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Girl toys vs boy toys: The experiment - BBC Stories

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Barbie | The Dream Gap Project Subtitulado

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Presenting Equal Play, our new campaign to support parents, care givers and influential adults to challenge gender stereotypes with their kids.

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As Early Years educators, you know children are really just roughly-human-shaped sponges. As they absorb this new strange world they're toddling through, it's part of your job to guide those experiences and be mindful of the lessons that those experiences teach.

Gender stereotypes and bias are part of those experiences, and that's why the way we talk about gender with children really matters. If we stop and think about the lessons we're giving children, we can cultivate a more equal idea of gender, and how we treat one another in the coming generation.

To work out where to start when it comes to addressing gender inequality in your rooms, we chatted to Nic Ponsford, Co-CEO and Founder of the Global Equality Collective platform. Nic wants to show every educational setting and business how easy it is to create an inclusive environment, and why the first few years of a child's life are so important when we talk about gender equality.

Why the way we talk about gender matters

"From about 18 months onwards, children can already tell the difference between genders," says Nic. After this point, the way we talk about gender with children has a massive impact on how they see the world and their place within it.

This is why you've got such a vital role in the Early Years gender equality movement.

"We need to move away from these binary roles we've had in the past," warns Nic. Reading 'girls' stories about helpless princesses and 'boys' stories about brave knights might not seem harmful, but this kind of language places children in stereotypical gender roles, and narrows a child's opportunities in later life. If a child can only see themselves through the lens of a binary 'boys do this and girls do this' approach, they will hold onto this way of thinking in later life.

As an educator, you have the power to give children an environment that encourages and enables equal opportunities - from the staff you hire as role models to the activities you plan on a day-to-day basis. What can I do as an Early Years educatorWhat can I do as an Early Years educator?

What can I do as an Early Years educator?

The conversation about gender equality needs to start in the Early Years.

"For any sustainable change, it needs to be embedded at the centre," Nic states. Early Years "gets pushed into a little corner away from the proper debates about education, which is ridiculous. It should be the flip-way." All too often, the topic of gender stereotyping is only discussed when a child reaches school-age.

And yet, what could be more powerful than making sure children never establish these wonky stereotypes to begin with? We focus on tackling the issue when children are older, and for Nic, this is far too late.

Nic notes that when faced with a classroom full of teenagers, you have to constantly ask yourself "What route have they taken to get here?" What lessons did they learn in early childhood that may have given them a gender bias and why? It becomes a lot trickier to stop gender stereotypes at this stage, so we need to go right back to the start to where these biases form.

Early Years practitioners should be the ones to introduce these lessons to give children the best possible chance, and to rebuild the way we look at gender equality from the ground up.

"We want to get the home, the educational setting and the workplace all involved," says Nic. In her view, these are all interlinked. If we stop encouraging stereotypes in Early Years, this will have a knock-on effect when the child goes to school and enters the workplace. Stopping biases from forming paves the way for a more equal future.

Questions for reflection

Children absorb everything around them, so by making the environment of your setting open to diverse gender roles, you're giving them an inclusive environment from which to build an equal framework for life. Have a think about the questions below to assess what you could be doing in your setting to promote gender equality.

What practice do I see that might enforce harmful gender stereotypes?

Are children seeing a diverse array of role models? Are you making sure, for example, that they see female firemen or male nurses?

Do the stories you read to children challenge gender stereotypes? They might have a science-whizz princess or a boy who isn't afraid to show how he's feeling.

Are you encouraging non-gendered play and diverse gender roles in the games and activities you give? You can mix up the 'boys' and 'girls' toys around your room, for example, or have an activity where boys play the nurse role.

Are you making sure that the staff you hire really represent the community that you live in? Can they recognise staff who look and act like them?

Are you including a range of images on your website that accurately represent the people in your community?

How to make your setting more gender inclusive

These are big questions, and figuring out what to do next isn't easy. When you've had time to reflect, have a look at the tips below to see how you can make your environment more inclusive.

Learn as much as you possibly can. If you don't fully understand gender equality and where your weaknesses lie, how can you help others change their own approach?! Read a few articles, talk to your staff and identify where you need change. Don't be afraid to have difficult conversations about where you need improvements - this is a process and it doesn't happen overnight.

Challenge your own behaviour and vocabulary when you talk and interact with children - think about using non-gendered language when you bring up topics about stereotypically gendered subjects. Are you used to calling a dancer 'her' or an astronaut 'him'? Try to avoid labelling girls and boys differently, and avoid gendered pet names such as 'sweetie' or 'fella'.

Give children gender inclusive activities and roleplay. Play is how a child sees and interprets the world, so activities are a perfect way to introduce gender equality to your setting. We previously partnered with Global Equality Collective to support the launch of EYHome, an online resource with 80 different gender-inclusive activities that you can use to encourage this.

Make your setting environment somewhere that encourages inclusive, non-gendered play. This can be as simple as mixing up your play areas to ensure that you don't have a 'boy's' or 'girl's' corner. Have pictures non-conforming stereotypes too - like male ballet dancers and girl scientists. If you're looking for handy tips and tricks, you can find a list of our 12 ways to promote gender equality in your setting here.

Start a conversation with parents about how they can reinforce what you're doing at home. The Global Equality Collective have a wonderful resource specifically for this called Raising Rebels. From book recommendations to advice on handling uncomfortable topics, it's a great tool for parents to develop their own understanding and continue the work you're doing at your setting.

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Not quite sure where you should start?

The reason Nic is so vocal about the importance of Early Years is due to the launch of her fantastic new platform, the Global Equality Collective. The GEC platform lets you assess how your setting scores in terms of gender equality and inclusion - perfect for those who don't know quite where to start.

Instead of constantly asking yourself questions such as "Am I doing enough to encourage gender equality in my setting? Do my staff feel supported? Is my website inclusive and representative of diversity?" you simply fill out a questionnaire on the Global Equality Collective website to get solid data on what areas you should be working on.

You'll be able to see exactly where the gaps in your setting are. The best part? For every gap in your knowledge or practices, the incredible eLearning hub offers a whole host of podcasts, book recommendations, articles and an entire community for you to build and develop your knowledge.

The platform is about starting a conversation, about getting 'comfortable with discomfort' by addressing the fact that you may not be doing everything you can to encourage gender equality.

Don't forget the parents

Giving children an environment that encourages gender equality is key, but what can you do outside of the walls of your setting to really make a lasting impact? Involve the parents.

"There's never going to be a solution if you don't bring it all together," states Nic. Creating a link between the setting and the home is part of this solution, as it ensures the work you do as an educator is reinforced time and time again.

You could start a discussion with the parents about how to encourage inclusive play at home, or suggest books for them to read to their children that include diverse heroes and heroines. You can find an extensive list of wonderful books exactly like these on the GEC platform here. Sharing knowledge creates an invisible string between the setting and home, and for Nic, repetition and exposure are absolutely essential to make a lasting impact.

For Nic, this sharing of knowledge is how we can create a fairer and equal world. She hopes the Global Equality Collective platform encourages Early Years practitioners to strike up difficult conversations with parents and address inequality as early as possible to stop harmful stereotypes.

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Official Danish Government Reopening Advice

Guidance from the Danish Health Ministry, translated in full to English.

UK Nursery Covid-19 Response Group Recommendations

The full recommendations from a working group of over 70 nursery chains in the UK.

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Why Early Years is the Key to Gender Equality | Famly

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As Early Years educators, you know children are really just roughly-human-shaped sponges. As they absorb this new strange world they're toddling through, it's part of your job to guide those experiences and be mindful of the lessons that those experiences teach.

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Early Learning and Childcare - Gender Equity

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What do we mean by Gender Equality and Gender Equity?

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Gender Reflections On Classroom Practice And Organisation

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SBC Early Years Gender Equality Audit - based on CI Gender Equal Play document

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Gender Equality – further reading – Early Level Portal

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Letterbox Library – Book Company with diverse themed books

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A guide to promoting gender equality - Gender equality support

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More resources than ever are available to help you evaluate and promote gender equality in your setting. Hannah Crown has a round-up

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The importance of representation within the Early Years is a subject of continual discussion.

What do we hope to add to that discussion? Well, we felt like we had heard from so many other professionals about the different ways that we should promote diversity and support children and families within the sector.

Yet, there wasn't a lot of accessible information to help us explore why we do things the way we do when it comes to discussing LGBTQIA+ in the Early Years.

Some settings had even told us that they didn't focus on this enough "in case the parents find out". In fact, it's something we hear a lot. We thought it was time to ask why, and what we can do about it.

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Why are some Early Years settings afraid of focusing on LGBTQIA+ Awareness?

It's so important to be reflective on our own practice and think about why it might be that people worry about how to discuss LGBTQIA+ in the Early Years. We wondered:

Is it due to individuals not knowing enough about a certain aspect of the LGBTQ community?

Is it that they fear addressing an issue that they aren't totally confident in?

Or is it that they may be taken out of their own comfort zone when looking at these important issues with the children?

But pushing ourselves from our comfort zone is how we improve. Ultimately, how would a child in our setting feel within their day-to-day experiences if they knew that they felt different to other children in some way but didn't have a trusted adult to help them?

That's why, in 2020, the LGBTQIA+ Early Years Working Group was formed. There are now 17 members involved, each working within different sectors and roles from Early Years settings through to schools.

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What does heteronormative mean in the Early Years?

Heteronormativity is the idea that society views heterosexuality as the 'norm'. This means if you're part of the LGBTQIA+ community, you're seen as different. Then along with that, come gender stereotypes and negative viewpoints that can easily harm people who don't fit that heternormative view of the world.

As with anything in the Early Years, to help improve our approach on a certain issue, it is always about bringing the narrative back to keeping the unique child at the centre of our approaches and celebrating this. With that in mind, let's start with why this matters.

Why do we need to get involved when it comes to LGBTQIA+ representation in the Early Years?

Just like us, you may be thinking, why? Why do we need to get involved when it comes to LGBTQIA+ representation?

Well, let's take a trip to an early years setting. Within this setting there is a same-sex female parent couple and their 3-year-old Maisey attends full-time. Maisey is positive, confident within her play - generally a happy young human. One day, Maisey asked her key worker, Paul, 'Paul, where are the pictures of my mummies?'.

What she meant was - where is my representation?

Maisey comes from a loving home, but when she goes to nursery, like all children she's soaking it all in. And she's starting to notice that her voice is missing. Where is her family, she's wondering, which she knows as the 'norm' at home.

We're sure you can start to connect the dots. This story leads us into our why...

Children quickly pick up on whether their environment represents them - or not. Representing the voice of every child is crucial for learning and development, and that's why it's so important to get to know your parents or carers who identify as LGBTQIA+.

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Getting to know your LGBTQIA+ families

It's important that you ask the same questions of LGBTQIA+ families that you ask everyone, but you could also ask some questions which are specific to them, such as:

What names does your child call you?

How would you like us to refer to you when we speak to your child?

How would you like us to describe your family to others, children and families etc?

How would you like me to respond to questions about your family?

Something to bear in mind is that even though these questions are quite open, some parents and carers who identify as LGBTQIA+ may be quite private, and might not be comfortable straight away with sharing details about their home life or family relationships. This is where it's so vital that your environment is as inclusive as possible, and you're prepared to answer all questions children ask - so that children like Maisey have the opportunity to see a true reflection of society today.

How to create a welcoming environment for LGBTQIA+ families in the Early Years

Within your setting, it is important to make every effort to make your environment welcoming and nurturing for members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Here are some examples, a start to reflect on your setting and how you can make your environment inclusive:

1. Make all of your forms reflective of the language that is welcoming to all kinds of families - for example, changing the spaces that request the names of 'father' or 'mother', instead using 'parent' or 'guardian'

2. In your written communication, address families with inclusive phrases like 'Dear Parents and Carers' or simply 'Dear Families'

3. Make diverse images more visible in your setting, with books, posters and play equipment that visually represents all children and families within our society.

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There are lots of fantastic resources and guidance already out there to help you be a more supportive setting for all children and families. These include fantastic case studies about how settings have already moved forward with being a good example of LGBTQIA+ inclusivity fromour own LGBTQIA+ Early Years Group and this Early Years toolkit from Stonewall.

Our advice would be to start by taking some time to reflect on where you are as an organisation and as individuals. Ask:

What is your current curriculum and delivery of LGBTQIA awareness?

How often do you discuss this?

What resources do you have that show same-sex families?

Is your delivery merely a gesture, or is it embedded within your ethos and culture?

We know from experience and discussions with other settings that everyone is on a journey in their learning and delivery of LGBTQIA+ awareness. Knowing this and accepting this will make it easier to ensure that the discussions you have with your teams aren't focused on who is 'right and wrong' but instead framed around the needs of the children and of their families. If you're so afraid of getting things wrong that you can't have that discussion to begin with, then making any progress is going to be almost impossible.

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Engaging LGBTQIA+ families beyond your Early Years setting

Engagement with the wider community is also very important. As with everything that we do within the Early Years, we need to ensure that we are communicating with families about our offer and how we celebrate differences - this includes our LGBTQIA+ delivery.

Children in your setting might have same-sex parents, same-sex relatives or may be on their own journey to explore their gender. These are all great learning opportunities for the child, but also for us as professionals. The community and families that you work with will be a great resource to help shape your discussions and experiences with this. We need to 'normalise' the discussions around LGBTQIA+, so that this is seen as of equal importance to all other discussions around personal development.

In summary, you should:

Make sure that your offer is embedded within your ethos and that your discussions with colleagues and families are focused on the child.

Constantly review what you're doing and how you're doing it, asking - does it showcase the best that you can be?

Use readily available resources for inspiration and ensure that this is a longer-term plan for your setting.

Embrace the challenges and prepare for them, by talking with other settings who may be further ahead on their journey.

Remember, that doing the right thing for the child and family may not always be the easiest thing to do. But this shouldn't detract from the work we do each day to prepare our children for life in the modern world.
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The hope...

We hope that this blog will inspire you to reflect on your own values and beliefs, as well as that of your setting. We know that this may be a sensitive issue for you to discuss with colleagues and to get started with, but as with all areas of personal and social development it is key to ensure that you're meeting the needs of the unique child and their family.

There are laws and protections in place to support this work, including the Equality Act 2010, which can be referred to when framing discussions and training to help.

The support that we provide to each other is even more important now and in the future and learning from each other's strengths and areas of development will ensure that each child in every setting is getting the best start in life.

Every child and family has the right to feel included and represented within their setting. We hope that this blog, the magazine and awareness week help to inform wider discussions across all Early Years settings to ensure that we get it right from the start. Our children are with us for a relatively short period of their formative years and we need to be confident and courageous in delivering what is right for every one of them. Be proud of your setting and its offer and be the hope for every child and family that you work alongside.
Aaron Bradbury is a Principal Lecturer in Early Childhood at Nottingham Trent University, and has been working in the Early Years. He's currently a member of the Executive Committee of the ECSDN (Early Childhood Studies Degree Network), the co-founder of The Early Years Academy and provides an online platform for practitioners and all Early Years professionals via his app and website, Early Years Reviews by Aaron.
Gary is the Headteacher of a special school in Derby and has over 12 years' experience within teaching and school leadership. He lives with his husband in Birmingham and has worked in many different settings, including Early Years and primary schools (both mainstream and SEND). Gary introduced and hosts the fortnightly SENDVoices Twitter chat held on a Saturday morning and plans to host a special online BrewEd focusing on SEND.

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Why LGBTQIA+ representation matters in Early Years | Famly

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Aaron Bradbury and Gary Coffey explain why it's vital that your early years setting takes LGBTQIA+ representation seriously - and how you can get started.

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5 Top Tips for Gender Equal Play. - Katie Horsburgh, Zero Tolerance - Play Scotland

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Five top tips for gender-equal play by Katie Horsborough, Policy and Practice officer: Children and young people. Zero Tolerance is a Scottish charity working to end men’s violence against women by tackling its root cause: gender inequality.

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Highland Council's Equalities Improvement Group and LGBTI+ sub-group have published a series of lesson plans in December 2017 to support the development of Equality and Diversity across the curriculum. 18 picture books have been selected; for each picture book there have been lessons created for Early - Fourth Levels (Curriculum for Excellence) driven by the...