A father brilliantly invoked time travel to call out a sexist school policy

Dec 10 2017
Written by Joseph McCormick

A dog with its fur set in curlers at George Constantinides’ hairdressing salon on Hornsey Road, London, December 1968. (Photo by Paul Fievez/BIPS/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Sometimes a little humour is necessary when calling out injustices.

This dad did just that, calling out his daughter’s school for a sexist policy around a casual day using time travel.

And the letter Stephen Callaghan sent to his daughter Ruby’s teacher has serious implications too.

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Ruby wants to be an engineer, and when she was offered the chance of a ‘Boys and Girls Day’, she had asked if she could go to a Bunnings hardware shop and to have the BBQ lunch offered to the boys.

But the 12-year-old was told by her teacher at the Dubbo West Public School in Wongarbon, Australia, that the trip was only for the boys.

She was told she should remain in the library with the girls to have her hair and makeup done.

Callaghan took matters into his own time, writing a scathing letter to the school’s principal about the need for school activities to not be “strictly divided along gender lines.”

In the letter posted on Facebook, he writes: “Dear Principal,

“I must draw your attention to a serious incident which occurred yesterday at your school where my daughter Ruby is a year 6 student.

“When Ruby left for school yesterday it was 2017 but when she returned home in the afternoon she was from 1968.

“I know this to be the case as Ruby informed me that the “girls” in Year 6 would be attending the school library to get their hair and make-up done on Monday afternoon while the “boys” are going to Bunnings.

“Are you able to search the school buildings for a rip in the space-time continuum? Perhaps there is a faulty Flux Capacitor hidden away in the girls’ toilet block?

“I look forward to this being rectified and my daughter and others girls at the school being returned to this millennium where school activities are not divided among gender lines.”

In response, a Department of Education spokesperson told Bored Panda that students are allowed to choose either activity.

Callaghan says: “I feel the school has a responsibility to break down these gender divisions…[I want to give my daughters] the confidence to speak up when they feel they are being discriminated against because they are female.”

And in the meantime, his letter has been shared thousands of times with many calling out the Boys and Girls day for unnecessarily segregating genders.