Gender Equality and the Fairy Boot

This morning, just after breakfast, child one started with the imaginary games while I was clearing the table. Today's imaginative play was done using the fairy boot with all the fairies representing close family and friends.

I wasn't playing with the child but I was listening to the scene being played out while virtuously doing the dishes 😜. Child one is obsessed with wolves and bears and as usual, there was a bear in the story, prowling the perimeter of the fairy boot and frightening all the fairies.

Long story short, the fairies made it safely inside the boot and then I overheard the child say, ''daddy is scared". I almost said, ''don't be silly, daddies don't get scared'' and then I caught myself. Just in time.

In that second, I recognised yet another stereotype that I harbour in my mind. I just realised that I was still carrying it about and waiting to transmit it to my child, the untruth that men are not supposed to be scared.

Me! A full fledged believer in gender equality.

The same me who pulled up a friend on his choice of descriptive language for women just the other day because he called me feisty.

There you have it, madam carry-gender-equality-on-her-head is guilty.

We all carry stereotypes that have been handed down to us by our culture and environment. They are part of us. They creep up on us from the darkest recesses of our minds when we are least aware of them and influence the choices we make, the words we say, the way we treat members of different sexes at work, home or play.

Have you ever heard about unconscious bias? It is talked about a lot with respect to removing discrimination. Unconscious bias is what makes us treat people in certain ways, it is our brains way of making quick judgements without us realising based on our culture, personal experiences and environment.

When I heard my daughters words, my brain made a quick judgement based on what I had been fed during my upbringing, i.e. that the man should always be strong. That masculinity equates to showing no fear in the face of danger, not asking for help or support, not showing any outward signs of emotion and basically being a He-man.

Well, my judgement was wrong and I am so grateful that in that split second when I was distracted, my mouth did not transmit the result of my minds unconscious judgement to my child. Phew!!!!

I was further reminded why it is so important for us to regularly examine our thoughts to determine if we are harbouring gender stereotypes that influence our decisions. Decisions that could be unfair and hurt people. A lot.

Men can and should be allowed to express fear, sadness, loneliness, vulnerability, anxiety etc. without worrying about what people would think of it. Expressing emotions outwardly doesn't make men not men. We were all given tear ducts for a reason. If men didn't need to cry sometimes, then they wouldn't have them. I wonder about the man who threw himself off the third mainland bridge last week. Yes he was depressed or so it seems but I wonder if the root cause of his angst wasn't related to the unfair pressures placed on men by society.

I wish I could tell you that I said something clever to my child afterwards, but I didn't. I was too busy being shocked at what I had just discovered in my mind to recover quickly enough and the moment passed.

However, because of what happened this morning, I am now prepared for the next time child one says something similar. I will definitely be saying that it's ok for daddy to be scared because he is human and we all get scared sometimes. I will also say that family and friends are our support mechanism in times of fear and we should go and tell someone that we love about how we feel. How about that?

Two lessons for the price of one.