The eve of March 8 I stayed a little longer at school. Not to prepare anything "pretty", but to think what message a day like this truly deserves when you work with children: one that is not forgotten upon leaving through the door.
8M reminds me that educating is not just teaching content. We educate when we let a joke that humiliates pass, when we distribute tasks “out of habit”, when we ask a girl to be prudent and a boy to be brave, as if they came already written inside. And we also educate when we do the opposite: when we correct calmly, when we name respect without fear of being intense, when we show that caring for others is not “helping”, it is taking responsibility.
I heard the conversation of several children, in the yard, they were talking about the changes they would make starting from that day, they would no longer say, that girls don't know how to play soccer and that they also couldn't say; that it's for girls, to cry, when a boy did it.
Hopefully this day serves for something very concrete: to look at ourselves with honesty. What do they learn from us when they see who listens more at home, who apologizes, who carries the invisible burden, who can get angry without consequences and who has to put up with it? Equality is not about competing; it's about dignity. It's about no one having to shrink so that another feels big.
And it's also about boys. Many have been taught to hide what they feel, to confuse: strength with hardness, respect with silence, manhood with endurance. That is not a privilege, it is a trap. A man who accompanies, who cares, who speaks clearly and who cries if he needs to, does not lose anything valuable; he gains humanity, and gives his own a cleaner life.
In the classroom, in the playground, at home, change almost always starts small: a phrase we stop, a task we distribute differently, a look that doesn't judge, a "I believe you", a "it's not normal", a "not like that". If March 8 pushes us to sustain those gestures the rest of the year, then yes: it will have served.
May no girl learn to endure by system. May no boy believe that feeling is shameful. May respect cease to be a one-day topic and become a custom. And let us remember something simple: dignity is not negotiated, it is recognized.
Equality is worked on at home, from a family lunch, where one should not say, that's a girl's thing, when setting the table. It is very gratifying to have sensitive friends, men who listen and do not ask.
I feel very proud of my colleagues, when I see the effort made with the students, that day where empathy is the protagonist. A seed that germinates with hope.
I finish this article by adding that on that day I celebrate my second motherhood and that it impacted me a lot, arriving in Vladivostok, precisely on the big day where Women's Day was celebrated, I not only celebrate my motherhood but also that Katya, my other daughter, is part of my eldest son's life; being his wife.
I would like that someday; we would speak of people and not, of men and women. That day we would stop demanding and it would be for celebrating. Meanwhile let's keep walking together and accompanying each other.
I was born of a father and a mother, we were a team, without sex distinctions, always in unison, as our hearts beat.