Being a girl has never been easy
“Over the years, children in general but girls in particular have been characterized by the invisibility and even the intellectual scorn with which they have been treated. If women have been discriminated, girls suffered even more: for being tiny and living in a womanʼs body”, these are the first words the first visitor reads at the exhibition “Per ser nena”, organized by Tàcita Muta (Grup dʼEstudis de Dones i Gènere a lʼAntiguitat). The exhibition can be visited until November 14 in the Philosophy, Geography and History CRAI Library in the Raval campus of the University of Barcelona, from Monday to Friday, 8.30 h to 20-30 h, and 9.30 - 20.30 h at weekends.
“Over the years, children in general but girls in particular have been characterized by the invisibility and even the intellectual scorn with which they have been treated. If women have been discriminated, girls suffered even more: for being tiny and living in a womanʼs body”, these are the first words the first visitor reads at the exhibition “Per ser nena”, organized by Tàcita Muta (Grup dʼEstudis de Dones i Gènere a lʼAntiguitat). The exhibition can be visited until November 14 in the Philosophy, Geography and History CRAI Library in the Raval campus of the University of Barcelona, from Monday to Friday, 8.30 h to 20-30 h, and 9.30 - 20.30 h at weekends.
Since Greco-Roman ancient times, girls have not been social agents: the only thing people expected from them was a life project adapted to the gender roles they had to fulfill when becoming adults. “The aim of the exhibition, which shows the research of the University of Barcelona regarding this subject, is to make visible the reality of girls in different periods of history and from several points of view” say the commissioners of the exhibition, Cristina Yúfera, from Tàcita Muta, and Georgina Rabassó, from the Philosophy and Gender Seminar.
“Per ser nena” is structured from the vital cycle: pregnancy, birth, little girls, older girls and teenagers, and it analyzes topics such as education, work, sexuality and violence. There are 13 panels that collect testimonies from all periods. Some of them, despite being old, are still a bit familiar: “If a woman is pregnant with a boy, she has a nice color, if she carries a baby girl, she has a bad color” (Hippocratic corpus “Aphorisms”, Greece, 5-6 century BC); “Growing a girl up is like gardening the neighborʼs garden” (Hindu proverb), or “Eva, without fear, determined and not ashamed of it, took the prohibited fruit […] gave herself and all women pain and battles, she was given as punishment -the birth of children with pain. Likewise, when a girl is born all the family will be sad and cry […], so that women who give birth to a girl will suffer more pain and will wish a boy to be born” (Lo llibre de les dones, XI, c.1396).
“In the 19th and 20th centuries, girls from the lower classes took care of their sisters and brothers,and the elderly, and they shopped, cooked, washed the clothes, brought the food to the men of the family to the factory or country, went to collect wood, herbs and fruits in the forest” can be read in one of the panels. All this work was just a second task for these girls that, like Caterina Gusí Espuña, had another paid work, only aged 7. “Sadly, this situation is still happening, in more or less the same way, in some parts of the planet”, says Rabassó.
This is why the exhibition shows current realities that are ignored or hidden, such as Yazidi girls, lots of them aged under 14, who are kidnapped by ISIS terrorists to be raped, sold or given to older men, or even tortured; or the fact that one out of four teenagers suffers from psychological harassment by their boyfriend (fed by the myth of romantic love and social networks).
The last panels show examples of overcoming cases, such as Malala, born in 1997 in Pakistan, who has fought for girl rights in order to have access to education, and despite being a victim from an attack that almost ended with her life, she still claims rights for girls so they can go to school.
The exhibition has a selection of books related to childhood and girls in history, taken from the archive of women and gender located at the Pilosophy, Geography and History CRAI Library. The exhibition is expected to be moved so it can be visited in centers, libraries, schools and municipal museums.
Exhibition precedents
The exhibition is part of the multidisciplinary project on girls, created in 2014, which gathers different study and research groups of the University of Barcelona: Tàcita Muta (Grup dʼEstudis de Dones i Gènere a lʼAntiguitat, study group for women and gender in old times); Philosophy and Gender Seminar; Seminario Interdisciplinar Mujeres y Sociedad (multidisciplinary seminar Women and Society, SIMS); consolidated Research Group on Medieval History. Sources and Studies; Consolidated Research Group Creació i Pensament de les Dones (women creation and thinking), and Center for Women and Literature.
“From Tàcita Muta we have always worked to promote, work on and share the knowledge and research on women and gender relations in the ancient world, to reflect on the reality of our current society from the research carried out about ancient society” says Yúfera. Resulting from the joint work, at the end of 2014 the international symposium “La infància en femení: Les nenes. Imatges i figures de filiació” was organized, and it took place at the Faculty of Geography and History with lots of attendance and participation.