Why educating children around the world about Gender Equality is important

To start this blog post, it is important to define what gender equality is. Quite directly, gender equality means that men and women should have the same rights and obligations. In other words, all responsibilities, rights and opportunities must be equally granted to all genders, without any type of restriction based on whether a given person was born male or female.

But when we talk about gender equality, we always end up focusing more on women than men and why this happens? The answer is quite simple: we focus on women because they are in a much more vulnerable position in society. Women do not have the same rights as men and therefore are more likely to experience violations. Women are also more likely to experience violence, abuse, harassment and death than men.

And why is it so necessary? Gender equality, besides being a fundamental human right, is essential to achieve peaceful societies, with full human potential and sustainable development. Moreover, it has been shown that empowering women spurs productivity and economic growth. Women's empowerment and gender equality have proven to be beneficial for the economy, for business, for a country's happiness, and even for men!

It is important for women to be active in society because they have the freedom to choose their religion, language, work, and other activities. Empowered women are more economically productive and thus more economically secure, which in turn leads to more stable and successful families. This cycle promotes economic growth and development, raising standards of living, and creating a more prosperous world.

In addition, when women are living safe, fulfilled and productive lives, they can reach their full potential. Another important fact is that women's empowerment helps reduce domestic violence by promoting and valuing them.

Gender equality is the basis for building a society free of prejudice and discrimination. It is essential for economic prosperity and societies that value women and men as equal are safer and healthier. Empowering women and closing the gender gap are central to ending poverty, improving food security, improving health and reducing inequalities - Women spend around 2.5x more of their time on unpaid care and domestic work than men. It makes sense that because women take on more of the domestic responsibilities, it becomes harder to work outside of the home. Besides that, when women are provided education and continued skill-development, they are less reliant on government assistance. The effects are passed down to their children and will have an impact on economic growth for years to come.

Also, companies receive great benefits from increasing employment and leadership opportunities for women. In an article from Wealth Matters, UN Women estimated that companies with three or more women in senior management functions score higher in all dimensions of organizational performance. When we empower women, we increase the skilled workforce, local economies are strengthened, businesses do better, and families rise out of poverty and create generational wealth and self-sufficiency. We all benefit.In recent years, gender inequality has become a recurrent issue. The struggle for a world in which men and women are free to make their own choices, enjoying the same responsibilities, rights and opportunities, intensified in the mid-twentieth century, driven mainly by the feminist movement.

In this sense, with the aim of breaking these barriers and achieving equity between the sexes, education becomes an important tool.

Because schools are important spaces for training, reflection, sociability, coexistence and interactions of individuals in society, talking about gender is essential to educate people for a more egalitarian society and to face the numerous inequalities, discrimination and violence that harm and destroy the lives of so many people. Education is of paramount importance in the process of socialization and human formation, and can be decisive in building critical awareness or can also reproduce dominant ideologies. In this way, the school ends up contributing to the development of the process of awareness, learning and to the formation of more ethical citizens. It is up to the school not only the process of teaching to read or write, but also to help in the critical development of the human being, contributing to the elimination of all forms of prejudice. In order to have a quality education, the school cannot ignore the world it is in, it cannot remain silent on issues that are so important for life in society. On the contrary, it is the duty of educational policy to promote equality and non-discrimination.

The school environment is still permeated by stereotypes that harm development and limit everyone's possibilities. The traditional education in which we live, separates and creates distinctions between boys and girls through actions and activities, collaborating with a segregated and oppressive society. Given this, it is from this perspective, facing inequalities, positively recognizing diversity, and building a fairer society, which highlights the need to teach about gender, race, sexuality and other inequalities that mark different realities.

Building gender equality at school is to prevent discrimination processes from occurring. However, it is important that it be practiced from the first years of school life. The teacher's participation is necessary so that the classroom is not a space that generates and reproduces a discriminatory education, but rather a space for building equality, as we know that the school contributes significantly to maintaining the standards established in society.