Girls, boys: you are the same!
If the newborn is a girl, she is dressed in pink, if it is a boy, in blue. The boy at kindergarten age has his big sister's Bäbi taken away so that he is not teased, and he is only allowed to wear the princess costume at home, if at all. Genderisation begins at an early age.
Since the 1990s, the United Nations has been promoting gender equality worldwide with its «gender mainstreaming» strategy. However, the «MeToo» debate has highlighted this once again: In professional life in particular, we still cannot speak of gender equality. Yet this is not just a pious wish - equal treatment of the sexes is enshrined in human rights.
In the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation's projects, 3,600 children and young people in Switzerland deal with issues relating to children's rights against discrimination and actual equal opportunities every year. They learn that the concept of gender goes far beyond the simple distinction between men and women.
Gender refers to the social or societal sex. It is a puzzle of different elements that ultimately make up a person's identity. This can be male or female, contain more or fewer attributes ascribed to the respective gender. Ultimately, however, neither physical nor social gender should play a role: All people should have the same rights and the same opportunities in life.
Living in a fairer society
And yet even babies are pigeonholed by gender. Paradoxically, this is an expression of parental love and is done out of a protective instinct. However, they are of little use to the individual child or to society. We should teach our children a view of the world in which there is no stronger or weaker, no cleverer or stupider and no more tech-savvy or household-savvy gender.
If we want to enable our children to live in a fairer society in which we can be different and yet all equal before the law, we have to accept that our children will be teased if they do not conform to the gender norm. Instead of protecting the child from this, we need to educate them - not the child, but the environment.
Image: Pexels
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About the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation
The Pestalozzi Children's Foundation is an internationally active children's aid organisation. Children and young people have been at the centre of its activities since 1946. The Children's Village in Trogen is a place of peace-building, where children from Switzerland and abroad learn to deal with cultural and social differences through exchange. In twelve countries around the world, the foundation provides disadvantaged children with access to quality education.
www.pestalozzi.ch