How much do women count if they not counted?

Abstract

The condition of women throughout the world is marked by countless injustices and violations of the most fundamental rights established by the Universal Declaration of human rights and every culture is potentially prone to commit discrimination against women in various forms. Women are worse fed, more exposed to physical violence, more exposed to diseases and less educated; they have less access to, or are excluded from, vocational training paths; they are the most vulnerable among prisoners of conscience, refugees and immigrants and the least considered within ethnic minorities; from their very childhood, women are humiliated, undernourished, sold, raped and killed; their work is generally less paid compared to men’s work and in some countries they are victims of forced marriages. Such condition is the result of old traditions that implicit gender-differentiated education has long promoted through cultural models based on theories, practices and policies marked by discrimination and structured differentially for men and women. Within these cultural models, the basic educational institutions have played and still play a major role in perpetuating such traditions. Nevertheless, if we want to overcome inequalities and provide women with empowerment, we have to start right from the educational institutions and in particular from school, through the adoption of an intercultural approach to education: an approach based on active pedagogy and on methods of analysis, exchange and enhancement typical of socio-educational animation. The intercultural approach to education is attentive to promote the realisation of each individual and the dignity and right of everyone to express himself/herself in his/her own way. Such an approach will give women the opportunity to become actual agents of collective change and to get the strength and wellbeing necessary to count and be counted as human beings entitled to freedom and equality, and to have access to all the rights set out in Declarations, Covenants and Conventions.