School Uniform Stereotypes

Young children take in many influential messages about gender roles and gender stereotypes. These gender roles pressure children to conform to behaviours that may limit their full developmental potential. Gender is a social construction, and other social groups such as race, ethnicity, class, religion, and language also influence that construction. Gender stereotypes are everywhere; it is portrayed in the media, books, popular culture and even in schools in terms of uniforms. This paper will argue the impacts that gender specific uniforms play on education in Australia as eras are changing. The following will be about how school uniforms are stereotyped throughout children’s school years.

-just remember to address the socio-economic issues

Students have the right to express their individual identity and one of the ways they do this is through dressing. Children who do not accept their birth gender need a school environment that supports them. With many schools requiring males to wear pants and a shirt and females to wear a dress or skirt and blouse, these can negatively impact on a child’s gender identity creating problems in their school years. If students are forced to wear a gender specific uniform it restricts them from the activities and opportunities that they can do, especially for females. According to Tait (2013, p. 46) girls’ uniforms are generally more aesthetic and much less amenable to any physical activity and the fact that many are required to wear a skirt, which is the natural enemy of all things athletic. Therefore, wearing a dress or a skirt restricts certain activities for females. This includes playing sports at lunch, hanging upside down on the monkey bars as well as not having much expression of freedom compared to males in pants, and always needing to sit in a ladylike way. According to Carson (as cited in Gilmore, 2015, para. 9) the female uniform tangles or hampers leg movement and can be revealing, leading to sexual harassment and modesty policing. Thus, dresses or skirts hamper physical play and create difficulty for children to do physically active games, for example, cart wheels and