Topic 4 Teachers’ gender bias out of the binary

The majority of people believe that there are only two genders: boys/men and girls/women. This classification of gender into two opposite forms of masculine and feminine is called gender binary and is the one that is popular in society.

Nevertheless, there are also non-binary or genderqueer people, whose identity is out of the gender binary and is neither male nor female (e.g., trans, agender, gender neutral, genderfluid, bigender, demigender).

There are a lot of students that are out of the gender binary and must deal with the deeply rooted gender norms that influence the way that school works.

As a matter of fact, a great number of these students may have to deal with marginalisation, oppression or violence in school which can lead to low participation and achievement, low self-esteem and confidence or even school dropout and suicidal thoughts and efforts.

Some teachers are not informed or do not want to bring up such matters and remain silent, while some others ignore or are not interested about this group of students.

There are also them, who claim that they are supportive to non-binary students, they do not accept that there is a gender spectrum, they recognise only some gender identities and do not realise that gender is a complex and personal matter.