Gender Inequality
Learning Objectives
- Students will identify and categorize examples of gender inequality
- Students will propose and analyze policy options to improve gender equality
Length
one class period
Grade Level
High School
Materials
Homework
- Read "What Is Gender Equality?"
Class
Use the attached handout to guide the class
- (5 minutes) Briefly review the definition of gender equality from the reading and ask students why it is important. (The reading points to the advantages for women and girls, as well as mentioning state stability and economic growth as two major reasons why gender equality is advantageous to society as a whole.)
- (15 minutes) Using the handout, have students identify a concrete example of gender inequality that falls under each category identified in the reading (legal protection, governmental representation, economic participation, education, gender-based violence, social discrimination). Depending on the focus of the class, you might ask students to draw their examples from the present-day United States, another country or region, or from history.
- (15 minutes) Introduce the Beijing+30 Action Agenda. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a resolution adopted by the United Nations in 1995, put forward a set of principles for gender equality. The Beijing+30 Action Agenda, a followup published thirty years later in 2025, presents an updated plan for improving gender equality worldwide. Have students explore the attached flyer summarizing the Action Agenda. (See this website for copies of the flyer in other languages, as well as additional details.) Using the handout, have students propose (or identify in the news) examples of policies that could support each of the six Beijing+30 actions.
- (10 minutes) Have students discuss: given all the benefits of gender equality, why do you think more progress hasn’t been made?
Vocabulary
- gross domestic product
a measure of a country’s economic output determined by the value of goods and services it produces in a given year.
- European Union
a supranational organization composed of twenty-eight European countries, formally established by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The EU’s objectives include the economic, political, and security integration of its members, accomplished through such methods as removal of trade barriers; free circulation of EU citizens among certain member countries; and use of a common currency, the euro, by nineteen members.