Social Inequality

Women in Politics

The 2015 General Election has provided sociology teachers and students with a wealth of information showing just how the media views and presents our female politicians. As a starter activity, students could be show articles such as those identified below:

  • Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘fashion transformation’:

    Discover More Goodbye death row hair, hello super-sleek soon to be First Minister Nicola

  • Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘baby hopes’:

    Discover More NICOLA Sturgeon has revealed she hasn’t ruled out being a mum.

  • Nicola Sturgeon as ‘the wee lass with the tin helmet on’:

    Discover More Labour MP’s ‘tin hat’ Nicola Sturgeon jibe mocked

  • How Nicola Sturgeon has become ‘sexier with age, income and office’:

    Discover More Nicola Sturgeon is living proof women become sexier with age, income and office

  • The up close cartoon of her breasts:

    Discover More SNP Plans for NHS database

  • Superimposing her onto a Miley Cyrus wrecking ball image:

    Discover More Wrecking Ball Plans of Ed SNP Pals

  • And this image of her as Kim Kardashian (which was even retweeted by the BBC’s Newsnight team):

    Discover More Newsnight Tweet

After looking over these representations and articles (and setting political views aside), students can look at the national newspapers in an attempt to find representations of male politicians – this works well as a ‘think, pair, share’ exercise. Individually, students can then use computers to create their own newspaper front page which depicts and covers a male politician in a similar way to that experienced by Nicola Sturgeon.

After completing these tasks, an article which brings the discussions to a conclusion can be found here:

Discover More Nicola Sturgeon




More Resources from Discovering Sociology


Criminality and Social Policy

The following New Zealand Ministry of Justice briefing paper outlines a range of explanations ...

crime

The Stephen Lawrence Case

Stephen Lawrence was a young black British man murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993...

crime

Broken Windows Policing

This powerful presentation from artist Molly Crabapple looks at the origins of the broken wind...

crime

Gender and Crime

Students could be provided with a copy of the following Guardian article and asked to create a...

crime

Prison Is not Working, Prisoner Demographics

This Guardian article, see link below is useful as it looks at not only the rise in the prison...

crime

Social Class and Crime

Some useful background reading and questions, in advance of the lesson, can be found here:

crime

Crime and Deviance Introduction

Crime and Deviance continues to be one of the most popular, and interesting, areas of Sociolog...

crime

Crime Statistics and Ethnicity

Referring back to the earlier lesson on official crime statistics, students can begin by remin...

crime

Race and Open Carry Laws

In the United States, carrying a firearm is legal. However, how it is carried is dictated by the ...

crime

How and Why People Stop Committing Crime?

"The Road from Crime" is a documentary that looks at how and why people stop or desist from of...

crime

Laws in a Global Context

Provide students with a copy of the following Daily Mail article which outlines some strange e...

crime

What is crime? What is Deviance?

Students can then work in groups to draw out two over-lapping circles where one circle contain...

crime

White Collar Crime & The Bank of Tax Cheats

In February 2015 the BBC revealed that HSBC had helped over 100,000 of its customers evade tax...

crime