For my issue brief, I talked about ending gender inequality in India. For this blog post, I wanted to talk about an article I found named Thousands of Indian Schools Implement Gender Classes to Fight Inequality written by Robbie Couch. In my paper, I talked about how different things need to stop in order for gender inequality to happen. While I was looking for an article to talk about for this post on Huffington Post, I stumbled across this article because it caught my attention and I felt that I could talk about is easily.
The article starts off with this YouTube video talking about the differences between men and women when it comes to doing housework and their morning routines. It starts off with looking at a female Student who is 15-years-old and she talks about how she helps her mother do the housework before she goes to school. She would help her mother prepare the meals and wash the dishes before she would go to school. The video then shows a 15-year-old boy who goes to the same school as the girl that was previously showed and his routine before he goes to school. He talks about how he eats his breakfast and then just goes to school while his mother and sister take care of all the housework that needs to be done.
After the video that was presented, the article then talks about how some boys in India are questioning why their girl classmates have much more housework than they do. With such questioning, there is potential for their to be more equality between men and women and could potentially lead to less violence against women. After the article started off with that statement, there were some statistics provided. In more then 12,00 Indian public schools, students now have classes that discuss gender roles incorporated into their learning experience through government partnerships with advocacy organizations. The efforts between one school in the slum of the Mumbhai and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) led 15-year-old Shakir Parvez Shaikh to understand how double standards play around him. Shaikh talks to reporters how “we talk about how boys and girls are equal as human beings, but how we treat girls differently. For example, girls are not allowed to play cricket or watch as much television as boys because they have to do housework or because it is not safe outside for them. I didn’t realize it before… I think it is unfair.” After reading this part, I learned that this is the kind of thinking that will lead to the road to gender equality and that not all males in the country think the same way. If a 15-year-old has such thoughts, it is clear that there is some progression in the thought process of men. One quotation that is used in the next part of the article was something I found very important. The director of ICRW mentions how “It today’s boys are taught to question gender abuse now, they are less likely to be violent when they become men tomorrow, And if girls are taught to speak out now, they will ne less likely to endure it as adults.” I found this quotation very important because this is something that India and many other countries have been struggling with for a while. For the longest time, children were never taught to speak up or question such principles, so it’s an improvement if children are starting to think like this.
This article was something that I found very interesting. Such thought process occurred when a brutal gang rape occurred in New Delhi, India in December 2012 and became a symbol for deep routed gender inequality. There was also supposed to be a documentary about this gang rape that was supposed to air on International Women’s Day, but was banned by the Indian government. Even though there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made in the issue of gender inequality, this is article is that start to something big.