Diversity and Difference Active Learning Assignment

Sadie Stock
2nd period
Catten

For my diversity and difference Active Learning assignment, I decided to put together a

survey and send it out to a group of people for them to respond to. I sent it out to 18 people, all

18 started it but only 17 finished it so I ended up with only 17 responses. I will start off by listing

some statistics of my findings

52% of my participants identified as a female that is 9 of the 17.

47% of my participants identified as male, that is 8 of the 17. if all 18 of the people I sent

my survey had finished it I would have had a 50/50 split of male and female participants.

88% of my participants were Caucasian. That’s 15 of the 17.

And only 11% of my participants were Hispanic.

76% of my participants or within the age range of 10 to 19years old,

11 percent were within the age range 22-39 and 11% of my participants were within the

age range of 40 to 49 years old.

35% of my participants said that they had been discriminated against for any reason

100% of my non-white participants and they have been discriminated against

35% of my female participant said they have been discriminated against

of the eight men surveyed three considered themselves feminists that's 37%

of the nine women surveyed 648 considered themselves feminists which are 66%
 Now I'm going to go into use my thoughts about how this project went. My main focus

was on asking people whether or not they considered themselves to be a feminist. I decided on

this question because I found the lesson in my Humanities class about feminism last week very

interesting.

I thought this experience was pretty eye-opening for me because I was surprised many

times by the responses that came in. I had a lot of pre-determined ideas or expectations that I was

sure were going to happen, but I was proven wrong on multiple occasions. Usually, I don’t like

to be wrong but this time I thought it was very cool. I think it’s good to recognize when you're

wrong because then you can learn from those experiences and become a better person. I am glad

I was able to do this assignment because it allowed me to grow in my understanding of others

and as a person in general.

Most of the people I surveyed were under the age of 20, This is mainly because I sent it

to a lot of my friends and we are all still in high school. I really thought that the younger people

who I surveyed would be less detailed and open about their opinions. I was sure that the people

who were older than 20 would be the ones to give more specific responses because they have

more years of life “under their belt” However this wasn't the case. Many of my younger

participants had a lot more to say and their responses were more detailed than the older group of

participants. I think this observation shows us how the new and upcoming generations are more

concerned and involved in the issues of the world that we see going on. Today you see younger

people going to protests, using social media to advocate for change and much more. This survey

just stands as a testament of that, reiterating the fact that we as a younger generation no longer

will sit idly by and let the older generations control the world. Because this world is our future.
 The main question I asked my participants was whether or not they considered

themselves to be a feminist. If I’m going to be completely honest, I fully expected none of the

male participants to say that they were a feminist, and I expected all of the female participants to

say that they were feminists. Once again I was wrong in my hypothesis. Out of my 17

participants, 9 of them considered themselves to be feminists. 3 of the 8 guys that I surveyed said

they consider themselves to be, and three of the girls that I surveyed didn’t consider themselves

feminists.

Some of the responses from the male participants didn't really surprise me when I asked

them if they consider themselves to be a feminist. Some examples of these responses are, “ No,

Because I’m a man.” and “ No because it’s not something that concerns me.” these responses

are very blunt and short, which is what I expected more of. I’m not proud to admit this but I

kinda wanted more responses from my male participants to be like this. The I could’ve been like

AHA! Men are so against feminism, they don't even know what it really means but they want

nothing to do with it because it “doesn’t concern them” and because “they’re a man”

Fortunately, my own stereotypes and unmerited aggression toward male gender were proven

false.

I was pleasantly surprised to by many of the male responses that I received. For example

one of my first male responses to that question was, “ Sure, because I believe that gender roles

are dumb and people should be able to do what they want regardless of what gender they are.”

another response that I liked came from an older recipient, age 47, he said, “yes in terms that

feminism is about all genders having equal rights and opportunities. I am a man in the general

sense, but I strongly support women and respect their diverse experiences, identities, knowledge,
and strengths” I was shocked to see responses like this but I'm glad that they came in and I'm

glad that I was able to make this observation. This observation shows that there are men that

know about and agree with the goals of feminism. It makes the blanket statement that “ All men

are Anti-Feminism” incorrect. Another observation that I thought is important is that a lot of the

men who said they weren’t feminists clarified that they supported ewual gender rights but they

weren’t feminists because they weren’t “ Actively fighting for change” by going to marches/

Protests or openly and publically advocating for a feminist movement. I find this interesting

because we talked about the misunderstandings of what feminism really is in class and then I saw

those same misunderstandings come through in the responses of my survey.

These misunderstandings weren’t exclusive to the men, I had 3 women say that they were not

feminists. One of their responses had to do with misconceptions of the meaning of feminism.

The other two were not. One Response was, “ No, I am comfortable with the role I have in my

life” and the other was “ No I am a female but I don’t think that men are treated better than

women.” Both of these surprised me and I had to remind myself that although they were

different from what I believed they were still valid opinions.

The biggest takeaway for me from this assignment is that you can not assume you know what

people think. I assumed all the men in my survey wouldn’t be feminists, and I was wrong.

Assumptions are often the root of all problems. I “assumed” men were anti- feminist and women

were feminists. People assume things all the time, You assumed the other car was going to stop

and you ended up crashing, people assume someone else’s character based on what they look

like, or sound like, or what they believe in.

I believe that this world could use a little less assumption and a lot more understanding and love.
Thank you.