Interviewer: What does Gender Equality mean to you personally?
E. Van Mens: I think that everybody should be treated equally, regardless their gender, beliefs, what they feel and think.
Interviewer: How do you think Gender Equality affects people's lives?
E. Van Mens: I think that if everybody gets a fair chance then the playing field is even, so everyone gets the same opportunity.
Interviewer: What is one action you would take to help Gender Equality?
E. Van Mens: Within the PHE department, I have tried to make all the assignments gender neutral. So we don't use he or she, but we use they or them, so that every student can identify themselves with their role in their assignment.
Interviewer: How do you try to encourage equal opportunities for boys and girls?
E. Van Mens: I think that within sports it's a tricky question, because for years and years people have been looking at competition, and it's split for boys and girls. I think that we should look into options where we don't focus on the sport but on the process. So, I think it helps that being an IB school we look at the skills rather than training people to become ultimate athletes. Therfore I think that it's a bit more difficult due to the nature of my subject, but like I said, to make the assignments even and making sure that everybody has a decent reference than we could do one step at a time.
Interviewer: What challanges do you see in achieving Gender Equality in school?
E. Van Mens: We deal with 1400 individual students and their ideas, I think that it's difficult to get everybody lined up and support this cause. So like I said it's one step at a time, and people might disagree, but I do think that it comes from educating people. Sometimes people judge and they don't really know what it's about. I think that if I would encounter a situation where I don't understand what's going on and it's related to gender, I will ask the students to tell me what it's about, so I can learn myself and teach that to other people as well.