Gender Stereotypes in Students’ English Writing

Abstract

<p class="AbstractText">Gender stereotypes are guidelines by which a particular gender group behaves as expected based on the existing ideology in the community. Gender stereotypes that are perpetuated by popular culture usually marginalize women, following patriarchal ideology. This popular culture is consumed mostly by the younger generation as well as students. STIKES Nasional is an educational institution where most students are female, and most student organizations are led by female students. This research investigates gender stereotypes in STIKES Nasional students’ writing. This research employs textual analysis focusing on word choice on students’ writing. This study shows that students' writing still represents women as passive and also sensitive or emotional. Women are also still constructed in domestic sphere. Those constructions are implicated in activities carried out by women. On the other hand, men are represented as brave, rational, active, and assertive. Men are also constructed to be in public sphere. Those male constructions are also implicated in men's occupation. Based on the results, it can be concluded that students’ writing affirms the patriarchal gender stereotypes that marginalize women. Patriarchal ideology is still strongly embedded in STIKES Nasional students, though female students dominate in STIKES Nasional.</p>

Gender bias in L2 writing for Chinese international students

“…The result hypothesis will be formed based on the literature review and the latest research results. According to the previous research outcome reviewed in the introduction, there is a relationship between gender stereotypes and students' L2 writing [1,3,2]. Furthermore, the previous literature also proposed the impacts of education on gender egalitarianism [4].…”

“…Firstly, the related literature review suggested the relationship between writing and the formation of gender ideology. The subjectivity in English is students as the subject tend to speak about gender through subject pronouns, such as he or she, in their writing, and gender stereotypes can be reflected in the writing materials [1]. The reason for gender stereotypes in writing through the fact that male firstness in academic writing is latent, rather than overt, forming gender bias [2].…”

“…Education can expose the gender ideology of individuals and academic writing is a particular type of embodiment in the aspect of subjectivity [1,4]. Moreover, the results of both academic writing and semi-structural interview suggested the different perspectives to reflect workplace sexual harassment based on participants' discipline areas, such as the economic and financial perspective derived from finance discipline, and the social perspective from law discipline (Table1, 2, 3).…”