Updated with video
Teachers in a Sliema boys’ school are organising activities to promote gender equality after they were “shocked” to hear six-year-olds utter phrases like “girls can’t play football” and “women take care of the house and make babies”.
“Back in January, we were throwing dice around. The boys said we teachers can’t catch because we’re girls. We challenged them to a football game. They were very serious when they said: girls can’t play football,” Christianne Aquilina, a Grade 2 teacher at St Benild’s School, Sliema, said.
Christianne, together with the two learning support educators in her class – both women – looked up a photograph of a Maltese female football team. The children were completely taken aback.
“We were shocked that, at this tender age, they already have these ideas in mind, especially since most of them have working mothers,” she admitted.
She spoke to assistant head Claudia Vella and together they decided to address this by organising a Women’s Day activity – something the school never did.
The need for such an event was strengthened sometime later when, during a class discussion on jobs, the children said that jobs suitable for women included “taking care of the house and making babies”.
Titled ‘Wonder Woman’s Day’, the event on Thursday aimed to shatter ingrained stereotypes and teach the boys that women, just like men, can do anything they choose to do. It included a morning of 20-minute activities for all 74 Grade 2 students at the church school.
Students met Kristina Chetcuti, author of Amazing Maltese Women, who talked to them about women who left a mark on Maltese society.
They met one of the book’s heroines – Esther Azzopardi, Malta’s first FIFA woman referee, played against an all-girls team of under 12s and met career women, including a pilot, engineer and radiographer.
“This idea is something they brought here. We are trying to tackle it in a way that they don’t see women only in stereotypical roles. We are trying to change the picture completely,” Christianne remarked.
The assistant head added that this was in line with the Learning Outcomes Framework for early years, to be introduced next scholastic year.
The programme included the concept of an emergent curriculum created around children’s interests.
Newly appointed Commissioner for Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, Audrey Friggieri, recently spoke about the need to address Malta’s patriarchal culture. Parents and educators play an important part in this.
In the case of St Benild’s, it seems to be working already. When we asked some boys what women can do, replies included: international variety performers, detectives, doctors, assistant heads and maids – if they choose to.
One boy was quick to add it was a female nurse who “cured” the coronavirus in China.