGBTQ cohort professor was the director of the master’s degrees and licensure program in teacher education. The cohort itself was designed as a disruption of heteronormativity in teacher education. Along with critical pedagogy readings the LGBTQ cohort was assigned the concept of reimagining the teacher desk. At the end of the term these students were given the actual “Teacher’s Desk” to paint in an act of reclaiming the classroom. Of particular importance to the project are the following statistics:

  • 74% of queer students are verbally harassed at school
  • 61% of queer students report school based harassment get no relief
  • Queer students are three times as likely to miss school on a monthly basis
  • Queer students have lower grade point averages than their peers
  • Queer students are twice as likely to not plan to pursue post-secondary educationThis work has been displayed at the College of Education.

The Inequality in Families: Institutional Pressure and Gender Diverse between Family Members

Presenter: Dongxue Su

Co-Presenters: Yaoying Zhang

Faculty Mentor: Julia Heffernan

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Educational Foundations

Authors: Lisa Wade (An associate professor of sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles); Myra Marx Ferree (the Alice H. Cook Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)

During the development of families, there are lots of inequalities between genders. In this project, we will focus on how institutional pressure influence both men and women in different ways, and the relationship between children and parents. Normally, men spend more time on breadwinner and women focus on housework and parenting in pop culture and conversation. For single parents and families with two working parents, that work is second shift, work that greets us when we come home from work (P248). Childcare and housework still carry the gendered meaning they did when breadwinner/housewife family were considered ideal. We need to think about social construction of children care and housework and look at the actual and the ideal division of labor in family today. Women are less happy than men in marriage, then, because it is an institution that systematically presses them into doing the low- status domestic work of our society. On the other hand, we also need to focus on children and family’s relationship. For example, if the child always stay with their mom that this child will love their mom more than their dad. And parent’s relationship also can affect their children thinking about the family relationship.

Gender and Inequalities in the Workplace

Presenter: Jessica Romeo

Co-Presenters: Belicia Castellano, Bailey Davenport

Faculty Mentor: Julia Heffernan

Presentation Type: Poster 34

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Educational Foundations

Gender inequalities and instances of patriarchy in the workplace are creating limitations for individuals and overall affecting their lives. The focus of our research is predominantly on women in the workplace and how these factors affect them in a negative manner. Through the use of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, and other resources, we will examine topics such as sexual harassment, job segregation by sex and gender, and wage gaps. Within these topics, we have determined that these support the idea that gender inequality in the workforce is typically aimed toward women. Such instances are apparent in pay, as the average woman makes $0.78 to the average male. This is also apparent by the fact that depending on sex and gender, women and men are stereotyped to fit into a specific and particular career, therefore establishing job segregation. A significant amount of women report leaving their job due to sexual harassment, which is yet another example of how these topics are apparent in the workplace. These factors, and our research, suggest that women do not have equal opportunities in the workplace, which reestablishes gender binaries and devalues the work of women.