Dd did an excellent "animation" today about Gender discrimation and equality.

[Portofino]

She talked all the way home about how children "her age" - she is just 8, are exactly the same (apart from genitals) and that girls can play football, and boys can wear pink.

Then they watched a short film which appears to have shown things about the suffragette movement and early feminist stuff. I have to translate the odd word from French so sometimes it is tricky to know exactly what went down.....

She laughed and said that in the film there was a daddy who came home and watched football and drunk beer - just like my daddy - "but my daddy isn't like that as he plays with me and does cleaning too"

Anyhow, I think I have tried to demonstate equality through how we do stuff at home, and have never really TALKED to her about it, but maybe this is something I can build on......Any ideas? Positive stuff we can discuss and do together?

no-one?

Just heading to bed, but the answer is YES (and I'll try and ferret some links out.)

Make a list of jobs/things that ONLY men or ONLY women can do e.g. giving birth- and one of things that both sexes can do. Gives you a chance to debunk any lingering ideas about what jobs she can do in the future. DD knows she can be a scientist if she likes as she has met female scientists, but I had no idea she was convinced she couldn't be a fireman.

Talk about what life was like for women in the past. DD and I have had some fascinating conversations about the vote, she couldn't understand why it was so important. She was outraged in her almost 7 yo way when I explained.

I have a big list of famous and not so famous women which I researched so that I wouldn't struggle to think of female examples to use in conversation with DD. If you PM me I would be happy to send it to you, perhaps you could use it as a jumping off point for discussion of your own. I wanted DD to know some of the amazing women who have lived/are still living who are rarely talked about- like Tang Sai'er from China who started and led a peasant revolt against the emperor or Ainissia Ramirez who is a female professor of science at Yale or Sybil Ludington who at 16 years old rode through the American wilderness at night for 40 miles, to warn towns of the British approach.

You could discuss stereotypes - a list again possibly. Get her to think of all the ways society defines women and men- pretty, kind, obsessed with appearance, macho, good at mapreading, chatty, not allowed to cry, pink etc and ask her how that applies to herself and her friends/family. This could lead on to advertising and marketing, how adverts for men and women are different etc.

I pressed post too soon

Hopefully you'll get lots of ideas from others too.

Portofino I was thinking along these lines earlier - while catching up on the day's awful threads by troubled women - and others telling them it was all in their minds...and wondering how we can educate or children about...well it all boils down to self esteem really, with a bit of a nod to respect, equality, etc.

I thought my feminism would sort of seep through to DD, a bit like osmosis, just in day-to-day life. That got wiped out by all the other myriad influences in her life.

If I could do it all again I'd make time for some sort of lessons-in-life cool curriculum (need a better description!) alongside all the stories, homework help, leisure activities, etc.

It seems your dd is learning some good stuff and that she can talk it over with you re-enforces the positive messages.

An alternative princess

the amazing Jackie Fleming

Nice thread. I look forward to more. Now I really must go to bed...

You could also make sure that she has access to lots of books with women as the main characters, rather than sidekicks, accessories or the lone 'token' woman.

www.amazon.co.uk/Necklace-Raindrops-Puffin-Modern-Classics/dp/014036613X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331898876&sr=8-4

www.amazon.co.uk/Clover-Twig-Incredible-Flying-Cottage/dp/074759063X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331898888&sr=8-1

www.amazon.co.uk/Clover-Twig-Perilous-Path-Umansky/dp/1408801876/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1331898888&sr=8-2

www.amazon.co.uk/The-Farthest-Away-Mountain-Lions/dp/0006729983/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331898850&sr=8-1

are all DD's current favourites and the farthest away mountain was one I had as a child.

I try and spend an hour with DD at bedtime once or twice a week (sometimes means she has to stay up later than usual), just chatting about things. She is relaxed then and enjoys my company with few distractions. We talk about her childhood, my childhood, our family, history, science, the world, what I want for her out of life, how I will always support her, how her body works, what she should do with her life, how to deal with the unkind child at school. Its a chance to really talk and reinforce her self-confidence and sense of self. I never know what we are going to talk about, it all sort of evolves and I really enjoy it; she squeals with excitement when she realises I am going to stay a little longer after her story.

There are some lovely ideas here.

Bump - for all the weekend feminist mnetters

What would you include in your cool curriculum?

This is the list I mentioned above. I have had several requests to send it on or post it on the thread. Its definitely a work in progress, not all the names have links, some have several, some are just links without the names as I just add to it as I come across women who interest me.

Dundee Mill workers bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/3080
PDF about millworkers

www.rrsdiscovery.com/index.php?pageID=116

Mary Wollstonecraft

www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ge-La/Greiner-Helen.html
Tang Sai?er
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History11642.html
Liu Hulan
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8821.html
Empress Lü Zhi - A Power-Hungry Empress
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History7817.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History7867.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8701.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8609.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8749.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8153.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8609.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8699.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History7889.html
Fanny Kemble
Sojourner Truth
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History9147.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History7679.html
history.cultural-china.com/en/48History8751.html
Constance Baker Motley ? first black woman to be a federal judge
Dora Lewis/Alice Cosu ?American suffragettes ?Night of Terror Nov 15 1917
Josephine Elizabeth Butler
Delores Clara Fernandez/Huerta
Jane Addams
Jovita Idar
Ida B. Wells
Barbara Jordan
Mary Church Terrell
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm
March 23, 2011? "I will not be silenced and I will not give up and I will not be ignored."
With these words, Elizabeth Taylor lent her voice to the voiceless, her iconic image to those who had previously been invisible, and her compassion and determination to a cause many others had shunned: the fight against HIV/AIDS. Her willingness to speak out against apathy and silence in the early, frighte.

Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo
Queen Joanna of Naples
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Greenham Common
Livia Augusta
(KS) First All Female African-American Flight Crew.

Captain Rachelle Jones, first officer Stephanie Grant and flight attendants Diana Galloway and Robin Rogers made history on February 12th when their Atlanta-based Delta Connection carrier departed from Atlanta to Nashville, Tennessee.

Minerva/Athene
Hypatia
Ada Lovelace
Marie Curie
amazingwomenrock.com/profiles-and-bios/
www.distinguishedwomen.com/
weburbanist.com/2008/06/13/12-monuments-dedicated-to-women/

Sybil Ludington- womenshistory.about.com/od/waramrevolution/p/ludington_ride.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington
Molly Pitcher/Mary Ludwig hayes
www.google.com/events/sciencefair/summary.html
www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19google.html
news.bbc.co.uk/local/taysideandcentralscotland/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8390000/8390747.stm
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/20/asian-women-trade-union-grunwick
womenshistory.about.com/od/worklaborunions/a/wtul.htm
www.historyofwomen.org/tradesunions.html
www.unionhistory.info/matchworkers/matchworkers.php

Mary seacole
Cleopatra
www.100greatblackbritons.com/list.html
Margaret Thatcher
First female MP Nancy Astor
WW1 ambulance drivers
www.firstworldwar.com/features/womenww1_one.htm
www.amazon.com/Not-So-Quiet-Stepdaughters-Women/product-reviews/093531282X
www.herstoria.com/discover/WW1Hospital.html
historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/from_war_to_war/worldwar1heroinemaudfitchlivedineurekautah.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Canfield_Fisher
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjory_Stoneman_Douglas
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Green
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Aid_Detachment
Factory workers ww1
womenshistory.about.com/od/biographies/u/biographies_women.htm
facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/VietnameseWomenInTheWar.html
www.teachamericanhistory.org/File/Harry_T._Burn.pdf

Ha, knew someone would come along and save me the job! :)

www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine10.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieu_Thi_Trinh

Oh - wow! Thank you so much! I feel a bit of self-education coming on, let along a chance to explore this with dd.

Brilliant thread, great list R2peepoo.

Thanks although its just a tiny percentage of women who have been overlooked by history books and society in general.

Famous Women in computer science, maths

Alice Paul

more

female inventors

more inventors

Gosh thanks for all this, my eldest is 8, I will look into all this for her. Great stuff thanks for sharing.

Thanks for that list R2, it's fantastic to have it all at my fingertips!

I was thinking about this over the weekend. I have a DD (2) and a DS (5) and have been questioning whether I parent them differently...they are veeeeery different characters and of course there's the age gap but it occurred to me that I tell my DD she can do anything , I'm not sure I tell my son that women can do anything. I am beginning to feel very strongly that we need to get our DSs involved in these kind of convos too.

www.themarysue.com/10-women-with-male-titles/?pid=680

eeek. Well that's my holiday reading sorted for the next wee while.

Should this be saved for posterity in mn classics?

A few more

Dorothy lawrence (disguised herself as a soldier in WW1, after war she claimed her guardian raped her and was committed to a mental asylum where she died almost 40 years later) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Lawrence

Mathematician- Amalie/Emmy Noether -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Lawrence

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noethe