Everybody lives with the stereotype that girls love dolls and boys love cars and trains, or that in school-age the girls are quieter than boys because of a biological difference that makes girls passive and suited for domestic life, and boys active and suited for the working one.
In the book ‘Dalla parte delle bambine’, assay published in 1973, the authoress Elena Giannini Belotti breaks the usual patterns and analyzes the two educational cases to explain that our beliefs are totally wrong.
Since childhood, boys and girls are always treated in different ways. The behaviour towards them are standardized, as well as the toys offered and the social rules teached.
The girls are educated to be moderate: they shouldn’t run, shouldn’t shout, shouldn’t hit other people, but, they should be tidy.
Instead, the boys have larger freedom: people don’t expect a boy orders his room, but, they think that if a boy shout, run or is bully, is normal.
In Belotti’s opinion, these behaviour are inculcated in boys and girls with so many subtle ways: for example, adults gift to the girls toys like dolls, iron or toy kitchen, without thinking that a girl might want a toy train. Adults praise girls if they cure their appearance but they don’t care if a girl builds something beautiful with legos.
Instead, no one would give to a boy a pink rompers or a doll, even if a boy ask for one.
So girls are dispirited since they’re little, because they can’t be curious, active or independent. They must remain in the boy’s shadow.
Of course, the example that Belotti does , date back to the ’70, nowdays a lot of things are changed, but a lot of comments done by the authoress are still valid.
Just another thing. Elena Giannini Belotti wasn’t the only one who write about this topic, do you know?
Loredana Lipperini, reconnecting herself to Belotti’s reflections, wrote another book, where she follow some themes like myths, conflicts, dreams, that live in the female imagery.
In this book you can find that since the 70s, things haven’t changed much, except for some slight improvement. Of course girl no longer wear pink pinafore, but pink Is the Barbie’s world; now there are a lot of new heroines but they are still mainly fairies or witches. You can already find book and magazines that invite girls to be beautiful or to look after the house.
The same women that some decades ago were fighting for the same rights as men, now they have surrendered to a society where women and men are still divided despite of the appearance that want us to understand the contrary.
