When I was born, my father was on a work trip. And according to my mother, he was aloof when he saw me because I was a girl. She made me feel that she divorced partly because of my gender. And my aunt used to say things like I should learn cooking because I was a girl and her son didn’t need to because he was a boy.
At school violence against girls from boys is not unusual. There were sometimes sexist comments from boys in class and teachers wouldn’t correct them. I chose science instead of humanity in high school, after which my mother kept saying girls couldn’t do well in science, girls are not good at maths. Before this I won twice in mathematical competitions in my province, but later I slowly lost confidence in science and developed some sort of phobia about it. I don’t know if there is any causal link here, but I do remember I was afraid when I heard comments like this. There were even articles in the newspaper saying that girls didn’t perform so well in school when they grew up because they started to have periods.
