The video you are about to see is the result of the Latin American Gender Equality Project.
As a woman, a mother, a wife and an educator, gender equity is an issue that is very close to my heart and frankly, an idea whose time has come.
We are long overdue for our children to see boys and girls sharing the sandbox equally.
Women make up more than 50 percent of the world, yet the messages in the media, in many homes and classrooms around the world are that women and girls have less value than men and boys.
We aren’t supposed to be leaders. Our place is in the home. We shouldn’t have goals and dreams. Those are reserved for our brothers, husbands and fathers. How dare we go to the edge of greatness and achievement? Who do we think we are?
There is an old expression, “women belong in the house… and the Senate.” And one day, we will see a woman president in the United States!
And let’s not forget what former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said,
Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good Latingovernance.
The video you are about to see is a remarkable story about the courage, confidence, and conviction of Maria Teresa Cabrera.
Maria Teresa is a hero to the women of the Dominican Republic. She is the first woman president of the Association of Dominican Teachers. (Associación Dominicana de Profesores)
You will be shocked to hear in the video what her opponent said to her when she decided to run for president of her teachers’ union…Nonetheless, she won in a landslide.
I can only imagine what this will do for the young girls in this country. When positive nontraditional images of women are available to young girls it can broaden and expand their lives, foster confidence, enthusiasm and achievement. If they see it, they can be it.
As president, Maria did all of the things that Unions must do…fight for social justice, equality, ensuring workplace respect. But more importantly, she made certain that gender equity was put on equal footing with all of these values.
What better place to fight for gender equity than within the union? We should be first in gender equity in all ways and at all levels. Unions are supposed to be progressive, but many of our unions are guilty of ignoring this fundamental right, right inside the walls of the union.
This must change. Unions must change. Curricula must change. The media must change. Educators must change. Education International and the EI affiliates in Latin America are changing. This project, in which Maria Teresa’s union is participating, is reaching every education union in Latin America, and is supported by the National Education Association.
(Interview with Jan Eastman from Education International)
When we fail to give our girls an opportunity to dream and explore, we rob society of critical energy, economic production and unlimited creative talent. We also teach the next generation that it’s ok to devalue women because it was done before.
This is our collective journey and we must move forward together to achieve gender equality.
We cannot embrace the false idea that progress happens naturally, all on its own. That as time goes by, people just change, and things just change for the better.
Change happens because we demand it.
(versión en español)
(…stepping on soapbox…)
A gender issue often overlooked in education is the profound lack of male elementary school teachers.
When we look at demographics of kids who struggle in school, we tend to examine family income, race, disabilities….but rarely gender. Take a peek, and it becomes clear that male students are winning the “flunk-out, drop-out” race by a wide margin.
Now, list the names of all the male elementary teachers you know. I bet most folks can count them on one hand. I can count the male teachers at my kids’ elementary school on….zero hands.
If any other identifiable sub-category were so under-represented in our teaching ranks – and there was a commensurate measurable deficit in how those students were doing later on – there would be massive efforts to rectify the problem.
(…stepping off soapbox….).
Hi Lily,
What a lovely name–the same as Lily Ledbetter, the heroine of “equal work-equal pay.” I heard her speak and then met her about two years at a Women in Equity/NAPE Conference in Arlington, VA. She’s a courageous person, dedicated to that cause despite all the backlash.
Here’s my theory of gender inequity, bolstered by quite a lot of eclectic reading and coursework in psychology and sociology, observations of human nature, and 64 years of living in American society.
It’s an accepted theory that many men have not evolved much either physically or emotionally since the cave man days when their physical size, agressiveness, and strength meant they could sometimes bring in food and fight off the animals that were in competition for the food. Men have always had an overwhelming fear of showing fear, or appearing weak, foolish, and helpless because they could lose their lives or their ability to mate and have their DNA carried on. have always had power over a woman’s body and, therefore, her mind. I believe this may be true even in those matriarchal societies where women reign supreme.
Part II. I’m not indicting all or most men, but instead pointing out the anger barely beneath the surface that some men have toward women. Women learned early on to be afraid of men’s tempers and to sit quietly in the background to avoid being hurt. Men even when weak emotionally are still physically strong with much false pride-jealousy. We often read about a man going crazy after losing his job (hunting and gathering) and killing his wife, lover, and/or children before killing himself. Why does he have to kill them? Power –hate — even when it’s too late for it to mean anything to anyone.
I know women in the trades who are “doing men’s work” and working directly with men. Some men are fine–polite and accepting; others are demeaning, crass, overweening, constantly pushing against the rules. One tradeswoman in CA was murdered the night before she was due in court to testify against a colleague’s alleged illegal activities on the job.
Most high level officers in large companies are men. They use a different kind of strength to keep women down. The most significant way that American society keeps women from earning equality and gender equity is the corporate system of devaluing the woman’s role as a mother. Most corporations generously provide new mothers with six whole weeks of maternity leave. A new mother is pressured to return to work or lose her position. She must leave her vulnerable child with strangers, and then she must pull herself away from the baby during the work day or go insane. In Europe, women who give birth have a significant amount of time off to spend with their babies. In Germany a woman is guarenteed her position for two years. These countries recognize the basic needs of mother, child, and society.
Families moved away from their parents and extended families in the 1970s when a job across country meant a big increase in salary for the man, who was the main breadwinner. Women were left to raise children without the support of sisters or mothers who could take part of the responsibility off her shoulders and could give the children extra stability–the kind of stability children lack today.
The effects on generations of people raised by strangers who see their parents for a couple of hours each night and on weekends is obvious even to the casual observer. Insecurity, constant contact with friends through electronic means, inability to stay in the moment, dependence on parents, dependence on expensive toys to feel equal, these are the results of a childhood lacking the simple necessity of a mother’s care.
And what happens to the women who have to produce to keep their jobs, pick up their child after a full day’s dealing with life and petty junk, then dealing with traffic, getting home, making dinner, feeding the baby, etc. Many husbands help but most work and most of society’s disapproval falls on women. EQUALITY MAY NEVER COME TO WOMEN UNLESS WE CAN FIX THE BROKEN AMERICAN CORPORATE SYSTEM.