Working with the primary schools

For the last two weeks, we have been to St John Angell Town primary school to work with a year 3 class as part of our documentary research.

The first week, we wanted to engage with the students and have them start to feel comfortable with having us there with the cameras. We were given two rooms and 12 students so divided up. Our girls showed the year 3 students how to use the cameras and they filmed each other talking about their favourite toys. This gave us some footage that might help us as we can see whether there were any obvious gender trends.

The second week we went, we started with some statements about gender that we wanted them to consider then decide if they were true or false. We filmed them talking about their answers. The major problem with this, was that we did this as 'circle time' and I believe the students were strongly influenced by what other students thought. After hearing what others said, they would often change their minds and not be able to recall what originally influenced their decision. Some also became rather shy or went off on tangents that didn't relate to the original question, and because we wanted them to feel comfortable and be honest, it was a little tricky keeping them to the point.

I personally was rather dismayed that most of them thought women couldn't do dirty jobs as they would be unhappy about getting their clothes dirty. One also stated that a woman couldn't possibly know how to fix a car, even if she was a mechanic. This was despite us providing pictures of a happy woman in very dirty clothes sat on the open bonnet of a car with a wrench in her hand! Most in the group I was with found it inconceivable that a boy might want to play with a doll. They insisted he would throw it in the bin, even when we asked if there was a boy that wanted to play with a doll, would that be ok?

Finally, the girls read them stories that challenge gender stereotypes and they seemed to respond fairly positively to that. In one, Princess Smartypants, the princess does not want to get married and scares off potential suitors. They didn't think it was a problem that she didn't get married in the end but did think it was wrong for her to disobey her parents wishes.