Neutrality

It was a brisk and sunny morning of a Friday. I was in the playground of my school. It was filled with the sounds of blowing whistles, enthusiastic students and cheering parents. It was the sports day of our school, the ambience got more exuberant with the start of running race for Class 6 students. As a class teacher I was a bit tensed. The students were on their marks to get, set and go!

Whistle was blown and the race started. Just after a few leaps forward, Mega, one of the active girls in my class, fell on the ground stuck by her skirt. Her dress digressed and she had an embarrassing situation. A group of boys standing on the other side giggled loud and teased seeing her fall.  She was wounded and as I took her for first aid, she had a long face and cried saying the boys of her class laughed at her. She was more hurt for the embarrassment because of the uniform than for the wound. It had been almost three months since this incident happened, but still strikes my mind whenever I see Mega.

During ‘Karka Kasadara’, an event conducted for teachers by Vidhya Vidhai, teacher groups were formed and we were asked to think of solutions to any important problem in the school and try to implement the same. The immediate problem that came into my mind was the above. When I shared this event, it caught our group’s attention. We were four of us sharing our perspectives and opinions on this. The discussion started with uniform, but turned towards different aspects of gender discrimination.

Is the uniform not so comfortable for girls? Why is there always a gap between boys and girls in the school? Why don’t they study or play together? Why can’t they be friends of each other? Why do they sit separately in classrooms?

All of us had noticed this behavior were prevalent in almost all the classes. To understand this, we had some casual discussions with children from classes 1 to 5. Many of the primary school boys said girls cannot play like them and thus cannot be their friends! Some girls mentioned they are hesitant to play because of their uniform. A boy mentioned his mom advised not to sit beside girls wearing skirt, which was strange and shocking equally.

In discussion with students from Classes 6^th to 12^th, girls mentioned that boys are always naughty and teasing which they don’t like. Boys said teachers always support girls and they don’t like it. One of the common concern was teachers restrict boys and girls to be friends with each other.

Our group discussed with other teachers as well. It made them realize gender discrimination prevails everywhere like in text books, classrooms, etc. The teachers follow practices like grouping students for activities based on gender, restrictions to mingle with each other, supporting or opposing based on gender unknowing these leads to gender discrimination in the school. This could be one of key reasons, which reflects in their behavior and relationship between them.

We wanted to spread awareness about this to all the teachers. We presented this report to the management and discussed some solutions to rectify the problem. Our first step was to conduct an eye-opener session for teachers and thus approached an organization called ‘Aware’. They conducted a two day session which gave teachers a better clarity on sex and gender. Gender sensitivity, in terms of a school context was discussed. After the session, it was our first success when we watched students sitting together in classrooms. Now our focus is on designing a comfortable uniform for girls!

One more important decision on which we influenced management was ‘Let us not celebrate Women’s day’, this year and always. That’s a small gesture towards gender equality!

Article written by:

Gowri, Babyruth, Anupama, Yamuna (Teachers, Partner School of Vidhya Vidhai)  Shrikarpagam D (Vidhya Vidhai)