– Edu institutes can take incremental steps towards fostering gender sensitivity to help break long-held beliefs about gender stereotypes.
In an experiment in England in 2016, 700 school children (7 to 11 years) were shown photographs of several men and women and asked to pick the surgeon and nurse among them. A whopping 70% of the children associated pictures of men with surgeons and women with nurses. The same experiment has been carried out in different forms across the globe among several age groups with the same results. It is a classic example of gender stereotyping and how we subconsciously imbibe it, particularly in patriarchal societies like ours.
Even before a child is born, they get bracketed into a gender role. Stereotyping begins with gender reveal parties where pink colour equals a girl and blue equals a boy. Societal norms, parental behaviour and school education further reinforce this, which creates hindrances in achieving gender equality and creating gender sensitivity.
Girls have been considered the weaker gender for centuries despite several women – from Rani of Jhansi to Dr Anandi Gopal from Indira Gandhi to Kalpana Chawla – storming what was considered male bastions. In fact, in the decisive board exams, girls most often outshine boys. Yet, gender stereotyping means girls are conditioned to put their familial duties ahead of ambition and careers.
But, times have changed and such categorisation needs to be eliminated. Schools can and should be the catalyst that encourages young minds to challenge gender stereotypes and create a more equitable world for both genders. This can be done with minimum investment in terms of money but needs patience and a conscious effort to question our long-held beliefs.
Classrooms can be fertile ground for bringing about this change. Teachers should encourage teachings that subvert traditional gender roles. For example, when teaching sentence construction, we can incorporate examples about male nurses or stay-at-home-dads or female generals. Teachers and principals need to guard against statements like ‘don’t cry like a girl’ or ‘boys don’t cry’ and need to call them out when such affirmations are made by students.
Schools can upend conventional gender roles by encouraging projects that are typically not associated with a particular gender. In teaching girls how to repair a bike, we teach them that riding a bike and knowing how to repair it is a must and is not just a man’s job.
What if schools make cooking classes mandatory for both boys and girls or encourage potluck celebrations where each gender cooks for the other? How about homework which mandatorily asks all pre-adolescents to cook one meal for their family for a week? Wouldn’t we be subconsciously letting them know that cooking is not just a woman’s job?
Another important step can be encouraging mixed-gender activities. For eg: gender segregation in singing and dancing contests should be eliminated, and some competitions – like chess should be made gender-neutral. This could help the new generation start wiping out associations of gender with particular sports.
Parents can contribute too. From an early stage, the choice of toys for kids should be left to them instead of telling them what they should play with? Let a boy be happy braiding a doll’s hair and let a girl drive her toy truck on the walls. They can also encourage their girls to be outdoorsy and their boys to help out in the kitchen.
Such small changes can go a long way in fostering gender sensitivity, breaking gender stereotypes and helping us unlearn that talent and skill are not gender determined.
After all, Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook (now Meta) got it right when she said, “The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Let our schools be the place where such prophecies are rewritten.
(The author is Mr Rajiv Bansal, Director-Operations, Global Indian International School (GIIS), India.)
