The government's new campaign promoting respect towards women has struck a chord with me. Perhaps you've also seenthe posters at bus stops and the television adverts? One television ad shows the gradual socialisation of boys learning to disrespect and dominate women, and young girls learning to accept it. The premise of this new campaign is that although not all disrespect towards women ends in violence, all violence towards women starts with disrespect. It's a premise and a campaign that deserves our full attention.

I am an English teacher and literacy researcher. My field and my career is founded on the fact that language matters – that the words we use to talk to others and talk about ourselves ends up shaping who we are. So I am conscious of the gendered language that abounds in schools; when students put their peers down by insisting that they "throw like a girl", or when they attempt to shut down an argument with talk of "your mum", or the sexual innuendo of "that's what she said".

What seems "natural" behaviour for boys and girls is the result of social conditioning. Why is it that girls can wear shorts for their school uniform but a boy wouldn't dream of doing something as demeaning as wearing a dress? What a sissy act that would be! In a similar way, it would be rare for me to be able to convince a boy to borrow a novel with a pink cover; even a book with a female protagonist or author can be a hard sell. This is why J.K. Rowling withheld her first name when she published Harry Potter: because of the advice that boys would not want to read a book published by a woman. As it stands, students would be lucky to read more than one or two class novels in their high school career that feature a female protagonist.