As we continue in the journey to achieving gender equality, it’s important to carry along the next generation. Speaking out about feminism and gender equality to your children can be very tricky especially because they cannot fully grasp the technicalities of inequality and all the terms that you’d normally use when explaining to adults. That is why it is very important to exercise caution when explaining feminism to your kids.
Here are a few pointers and tips to help you when teaching your kids about feminism.
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Focus on equality and explain all the benefits of feminism to the child.
Kids have short attention spans so whatever you want to say, you may want to keep it short and catchy and be sure to highlight the importance and benefits young girls can enjoy through feminism, like access to education, voting rights, etc.
Highlight the importance of speaking about feminism.
Explain to your child that speaking up about feminism is important to achieving gender equality. You can site examples using how important their favourite tv show is or their favourite dress etc. With children, you want to be sure that they fully understand the importance of a concept so that when they go out to social gatherings like school, they will not pick up and reinforce acts of sexism.
Give them books on feminism.
If they’re old enough to read and understand books, you can start gifting them books with strong themes of feminism and you can start conversations with them based on the books.
Give them practical examples.
Children learn a lot more when they can relate to the situation. So you can give examples like “Thanks to feminism, I chose to have you” or “Feminism fights for girls to have an opportunity to go to school”. The key to giving examples is to ensure they are not abstract or unrelatable.
Highlight the ills of inequality.
Children are very tender and embody a lot of compassion. You can engage your child’s empathetic side by highlighting the ills of inequality and how detrimental it is for women all around the world.
Explaining feminism to your kids is very important when you’re trying to build an equal household and instil core knowledge about equality in them.
Children are very impressionable and they pick up habits and ideologies very easily, both good ones and bad ones. Hence, it is important that you can get control of that aspect of their core values and belief system, by helping them see the importance of a cause as important as feminism at a very young age.
Read Also: The Feminist Glossary You Didn’t Know You Needed
