I ran my first anti-sexism workshop for children last week. They were a Montessori class of 5-6 year olds and I concentrated on questioning gender stereotypes, identifying sexism and a little bit of acceptance stuff of gender queer identities. I didn’t use those terms though, I talked instead about people thinking there are rules about boys and girls and how these aren’t really rules, and everyone should get to choose for themselves what they like and how they like to look.
It all came about after I heard about some worrying examples of ‘gender policing’ going down in my daughter’s class. I approached her teacher to see whether she had any plans for tackling this stuff with her class and she asked me if I’d like to run a workshop for them. I am really grateful to her for that invitation; this was a lovely opportunity not only to help turn something bad around in my daughter’s class but to see what other young children think about sexism. It was pretty fascinating.
The workshop went really well – the kids were really receptive and by the conclusion of the workshop were readily able to spot sexism in toy catalogues presented to them and were happily repeating phrases in their analysis that I’d been using throughout the workshop, like “colours are for everyone”, “feelings are for everyone” and “toys are for everyone”.
In many ways the children were a lot less weighed down by stereotypes than I’d expected – my first question to the class was “can boys like pink” and the class consensus was a quick and resounding “yes”. It was difficult to tell whether they were particularly progressive children (ie. maybe those enrolled in a Montessori school are not representative of their peers), or if they are too young yet to have met some of the more rigid ideas about gender. For instance, another question we discussed was whether boys can cry and the kids were like ‘have you seen our playground at lunch time?’ whereas once we got to the slide with pictures of men crying they paused. In fact, one boy was quite challenged by those images and my accompanying statement that “everyone cries sometimes” and told us emphatically that his father has never cried. I suggested that this was something worth asking his father about – when was the last time he had cried. This same boy gasped and covered his eyes with his hands when a slide later came up showing pictures of boys playing with dolls, wearing ‘princess’ clothes and learning ballet. It was an impressively horrified reaction. He was an interesting little boy, and brave to share his reactions so honestly given he was increasingly at odds with the class in his views. I would have loved to explore his responses more, we did a little bit of talking about them, but there is a limit to how much you can unpack something challenging with a child you don’t know very well and also to how much you can focus on one child while also keeping hold of the attention of a class. Sometimes you’ve just gotta plant the seed and leave it to grow or wilt elsewhere.
As progressive as they were (‘can girls have short hair’, ‘can girls run fast’, ‘can girls do skateboarding tricks’, and ‘can boys grow up to be daddies who stay home and look after their children’ all received enthusiastic endorsements from the class), there was still plenty of sexism in their thinking to keep the workshop rolling. For instance, “can girls be the boss or are boys the leaders?” got some disturbing responses. However, once I started testing their thinking with some real world examples they were quick to nominate examples of their own of female leaders. They caught on fast. Working with children that age is fabulous, they’re totally guileless. They don’t try to second guess your workshop or get jaded and cynical with you, they just leap right in with their honest thoughts – and so many of them are ripe for the unpacking. For example, showing the children an image of two medical professionals doing similar tasks, one male and one female, and asking them which was the nurse and which was the doctor produced a clear and probably unsurprising result. The woman is the nurse, they decided and the man was the doctor, when in fact in this particular example it was the other way around.
Some of the work I did with them about questioning sexism and stereotypes was from the perspective of looking at how ‘appropriate expressions of gender’ change across time and place and therefore aren’t absolutes. A great example for this was looking at ‘boy clothes’ and exploring the many skirt and dress-like clothing options worn by males in countries outside Australia – Scotland, Fiji, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Greece, many African countries etc. Another example I talked through with them was the history of ‘pink for baby girls’ and ‘blue for baby boys’ and how it was once the reverse.
Towards the end of the workshop we looked at some photos of androgynous and gender-queer children and adults and I talked about how you need to get to know someone for who they are rather than knowing people as a ‘girl’ or a ‘boy’. Having unpacked so many gender stereotypes along the way the children were entirely unphased by this component. It was pretty delightful to watch – no rejection of the images, not even mild giggling – just some nodding and quiet attention.
This week I am running the workshop all over again for another class of children the same age and it will be interesting to see how they compare. Wish me luck.
That sounds amazing. It needs to be franchised and taught at all schools in Australia. I decree it so! I’m so glad you were able to provide that ‘spark’ for those kids to think about gender in a less concrete manner and that you found the experience enjoyable. When the Strumpette reaches school age, I offer you free accomodation in the Yarra Valley so you can run a class at her school. I live within 15km of about 10 wineries, as an added incentive :D.
That sounds awesome. My 4yr old has been coming home from daycare with some concerning stories about reinforcement of gender stereotypes which border on bullying. Thankfully she is quite happy with her male friend who loves to dress up as a princess as much as she does. Yeah the whole princess trope bothers me but I figure at least my girl is inclusive!
Get a copy of Paper Bag Princess. It will make you feel better about the creep of princesses into your life.
Paper Bag Princess! One of my favourite books as a teacher, and recently I bought it for my daughter – 4. We love it, and so does my son – 6.
Oh wow, that sounds absolutely wonderful! I second PPS’s call for franchising 🙂
This is very inspiring. I can only imagine how much more accepting our world could be if this was a mainstay in schools – starting with 5-6 year-olds and continuing all the way up. Great job, and keep it up!
Incredibly cool! Can you imagine if this type of workshop was more common?
I’m really glad that you were able to do this talk for your daughter’s class. I literally was JUST posting about gender roles and the way we acculturate children to them on my blog (http://luciernaga.livejournal.com/187698.html).
So wonderful, this brought a smile to my face this morning. You are an inspiration.
That sounds wonderful. When my kids were in elementary school, I was often horrified at how many of the old rigid gender stereotypes were still around. This kind of workshop is still so necessary.
What a lovely and sensible reaction to your concern on the teacher’s part: taking it seriously and asking for help with a way to make it better.
The workshop sounds totally amazing.
You are amazing! (And, are you willing to share your resources?)
Blue Milk, what a fabulous idea! I’m a teacher and would love to know where you got your resources from? But mostly, (as I am currently casual teaching 2 days per week, whilst child-wrangling), I would love to approach my son’s preschool about this issue, as he’s been coming home with all sorts of weird and wonderful tales of what ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ are allowed to do. Would you be willing to share?
Good luck with your next workshop – it’s not easy sitting in front of a class and ‘teaching’. Well done!
What a fantastic lesson. I’m a teacher and have also tried hard to dispel gender bias. Luckily I teach at a pretty progressive state school in Melbourne and I think it helps that 3 of our staff members – including our principal – are lesbians in committed, open relationships. Interestingly there’s been a lot less ‘your gay’ type of insults flying around that you tend to hear a lot in the latter years of primary school. When planning the term curriculum we were encouraged to address gender within our subjects. However one thing that really bothered me was that once a year we had ‘celebrating women’ day on International Womens Day. We invited women in our school community to come up and arranged small group sessions and got the women to talk about their lives/achievements. The day was wonderful, but we never had a wonderful mens day. Know I know that as women we are still fighting for equality, BUT we could have broken down gender stereotypes with a wonderful mens day. We had ballet dancers, stay at home dads, nurses and many interesting dads in our community and having them talk to our kids would have been invaluable. Interestingly, this argument always divided the staff along generational lines. The younger staff were overwhelmingly in favour of a mens day and the older staff were dead against it.
Awesome work – keep it up. My husband is a stay at home dad and when he took my daughter to the park, some kids came up and asked him why he wasn’t at work. He said “I stay home and look after my daughter and my wife goes out to work”. The kids said “You can DO that?”. They were absolutely amazed that this arrangement could exist. If the parents aren’t teaching these kids the options (not saying there is a right way or a wrong way, just that there are DIFFERENT ways), then who is going to do it? It would be excellent to see this implemented nationally.
Hi Bluemilk
I think this: ‘For instance, “can girls be the boss or are boys the leaders?” got some disturbing responses’ might be getting at the crux of the matter for kids this age – i.e., they’ve started to internalise who gets power and who should get power in our society (and in the school yard).
I’m finding less of the blue/pink gender policing in Lucy’s group (she’s the exact same age as Lauca, to the week) but some worrying comments about managing relationships and power.
Example: the other day Lucy was talking about how the boys, as pirates, were chasing the girls who were playing fairies, and ruining their game. I was questioning her about the girls’ response and it was clear she felt girls/ fairies can’t/ shouldn’t stop the boys/ pirates from disrupting on the material level (telling them to stop, standing your ground) or the imaginative level (turning them into ants or somesuch – surely magic is stronger than swords and scurvy?).
These and some other conversations leave me feeling that Lucy and her girl friends are starting to learn what access to power is appropriate and possible.
Yeah, good point – it is who gets the power in our society that they’re really getting interested in – so true of that age.
Excellent idea! I also would love to know about any specific resources that you used (though as someone who also does some teaching in/about gender studies, I understand sometimes curriculum is gleaned from collective knowledge). Good luck with your next installment of the workshop!
Amazing! This post makes me so happy.
Me too – this should be taught everywhere. My son has taken to talking about “boy toys” and “girl toys” (thank you department store advertising!) and I’m suprised it is so strong for him. We don’t generalise the toys into boy and girl in our household and it horrifies me he has learnt this somewhere else.
don’t suppose you run the workshops in Brisbane?!?!?!?
Very happy to share an outline of my workshop with anyone who is interested in doing something similar but I will admit two things first – I don’t have a teaching background, and I used lots and lots of photos in my workshop and I nicked them from the internet without credit, so I wouldn’t want to put my presentation up on the internet as that would seem a bit unfair of me to those photographers.
But if you’re wanting to do something of your own email me and I am happy to send you a copy of the outline, including the points I spoke to, the questions I asked and the types of images I used. My workshop was pretty directive but it would work better if you had more time, and possibly also with older kids, if you incorporated more discussion for participants. I had some ideas for how to do this thanks to a couple of friends I showed the presentation to who do have backgrounds in education but chose not to expand the workshop given the age of the kids I was working with and the limited time slot I had with them.
Thanks everyone here for so much support and enthusiasm – it has been truly lovely to come and read these comments.
Awesome! It is so cool of you to willingly share this. I am looking to enroll my 3-year-old son in preschool come January, so any solid resources I can use to prepare him (and/or myself) to combat gender bias will be ridiculously useful.
I am so happy the school let you present this material.
This is so great! I am going to file this away for the future (as I’m sure my son’s playschool class of 3 year olds is a bit young for this discussion). I am frequently surprised at just how young the gender stereotypes start. From the 3-year old boy in his soccer class whose brother?/uncle? told him to “man up” when he got hit on the head and expressed distress, to the little (4 year old?) girl at the book store who indignantly took a pink book away from my own son because “it’s PRINCESSES!”, I feel like I’ve been seeing it everywhere in the preschool set. It makes me sad and quite frankly, a little worried about my own ‘princess boy’ who loves to dress up in sparkly dresses and dance ‘ballet’ around the house almost as much as he loves to play with trains.
SO. AWESOME. I want to do this!
[…] A sexism workshop for children. blue milk asks a room of young children, ‘should boys wear pink?’ Find out what they said here. […]
You rock.
[…] Europäischen Raum wäre das sicherlich auch eine gute Idee. Ebenso erzählt sie von ihrem ersten anti-sexistischen Workshop für 5 bis 6 Jahre alte […]
I love this and I share all of your same beliefs about gender. Thank you for doing this and sharing. 🙂
Good work, Blue Milk. A resource you may like to add, or just have. You’ve probably read US feminists talk about the recording Free to Be You and Me, released in 1972. I bought the CD from Amazon, and it’s interesting. Songs, skits, stories. Perfect for the age group.
Sounds fantastic! And it’s evidence that this sort of work with children can (and should) commence at a young age. They’re able for it, receptive to it, and engaged with it, and it could change so much.
Good luck with the next session!
I keep wondering the following: If, despite your efforts, your sons develop some stubbornly heterosexual orientation as they mature, how will they react when they realize that women reward, with their affections, the aggressive, the achievers, the strong, and punish, with indifference, if not laughter, the weak, the effeminate, and especially androgynous weaklings whose persona is a parody of true femininity????
Signed,
A male child of the 70s–that is, heavy doses of “Free to be gay and me”
Then hopefully they’ll have the strength of character to realise that the only people (including women) worth dealing with are people who respect you for who you are, and that women who “punish” men because they percieve them to be weak and/or effeminate are dicks.
Some women do, but if your sons look carefully they will find some wonderful women who don’t care for that sort of crap and like men who are casually, happily, unashamedly men who are confident in themselves and don’t need to prop up their egos with strings of conquests. If they learn to read the signs they will meet women who are interested in them and if they go beyond shallow good looks they will find the pool much deeper than they ever imagined. After all if they are heterosexual the balance really is in their favour statistically.
[…] link below is very reminiscent of the anti-sexism workshops I ran in schools.. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I had a child dealing with gender variance (defined as […]
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[…] haircut because ‘that’s what boys have’? I’m very happy to tell him that ‘colours are for everyone,’ ‘toys are for everyone,’ but is there something else that goes in that vacuum and tells him what being a boy means? Share […]
[…] term, here’s some smart stuff that we’ve picked up from some other brilliant feminists. This post by the excellent Blue Milk describes her experience of running an anti-sexism session in her […]
[…] This could be a good pair of images to show some kids you know. Ask them what they think about these t-shirts. For more ideas on helping kids become merchandise-and-media savvy, check out blue milk’s post on the workshop she ran for 5-6 year old kids on sexism. […]
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