Gender Equality is our subject on Local Matters this week, and today, we discover a new book, a children’s book. The ministry of equality between women and men last week published the book “Le coffre magique”, the magic treasure chest. We took this opportunity to discover the story and to talk to the minister Tania Bofferding.
A group of schoolchildren from Niederanven were among the first to discover this story, when the ministry invited them and the press to an event in the museum Casino last week. Mireille Weiten de Waha, a Luxembourgish children’s book author was invited to read the story to the children.
The book, written by Nadine Schirtz, an employee in the ministry’s education department, and illustrated by artist Marco Weiten, tells the story of a fox family. The two fox children Flinn and Flora discover an old treasure chest in their grandparents’ house. In there, they find relicts from the grandmother’s past – old photos, a hat and other clothes. And they dive back into the history of women’s rights achievements in Luxembourg.
The reading of the book with Mireille Weiten de Waha is the newest among the Ministry’s workshops for schools. Gender equality is not part of the regular school curriculum. The Ministry of equality between women and men, however, proposes a series of workshops that schoolteachers can book. Last year, they did more than a hundred of these workshops. The minister Taina Bofferding says: “And with this project, the children shall learn how human rights have evolved, how women’s rights have been achieved. They didn’t fall from the sky but several generations have fought for the equality between women and men. The 70s are not that long ago. It is a valuable story to show that this kind of achievements needs real commitment and that they are not set automatically forever but the youngsters must continue to make an effort to keep these achievements and to extend them. As we have seen that gender equality is not yet at the point where would like it to be.”
The establishment of the Observatory for gender equality is part of the national action plan for equality between women and men. The new body collects all available data on gender equality and on the long run, wants to improve the availability of data. It’s mission is to analyse where statistics on equality are still lacking.
Photo: MEGA