Conference Program

Since 2011, the Scosse association has been working on gender education in schools of all levels, from nursery to upper secondary school.

Since that same year, we have been running the Leggere Senza Stereotipi project: a research initiative that conducts ongoing monitoring of gender representations in illustrated children’s literature published in Italy; a free, regularly updated online catalogue offering a selection of around a thousand titles that serve as tools for deconstructing and critically analysing gender and role stereotypes, whilst also providing the option to carry out advanced searches within the database; an educational approach that, through picture books, encourages the reading of normative models conveyed from early childhood through these media, as well as those that the adults who create, select and mediate these books are consciously or unconsciously carriers of (Fierli et al. 2015, 2020a, 2022)

Picture books are deeply complex cultural artefacts based on the dialogue between text and images (Handler & Spitz, 2001; Van der Linden, 2006, 2013). Through their stories, they offer a potentially infinite variety of experiences and perspectives (Chabrol & Gagne, 2011; Fierli et al., 2015), a kaleidoscope of available expressive choices (Van Der Linden, 2003). They represent cultural artefacts that a given society produces to narrate its own story and educate, imbued with norms that influence how readers construct their own imagination and value systems (Hamelin, 2012; Mitchell, 2002).

In the three-year period 2024–2026, the project Leggere Senza Stereotipi per contrastare la violenza di genere – Libri, immagini e letteratura per prevenire e contrastare la violenza di genere e tra i generi, funded under the ‘Poster – practices beyond stereotypes’ call for proposals and coordinated by AIDOS Associazione Italiana Donne per lo Sviluppo, has enabled a substantial update of the database and the development of a bibliography dedicated to combating gender-based violence for the 0–18 age group. Around 40 titles, including picture books and graphic novels, which address the issue of combating gender-based violence through a holistic approach that incorporates the recommendations of the Istanbul Declaration (Council of Europe 2011) and follows the guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education issued by UNESCO (2018).

From this perspective, the ideas put forward in the books under consideration include education in consent, the exercise of self-determination and the affirmation of pleasure from the very earliest years of childhood, critical engagement with gender and role stereotypes that remain so pervasive in the structure of the societies in which we live, and the building of relationships free from dynamics of control and possession, ranging from parental relationships to those within couples – a need underscored by recent statistical surveys (Save the Children Italia 2024; Ipsos 2026; Ipsos Doxa 2026). As the age groups progress, the selection encourages the ability to identify and name all forms of patriarchal and cisheterosexist violence. Bibliographical suggestions that outline a paradigm of gender-based violence and gender as structural, and an educational approach aimed at combating it.