Following the publication of our report on Gender Equality in Schools, we spoke with the Project Workers who led the investigation with our MCPs (Members of Children’s Parliament) to share their experiences of being the adults who listened to, captured and reported the children’s experiences and solutions.
I sat in my car outside the school gates. I needed a minute to process what I had just heard. Some of the experiences of the girls I had met that morning were so upsetting. I thought I had heard it all, but I was genuinely taken aback by hearing 9 to 13-year-olds talk about their experiences of gender-based sexual harassment, violence and bullying in school. “I’m going to rape your mum, that’s what boys write in our WhatsApp chats,” an eleven-year-old told me in our first session. “They think that’s funny but it’s disgusting.” The same 11-year-old would later suggest, in earnest, that Father Christmas could help us get the importance of gender equality over to children when he delivered their presents. Like I said, I needed a minute.
Every woman I know, without exception, has tales of being treated differently at school, of a lack of opportunities, of inappropriate teachers, and of sexual harassment, all rooted in gender inequality. When I was fourteen, I was the only girl in my year who was encouraged by our technical studies teacher to take woodwork beyond second year. Everyone thought it was hilarious and the boys were having none of it. “Why would a girl do a qualification in woodwork?” “No way, we don’t want a girl in our class”. I loved woodwork but I reluctantly took my guidance teacher’s, pressured, advice that a second language would be much more useful than woodwork, which he insisted would be a waste of my time. So, I took German instead. My male German teacher ended up massaging my shoulders in front of our small class one day. I reported the incident, backed up by my classmates, but was dismissed. I was told I was over-sensitive and exaggerating and that the teacher had just been having a laugh. Every girl in that class was outraged. We were a feisty and confident bunch, yet no action was taken. No adults listened.
So, when Children’s Parliament was tasked with doing a Theory of Change consultation for the Gender Equality Taskforce in Education and Learning, for the First Minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls, I was keen to find out how much things had progressed. Our Theory of Change consultation model was to identify how we can move from the start point, of gender inequality, to an end point where girls are happy, healthy and safe in school and are able to take part in all the subjects and activities they want to do. We engaged with 11 (P5-7) girls in primary school and four (S1/S2) girls in secondary school. Additionally, we worked with six boys (P5-7) to gather their views on the role of boys in achieving gender equality and how they could become effective allies. The diversity of children allowed us to include a range of cultural, religious, socio-economic and neurodiverse views.
So here I was, sitting in my car, trying to process that a group of 9 – 13-year-old girls had just told me that they lie awake at night worrying about rape and that they felt so anxious and filled with dread about getting hassled by boys in school that they often felt unable to concentrate on their studies. “You have no idea what it’s like to be a girl today, It’s so awful. We shouldn’t have to face this stuff at 12 and 13.” “Girls are irrelevant is a slur now.” Their words came tumbling out in torrents, the release was palpable. “It’s the dads we have to target,” I was told by a nine-year-old. “We’re conditioned to be passive and nice and to accommodate others,” said a shy 10-year-old. “Wherever we go guys stare us down and intimidate us and no one does anything about that,” said a twelve-year-old. The high school girls told harrowing tales of being followed home from school and abused both verbally and physically in the playground by boys.
It became obvious early on that the girls needed time to offload the weight of the experiences they had been carrying before we could begin to capture their ideas for change. “Why do we even have gendered clothes and toys?” “I would love to play basketball and football every day, but the boys just don’t let us and won’t give us a turn of the areas in the playground that we need.” “When did all this gender stuff start?” “I really wanted to take GDM (Graphic Design and Manufacturing), but I would have been the only girl and I couldn’t take the boys treating me badly, so I just thought no.” My heart sank. All these years later, we’re still not listening to our girls.
When I asked if the girls I was working with were reporting these behaviours to school staff, the replies were consistent across settings and ages. Female teachers, they said, were on the receiving end of gender inequality themselves and so were powerless to act, and male teachers were dismissive of their complaints and minimised them. Nothing ever changed so, disempowered themselves, the girls had given up. While the girls were pessimistic about adults acting on their insights, they described our consultation as being “… more like a therapy session or a support system where you are not dismissed or judged,” and all had a strong desire to keep participating and to be heard. There is clearly a desperate need for a safe space for girls to meet and talk about these issues.
I was struck by the fact that the girls had already been discussing gender issues and impressed by the positive and clearly defined solutions they had already formulated to make education more equal for everyone. They knew what needed to be done. Yet, prior to this consultation, no one had asked their opinions or views on gender inequality. The girls told me repeatedly that they felt powerless and silenced. Yet they were keen that we should not demonise boys as monsters. “It’s a wider societal problem… it’s our brothers, fathers, cousins and sons”. “Adults need to stop pitting us against each other like bull dogs,” a ten-year-old told me. An over-arching theme of the consultation, from all age groups, was that girls realise that a lot of the gender inequality is not really the fault of boys. They realised that boys are under pressure to live up to stereotypes and think this is an issue that should be addressed by everyone, not just boys and men, and not just at school. “We need to educate boys at nursery so that by the time they get to school they know sexist behaviour won’t be tolerated.” As the Theory of Change took shape the younger girls started developing a range of different workshops for boys during our sessions. The intended outcome of these workshops was that boys would gain an understanding of how it feels to be a girl, with a view to both changing behaviour and getting boys on board as allies. There were so many great ideas flowing that we had to add extra sheets onto our Theory of Change props. As adults we can learn so many lessons from the way that children collaborate and workshop ideas together. As professionals, children can help make our jobs so much easier with their searing clarity and innovative ideas, unencumbered by the vagaries of adulthood.
The boys we spoke with struggled to accept there was a problem. “Not in this school” was the retort when we explained that the problem had already been identified and, using our Theory of Change model, we were now seeking the boys’ opinions on solutions. The younger boys were more open to the idea once the situation was explained to them, reinforcing the girl’s opinions that we must educate boys from a young age, or these views will just continue to be passed down through the generations.
There were wide-ranging conversations about gender identities, initiated by both the older and younger girls, who all said that they had transgender friends who were severely affected by gender inequality. The girls questioned why pupils are told to split into gender groups at all and said they thought it was wrong that they were forced to choose a partner of the opposite sex for dancing. “If you are nonbinary and the class is split into boys and girls for activities, where do you go?”
Some of the girls we worked with were neurodivergent and reported that there were widely held gender misconceptions amongst teachers about neurodiversity that resulted in autistic and dyslexic girls being dismissed, misunderstood and being denied appropriate support. “There is a lot of misunderstanding amongst teachers that girls can’t even be autistic and that dyslexia is only a boys’ thing”. The girls said that teachers needed training in understanding dyslexic and autistic people and that all the positives of being neurodivergent should be explained to pupils. They believe that these misconceptions sometimes prevent girls from getting appropriate support and contribute to anxiety in telling other pupils and adults about their needs.
The solutions the girls came up with for our Theory of Change were thought-provoking, considered and innovative. Amongst them were regular, mandated gender equality training for all school staff, promoting kindness and fostering better relationships and understanding between girls and boys, a national media campaign promoting gender equality in education and allowing girls themselves to run workshops where they taught boys face-to-face what it felt like to be a girl at school.
At our feedback session to show the girls our completed report they were proud but pessimistic. “I would like to show this to my little sister so she knows what to expect at High School and can prepare so it’s not so bad for her. If she was prepared, she could think of solutions and ways to avoid stress.” I needed another minute to process that one. The children in our consultation eloquently articulated how our education system is currently failing to ensure that girls are safe, included and able to reach their potential. It is our collective responsibility as adults, not just to listen, but to act on their considered and inspiring solutions for how we can effect change to ensure gender equal education and learning. I would urge you to read the full report, and in particular, the appendices to get a sense of the scope and breadth of the girls’ solutions, and to reflect on what we can all do in our daily lives to promote gender equality in wider society.
The Theory of Change report has been shared with Scottish Government and members of the Gender Equality Taskforce in Education and Learning. Their job now is to meet and discuss all the Calls to Action that the girls have raised. From there they will make an action plan that they will take forwards. As one of our high school girls put it: “It’s one thing to be listened to and participate, and quite another to actually feel like you are influencing action. I’ve seen the report, but I haven’t seen any action yet.”
You can read our report on Gender Equality in Education here: https://www.childrensparliament.org.uk/gender-equality/
You can read all of the reports, and the response here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/gender-equality-taskforce-in-education-and-learning-response-to-reports/