If we are talking about gender equality, we should know that gender and sex are different terms. Sex is defined as the state of being a male or female while the gender is defined as the characteristics of male and female persons so, this term is constructed by the society. The society have some expectations from different genders, this term is called as gender roles and gender identity. As we understand from definitions these terms are really different each other. There is an important matter; you cannot choose your sex, but you should learn that being a man or being a woman since it is a cultural expectation. Today, we have a few problematics about the gender issues like that women are weak sex, actually these belief comes from term of Ancient Greek. The society of Ancient Greek has defined the women as “fragilitas sexus”, this belief has been reflected in Ancient Greek Tragedy works such as Antigone. I can say that we have constructed a few gender roles to define the roles of men and women according to social expectations and this belief comes from Ancient Greek times and today, we can see the effects of this belief. For example, we have some gender bias such as women cannot do it, women are weak for this work, women should get nose out of men’s business, etc. These gender bias cause that gender socialization, which means that it is the learning process of cultural gender-related rules, norms and expectations. As a result of the process, we construct a thought about gender roles, this terms starts in early childhood and according to their inferences, children construct a gender identity(according to research studies , by age three children have raised their own gender identity.) Generally, there are important agents in the process of acquiring a gender identity, these might be family, media, etc.
In Turkish society, we can see many examples of gender bias and gender stereotypes like you know that we have a few common gender bias such as woman should do domestic works, woman should babysit or we cannot buy a bus-ticket if a woman has booked the side seat since our society will not be seen dead the situation. Another matter is that women are generally commercial tools for ad agency, companies etc. all over the world but we should remember that women are not tool, they are human being.
When it comes to gender equality in education, there are a few drawbacks like the teaching materials, cultural gender bias, non-educated families, cultural and social expectations from genders, child marriage, low value placed on girl’s education. Today, we can see the problems in Turkey but taking education is a social right for everyone, isn’t? We should make provision against gender inequality in education process. There are a few ways to prevent gender inequality in education, which are selection of textbooks, providing more interactive classroom exercises, giving equal chances to students, showing different examples in contrast to gender bias. In this sense, a teacher should provide positive images for both girls and boys, revision of curricula, improve the educational aims; by the way, the teacher can create a democratic and equal future for both genders. At the same time, Ministry of National Education(MoNE) should inform both families and society about the gender inequality. We should remember that we are human being, We must go beyond gender bias, social norms, gender stereotypes and gender socialization and we should prepare a equal future for everyone, regardless of gender.