Why Do School Uniforms Have To Wear School Uniform

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Young children absorb many influential messages about gender roles and gender stereotypes. According to Morris (2005, para. 28) 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.

From birth to …show more content…

Students have the right to express their individual identity and one of the ways they do this is through dressing.Furthermore, it is vital that a school environment is supportive of children who does not wish to follow their birth gender. With many schools requiring males to wear pants and a shirt and females to wear a dress or skirt and blouse, this can result in negative outcomes on a child’s gender identity creating problems in their school years. When students are forced to wear a gender specific uniform, it restricts them from the activities and opportunities that they are capable of, 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 reinforces gender stereotyping as they are 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

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