Gender and Literacy

Our group is studying the idea of gender and literacy. Throughout the articles we have read we all obtained that the common interest is that females learn literacy socially and males learn literacy more privately and through symbols. We have found some really interesting stereotypes regarding genders such as females are better at reading and writing whereas boys are better at math and science. These articles also said that females are stronger and memorizing and males learn better symbolically. These claims seem outdated to my group and myself and we are fighting to reestablish to people how boys and girls learn literacy.

We think that literacy in regards to gender isn’t based on female vs. males, it is what interests each gender in literacy. For example, if a class is assigned a reading based on a love story, statistically speaking girls would likely be more interested in the story than boys would. In an opposite situation if a reading was assigned based on video games, boys are likely to be more intrigued in the reading than girls. I really disagree with these articles that argue which genders are “biologically” better at certain subjects. I think it is more based around someones personal interest. I’m really excited for our group activity that we will perform because I think it will be beneficial to us as a class in moving forward with defining literacy in the gender aspect with our own experiment and results.