‘Why
should boys have all the fun?’ – goes the tag line of a commercial. The text
books of my primary level kids may well be asked this question. The Social Studies class 4 book of my son, in its chapter
‘Seasons’, has five different pictures on seasons- each depicting a child enjoying
itself, and not one is of a girl-child; the chapter, ‘Natural Resources’, has a
picture of children enjoying themselves in a pond and, all of them are boys.
It’s not only about play, but also about work. The pictures in the chapter ‘Organizations
that help us’, depict only men doing all the important jobs. There are five
different pictures of various professionals- the police, doctor, army
personnel, workers in a post office- and none of them has a woman. Interestingly however, one chapter, ‘Our
Heritage’ has women in all its
pictures- the pictures being of various dances in our country. Similarly, the Class
2 book of my younger son, Environmental Studies, has pictures of
12 professionals in the chapter, ‘We Need Them’, and none of them is of a woman
while, again interestingly, in the same chapter, the sub section
‘People who entertain us’ has the only picture of a woman and , it is of a dancer !
The outdoors being for boys and
girls both, is not the only issue regarding the subtle bias in gender
representation in our children’s books. An example from the NCERT Hindi book of
class 3 Rimjhim, shows how finely the
dominating maleness is interwoven in the tone and tenor of the text and the
image. The stage directions
for a skit of the famous parable of a
monkey eating the whole bread being fought over by two cats are worded thus- ‘7-8 baras ka ladka bandar ban sakta hai aur
5-6 baras ki ladkiyaan billi ban sakti hain.’ (a boy of 7-8 years of age
can become the monkey and girls of 5-6 years can play the parts of the cats). A dialogue by the monkey goes so- “roti kiski? Mai iska faisala karoonga. Chalo
kachehry, mere peechhe peechhe aao.” (Whose bread? I will decide it. Come
to the court, come behind me), followed by the directions-‘bandar dono se chheenkar roti apne haath mei lekar chalta hai, dono
billiyaan peechhe-peechhe aati hain’ (The monkey snatches the bread from
both of them and walks away with it while the two cats follow). The play ends
with the words- “aapas mein jhagdaa kar
baithin, buddhi apni khoti…” (we fought among ourselves as our minds are
weak)
The stage
directions specifying the gender of the actors for the role of the monkey and
the cats sets the gendered tenor of the skit. The tone of the dialogues along
with the illustration- the monkey
sitting on a pedestal as the cribbing cats literally look up to him for
justice- underpin the notions of requirement of aggressive masculinity for decision
making and, of females given to stupidly fighting over small things.
My experiences as a teacher-trainer are that people fail to realize the
gendered undertones of a text/image in our books unless strongly hinted. This
is because all of us have been brought up in the same gender-construct milieu. A
text book shapes the belief system of the coming generations and, the content as above, only go on to
reinforce, unknowingly, our impressionable minds with the gender stereotypes. A
rethink is required on our definitions, language and concepts to create gender
non-discriminatory knowledge for our children. For instance, physical stamina, thresholds of pain and,
longevity can also be taken to be indicators of ‘strength’ along with its usual measurement in terms
of running faster, jumping higher, etc., as The Position Paper of
the National Focus Group on Gender Issues in Education (NCERT), suggested almost a decade back. Incidentally,
a picture of three children playing basketball, in NCERT’s class 5 English Book,
shows the lone girl’s feet on the ground while the two boys are high up in the
air.
It is important that the material presented
before children is such which is empowering for girls in the sense of making
them realize their potential, frees the boys from the bondage of stereotype
male-hood of aggressiveness and curbing of emotions, and thus, raise a
generation that is capable of contributing to the making of a just and
compassionate society.http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx?noredirect=true
