At school, me too

The urgent need for an education which aims to work towards greater equality between women and men lead me to the execution of an important project on the theme of education for equality. I have developed with my Institute Manzoni in Trento (Italy), in collaboration with the local University of Trento – Faculty of Sociology, the project “At school, m* too”. I worked with a 3rd year class exploring the theme of the image of women and men in the Media and in Art and the stereotypes that are behind them. Photography is a vehicle that teeenagers are familiar with, but which often they use without really considering what they are communicating. It was important for them to investigate the deeper meaning of the images on TV and the Internet, which they can then read with a different awareness, then they carryed out a workshop that lead 15 boys to produce 4 series of murals. The stated goal was to spread a greater awareness among girls and boys, as teenagers committed to building their identity and future, the school itself is promoting a process of inquiry and reflection, trying not to transmit models that would preclude choices of study or profession.
Teenagers dressed in clothes of the most common genderized professions (a hairdresser, housewife, maid, teacher, nurse, doctor, carpenter, mason, painter, laborer, airline pilot, mechanic, cook, banking and cardinal – it would be difficult even to imagine a woman cardinal in Italy …). They painted their faces, first with the typical colors of male and female, blue and pink, then adding more colours to each photo, saying that a multicoloured world is better. Their eyes look to the future soliciting a new vision of the contemporary roles in society to mean that their identity is not a stereotyped but is realized in the complementarity relations female/male.
Now their images are installed in the underpass of the train station of Trento, with the stated aim of encouraging the distracted eyes of passers-by to think about the theme of education for equality.