Lecturer of Institute for the Study of Women and Child Development Yogyakarta, Ifa Aryani, says that currently many distinctions in educating and raising children in the community are still encountered. These are often detrimental to one gender and have an impact on the future life. Therefore, it is time to eliminate gender bias education of children. "God created men and women with the same amount of brain capacity, about 150 million of brain cells. Under these conditions, each child actually has the same opportunity to be educated and nurtured equally by parents, teachers and anyone else," she said at the Auditorium of Masri Singarimbun Building, UGM Center for Population and Policy Studies on Thursday (21/7).
Present as speaker in the Seminar on Implementation of Gender Fair Education for Children, held by the Center, Ifa says that children should be given the freedom to choose the instrument and how to play the game in the early childhood and kindergarten. For her, women are not always associated with dolls games and boys with cars, or women perform domestic roles and men perform a variety of public roles. “We still find teaching materials that show gender bias as well as discriminative relationship patterns and approaches of teachers to children. This condition is quite alarming," she explained.
In real life, however, a woman should also be able to fix electricity and a man can work in the kitchen because in some cases women become a policewoman and engaged in the military, while men become international chefs.
This distinction, according to Ifa Aryani, also has impacts to the provision of child nutrition. The boys sometimes get a better nutritional intake than women so that, in some cases, girls tend to be weak, lacking initiative, and passive. "Boys are also more difficult to empathize and difficult to become independent for a variety of domestic tasks," Ifa said.
As a solution, Ifa expects boys and girls to be trained to do domestic chores equitably because domestic tasks are not necessarily the nature of women. Parents can conduct the patterns of communication, supervision, and advice as needed because boys and girls are physically different but have the same opportunity. "Avoid violence, whether physical, mental, economic or sexual. To warn the boys does not necessarily to shout all the time or, on the other hand, girls with tenderness," she said.
To educate and nurture fairly can be done since the pregnancy. Whichever the fetus would become should be given equal attention. It is also the same in the selection of accessories, clothes, and others with a wide variety of specific colors for a specific gender. Both girls and boys are given a choice of various types of toys. "It is also important to learn to listen to children. The view that the girls are always identical with pink and boys are more suitable in blue should be avoided," she explained.