I personally use "English File" ideas and "Inside Out".
"English File Upper -intermediate" has got a chapter entitled: "Why men don't iron?". In it you can find an exercise which can help start a discussion on the topic. The discussion, from my experience, tends to make students a bit annoyed but at least it makes them SPEAK. To give you an example of the questions, or rather statements with which you can either agree or disagree: Men and women can do most jobs equally well, women are safer drivers than men or all men like giving advice; none of them like getting it, etc.
There is a similar exercise in "Inside Out Intermediate" which I like slightly more - you have to decide who would never say that. Here are some of the examples of sentences: Do you think my bottom looks fat in these trousers?, Thanks so much for ironing my shirt, Of course I'd love to have dinner with your sister, the only thing on telly tonight is football ..... this part of the unit deals with stereotypes.
As far as a reading comprehension, I'd suggest the article from the NY Times entitled "Men Find Rewards in Jobs Long Dominated by Women", as it talks about the most important problems of glass ceiling, glass escalator, pink-collar jobs, and pay inequalities. But there are a lot of texts out there.
The topic of men and women lends itself to a problem of collocations with DO and MAKE,
as it is nicely shown in "Inside Out". It is always a good idea to work on collocations which are, generally speaking, a bit neglected.
But the topic could be, for example, and opportunity to revise graphs and charts as well.
Below some examples:
as for the video, one of the most popular ones, I suppose, is about the glass ceiling:
Female CEOs are breaking the glass ceiling
Another idea is to talk about sexist language: In "Test Your Business English" by Steve Flinders (I've got an old edition so I can't be sure that it hasn't disappeared from any new ones) unit 49 deals with the topic of political correctness.
If you are still looking out for some ideas to make your lesson a bit less serious, why not try this job ad for a mum....
Job interview -World's Toughest Job
