What equality between girls and boys, men and women Can gender equity provide for parity in conteste

1
What equality between girls and boys, men and
women? Can gender equity provide for parity in
contested old male- or female-dominated
territories THROUGH EDUCATION?

• Start up your own analysis

2
The equity approach

• Strives to enhance the idea that boys and girls,
  women and men can contribute on an equal footing
  to a common task (or a family, a business, the
  society at large), while no gender is domineering
  over the other. The textbooks seem to powerfully
  promote it.
• There still will have some gender division of
  labour, but neither of the genders will appear
  more important than the other.
• And everybody will be appraised for their share
  of work regardless whether men or women, girls or
  boys, like in

3
All active, all includedEquity doesnt seem
unrealistic, does it?

• Pictures from Bulgarian first grade textbook
  Homeland of the publishing houses Bulvest (2002)

4
However

• There still exist trends boys and girls, women
  and men to be seen or expected to behave in a
  prescribed way, as befits a man or a woman, in
  public places or work situations, etc.
• Try to remember instances when people around
  you
• - didnt expect you to achieve something (e.g.
  to come first in a maths test or mend your broken
  bicycle) only because you are a girl
• - or talked you out of doing something (e.g.
  to look after the flowers in the classroom) only
  because you are a boy

5
Professional guidance is important in everyones
life Yet what difference can you single out in
this two-page 1-st grade textbook
representations?
I want to be a doctor and cure people
I learn and dream what to become
??? ? ??????. ????? ?? ??????
I want to be a builder and construct modern
buildings.
I love working on a computer
I want to become a train driver.
I want to become an engineer and design robots
I want to become a famous chef.
I want to become a pilot.
I want to become a captain.
Homeland textbook, Bulgarian publishing house
Bulvest 2000 (2002)
6
Analyze the professional guidancepage(note
there is some deliberate mix-up with the jobs
children are expected to correct it?)

• How many boys and girls can you see?
• How do they (the characters) speak about their
  dreams and/or wishes? How do their orientation or
  determination show in their stance or word choice
  ?
• What importance do you attach to the professions
  represented?
• What are your conclusions on the impact such a
  word-picture layout will have on 7-year olds?
• How would you change the picture to make it more
  equitable in terms of gender representations?

7
It is not only the textbooks

• Start a class project monitoring the MEDIA the
  press, commercials, the TV news, special
  programmes, movies, etc.
• Who do you see more men or women? Whose voice
  is more often heard or has more weight in
  decision-making?
• In what types of activities are men and women
  shown involved? In what situations are men or
  women shown as more important?
• Which is the stronger sex? How does it show?
• Are men OR women represented as better
  professionals? Who has more power or is in more
  powerful position? Who earns more, boasts more,
  etc.?
• What is the role of sexist language? Power
  control, inferiority complex or?

8
You may make your own investigation

• It has been a long process of which most of us
  are still unaware
• You can go back to history books or movies How
  has the idea of separate gender life tracks
  developed? What was acceptable /allowed THEN and
  is not acceptable NOW in your society, on other
  continents?
• Religion How has religion been regulating the
  gender interactions? Do you find it fair or
  adequate to the present day society?
• You can interview your parents and grandparents
  How they felt about (their) mens and/or womens
  duties, place/position at home, at school, at
  workplace, in the society at large when they were
  young, middle-aged, elderly? How have their ideas
  about gender social importance changed, if at
  all?
• New legislation on gender equity in your country
  or the EU Does it help genders to be treated on
  equal footing yet still preserve their difference
  in their own right? Can the legislation
  automatically correct existing injustice in
  gender interactions, or publicly redress unfair
  treatment on gender/sexuality basis at school or
  at the workplace?

9
Make yourselves emotionally and civilly involved

• Make individual or group posters presenting your
  viewpoints on existing discrimination practices
  on gender basis
• Video hunt film instances of unfair treatment on
  gender basis at school, in the café, etc. (its
  easy your have your mobiles?)
• Write an essay or an article on biased gender
  interactions, ending them with your
  recommendations on how to change the described
  trends or unfair interactions between boys and
  girls, men and women
• Start quotes page in your blog or school website
  monitoring your friends, teachers, colleagues
  opinions on gender equity or gender inequality.
  Use them to launch a public debate

10
It is you who can make the difference

• Starting as of today
• One is not born, but rather becomes a woman
  (Simone de Beauvoir)
• It is human beings not just MEN who are born free
  and equal
• Anatomy is a destiny (Sigmund Freud) but people
  have worked it out how to put additional
  importance on Nature, constantly reshaping their
  social (gender) interactions to suit better their
  earthly ends. The rightful question is whose ends
  and how?

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SUGGESTED BY Svoboda Gagarova, a teacher of
English, Institution Helpdesk for
Intercultural Learning Materials, Bulgaria,
www.helpdeskbg.org Acknowledgment for the
Homeland textbook artists and authors of the
Publishing House Bulvest 2000 (2002)