Geography: feminism?

[Madeleine Råstedt]

Hi!

I'm considering taking geography SL or HL in the IB. However, when I was researching the subject I noticed that in the syllabus there's quite a lot of stuff on gender equality. I found a link to a book called "Planet Geography Second Edition Equity" from the page "Populations in Transition" (from ibo.org) that is one of the compulsory topics under the heading "textbook resources" that addressed the issue of gender and change. I looked a bit deeper into it and found that there was a lot of material on "feminist geography" especially on the pages 100-105. Since this was directly linked on ibo.org I reckon this is something we will cover during the courses. Is geography in the IB looked through the lens of leftist values and social justice? I agree that women have less rights in many countries and we should cover that when talking about basic human rights but what I don't agree with is politically biased syllabuses. Does IB geography actually have a political agenda? I really hope I've misunderstood something.

[kw0573]

I took Geography SL and we used Planet Geography, though mainly for physical geography. In gender and change, we looked at demography of females in different countries. So we discussed female representation in government, life expectancy male vs female, trafficking of girls/women, maternity leave, income inequality. We then connected these issues with history as well as cultural or social status in specific countries (eg One Child Policy in China, affirmative action in US/Europe). I leave you to make the choice if you want to take this class or not. 

[Madeleine Råstedt]

Thanks of the information! So for example when you touched on the subject of female representation did you talk about taking affirmative action in order to increase the amount of women in certain positions, meaning the equality of outcome rather than the equality of opportunity? 

[kw0573]

I can't remember the specifics but in general we discussed positives and negatives for most policies. For the most part on the exam, you have freedom of choosing arguments to answer a broad question. The teacher has a lot of freedom in what arguments to present to the class so it's not like IB dictates specific policies.

[mac117]

12 hours ago, Madeleine Råstedt said:

Thanks of the information! So for example when you touched on the subject of female representation did you talk about taking affirmative action in order to increase the amount of women in certain positions, meaning the equality of outcome rather than the equality of opportunity? 

I am currently enrolled in geography SL so my memory is slightly more fresh on this. The IB is, for the most part, unbiased. We learn about all the positive and negative impacts of any policy that has been introduced. Today we discussed the Millennium Development Goals, and the fact that nowadays Eastern Asia has 103 girls enrolled for 100 boys, where many of these boys underachieve due to the stereotypes associated with the typical "male". 

I highly doubt IB geography has a major bias in its curriculum, but some of it will surely be present somewhere if you look super close. It didn't affect my learning experience at all.