GENDER-BASED DISCRIMINATION - AS PERCEIVED BY CHILDREN
Children have an amazing sense of articulation, which is not often understood or recognised. And it has nothing to do with their educational background.
Anita, a friend and colleague of mine during my Plan days, was discussing the issue of gender discrimination with a group of men and women, boys and girls separately. This was in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, where the practice of female infanticide was common (as also in Salem and Madurai districts). Anita was trying to understand the perspective of the local community on the why, what and how of discrimination against girl children. She met initially with a group of men and women. The men stoutly denied any form of discrimination against girls. They fed them well, treated them well, provided them with all the opportunities that they would provide a girl child, they said. The women were defensive and even rationalised the forms of discrimination. Ultimately she has to go to another house, so why educate her more? It will be difficult to find a match later. Moreover, as a woman, she must learn to give priority to her husband’s needs and hence, must eat last, even eat less if there isn’t enough, they said.
The girls however refuted and contested what their mothers said. “We are strongly being discriminated against”, they said. “Our brothers get more clothes. They always get a priority in case of education. Many of us are not allowed to continue due to economic reasons or on reaching puberty. But the boys have no such hassles. Even if they are not interested in studies and don’t do well, they continue to be sent to school. They hardly do any work at home. We have to take care of our younger siblings too if our mothers are busy”, they narrated.
We expected this view to be contested by the boys who may even justify the preferential treatment they got. But we were in for a surprise. “We know the girls get a raw deal”, they said. “They eat less, get fewer clothes, do not enjoy the leisure that we have. We know it is wrong, very wrong. But we don’t know what to do about it. If we try to do some work that the girls are supposed to, our parents scold us and friends deride us. And ultimately, we get to do only what our adults want us to do, isn’t it? How do you expect us to change the existing situation if the adults don’t want us to change”?
There was a similar response, this time from the girls. I was travelling through Chengalpettu district in Tamil Nadu. Most men and boys were huddled around the lone black and white TV set, watching a day and night India – Zimbabwe one day cricket match. So engrossed were they that they barely turned their heads around to see us alighting from a jeep, something which is not a very common sight. “Good relief”, we thought, as otherwise, our interactions with village communities are normally dominated by the men, barely allowing their women to have a word through, unless, of course when asked to shut up !
The women and the girls were busy with their household chores – cooking dinner, milking the cow, washing utensils, bringing back head loads of dry fuel wood. Out of curiosity, I asked some of the girls, “Wouldn’t you also like to see the cricket match”? The girls broke out into helpless giggles as if I had said something ridiculous. “How can they watch TV? Why should they ? They don’t understand the bat and ball game”, said one of the women. “Why? Why not”? I asked. “Oh, they don’t understand and they are not interested. Moreover, who will help us cook our dinner and attend to other household chores”? they queried.
But this time, it was the girls who responded. “We want to watch the TV and we want to see cricket. If we don’t get to see, how will we know what this game of cricket is all about? But we can’t. Our elders, our mothers say we can’t. You see, if we don’t help them, the household work won’t get over and our fathers will get very angry. The boys always get away by doing nothing. They while away their time, watch TV, pick up fights, yet no one admonishes them”, they said. No, they were not complaining. They were just narrating to us a reality they faced and a discrimination that they experienced, day in and day out, being denied the privileges that their brothers could avail and they could not, for no fault of theirs – just because they were girls and this is how they were destined to live ! Which incidentally they had come to accept, with a great degree of bitterness though…..and will probably perpetrate, unknowingly, when they grow up and become mothers too!
Similar stories and incidents kept surfacing in several parts of the country I visited. In one village in Karnataka, girls stopped going to school because they were constantly teased, not just by the older boys, but even some adults from their own communities. “Do you think you are going to become a Collector”, they would ask derisively, followed by loud guffaws. But this was only the mildest form of harassment. Many girls had worse forms of harassment to narrate, abused by older boys in their schools, and sometimes, even by their male teachers!
In a village in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh, girls were stopped from continuing their studies beyond standard 5 as their parents thought it would be difficult then to get a suitable groom for them. Children in a small Orissa village in Kashipur district of Orissa preferred not to go to school, a few kilometres away, fearing wild animals. And the adults did not consider it worthwhile to escort these children, especially if they were girls – for what use was education to a girl child in a small tribal village in Orissa?
The situation in the relatively more developed Tamil Nadu, and that too, in Chennai, was equally distressing. In a high school in Chennai, right in the backyard of its famed film industry, girl children stopped going to school just because there were no toilets, something which they found it difficult to manage without, especially on attaining puberty. It was in a government girls’ school named after a Marwari businessman who had donated some money for the school to be named after him. For relieving themselves, the girls had to use a stretch of land right next to the railway track, a little distance from their school – which obviously they found it difficult with the frequency of trains passing by.
It was amidst such dismal adversities that we met Lakshmi in a small remote village of Chamrajnagar district in Karnataka. We were in a village on a dark, rainy day, well past 8 p.m. with no electricity supply in the entire village. Her own house did not have an electricity connection, but the streetlight was always helpful. As the only child of her parents, her parents had given top priority to educating her. Her parents’ determination to see through her education was indeed remarkable, not commonly seen. She had to walk to the middle school, 6 kilometres away. Each day, she walked for more than an hour to go to school and an hour to get back. There were only 3 children including Lakshmi who went to the middle school, mainly because of the distance. All the others had dropped out. 2 were boys. Lakshmi, the only girl, normally found herself walking alone since the boys were not too keen on escorting her. But these difficulties did not bother Lakshmi. She was determined to be educated, qualify as a teacher, and come back to teach children in her village.
Children have an amazing sense of articulation, which is not often understood or recognised. And it has nothing to do with their educational background.
Anita, a friend and colleague of mine during my Plan days, was discussing the issue of gender discrimination with a group of men and women, boys and girls separately. This was in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, where the practice of female infanticide was common (as also in Salem and Madurai districts). Anita was trying to understand the perspective of the local community on the why, what and how of discrimination against girl children. She met initially with a group of men and women. The men stoutly denied any form of discrimination against girls. They fed them well, treated them well, provided them with all the opportunities that they would provide a girl child, they said. The women were defensive and even rationalised the forms of discrimination. Ultimately she has to go to another house, so why educate her more? It will be difficult to find a match later. Moreover, as a woman, she must learn to give priority to her husband’s needs and hence, must eat last, even eat less if there isn’t enough, they said.
The girls however refuted and contested what their mothers said. “We are strongly being discriminated against”, they said. “Our brothers get more clothes. They always get a priority in case of education. Many of us are not allowed to continue due to economic reasons or on reaching puberty. But the boys have no such hassles. Even if they are not interested in studies and don’t do well, they continue to be sent to school. They hardly do any work at home. We have to take care of our younger siblings too if our mothers are busy”, they narrated.
We expected this view to be contested by the boys who may even justify the preferential treatment they got. But we were in for a surprise. “We know the girls get a raw deal”, they said. “They eat less, get fewer clothes, do not enjoy the leisure that we have. We know it is wrong, very wrong. But we don’t know what to do about it. If we try to do some work that the girls are supposed to, our parents scold us and friends deride us. And ultimately, we get to do only what our adults want us to do, isn’t it? How do you expect us to change the existing situation if the adults don’t want us to change”?
There was a similar response, this time from the girls. I was travelling through Chengalpettu district in Tamil Nadu. Most men and boys were huddled around the lone black and white TV set, watching a day and night India – Zimbabwe one day cricket match. So engrossed were they that they barely turned their heads around to see us alighting from a jeep, something which is not a very common sight. “Good relief”, we thought, as otherwise, our interactions with village communities are normally dominated by the men, barely allowing their women to have a word through, unless, of course when asked to shut up !
The women and the girls were busy with their household chores – cooking dinner, milking the cow, washing utensils, bringing back head loads of dry fuel wood. Out of curiosity, I asked some of the girls, “Wouldn’t you also like to see the cricket match”? The girls broke out into helpless giggles as if I had said something ridiculous. “How can they watch TV? Why should they ? They don’t understand the bat and ball game”, said one of the women. “Why? Why not”? I asked. “Oh, they don’t understand and they are not interested. Moreover, who will help us cook our dinner and attend to other household chores”? they queried.
But this time, it was the girls who responded. “We want to watch the TV and we want to see cricket. If we don’t get to see, how will we know what this game of cricket is all about? But we can’t. Our elders, our mothers say we can’t. You see, if we don’t help them, the household work won’t get over and our fathers will get very angry. The boys always get away by doing nothing. They while away their time, watch TV, pick up fights, yet no one admonishes them”, they said. No, they were not complaining. They were just narrating to us a reality they faced and a discrimination that they experienced, day in and day out, being denied the privileges that their brothers could avail and they could not, for no fault of theirs – just because they were girls and this is how they were destined to live ! Which incidentally they had come to accept, with a great degree of bitterness though…..and will probably perpetrate, unknowingly, when they grow up and become mothers too!
Similar stories and incidents kept surfacing in several parts of the country I visited. In one village in Karnataka, girls stopped going to school because they were constantly teased, not just by the older boys, but even some adults from their own communities. “Do you think you are going to become a Collector”, they would ask derisively, followed by loud guffaws. But this was only the mildest form of harassment. Many girls had worse forms of harassment to narrate, abused by older boys in their schools, and sometimes, even by their male teachers!
In a village in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh, girls were stopped from continuing their studies beyond standard 5 as their parents thought it would be difficult then to get a suitable groom for them. Children in a small Orissa village in Kashipur district of Orissa preferred not to go to school, a few kilometres away, fearing wild animals. And the adults did not consider it worthwhile to escort these children, especially if they were girls – for what use was education to a girl child in a small tribal village in Orissa?
The situation in the relatively more developed Tamil Nadu, and that too, in Chennai, was equally distressing. In a high school in Chennai, right in the backyard of its famed film industry, girl children stopped going to school just because there were no toilets, something which they found it difficult to manage without, especially on attaining puberty. It was in a government girls’ school named after a Marwari businessman who had donated some money for the school to be named after him. For relieving themselves, the girls had to use a stretch of land right next to the railway track, a little distance from their school – which obviously they found it difficult with the frequency of trains passing by.
It was amidst such dismal adversities that we met Lakshmi in a small remote village of Chamrajnagar district in Karnataka. We were in a village on a dark, rainy day, well past 8 p.m. with no electricity supply in the entire village. Her own house did not have an electricity connection, but the streetlight was always helpful. As the only child of her parents, her parents had given top priority to educating her. Her parents’ determination to see through her education was indeed remarkable, not commonly seen. She had to walk to the middle school, 6 kilometres away. Each day, she walked for more than an hour to go to school and an hour to get back. There were only 3 children including Lakshmi who went to the middle school, mainly because of the distance. All the others had dropped out. 2 were boys. Lakshmi, the only girl, normally found herself walking alone since the boys were not too keen on escorting her. But these difficulties did not bother Lakshmi. She was determined to be educated, qualify as a teacher, and come back to teach children in her village.
Interesting GC..I was able to relate to many names..And appreciate your writing talent and memory..Keep writing ..tinku
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