According to two Russian researchers, teachers transmit sexist clichés to children from kindergarten, teaching young girls in particular to be pretty and obedient and to love pink.
“To be” a girl or a boy is taught from nursery school. This is the finding of a Russian study published this month in the Journal of Social Policy Studies. According to the researchers behind this work, kindergarten teachers transmit to children traditional notions of femininity and masculinity, for example teaching girls to behave well, to be pretty and obedient and to like pink. And most of the time with parental consent.
To reach these conclusions, Professors Olga Savinskaya and Anastasia Cheredeeva of the Moscow School of Sociology interviewed mothers aged 27 to 40 and their daughters, the latter aged between 4 and 7 years old. And according to the testimonies collected, teachers often teach that “girls should always be clean and pretty and that boys should protect them and take care of them”.
Teachers and parents also generally agree that music, singing and dancing are compulsory elements of a “feminine education”, note the researchers, explaining that mothers often force their daughters to have artistic activities. without taking into account their real interests. “We are very happy that our daughter does not resist going to her music lessons. She does not seem to hate this activity. Her father and I would very much like her to become a professional musician”, would have declared in particular a mother interviewed.
Girls who want to become mistresses or veterinarians
“In the process of socialization, girls are supposed to show themselves to conform to an ideal”, observe Olga Savinskaya and Anastasia Cheredeeva. The latter wants them to be pretty, polite, hard-working and artistic. As at home, at school, they are told about professions related to health or animals. Also, “girls aged 4 to 7 want to become veterinarians and teachers”, note the sociologists.
Regarding the games, the teachers push the girls to think of themselves as princesses or mothers, which reinforces the usual notion that a “woman must become a mother”. However, it is clear that many girls already have “a tendency to show maternal attachments”, recognize the scientists.
Ultimately, this could limit some opportunities for girls, they worry, seeing a real danger in the fact that a person’s biological sex determines the activities they engage in growing up. Girls have other ways to reach their potential than through a profession where they have to take care of others, they protest.
Girls and boys rarely encouraged to play together
As for the boys, they are encouraged to be themselves and to be active, to do as much sport as possible. And not surprisingly, the data indicates that they are interested in more physical professions than girls such as firefighter or driver.
Still, most of the children surveyed said they enjoy participating “in unstructured play where they can create their own rules by trying out what their toys can do and creating new roles for themselves.” But if it happens that some teachers push boys and girls to play together, it remains very rare, notes the study.
Finally, a close link exists between sexual identification and external factors such as clothing and standards of behavior in children, continue the researchers. Thus, girls and boys are assigned specific colors. Girls are “taught to wear pink because society dictates that this color is associated with the image of femininity”.
The school’s “hidden curriculum”
And it even starts before kindergarten since from birth, the form authorizing the exit of baby girls from the maternity ward is placed in a pink envelope, recall Olga Savinskaya and Anastasia Cheredeeva.
Thus, it is clear that the education system and the family transmit social attitudes and roles to children in equal measure. This is what some sociologists call “the hidden curriculum” of school. “The hidden curriculum is the part of learning that does not appear to be programmed by the educational institution, at least not explicitly. We are here in the register of notions constructed by sociology to account for the involuntary effects of actions and human institutions”, explained in particular Philippe Perrenoud of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Geneva in 1993.
In France, reports criticizing the “sexist clichés” conveyed by schools have been piling up since the 1980s. In order to better promote gender equality, the Hollande government had decided to modify textbooks in 2014. Two years later, the debate on “gender” at school was revived by Pope Francis himself after he accused French textbooks to convey the “gender theory”. He had even gone so far as to use the term “ideological colonization”.
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