Women in Careers

Grades 7-12
Length of Project: 4-6 Weeks
California State Framework Area: Social Studies
Themes: sociopolitical literacy, cultural literacy, and understanding of a national identity

Produced in conjunction with the NASA NREN K-12 Partner School Program and the California Telemation Project

*Modifications have been made to the original "Women in Careers" curriculum to meet the goals of the "Women of NASA" project.

The two major goals of the Women of NASA project are to:

1. Provide as role models women who have succeeded and continue to thrive in a high-tech environment.
2. Provide a resource where teachers have access to information on gender equity in the classroom and materials that provide insight on reducing inequities especially in math and science.

I. INTRODUCTION:

Young women of the ages twelve to fifteen are between a mountain peak and an open chasm regarding their own self-confidence. To nurture and encourage their self-confidence and determination, it is valuable for these young women to meet successful role models and have dialogues with them about the confusing issues of women in society. It is especially important for them to make contact with women who are succeeding in careers generally dominated by men such as science and math-based fields. Through their contact with these women, young girls and women receive much needed confirmation that society's pressures are real and that the decisions they are forced to make are indeed confusing and difficult. At the same time, these women provide assurance that these obstacles are conquerable. They also are able to give the girls and young women an idea of how their decisions today affect their tomorrows as they provide a link between school and the real-world.

The Internet is an ideal way for students and teachers to contact a wide variety of women to ask questions and discuss specific issues. By using the Internet for documentary research and connecting via e-mail to women working in specific fields of interest, students can prepare presentations for class discussions and individual projects. Research done via e-mail, Internet, personal contacts and library delving will develop into very fresh, original and encouraging final projects which will then be presented to a whole class.

Purpose:

1) For students to explore careers via Internet, and e-mail dialogues with working women. This interaction will inspire and help students gain confidence in pursuing their own interests and talents. It will also help counterbalance the forces which nudge students (especially girls) away from their own potential.

2) For students to explore current women's issues utilizing the Internet.

Framework Connections:

Students will research using a wide variety of sources. They will employ critical thinking skills, especially questioning, evaluation and synthesis. Students will develop presentation skills such as visual display and oral report. They will connect their own lives with the adult world (relevance) via interviews and computer dialogues.

II. STUDENT OUTCOMES:

Students will:

1) use e-mail to communicate with professionals (especially women) in a variety of careers.
2) use Internet tools such as the Web and gopher to gather research material regarding current women's issues.
3) learn to develop an appropriate and effective list of questions regarding careers .
4) gain an understanding of one current issue facing women.
5) prepare a visual and oral presentation regarding one issue facing women today and/or include data from responses to questions posed in e-mail dialogues.

Pre-class activity:
Six weeks before the class begins the teacher solicits e- mail partners for the class by posting a description of the interactive nature of the class to appropriate newsgroups including those related to school projects such as kidsphere, schl.ideas, and schl.general and to newsgroups related to women's issues.

III. ACTIVITIES:

Week One

1) Students will begin with a survey of issues affecting today's women.

a) As a class they will brainstorm a list of current issues especially those pertinent to women in careers .
b) The entire class will discuss the implications of these issues on women, and the controversies regarding different issues.

2) Students will then pair up or form small groups according to which issue they wish to study.

3) Each group will brainstorm its own list of possible sources of information under categories of books, periodicals, the vertical file, interviews, and Internet, and review this list with the teacher.

4) After two to three days of information gathering from library reading and summarizing (see no. 5), student groups will expand to telephone or person to person interviews to local departments such as social services or employment agencies, directly to persons who may have data in response to specific questions developed by the group.

5) Students will keep a portfolio which exhibits documents received as well as summaries and reflections upon their contents. This will lead to a final presentation on the issue studied.

Week Two

6) Armed with basic information regarding the chosen issue, student groups will expand research to the Internet using the following methods:

1. The Veronica Search Engine or Web Search will be used with issues as the keywords to find documents pertaining to their selected women's issues.

2. Direct connection to information in the following locations:

The "Women of NASA" Project
Profiles of women working at NASA in which they discuss their careers and issues affecting them as women in math and science based fields. Provides links to other sites that contain information about various women issues, and contains bibliographies of documents about gender equity in the classroom.

"Women's Studies and Resources"
Specific information in Women's Studies and a number of pointers (over 20) to other gopher servers can be found here.

Women's Wire Gopher
A wide ranging discussion of issues relating to women.

Women and Computing

Contains many references to women in the field of computing and other sciences

BAMM Bay Area Model Mugging

This site contains information about this womenÕs self defense organization

Global Fund for Women

This site provide information about various women issues.

Women's Homepage at MIT
Maintained by Jessie Stickgold-Sarah , this site contains articles and pointers on articles and different topics.

Dataline
A specific study of the glass ceiling in America and its implications can be found at this site.

3.Students will obtain information from active Listservs whose focus is related to women's issues. They will also gather information using archives of these discussion lists. For a listing of Listservs students can use the following resources:

Sources for Women's Studies/Feminist Information on the Internet by Laura Hunt
This directory contains addresses of listservs on the Internet. It also gives an overview of the tools available on the Internet.

7) By the end of the second week, students should begin preparing individual letters or questions regarding careers, and group letters regarding their study issue, to deliver over e-mail.

a) Each student is to write a brief letter of introduction about her own future career goals or interests and address it to professional or trained women in these careers. The letter should include a list of questions the student has about this field, and issues that may arise for women in such work. Students will monitor newsgroups using Newswatcher to find contacts. They will then post the letter of introduction to the appropriate people posting on the conference.

b) Students will take their selected group issue pertinent to women in careers i.e. wage parity, working conditions, opportunity for promotion, sexual harassment, or employee relations if a woman is a supervisor and address a letter specifically to the one issue . Contacts can be found in the same manner as above.

c) Alternatively: As a class, students may compose a generalized letter (see sample at end of document) to send out to women on line in male dominated fields. Feedback may then be categorized and filed for use in a full class study.

Weeks Three and Four

8) The third and fourth week should be spent collecting data, doing further reading, keeping up with their portfolios and preparing a visual display of their information.

9) Each student will be responsible for presenting information to the class about one current issue for women. The presentation should be both oral and visual. It should include data from various sources including Internet. A bibliography must be attached.

IV. ASSESSMENT:

Final assessment will include group self-evaluation, teacher evaluation of project portfolios, and teacher evaluation of both the oral and visual final projects. Each display should include a title and explanation of the nature of the issue (for example, "Are Women Achieving Equal Opportunity in the Workplace?" as a title with a paragraph or two explaining why this is in question). The display should include as examples three to four pertinent articles on the subject showing a variety of sources. A summary of data along with an explanation of how this data was used should appear along side each article. Controversial issues should be set up with opposing views in the display and should include a developed written opinion based on the data collected. Graphs and statistical displays should be used to aid the presentation of data. These should be neat and attractive, well labeled, and if possible, colorful. In addition, each display should showcase one trained or professional woman with a description of her work and her response to questions posed.

The portfolio should also have a cover with a title, a title page, a log recording research documents by category and source, and attached to the document the required summary of information of each document, done by the student.

I recommend that points be allotted for organization of data, comprehension of the issue as seen in summaries and opinions and attractiveness of display. Students should guide their peers through the display in an oral presentation, and this report should receive a separate score.

Sample Letter for Whole Class Inquiry
(Usable as model for individual letters)

Dear Professional,

I am a student taking a course in women's studies . I am interested in talking to women, like yourself, about the work you do and women's issues that come up in this work. (It may also help for students to include the amount of time that this project will take. It is suggested that no more than an hour a week should be requested of the professional) Please respond with:

- field of work
- brief description of job
- background needed i.e. education and experience
- recommendations for what to do in high school in order to
pursue such work i.e. must courses and experience
- what is fun and satisfying about this work
- what is tedious or difficult
- your feeling about whether or not you have to be "superwoman" (meaning more efficient, attractive and harder working than men in the same field) to succeed at your level
- range of salary
- opportunity for women
Also please comment on:
- What, if any, obstacles you or other women face to rising to the top of your field:
- Women's issues which might noticeably affect you.