How we challenged gender discrimination in our high school

Five students in Turkey share how they made their school a more inclusive place.

In Turkey, patriarchal norms affect everything we do. More girls leave school than boys in rural areas. Families expect their daughters to take care of younger siblings or work in agriculture while their sons go to school to prepare for their future careers. Men criticize their peers for “acting like a girl” if they speak in a slightly softer voice than usual. Women are looked down on and made to feel worthless. 

(Courtesy of the Bahçeşehir High School HeforShe Club)

As five 15-year-olds, we knew we had to do something to prevent future generations from growing up in a society like this. In September 2019, our biology teacher Neriman Derya told her students that she was creating a HeForShe club at our high school to break down prejudices and fight for gender equality. HeForShe is a U.N. campaign to advance gender equality around the world. We immediately signed up. Through this team, we wanted to make other students think about gender equality and how the language they use reinforces patriarchal norms. 

Since then, we’ve started a number of initiatives at our school to make progress for gender equality. Although speaking out hasn’t always been easy, we’re starting to see progress among our friends. Our peers are avoiding gender discrimination in daily language, such as the phrases “behave like a man” or “don’t play like a girl.” Boys are now questioning school policies that prevent them from wearing earrings like girls. Both genders are now speaking loudly about gender inequality.

If you want to create change in your high school, here are some of our team’s recent initiatives that helped us.

Promoting gender-inclusive language. One of our team’s first projects was highlighting that using language like “behave like a man” makes men seem more dominant. We put up banners all around our school informing people about the alternative, gender-neutral versions of common phrases. As a result of this campaign, we noticed that our teachers started changing the way they speak. Instead of saying “behave like a man,” they now say “behave well.” They’ve also stopped using the Turkish word bilim adamı (science man) and started using the word bilim insanı (scientist) to indicate that a person of any gender can be a scientist. 

The HeForShe club poses with books they donated to the school library. (Courtesy of the Bahçeşehir High School HeforShe Club)

Donating feminist books to our library. We donated some books focused on gender equality and feminism to our library so that we all can look at these topics with a new and different perspective. Using funds from our own pockets we donated copies of “Becoming” by Michelle Obama and “I am Malala” by Malala Yousafzai. By doing this, we wanted students to feel that they are not alone when they see that these famous people had something in common with them.

Holding a basketball fundraiser. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month so we organized a pink-themed basketball tournament to help teach our peers about the disease. We used a pink basketball and encouraged players to dress in pink clothes. It was the first event where our friends who are resistant to gender equality supported our work. Sports tournaments are a symbol of fighting for the same cause, so we used team sports to unite us all and put our differences aside.

Creating interactive posters. For International Men’s Day in November, we hung up some interactive posters around the school with questions about gender stereotypes like: Can you wear the clothes you want freely? Hey you! As a girl did you ever think of making the first move? As a guy, did you ever think of dyeing your hair? We provided markers for students to write answers and found that we got great responses that we probably couldn’t get if we’d asked these questions directly to their face. We found out that without social pressure and anonymously a lot of people had different takes on these questions.

(Courtesy of the Bahçeşehir High School HeforShe Club)

Inviting guest speakers. We invited İlayda Eskitaşçıoğlu who is a member of Beijing 25+ Youth Task force to give a speech to our high school about her work on gender equality. From İlayda, we learned that there is a career focused on feminism and gender equality and that activism doesn’t end here in high school. Guest speakers are really important because they have more experience than us. 

Holding essay contests. We organized essay contests for our middle school and high school about gender inequality. We asked students to share their personal opinions about gender inequality. Then we chose the winners and gave them $25 gift cards to spend in a bookstore. We published the winning essays on our HeForShe Instagram page and our school’s Twitter page. Essay contests offer freedom amongst students and an opportunity to raise their voices.

We’ve seen great progress in our community, but we’re not stopping yet. We’re planning to spread HeForShe to other campuses in Turkey. We want to reach people of all ages to create awareness about the importance of gender equality.