Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This research study was conducted with twelve students from the Modern/Foreign Languages program at a public university in Tunja – Boyacá, Colombia called: Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia (UPTC). It was aimed at unveiling EFL students’ perceptions on Gender Stereotypes through their narratives in three different moments. At first, students expressed their thoughts on this issue after being exposed to a film untitled: “On the basis of sex” which shows the struggle a female character faced with discrimination against women when fighting to have the same rights as men in the United States. Then, in the second moment, visual art was included through some before/now photographs which revealed how women have been underestimated for years due to their gender and how they are positioned nowadays; and lastly, in the third moment, students drew their own artwork aiming to express the way they saw men/women in their contexts, later, they were asked to let their voices be heard about their own and someone else’s insights in the drawings in order to comprehend their realities. Additionally, field notes, students’ artifacts and three focus group interviews were used as data collection instruments. Data was analyzed under an interactional analysis proposed by Riessman (2005). Findings showed that students’ lived experiences on this issue have permeated the way they see their present and future over the time; and their perceptions on gender stereotypes differ from their past generations since they consider themselves as a new generation who does not see any distinction among genders.