October 11 – one day, great power
The International Day of the Girl Child is a celebration established by the United Nations, which aims to draw attention to the fact that from birth (and in some places in the world even before birth) girls are often not treated as equal to boys, do not have the same opportunities, and social expectations towards them limit their opportunities to realise their full potential by the time they become adults. This year’s slogan is “Digital Generation, Our Generation” which is to remind about the competency gap, but also the gap in access to modern technologies between boys and girls. In our materials, we write about these problems and pay attention to how technologies can help in the fight against problems that affect modern girls and young women.
Why do we care about your commitment?
As educators, you have a huge influence on how girls will realise their potential, what skills and interests of girls will be developed and which will be suppressed. You are also role models – you can give them courage to reach for what they want and need to feel good about themselves, in relationships with others, in the roles they play and will play in the future.
Your role is extremely important – it is you who can involve girls in activities that allow them to develop various competences, strengthen individual development, for which we need to go beyond the usual patterns and challenge stereotypes.
How to join the action?
We encourage you to join the celebration of the International Day of the Girl Child! You can use the proposals we have prepared and implement your own. It can be an all-day event, one lesson, or even a moment of reflection.
STEP 1 – What is International Day of the Girl Child and why is it so important? Get inspired by the texts that were created especially for this occasion. They were written by teachers, female scientists, journalists, and reporters. They talk about their own experiences, observations and research results. The texts beautifully describe what girls and young women are facing and indicate what actions each and every one of us can take to make the beautiful slogan of equal gender dignity a reality.
STEP 2 – Invite your pupils to reflect on gender equality. Prepare boards with slogans: “What a girl/boy is allowed to do.” Let the pupils work individually at first, then in small groups, and then let the whole class share their suggestions. Create a shared board or a mosaic of all the cards. Can the pupils see the difference between what girls can do and what boys can do? Talk about where our beliefs come from, including those related to gender (in)equality. Photograph the finished boards and put them on the profile of your school or class. Let the world know about this day! You can hang blank boards in the corridor and encourage the entire school community to write their associations. The more, the better!
STEP 3 – Conduct equality-enhancing lessons based on our proposal or your own ideas:
1. Conduct the “Professions have no gender” experiment. Ask your pupils to draw people who are engaged in a given profession. What gender are the people assigned to a given profession according to them? What did the girls draw and what did the boys? Look at the drawings and think about why – even though the jobs do not have a gender – we associate some as more masculine and others as more feminine together.
The prompt should read: Draw a person who (important not to suggest gender):
- creates computer games,
- designs websites,
- designs robots,
- manages a large technology company such as Google,
- creates new appliances that make life easier for people,
- designs spaceships.
You can also add others that are more popular and familiar to younger children.
If possible, invite representatives of various professions which are stereotypically male or female as often as possible, e.g. a female programmer, a male architect of greenery. If you are unable to do so, look for information about such people on the web and show it regularly. Let the kids know that the professions are genderless!
2. Organise a screening of a short video showing how our help changes the lives of girls from Guatemala. The video refers to this year’s slogan “Digital Generation, Our Generation”. After the screening, talk about how the technologies influenced the lives of the characters.
3. Invite the students to create a poster, sticker, meme or text that promotes gender equality. Put the finished works on the profile of your school or class. Let the world know about this day!