GENDER EQUALITY BEGINS AT HOME: HERE’S HOW!
Parenting largely influences the way your children think. The general notions that they have, their perception of the world and how they look at things is greatly influenced by the way you bring them up. Naturally, what they perceive of gender and how they associate things to it in their day to day lives starts from your home.
A research by UNICEF in 2016 revealed that girls spend 160 million hours more than boys doing household chores. This means that they get less time to play and study as compared to boys. This gender stereotyping and inequality is still evident in various households all over the world, where girls are still expected to perform more household chores.
It is important to understand that housework is an important skill for everyone to learn, irrespective of gender. Whether a boy or a girl, both are required to be taught to be independent- both inside and outside the house. Teaching them to do their laundry, maintaining their own accounts and equipping them with the skills to cook a little something for themselves will only make them more self-sufficient and self-reliant. Like education, housework too, is about training children for the future because eventually, someday in their lives, they will have to iron their own clothes and do the dishes all by themselves. Also, they come with the added benefits of making children more responsible and organized. They would realize that housework, too, is a lot of hard work and should be viewed as something that deserves an equal amount of respect as any other form of work.
However, when certain chores are only allocated to a particular gender, children might subconsciously start thinking that they are just for girls and others for boys, and refuse to do them when required in the future. This will also lead them to think that boys and girls are not equal since they are supposed to do different jobs. To change this, parents need to put in some thought and not give into gender stereotypes. Naturally, when children will grow up in an environment where everyone does every kind of work, they would believe that girls and boys are equals, all the while developing an all-around skill set that will only help them succeed in their lives.
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