Doll is a boy thing, yes!

At Pedro’s house, 3 years old, the cars share space with the dolls. The boy likes to play house and make food. Offering this type of toy was the idea of ​​his mother, Carolina Faria Alvarenga, who researches the relationship between gender and education. “He always got carts from relatives; so he wanted to encourage other games.” The same goes for her sister, Ana, 1 year and 11 months old, who can choose a variety of activities, but prefers more active ones, such as riding a velotrol and a bicycle with training wheels. The two children also play together, in “boy” and “girl” activities. At first, the family found this attitude strange, but they got used to it and today they already present gifts to both of them following the same principles as Carolina, who prefers wooden toys to plastic ones and cloth dolls, with less detail, believing that they stimulate the imagination of children. small. This freer stance still raises questions. On a walk with his parents through the center of Lavras (MG), where they live, Pedro wanted to take a doll. Two other children were astonished to see him on the street with the toy. The grandmother of one of them tried to put warm cloths saying: “He is holding his little sister’s doll”. Carolina intervened explaining that the owner was really the boy.

Many situations like this, apparently common, reproduce pre-established and almost always wrong conceptions of gender. “These patterns, from a time when a woman’s main function was to have children, have been internalized over time and still persist today, despite women’s achievements”, points out Teresa Creusa Negreiros, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) in Rio de Janeiro. of January. Throughout the 20th century, we gained the right to vote, entered the job market, went to university, postponed motherhood and shared the expenses with maintaining the house. All this shuffled traditional roles. “Currently, there is a very fine line between what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, in addition to a series of attitudes and needs that dismantle the characteristics of each gender”, says psychologist Maria Helena Vilela, executive director of the Kaplan Institute , in Sao Paulo.

With so many changes, why are there still behaviors considered feminine or masculine? Why does even the way we play reproduce old stereotypes? “Perpetuating these differences limits the learning process, hinders opportunities for both sexes and encourages future prejudices”, explains Constantina Xavier, a professor at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) and coordinator of the working group on gender at the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Education. For someone who spent her childhood learning that only girls play house, it’s easier to become an adult who believes that household chores are strictly female, for example. “We see the implications of this in the lives of many women who do not have the help of their partner to take care of the children and the house”, points out Carolina Faria Alvarenga, a professor at the Federal University of Lavras, herself the mother of a boy who likes dolls (see his story and that of other children in the pictures). “By doing this, the boys learn to cultivate relationships of care, affection and respect”, argues anthropologist Michele Escoura, who has researched how notions of gender are constructed in 5-year-old children from public and private schools in the interior of São Paulo. She noted that the little ones reproduce adult speech and behavior models that reinforce the male-female dichotomy.

The school often also collaborates to perpetuate these beliefs by maintaining divisions between the sexes in games and reinforcing stereotypes, when, for example, a teacher praises a student’s sweetness and a student’s objectivity or justifies aggressiveness as something proper of the boys. Fortunately, things are starting to change. In 1997, guidelines for working with the issue of sexuality were incorporated into the National Curriculum Parameters (PCNs). In 2009, it was the turn of the National Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education to include the theme. Today, almost all undergraduate courses in pedagogy have disciplines related to gender. As a result, many institutions design actions to reduce inequality and prejudice. This is the case of Escola Municipal Ernani Silva Bruno, in São Paulo, and Escola Henfil, in Belo Horizonte, where boys and girls are encouraged to play whatever they want and teachers receive constant training to be able to intervene properly. At Colégio Ofélia da Fonseca, also in São Paulo, everyone takes dance, taek-won-do, capoeira and swimming classes together. “The school environment is an important space for reflection on overcoming inequalities”, says Constantina. The role of teachers, as well as parents, is to respect children’s choices and to supervise them without censoring. According to the specialist, discussions about colors and games without distinction of gender can be proposed from early childhood education.

Check below 3 steps for a less sexist education

1. Tastes and behaviors are learned and experienced based on what is offered to the little ones. Propose different games and toys that escape stereotypes.

2. Set an example: the child reproduces the adult’s speech; therefore, beware of jokes and prejudices. Avoid uttering phrases like: “That’s a girl thing” and “Boys don’t cry”.

3. Ask both daughters and sons to help with household chores. It covers their fulfillment with equal emphasis for both. And get your partner involved in these activities as well.