This is part of a Master of Education research project called Gender in Music Education: Lessons Addressing Gender in Music in Grades K-12 (PDF 4.8 MB) completed by Laura Anne Smith.
In the world we live in today, seventh graders are pulled in every direction by every platform of social media (Abrams, 2022), as well as media like popular music, where gender roles are enforced by influential performers (Pang, 2022). Popular songs often portray masculinity and femininity in very specific ways that create harmful narratives for young people that tell them there is a right and wrong way to be who they are (Pang, 2022). Similar to the imbalance of men over women in STEM fields (McGuire et al., 2020), music composition is dominated by men in the field (Devaney & Partti, 2023). Devaney and Partti (2023) argue that Western music is one of the most masculinised of all other art forms. This is very easily seen in the music industry by just listening to the radio for twenty minutes and noticing how the artists sing about women versus men. Scholars from the University of California argue that there is flexibility in the way students from different schools view gender atypicality (Sayre Smith et al., 2017). Because of this, educators are able to intervene within their schools and change the landscape of gender acceptability for their students.
This lesson is inspired by an activity called “Girls Just Wanna Have Fundamental Rights,” designed by educator Velvet Lacasse (Lacasse, 2020). Students will be asked to analyze the way gender is being portrayed in a song of their choosing and to rewrite the words to change the narrative of the song. This lesson also acts as an introduction to songwriting, which works to combat the expectation that writing and composing are careers for male musicians only.
Grade 7 - Rewrite The Narrative
Lesson Objectives
- Students will develop the skills to be able to recognize problematic gender portrayals in popular music.
- Students will be able to recognize when a song has problematic messaging about gender.
- Students will know that there are always creative ways to exist and act outside of expectations.
Materials
- Devices to look up song lyrics
- Projector to project and edit lyrics
- Example edited lyrics (PDF 142 KB)
Warm Up
Ask students to work in partners or in table groups to create a venn diagram of the way they think popular music portrays boys vs girls in the industry. This should only take 5-10 minutes. When they’re done, ask them to share what they came up with.
Lesson
Ask students to share some of the ideas they came up with in their warm up activity. Then, ask them to share if they think that song lyrics help portray these ideas. After the discussion, project song lyrics on the board (see recommendations if you need them), and ask students to suggest ways to alter the song to make it portray gender in a way that disrupts typical gender presentation in music. (See example lyrics for inspiration if needed).
Song Recommendations
- Honey Bee by Blake Shelton
- Stupid Girls by P!nk
- Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure
- Daughters by John Mayer
- Ask students to choose their own song that communicates messages about gender, and to put the lyrics in a doc.
- Have them edit the lyrics the same way you did as a class.
- Have them write a paragraph underneath about what the song was saying about gender before, and how they changed it.
References:
Abrams, Z. (2022, February 3). Why young brains are especially vulnerable to social media. American Psychological Association.
Devaney, K., & Partti, H. (2019). Addressing gender inequality in and through music composing studies. Nordic Research in Music Education.
Lacasse, V. (2020). Singing in solidarity: Social justice in music education. ETFO Voice.
McGuire, L., Mulvey, K. L., Goff, E., Irvin, M. J., Winterbottom, M., Fields, G. E., Hartstone-Rose, A., & Rutland, A. (2020). STEM gender stereotypes from early childhood through adolescence at informal science centers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 67, 101109.
Pang, S. (2022, March 31). “Say good-bye to gender stereotype”: How is gender portrayed in the lyrics of pop music?. Gender at Work.
Smith, D. S., Schacter, H. L., Enders, C., & Juvonen, J. (2017). Gender norm salience across middle schools: Contextual variations in associations between gender typicality and socioemotional distress. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(5), 947–960.