We have written a piece for PACEY - the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years - about how Gender Action can work in early years settings, making reference to our focus areas and Glyn Hawke’s blog for us.

You can read our article here.

Megan Perryman is a teacher in Hackney with a background in managing projects for the public and not-for-profit sectors. She is a co-founder of Let Toys Be Toys, a campaign group that challenges gender stereotypes in childhood. Since the campaign began, fifteen major UK retailers have stopped signposting toys specifically for boys or girls and eleven children’s publishers have agreed to stop marketing books explicitly to boys or girls.

An afternoon lesson in Year One and we’re acting out Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I invite the children, one row at a time, to stand at the front of the class and act out each section of the story…

At Rye Oak, our journey began by examining our role as practitioners in either challenging or reinforcing gender stereotypes.  In the initial stage, we unpicked our training and the ‘assumptions’ that had become 'fact' in our daily practice. We shared stories we had heard over the years, particularly around boys and writing, which reinforced the assumption of innate biological differences between boys and girls.  These stories included hearing that…

We are thrilled to announce the winner of our prize draw for Supporter schools who teach Key Stage 2, thanks to educational publishers, Collins. The winner is….

Queen’s Park Primary School!

The prize was to win a visit from Lisa Rajan, author of the Tara Binns books. This new series, within whole-school reading programme Collins Big Cat, explores STEM careers with a female protagonist.

I can’t believe it has been nearly two months since we launched Gender Action with teachers at City Hall. The event was exciting, not only as we got to hear from Professor Becky Francis, and educators and activists on our panel and leading our workshops, but also because we had such quality conversations with teachers and practitioners, from nurseries up to colleges. This was an enriching experience, and confirmed the need for Gender Action…

We were delighted to run a workshop for primary school teachers at the Gender Action launch event last month, addressing gendered language in schools, why it matters and strategies for dealing with it.  We chose to address language as language runs through the heart of children’s learning about the world and – intended or otherwise – conveys profound and lasting messages to children about how they should look and behave, what they should aspire to, what and who they should play with. 

On 1 March 2019, Gender Action was invited to participate at a training event for teachers from Islington Council at City and Islington College. This was a great opportunity to meet teachers interested in gender equality work, as well as other organisations in Islington working in similar fields.