Around the world, girls are taught the same limiting lesson

It doesn't matter if you grow up in India or China or the United States - when it comes to learning what it means to be a girl or a boy, a universal stereotype prevails: Girls are weak and boys are strong. That's the dispiriting finding of a comprehensive new study of children and their parents around the world, released Wednesday morning by the World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Kids learn this "truth" about gender from their parents, friends and teachers at a very young age, conclude the researchers, who looked at kids ages 10 to 14, the period when they're just entering adolescence. "In every single place, girls are given the message that they are weak, that they are vulnerable. That their bodies are a target," said Robert Blum, who chairs the department of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins and led the study. "They're told 'cover up and stay away from boys,'" and when they fail to do so, he added, the "sanctions they experience are pretty profound."

source: Article 'Around The World, Girls Are Taught The Same Limiting Lesson' by Emily Peck; www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gender-stereotypes-worldwide_us_59c15e88e4b087fdf5089cab; HuffPost; 20 September 2017