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Why it's high time we addressed gender stereotypes

We need to let our children play freely with the colours and toys, without associating gender with them.
We need to let our children play freely with the colours and toys, without associating gender with them.

A Voyager’s of The Seas cruise ship turned into a horror journey recently after 1300 employees of an Indian gutka company, who were on an off-site started behaving raunchy, bringing in playboy bunnies and taking unsolicited photographs of the dancers and other passengers on the ship too. Apart from blocking the ship’s amenities and running over the place, the Indian tourists were also accused of leching at many of the women passengers, leaving most uncomfortable.

What happened on board the ship is not a one-off case, but one that smacks of the feeling of entitlement that some men tend to have. Wrestler Babita Phogat put it brilliantly when she recently said that in the light of the growing incidents of rape and violence against women, Modi government’s punchline ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ should be changed to ‘Beton ko Padhao, Beton ko Samjao.’ Phogat has every reason to say that – in a society that is deeply entrenched with beliefs over what girls should and should not do, the Phogat sisters have managed to break norms to prove their strength and mettle in the field of wrestling.

The attitude that it is ok for boys to commit rape and indulge in violence just because they are boys, is, unfortunately, entrenched in the society. In 2014, Samajwadi Party honcho, Mulayam Singh Yadav had caused much uproar when he said that ‘ladke ladke hain….galti ho jati hein’ (boys will be boys… they commit mistakes). This was during a rally he was addressing in Moradabad, in reference to amended anti-rape laws.

Our society believes that it is the girl child who has to be taught, cautioned and saved. It is also the girl child who gets killed at birth or even before she is born. Delhi based NGO Asian Centre for Human Rights recently revealed that India has one of the highest rates of female foeticide rates in the world and is ranked number four when it comes to countries with the most skewed sex ratio, at 112 males per 100 females.

Where the girl child survives birth, she is often abandoned by her parents and left on the road, or if she is lucky, near a state-sponsored cradle baby scheme site. And, in case the child is allowed to be born and remain within the family, she is bound by norms and subjected to restrictions. Rather than allowing her to spend her childhood studying, playing and growing naturally, in many parts of rural India, and in urban households as well, girls are made to take on their caregiver from an early age. It is still common for parents to expect the girl child to care for her brother and other male members of the house, even if they are much elder to her.

Gender stereotyping is not just prevalent in India, alone. The recently announced Nobel Prize for Physics stood out for one thing – the fact that a woman was among the three scientists who shared the prize for laser physics. By winning the prize, optical physicist Donna Strickland became the third woman ever in the history of the Award to win a prize in Physics – the first being Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. Across the world, very few girls are motivated to take on STEM subjects or coached to take up technical subjects.

How gender stereotypes harm

Studies reveal that embedding stereotypes in children from a young age can harm them as they grow up, both socially and emotionally. When children are straitjacketed into roles and given characteristics based on their gender, they learn to conform to society and do not think out of the box.

A first of its kind cross-cultural study, jointly conducted by researchers led by pediatrician Robert Blum from the Urban Health Institute at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, World Health Organisation, and the United Nations Population Fund titled The Global Early Adolescent Study, assessed children between the ages of 10 and 14 on their notions of sexuality and gender. The study showed that friendships between girls and boys died down across cultures during the ages of 10 and 14. Boys also start seeing girls in a sexual way as early as from the age of 10 while girls are often warned against going out late at night, to parties, mingling with boys and are discouraged from participating in activities which are considered ‘masculine’. As a result, girls become aware of certain limitations and are also hesitant to deal with boys.

Surveys that have been conducted on 12-18 year-olds have also revealed that gender stereotypes have a negative impact on the attitude of children. One in three believed that it was alright to exert control over someone as that was not a form of violence, while one in six felt that women should be shown their place. Alarmingly still, one in six surveyed believed that it was alright to pressurise a girl into having sex if she was drunk.

Sweden shows the way

Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway have shown that some of the most progressive nations in the world are those that have the lowest gender gaps in the world. Sweden, which has rightly been named as one of the most gender equal countries in the world, is taking the fight for equality right to the basics. By bringing about a change in how stereotypes and gender norms creep in as early as during the pre-school stages. Sweden’s experiment with gender-neutral preschools goes back to 1996 to a small town named Trodje, near the Baltic Sea.

Ingemar Gens, a journalist who is also interested in anthropology and gender theory, was appointed the district ‘equal opportunity expert,’ aiming to bring a change in the typical Swedish concept of tough masculinity. While conducting experiments with pre-schoolers, some as young as a year old, Gens, and the teachers realised that a lot of gender stereotypes crept in unconsciously in the way children behaved or teachers reacted to them. One teacher realised that she would often help the boys with their shoes, while girls were expected to help themselves.

Much has changed since then, and Sweden’s gender-neutral preschools now encourage their children and teachers to break gender norms. Hence, toys are jumbled up – both girls and boys are encouraged to play with dolls, cars and blocks. Girls are encouraged to scream and run around, and boys are encouraged to paint and dance. Some progressive pre-schools such as Egalia (Latin for Equality) and Nicolaigarden even refrain from using gender pronouns and address the children as ‘hen’ which is the Swedish gender-neutral personal pronoun.

While there have been a few critics of the line of thought, many parents have now accepted this form of teaching, and actively question schools about their approach towards gender.

Reversing the gender bias

As parents, we have the biggest role to play in ensuring that these stereotypes are removed. It is up to us to consciously follow gender-neutral practices such as allowing our boys and girls to explore and play the way they want to, without perceptions of gender seeping in. We should allow our girls to go out, run around and scream as much as they want to, and make our boys accountable for all their actions.

It is also time we moved beyond the typical ‘pink is for ‘girls’ and ‘blue is for boys’ or restricted our girls from doing what they want to do. Because, unless we stop telling our boys to not cry and be a man and teach our girls to look out for themselves, we will still have a long way to go before we ensure that our future generations live in a safer, more equitable world.