Guest Speaker and KLM...

Guest Speaker

Jerri bird was a very fascinating women. I was so into her stories about growing up in the different decades. When she was telling her stories about how they did not have televisions and other electronic devices when she was going up made me think about how life would have been without those things. My mind totally went blank because I really cannot picture growing up without a least one television in my household. Besides that I admired how she taught her children at home because they did not know Arabic or French and the schools spoke both of those languages fluently. The fact that she decided to educate other children was awesome because she could have been selfish and just taught only her children, but she did not. I think that Americans already have a bias view about Middle Eastern people because of 911. The fact that she is the founder and president of "Partners for Peace" which is a tour involving Israeli and Palestinian women voicing their opinions shows her passion and interests on the views of other people from different cultures and geographical locations.



KLM Part II



This entire book is about leadership and this section talks about knowing yourself as a leader, understanding other people, being understood by others and leading with integrity and moral purpose. All of which are important when it comes to leading and leadership. The that stood out to me in this reading was the discussing about gender diversity. This section talked about how gender influences our attitudes and behaviors. Sex roles and gender roles are characteristics that we deal with today in society. The book says on page 154, "...sex roles are those expectations resulting from biology, like pregnancy or muscle mass, whereas gender roles are socially constructed expectations that get labeled masculine or feminine." Last week in NCLC 391 we talked about categorization and I remember saying that guys who comb Barbie's hair was considered feminine and gay and girls who played with action figures, sports and played with the boys are considered tomboys. These are two examples of gender roles in a social context. Growing up society set the standards for what is seen as masculine or feminine. Since that is and was the case it has made if hard for people to be themselves especially women. The example the book gave was that "...men's involvement in the development of children has been limited because that role has been considered feminine or nurturing (pg 154)." This is because women were housewives and nurses growing up. Nowadays that is not the case. There still may be some housewives out there, but a lot of women have corporate jobs these days. Since society saw saw women as housewives and things of that nature that image is embedded in their heads. If guys want to be nurses then they are looked down upon because that was considered a feminine job. A job is a job to me. Men who are not athletic or have the muscles and mustaches suffer from what they call "gender role discrimination". This goes for women too. In Wilson it talked about when women speak up or state their points they are considered a bitch, but when men do it they are considered strong and leaders. Why cant that be the same for women? I wonder how life would be if we cleared everyone's minds of stereotypes (by using that little Men in Black laser) and we started life all over from scratch. I really want to know how society would be. This is what I am really interested in and would like to know.