Girls and Boys:Gender & Culture in Serbia
In cooperation between:
Zene na Delu, Belgrade, Serbia
RåFILM, Lund, Sweden

Education is a powerful way of influencing social views and reinforcing or challenging strongly held beliefs through curricula and teaching methods. It is important to note that often teachers’ patriarchal views influence the ways in which they teach boys and girls, thus influencing the self-esteem and performance of girls and boys in particular subjects. In the very educational process/curriculum and within institutional environment there are latent forms of discrimination that help forming traditional gender identities, both for girls and boys. For instance, negative gender-coded messages about girls’ lower abilities in math and science along with their “natural” abilities in caring for children and home create in some girls a lower expectation for success in traditionally masculine fields. It is significant for motivation during education that a lack of positive role models of women helps to maintain the traditional status quo. School safety issues include the difficulties that girls
often face in the school environment regarding sexual harassment and violence. However, boys are more likely than girls to struggle with reading and to give up on independent reading. Boys are also far more likely than girls to under perform in writing. There’s no adequate support to increase social-emotional skills of boys, effective teaching and assessment strategies for boys’ learning styles or behaviour strategies.

The aim of the project is to establish a creative environment within the educational system in Serbia, in which gender equality could be addressed to girls and boys in elementary school. We believe that in this way we could create the base for further work in this field. Throughout this creative program, especially during the implementation process, it will be very important to have high expectations of all the children in the class, avoid gender or other stereo-typing, use an active teaching style and try to get all children involved. Throughout this creative process, we plan to strongly involve boys and girls and get their answers on the attitudes, plays, identities and role models – gender culture of boys and girls in common Serbian elementary school.

Activities within project included storytelling workshops followed by workshops in stop-motion animation with children age 8-10. Using the story of  Pippi the Longstock as postitive gender role model, we have inspired girls and boys from elementary school "Јоvan Cvijić" but also children from Svratište (Drop-in house for street children) to think about their position as girls/boys and also their relationship towards violence that often occurs in their environment. Together we have discussed various strategies for dealing with violence, as well as specific gender context of violence. At the end we have put every child in Pippi's shoes - the shoes of the strongest person in the world, and asked what would they do.

The results of that work are short movies made by children that we present on this DVD. You will see strongest persons that take care of those in need, teach, build houses for homeless, save planet by cleaning it or taking care of endangered species, or just organize parades and parties for friends :)

Story telling is in Serbia inovative technique which provides possibility to learn not only how to tell a story but also how to create new content through personal prism using existing myths, or in this case de – mystification of existing myths. That is why we choose to introduce this technique to the project.

With stop-motion animation technique, the children will have an oportunity to visualize and express their view on gender issues and present the conlcusion drawn during the gender workshops. RåFILM has conducted stop-motion animation workshops in schools and other contexts in Sweden,
also using the technique to give voice to stories not often heard in mainstream media. Another reason for choosing stop-motion animation is that language is not of any big importance in the process.

Gender awareness workshops provide an additional frame for the school staff to deal with this issue, since the Serbian educational system lacks gender friendly methodology and content. The combination of representatives from Serbia and Sweden, story telling and stop-motion animation,
is inspiring and rich not only for the students, but everyone involved in the project.

Partners in project:
Elementary School "Jovan Cvijić" - Belgrade
Svratište (Drop-in house for street children) - Belgrade