A Path To Gender Equality In Society

A path to gender equality in society

To begin, it is important to note that Uruguay has, since 2007, with a law that promotes equal rights and opportunities without sex distinction, being the State in charge of generating public policies that integrate said proposal.

To guarantee this law, the National Plan for Equal Opportunities and Rights made by the National Women’s Institute was created, which must be put into operation by all state agencies in conjunction with society.

The activities that are proposed, will be based on integrality, decentralization, citizen participation, social, political and cultural inclusion, and promotion of human rights.

The objectives of the plan must:

•  Guarantee respect for women’s human rights through egalitarian laws.
•  Promote the equal exercise of citizen rights.
•  Promote the social, political, economic and cultural inclusion of women.
•  Promote cultural changes to achieve conditions of equality at work and family relationships.

Following this, the manual for teachers, educators and educators “first steps. Inclusion of the gender approach in initial education ”that raises three elements that are fundamental for work with children and that must be linked in the daily life of educational centers: the gender approach, the rights approach and the conception of education and firstchildhood.

Gender is a category of analysis, a social and cultural construction by which each society, at a certain historical moment, defines qualities, capacities, prohibitions, prescriptions, rights and obligations for women and men, based on biological differences betweenThe sexes.

This responds to a sociocultural construction of masculinity or femininity.

Gender describes the attributes of roles: determined by society, learned by each individual, subject to a constant process of change, determined by social, cultural and economic organization. In relation to rights, this allows to strengthen democratic processes that allow the integral development of children and adolescents as subjects of law.

They are human beings with opinion, participation that contributes to change. This way of looking at them builds a new relationship between adult and children, which translates into a new attitude and behavior. Initial education centers play a fundamental role in gender socialization.

One of the purposes of education is the formation of citizens: of people who can exercise their fundamental freedoms and demand compliance with their rights in a democratic society.

When talking about education refers to a permanent process, which begins in early childhood, in which there is a construction in interaction with the environment, which focuses on the active prominence of people. It has characteristics that are framed within the concept of integral education.

• The main task in educational centers is to build the identity and meaning of each child.
• Learning will be based on the affective and social field.
• Children build their identity through the links they establish and in this period they have a great dependence with the adult world.
• Language, actions of everyday life, clothing, work, family relationships, give children the elements to behave according to the assigned gender and to elaborate their self-image.

The starting point of this process is in families, who fulfill a fundamental role in the teaching of gender, children learn through the observation of the relationships that adults develop with each other, these being more or less equitable and expressing themselves indifferent forms of everyday life. Educational institutions accompany them in a coeducation process with a shared responsibility.

The first links, the first relational experiences with their environment, with their peers, their participation in the construction of their identity, the possibility of exploring the world, among other aspects, must be guaranteed.

The mass media have a fundamental role in the transmission and formation of gender values, mainly the Internet, written press and television, which through its great impact and scope contribute to maintaining gender division.

Building an educational proposal that promotes the rights of children in this first stage, constitutes a challenge that requires a team that has the child and their families, which considers its particular and unique reality, and its social context, and its social context.

Social changes, different family structures, new educational demands offer the opportunity to build a professional culture linked to childhood that continually reviews the theoretical and methodological proposals, which nourishes cooperation and participation to integrate knowledge.

Children have the same needs as people, and there are no differences previously determined by their sex in terms of their possibilities and interests.

The same answers must be provided with the same situations, regardless of the sex of the protagonists.

It is important the resources that are made available to children in the classrooms, having prior planning grounded. With this, different experiences and experiences must be promoted to rehearse different roles, games and new situations. The observation and intervention of the teacher is essential in case the dynamics reinforce the stereotypes.

The genre is built through games, children’s stories and toys, as well as everything that surrounds the little ones.

It is necessary to think about the construction of institutions open to the community to which it belongs, with a commitment not only focused on the pedagogical – didactic, but also on social learning, life and reflexive commitment.

Early childhood educational centers that incorporated the gender approach into their work, can strengthen community spaces, social networks and institutional associations.

Based on the definition of WHO sexuality (see Annex 2) we reflect: Sexuality is present in all human beings from birth, there are even theories that state that it occurs from the moment of pregnancy.

The aspects posed by the definition are presented at all stages of the development of the human being and are built and modified throughout life.

This definition is very complete, since it crosses the human being in all its dimensions.

As teachers under construction, we believe it is essential to keep in mind this concept to be able to provide children with an adequate space, the freedom to express themselves, to know each other, explore both individual and collective reinforcing the idea of knowing, caring for and respecting the body of onelike that of others.

We have to take into account the age strip with which we will work, since what has lived and acquired in early childhood conditions the child, positively or negatively, for a lifetime. Therefore we must be, in addition to what we express in previous paragraphs, promoters of sexual health.

Sexuality is a right of children and not providing them with that space, we would be violating it.

From the moment of birth to all human beings one or the other is assigned. This general assignment occurs from the observation of external sexual organs. From this biological characteristic, a cultural characteristic is defined that will affect the person during the rest of his life, since from there a differential treatment begins and through this gender learning.

These characteristics reflect the guidelines that society marks for sex according to sex, called gender roles or papers.

Generally women are seen as weak, dependent and passive people, instead of men they look strong, aggressive and active, marking the highly valued and the feminine devalued. This being seen as something natural and exclusive to sexual distinction and almost never recognized as a social construction.

UNFPA defines gender violence as:

“Violence involving men and women, in which the victim is generally the woman and derives from unequal power relations between men and women. (…) Includes but is not limited to physical, psychological or sexual damage (including intimidation, suffering, and/or deprivation of liberty within the family or community). Includes violence exercised or conded by the State."

Referring to it, we describe the different types of violence, their characteristics and consequences, in the family sphere but that can be transposed to other areas.

•  Physical violence: refers to the body understanding a scale of behaviors ranging from a push to death. The consequences can be external (visible) or internal (hidden), mild, serious or mortal.
•  Sexual violence: It happens when another person is forced to perform unwanted sexual behaviors, he is sexually host or denigrates, his way of having sex or comparing it with other people in a degrading form is criticized, he is treated as a sexual object, objects are introduced into the vagina or viola while you are asleep. Consequently, most women do not identify this type of violence as such, considering that their obligation is to "satisfy" the other. In addition, it produces a total or progressive bodily and genital insensitization.
•  Emotional or psychological, social and economic violence: the first refers to the psychic (mockery, rejection, ignorance, indifference, among others). The second is also psychological pointing to the victim’s social life (hostile with her friends, disqualifying her by subtracting authority, among others). And the third refers to financial decision making in all its aspects. The consequences it brings are: anxiety, depression, loss of self – esteem and feelings of guilt, social isolation and psychosomatic disorders.

All the above, it affirms how fundamentally it is to build and work on a path of gender equality since the beginning of our lives.