This lesson helps students identify the industries in which women work, their rate of pay and how that pay compares to men’s pay using data from the Department of Labor. Students question whether stereotypical ideas about women contribute to women’s work choices and why women still earn less than men in virtually every industry.

Students will understand the organizational and agenda issues common among labor unions.

In these activities, students will imagine themselves in the role of these women and weigh the risks and potential benefits of their actions. In the process, they will develop an understanding of undocumented workers that goes far deeper than the caricatures that are often part of the debate over policy.

Unwilling or unable to complain about working conditions, immigrants routinely suffer chronic problems brought about by pesticide use, harsh weather and the lack of proper equipment. Using primary sources, students will learn more about these conditions—from the past and the present.

In this lesson, students use data to analyze the participation of white, black, Asian and Hispanic men and women in STEM careers as compared with their participation in the general workforce. They then discuss the possible reasons identity groups are unequally represented in STEM careers.

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, during which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to prominence as a spokesperson for black people seeking equality, has been the catalyst for many contemporary civil rights movements (e.g., the Chicano movement, labor movement, environmental movement, women’s movement, LGBT civil rights movement, immigrant workers rights). This lesson invites students to see that they are part of a continuum in the long struggle for equal rights for all people.