Global Ambassadors

Encouraging Gender Inclusion at MPS

As a result of a survey conducted with students from across the school, it is evident that there is an element of gender bias comments being made. This can lead to students developing gender stereotypes. Examples of gender bias comments from the survey included; “Girls aren’t good at maths.”, “Boys can’t have long hair.”, “Boys don’t cry.” and “Girls aren’t allowed to play football”.

To overcome this, we would like to encourage our school community to use gender inclusive language. ‘Using gender-inclusive language means speaking and writing in a way that does not discriminate against a particular sex, social gender or gender identity, and does not perpetuate gender stereotypes. Given the key role of language in shaping cultural and social attitudes, using gender-inclusive language is a powerful way to promote gender equality and eradicate gender bias.’ 

3/10/2023 https://www.un.org/en/gender-inclusive-language/guidelines.shtml

Some tips for using gender inclusive language include:

• Using gender neutral words - instead of man-made an alternative could be artificial.
• Using gender neutral pronouns - instead of he, she him, her alternatives could be they, their, them, one, who.
• Omitting the gendered word altogether.

We are implementing a few strategies at school to encourage gender inclusion throughout the school. These include:

• Purchasing a range of texts students can read and teachers can use in their classrooms to encourage gender inclusion.
• Creating multimedia products, in response to the gender bias we identified in the school survey, to be used by teachers.
• Girls lunchtime football club to be run by Ms Short on Tuesdays.

We look forward to implementing the above strategies and observing their impact in the future.

Year 6 Global Ambassadors