Because I am a girl: The State of the World's ... - Plan Deutschland

married couples who in 2008 participated
in ‘Pretty Ermats Meet Proud Erpats’
– Pretty Mothers Meet Proud Fathers
(PEMPE). After the training, Arlyn told
other wives in the village about the
positive changes in her husband. “I woke
up one morning surprised to see my
husband walking towards the stream with
our dirty laundry. He has never done the
laundry before.”
Most participants said the training
not only resulted in positive changes at
home, but also in their children’s school
performance. The teachers reported
that children were better groomed,
arrived in school early, and many had
their homework done. “Parents are now
minding their children’s assignments and
lessons,” said Rose Baganes, Salcedo
district supervisor of the Department of
Education. More parents now participate
in school activities.
PEMPE is part of the implementation of
the Program Effectiveness Service (PES)
and Empowerment and Reaffirmation
of Paternal Abilities Training (ERPAT)
programmes that Plan Philippines
supports in partnership with the
Department of Social Welfare and
Development.
Plan organises and trains ERPAT
fathers, who then facilitate parenting
skills seminars and work in groups
in the community. ERPAT – also a
colloquial term for ‘father’ – has been
hugely successful in terms of engaging
fathers in childcare and increasing their
appreciation of women’s roles and work.
In Llorente, a town in East Samar, the
ERPAT session on monetising women’s
household work has even led to some
fathers stopping smoking in order to
contribute more to household finances.
“Changing traditional beliefs which
have been passed from one generation
to another is an uphill climb because
these cannot be changed overnight,” said
Godofredo Capara, a local ERPAT trainer
and a father of seven. “What is important
is that we have started on that road and
we have seen positive results. We are
banking on that.”
B e n n o N e e l e m a n
4 “Everybody has a penis” –
gender stereotypes in
the early years
“Boys are not allowed to play with Barbies.”
One pre-school boy to another 43
“As a father of two small girls, aged three
years and eight months, I am frustrated by
my constant struggle to find toys and, more
importantly, literature, beyond the realms
of princesses and fairies (all of whom seem
only interested in finding a prince, wearing
dresses and getting married).”
Andrew Kinmont 44
“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like
sons... but few have the courage to raise our
sons more like our daughters.”
Gloria Steinem, US writer and feminist
Even in the places where feminism has
made the most inroads, young children still
seem to adhere to very specific ideas of
what it means to be a girl or a boy and a
man or a woman. In her book ‘Delusions of
Gender’, UK academic Cordelia Fine talks
about the Bem family, who decided to try
and raise their two children, a boy and a
girl, in a gender-neutral way. This is what
happened when their son Jeremy, then
aged four, “decided to wear barrettes [hair
slides] to nursery school. Several times that
day, another little boy told Jeremy that he,
Jeremy, must be a girl because ‘only girls
wear barrettes’. After trying to explain to
this child that ‘wearing barrettes doesn’t
matter’ and ‘being a boy means having a
penis and testicles’, Jeremy finally pulled
down his pants as a way of making his point
more convincingly. The other child was not
Getting
behind the
wheel in
Egypt.
impressed and simply said: ‘Everybody has a
penis; only girls wear barrettes’.” 45
These stereotypes are reinforced by giving
girls ‘female’ toys such as dolls and teasets,
and boys ‘male’ toys such as trucks
and trains. Children learn that adult men
and women hold different types of jobs and
learn to categorise the ‘gender’ of household
objects (such as ironing boards and tool
boxes). Once again, this is reinforced by the
marketing of toys as either boys’ or girls’. 46
Interestingly, the fathers we spoke to in
Benin believed that it was acceptable for boys
to play with dolls: they mentioned that boys
could “play whatever they want” and that
playing with dolls “developed the spirit”. 47
Superheroes – from Superman and
Spiderman to Robin Hood and Aragorn in
‘Lord of the Rings’ – are almost always male.
Gary Barker, developmental psychologist and
International Director of Instituto Promundo,
notes that: “There are debates about
whether superhero play is only about men’s
and boys’ dominance over girls. It also seems
to be about how little boys feel powerless
before other boys and men. They know that
‘real men’ are supposed to be powerful,
and wearing the cape is also about trying
to protect themselves from bullying and the
violence of other boys.” 48
Perhaps one of the reasons that this
doesn’t change is that it is actively promoted
by those producing and selling goods for
small children. In 2007, the toy industry in
the US was valued at $3.2 billion. 49
And this is not just a Northern phenomenon:
many countries import toys from the big
US and multinational toy companies. In El
Salvador, Plan’s gender Adviser, Beatriz De
Paúl Flores, noted that it was very difficult to
find toys that were not differentiated by sex,
“because they are all imported; we don’t make
any toys here ourselves.” 50,51
Swedish children take on
Toys R Us
In December 2008, a class of children in
Sweden noticed the Christmas Toys R Us
catalogue had pages of pink for girls and
pages of superheroes for boys. Philippe
Johansen and Ebba Silvert, both aged 13,
were shocked by this.
Ebba said: “I think that girls can be
superheroes if they want to; they don’t
How advertisers describe toys
Selling to boys
Selling to girls
have to look like little princesses. The
boys were action and fighting and stuff
and the girls were sitting at home and
being cute.”
They wrote a letter to the Advertising
Ombudsman and to Toys R Us and on 9
October the Ombudsman reprimanded
Toys R Us. They found that out of 58
pages of toys there were only 14 where
boys and girls were pictured together
with the same toys. On 44 pages, girls or
boys were playing separately.
Ebba says: “The Toys R Us Christmas
catalogue has to change for next year.
It made me feel very proud that we
succeeded and I am very happy I learned
that you can make a difference even if it
seems impossible.” 52
C r y s t a l S m i t h / w w w . a c h i l l e s e f f e c t . c o m
40 the s tate of the world’s girls 41