Can Misogyny Be Reversed Through Education?

by Chelsea Berry, Tatiana Franklin and Tareah Davis

With women making up the majority of the United States population, there shouldn’t be much inequality based on gender. Sadly, there is. Throughout the entire United States Congress, only nineteen percent of the seats are held by women. That means that only 90 seats are held by women. This type of inequality is anti-woman, or misogynistic, and it needs to be exposed in order to educate and change society’s course of action.

We believe that misogyny starts at an early age in an individual’s life, but the pinnacle is reached in a high school environment. We are interested in understanding if education of the topic can positively affect misogynistic attitudes and behaviors in high school settings. This is important because misogyny has created a gap in gender equality. According to the Huffington Post, “...in a recent incident, 200 high school students got detention for violating a strict new policy” that states female students cannot dress “provocatively” or in a way that distracts from the learning process. These types of policies single out women in an unfair and unjust manner. “Girls, gender-conforming students, and boys of color are all targeted, shamed, humiliated, and penalized in disappropriate numbers. Ninety percent of them were girls.”

We traveled to North Lawndale College Prep on the west side of Chicago to interview school officials and their students. Kenya Butts, dean of students at North Lawndale, talked about how misogynistic attitudes are acquired amongst her own students. Kaycee Griffin, the office coordinator, spoke about experiencing misogyny in her workplace. We also spoke to the school’s president, John Horan who explained young women’s positions within the school culture. We even got a chance to speak to a couple students about misogynistic behaviors and attitudes they’ve encountered, witnessed or displayed.

These people are in a high school environment and witness some form of misogyny almost every day. This documentary was created to investigate how the role of education can play a part in building awareness about misogyny amongst high school students. We are trying to find a solution to stop misogyny amongst teenagers and hope that education will be key in helping to do so. Some may argue that misogyny is not a problem in today’s society, but we hope our reporting demonstrates that it is. This documentary was inspired by real life misogyny. In the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote. Many believe this is because she is a woman. After the election, famous rapper T.I. said, “ ...the president, it’s kind of like, I just know that women make rash decisions emotionally... they make very permanent, cemented decisions… and then later, it’s kind of like it didn’t happen or they didn’t mean for it to happen.” These types of comments glorify misogyny and are present throughout society and the media.