Society today has such vibrant and joy thanks to individual colors of people thriving together in harmony. Many years ago, discrimination and gender biases would have prevented a peaceful coexistence with people once labeled as different. Today, schools have a lot more to do to keep promoting equality, especially regarding gender and to continue to create a more accepting world for the children under its care.
Several issues that violate the human freedom of many nowadays are caused by the disparity of how the world sees different genders: misogyny, homophobia, rape, or even domestic abuse within marriages, etc. One of the roots is assigning gender roles. According to USA Today Blogs, both girls and boys of very young ages are severely affected by the restrictions and traumas of gender stereotyping. The article quoted Kristin Mmari, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, that these stereotypes must be eliminated from the minds of young people because it leads to problems like early pregnancy, depression, and higher drop-out rates for girls; while being physically and mentally abusive for boys. How these children see other people in their early years will be the basis of how they treat others when they grow up. For example, abuse rises when they start to see that different genders have weaker biological makeup in terms of physical strength.
Another major problem caused by assigning gender roles is self-expression. By creating a division between what genders could have and could be, the opportunity for children to grow is decreased by a greater percentage. For instance, when told that being a soldier requires a masculine physique, then women who could have excelled in the said profession would not even bother trying. Also, when told that pink and yellow are for women, then men would instinctively avoid those colors and would eventually develop broader concepts of what not to do because of their idea of masculinity. This creates a boundary of how much people can discover themselves. What if the best soldier is hiding within a feminine physique? Or the most graceful ballet dancer within a man? What if it’s actually a housewife that a country needs for it to grow? The world misses more than half of the opportunities when gender roles start to penetrate the minds of different generations.
In eradicating these stereotypes, the education sector must enable the children to dive deeper into this sensitive topic; to challenge these concepts in their own minds while it’s still innocent. Schools must be a place for them to discover what they’re good at and who they really are without judgments nor limitations. Also, it must be a place for them to experience what the other genders are experiencing. Boys must be assigned to clean, girls to do the lifting, etc.
You can’t ask children to paint the most beautiful image they can make and not let them paint a flower or a car because of their gender, nor can we give them a whole box of crayons to use and let them use pink or blue because of the same reason.
“How you perceive boys and girls is socially driven. It’s not biologically driven”, as stated by Kristin Mmari.
Schools should be places where the butterflies in every boy are freed and the warrior in every girl is trained. Equality starts when little boys and girls are able to use all the crayons in the crayon box without a hint of doubt.
REFERENCES
- https://www.jica.go.jp/activities/issues/gender/reports/ku57pq00002hdv3w-att/phi_2008_summary_en.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0rhvyIPnA84NXjzlZyotWKvLrJAkhGqwQYVrEvjot4wZc8hyqmVCvFhxQ
- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/09/21/gender-stereotypes-destroying-girls-and-theyre-killing-boys/688317001/?fbclid=IwAR0JZbul9Tw4xKayc1qMrk69ztmkmFbUiqYxRv4YY3pNG1s6psVuCKdnvfI
- https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/how-gender-disparities-affect-classroom-learning
- https://www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/what-i-learned-about-gender-roles-education-stephen-marches-unmade-bed1805.html
