Our
Primary Level Text books and Social Constructs about Gender
Abstract
Text books are not only an expression of the
beliefs of the writers who are a part of a particular social milieu, but also a
shaper of the belief system of the coming generations. A reading of the primary
school text books of various publications, including NCERT, shows that they
seem to be guided by many age old social constructs about gender. ‘Social
construct’
is an idea that seems to be natural and so obvious that it is accepted
unquestionably, but, which in fact, may not represent reality, being actually
an invention of a given society.
In fact ‘gender’ itself is a social construct. Down the years, gender sensitivity as regards the text books
has been limited to an increase in pictorial content depicting women and gender
role reversals, but has not questioned the traditional gender power structure.
This paper intends to present how
finely the gender biasness is interwoven in the content of the textbooks and why
and how it can be done away with, with a little circumspection.
Our
Primary Level Text books and Social Constructs about Gender
It was during the mid-19th century, the period of Victorian
England, when Tennyson wrote in his long poem ‘The Princess’-
‘…Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and
woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion….’(Part V, lines 427-431)
The poem
raised and explored the question of the male- domination in gender relations,
both in work area as in lines cited above and, in sexual relationships as in
the lines- ‘We
hunt them for the beauty of their skins;/They love us for it, and we ride them
down’ (V, 147-50).
The
scenario has changed tremendously in the West since then. Changes have not been
little even in our part of the world but the moot point is whether the social beliefs have changed to
considering the two genders equal (not similar) on a social scale or, is it only that woman have taken to
some works in professional area, mostly because of economic necessity, which
previously were done only by males. Perhaps it is only the latter and the
clearest signs can be found in our text books written for our primary school
children. Text books are important indicators because they are not only an
expression of the beliefs of the writer who himself is a part of a particular
social milieu, but also a shaper of the belief system of the coming generations
in society.Browsing through the primary school text books of various
publications, including NCERT, makes one feel that the age old social
constructs about the male being more
powerful, both in physic and intellect, and hence the natural decision
maker, exist in our society till date and are also being perpetuated through
them.
To put it
simply, a ‘social construct’ is an idea or notion that seems to be natural and
obvious to people who accept it unquestionably, but, which in fact, may or may
not represent reality. Thus it is largely an invention of a given society. In fact ‘gender’ itself is a social
construct. Gender, as distinguished from sex, is the assigning of masculine or
feminine behavior and roles based on the genitalia. Some of the social
constructs about gender are- girls are feminine i.e. are characterized by being
shy, soft spoken, sensitive, self-effacing, compliant, emotional and subjective;
boys have masculine traits and are out-going, aggressive, achievement oriented
and objective. These constructs become the basis of stereotypes in other fields
as well. For instance, in the field of education, it is widely believed that
girls are less adept in mathematics vis-à-vis boys, drawn perhaps from the
notion that girls are emotional while boys are rational. Similarly, in
reference to marital life, it seems to be a given that woman are best suited
for household chores while men for works outside the house.
The
assigning of softness and emotionality, down the ages, to one of the two genders
has automatically resulted in the acquiring of a dominant role by the other
gender. It would however be interesting to think overas to why this assigning
traverses time and space.Fiona Tolan writes- ‘The Second Sex argued that there was no such thing as ‘feminist
nature’. There was no physical or psychological reason why women should be
inferior to men…Biological differences do not provide a causal explanation for
women’s oppression, however their reproductive function has placed women at a
disadvantage by tying them to the domestic sphere…’ (Waugh 321-322).Without
going into a debate over the question of the two genders being psychologically
or emotionally differentfrom each other, this writer’s guess too is that since
it has been the woman who bore child, she automatically got bound within a
boundary for rearing and, as a corollary, got stamped over time with the
attribute of emotional and a weaker gender vis-à-vis man.
These social
constructs can easily be seen to be false if we just observe the world around-
a woman laborer giving as much output as a man at a construction site and also
taking care of her child, lady scientists in one of the most intellectually
demanding organizations as ISRO, ladies climbing high mountains – even an
amputee like Arunima Sinha, ladies heading big corporates and; men too breaking
down in times of distress, even tough sportsmen as the South Cricket team players
on losing a world cup match. But, the question is- can we observe objectively?
Perhaps not. The reason is that we all - men and women- have been bred amid
gender discriminatory social constructs. Content and images in our text books
have only gone to reinforce, unawares, our impressionable minds with the gender
stereotypes. No wonder socially prescribed, practiced and believed in gender
roles and behavior do not strike us as odd. No wonder statements like, ‘it’s
the cow which is tied to a peg, not the bull’, are sometimes issued by the
boy’s apologists when his inappropriate behavior towards a girl is asked to be
restrained.No wonder,a criminalseems to echo
Tennyson’s words cited abovewhen justifying his
heinous act of violation of the girl Nirbhaya-"Housework
and housekeeping is for girls…’
Besides the typical images of boys playing
outdoor games and girls playing with dolls with which our primary school text
books are replete with, there are more gender related seemingly innocuous
contents, which on a deeper analysis, are not really so. Down the years, gender
sensitivity as regards the text books has been limited to an increase in
pictorial content depicting women and gender role reversals, but has continued situating her within
domesticity and, not questioning the traditional gender power structure. A few
examples from books published by India’s premier educational organization, the
National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), below
will show how finely the gender biasness is interwoven in the content of the
textbooks–
1) ‘His mother and sister have to walk a longer distance to fetch
water… While walking on the hot sand their feet burn and blisters just cannot
be avoided. When the train carrying water comes they are very happy. Madho’s
father goes to fetch water in his camel-cart’. (Chapter 20 ‘Drop By Drop’,
Environmental Studies book Looking Around).
The text
above and the picture of ladies trudging to fetch water in this chapter on water
conservation reinforces in the young minds
that the job of fetching water is of women alone. Moreover, it goes on
to assert that, when a man does so (the chapter makes clear that it is ‘not
often’) he goes not on foot, but on a cart, , unlike Madho’s ‘mother and
sister!
2) The stage directions in chapter 8 of the Hindi textbook for
class 3 , Rimjhim, 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 baraskaladkabandar ban saktahaiaur 5-6
baraskiladkiyaanbilli ban saktihain.’(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
spoken by the monkey is so expressed- “roti
kiski? Mai iskafaisalakaroonga. Chalokachehry, mere peechhepeechheaao.” (Whose
bread? I will decide it. Come to the court, come behind me) The stage
directions then say-‘ bandardono se
chheenkar roti apnehaathmeilekarchaltahai,
donobilliyaanpeechhe-peechheaatihain’. (the monkey snatches the bread from
both of them and with it in its hands begins to walk while the two cats follow
)
The stage
directions specifying the gender of the actors for the role of the monkey and
the cats, the dialogues and, the accompanying picture of the monkey sitting on
a pedestal while the cribbing cats look above to him for justice reinforce the
notion of maleness essential for decision making and females given to stupidly
fighting over small things.
In both the above examples, a little
circumspection could have made the content gender neutral. In the first, the
distinction between men and women could have been avoided and, men too could
have been shown partaking in the domestic works. In the second, the specifying
of gender for role play could have been avoided or even provided that a girl
could be the monkey-judge and a boy and a girl can play the roles of the cats.
3) Some of the seemingly innocuous pictures of children playing
are like bas-relief in the way they subtly put forth the distinction between
the two genders even when the two are shown to be performing the same activity.
The chapter ‘ Nobody’s Friends’ in Unit
8 of class 5 English text-book juxtaposes in one picture a girl-child with a
doll with a boy-child on a tricycle. Again, a picture of three children playing basketball in Chapter
‘Teamwork’ (page 20) in Class 5 English book shows two boys leaping high in the air, touching
the ball while the lone girl’s feet are on the ground, the ball quite beyond
her reach.
Besides
the NCERT books, which are supposed to set standards for other publications,
here are some examples from other reputed publications-
1) In the Social Studies book for class 4, TREK (Oxford University Press, 2013),there are five pictures of
different seasons being enjoyed by a child and not one is of a girl-child in chapter
6- ‘The Climate of India’. The chapter 8 of this book- ‘Natural Resources’- has
a picture of children enjoying themselves in a pond and, all of them are boys.Chapter
7- ‘Organizations that help us’- has five different pictures of various
professionals helping us the police,
doctor, army personnel, workers in a post office and none of them has a woman
Chapter 10- ‘Our Industries’- has a picture of people working in an automobile
industry and all of them are men. However there is a chapter, chapter
11- ‘Our Heritage’- which has pictures in which there only women, and
interestingly they all are depictions of dances of various kinds.
2) The book Environmental
Studies , Viva Publications , written for class 2 has pictures of 12
professionals in the chapter 11- ‘We Need Them’- and none of them has a woman
while, in the same chapter, the sub section ‘People who entertain us’ has the
only picture of a woman and,again interestingly,it is of a
dancer !
The above
are only a few samples of the gendered content existing subtly in our primary
level textbooks of various reputed publications. These examples give a fair
idea of the fact that our text book writers have to get out of the time warp of
antiquity as far as the gender constructs are concerned.
In their essay ‘Inclusive Education in India:
The Struggle for Quality in Consonance with Equity’, NidhiSingal and Roger
Jeffery remark that- ‘Efforts aimed at developing inclusive education have been
largely framed by the distributive paradigm of social justice’ (Artiles,
Kozleski and Waitoller, 181). The distributive view of justice, as thought of
by Rawls, has relevance only to an extent. It is useful in that it focuses on
access and provision of resources like free books, uniform, and even bicycles
and money sometimes, and thus ensures the availability of basic essentials for
education to girls but, it stops short of realizing the roles that are played
by social structures and institutional contexts in upholding the gender
inequalities.Access does not automatically ensure equality. In fact, if the curriculum
and the content are not examined in the light of gender equity, the gender
inequalities of socialization and social control will only be perpetuated. As
Lewis advises to ‘remember the ‘education’ in inclusive education’ (qtd in
Artiles, Kozleski and Waitoller, 182), inclusion is not enough in itself and
attains worth only with the imparting of an education that helps to create a
just and equal society.
We should also remember that it’s not only
about girls. ‘Femininity’ cannot exist by itself, therefore masculinity and its
effects on boys and menneeds to be sensitively understood and addressed too.The Position Paper of the National Focus
Group on Gender Issues in Education expressly says-‘Boys and men
also suffer from the stereotyping that exists in a patriarchal culture. Boys
are discouraged from being emotional, gentle and caring or from admitting to
being weak or fearful. They are thrust into the role of breadwinners,
protectors, warriors. Most men cannot live up to the notion of hegemonic masculinity.
They are ridiculed for being effeminate if they are not aggressive. Gentle boys
are pushed around and sexually exploited by stronger, macho men. An excessive
emphasis on virility, male sexual prowess and performance leads to tremendous
insecurities and anxiety in men.’ (NCERT, 24)
What
is required is a massive rethink on our definitions, language and concepts to
create gender non-discriminatory knowledge for our children.The
Position Paper of the
National Focus Group on Gender Issues in Education suggested construction of ‘alternative
gendered frameworks of knowledge that equally reflect the life worlds of both men and women and carry within
them the seeds of a just social transformation.’ (NCERT, 32). These alternative
frameworks will have to go beyond merely making woman visible in the text
books, situating them within domestic boundaries (even while discussing
historical figures like Rani Jhansi and Razia Sultan) or, at best, supplementing
income of the family in her outdoor life. It also suggests to seek new
definitions of ‘strength’ as the existing definitions only lead to a false
perception of women being weak. It says-‘Strength is usually measured in
terms of who runs faster, jumps higher, carries heavier loads. Physicalstamina,
thresholds of pain, and longevity, are rarely taken to be indicators of
strength.’
.
The fact is that we have to move even beyond
gender and think in terms of intersectionality, i.e. multiple disadvantages of
some sections of society, to ensure inclusiveness in our thoughts. Thus,
instead of a picture of man mountaineer in the text book, we have to have the
picture of that woman amputee mountaineer who successfully climbed Mount
Everest.
Learning
imparted at the impressionable age of primary schooling remains forever and, it
is imbibed both from the texts as well as the images. It is hence, of utmost
importance that the material presented before children is such which is
empowering for girls in the sense of making them realise 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 not conformist but critically
evaluative and constructive and capable of expanding its capacities to the
utmost and contribute to the making of a just and compassionate society.
Bibliography
11-
Artiles,
Alfredo J. , Elizabeth B. Kozeleski and Federico R. Waitoller. Inclusive Education, Harvard Education
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011. Print.
22-
Environmental Studies , Viva Publications, New Delhi, 2014. Print
33-
Gutek,
Gerald L. Philosophical and Ideological
Voices in Education, Pearson, USA, 2006. Print.
44-
NCERT. Marigold,
http://www.ncert.nic.in/NCERTS/textbook/textbook.htm Web (8/5/2015)
55-
NCERT. Looking Around, http://www.ncert.nic.in/NCERTS/textbook/textbook.htmWeb (8/5/2015)
66-
NCERT. Rimjhim, http://www.ncert.nic.in/NCERTS/textbook/textbook.htm Web (8/5/2015)
77-
NCERT. The
Position Paperof the National Focus Group on Gender Issues in Education.
2006. Print
88-
Prasad, Shiva. Times of India,http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/icc-world-cup-2015/top-stories/Teary-eyed-at-the-World-Cup/articleshow/46713409.cms Web (8/5/2015)
99- Tennyson, Lord Alfred. http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/atennyson/bl-aten-princess.htm . Web (9/5/2015
Dr Skand Shukla
(Officer of the U.P. Education Services and was
recently a visiting fellow at the Arizona State University, U.S.A)
Profile of the writer- An officer
of the Provincial Educational Services of Uttar Pradesh, did post-graduation in
English Literature with a gold medal and was awarded the degree of D.Phil. on
his thesis on Tagore’s philosophy of education by the University of Allahabad.
Articles related to academics and other issues have found place in newspapers
like The Hindu, The Economic Times, The Times of India and the Hindustan Times.
He was also a visiting fellow at the Arizona State University, U.S.A.
E-mail id- skandshukla@yahoo.com
; Phone number- 09415254692
