25 Write a composition giving your opinion on one of the statements below. Write your composition in 120 - 180 words.
The line from ‘normality’ to ‘abnormality’ is a continuum with no sharp cut-off point.
The greatest need for many people is to be accepted and not rejected as somehow ‘abnormal’.
Schools could help young people by extending community projects and encouraging young people to get to know disabled people.
Many fears would be eliminated if disabled people were further integrated into the communities.
There is a tendency for the media to overdo the ‘tragedy’ aspect of disability. The media could play a role in changing attitudes by portraying people with a disability in everyday situations, leading a normal life.
Evaluation
What have you done in this unit?
What have you learnt from it?
What did you enjoy about it?
Have you any criticisms of it?
Have you any recommendations or suggestions for doing it differently?
Discrimination against Women: is it Really a Great Problem?
It's only women who are not really quite women at all, frivolous women who have no idea, who neglect repairs.
Duras, Marguerite,
French Author, Filmmaker
…………………………………………………………………………………
1 Discrimination against women – what is it? Think about the topic and fill in the drawing below.
What is your attitude to this problem (discrimination against women)? Does it really exist in morden society?
Make comments on the quotation given at the beginning of this unit.
4 Study these survey results (UK, 2003). How would you answer the survey question given below? Discuss your responses within your group.
Do you think it is easier to be a man or a woman?
Females Males
To be a man 30% 21%
To be a woman 59% 65%
5 Ask five women and five men outside the classroom the survey question and present your results to the class.
6 You are going to read a text which contains examples of the discrimination against women in different parts of the world. Some parts from the text have been removed.
A. In the U.S.A., students discriminate and attack girls in school who are lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgendered, or do not conform to male standards of female behavior.
B. We live in a world in which women do not have basic control over what happens to their bodies. Millions of women and girls are forced to marry and have sex with men they do not desire.
C. Men in Pakistan, South Africa, Peru, Russia, and Uzbekistan beat women in the home at astounding rates, while these governments alternatively refuse to intervene to protect women and punish their batterers or do so haphazardly and in ways that make women feel culpable for the violence.
D. Doctors and government officials disproportionately target women from disadvantaged or marginalized communities for coercive family planning policies.
E. Arguments that sustain and excuse these human rights abuses - those of cultural norms, "appropriate" rights for women, or western imperialism - barely disguise their true meaning: that women's lives matter less than men's.