Recently, I came across this new item that talked about a young girl in a Chennai engineering college who killed herself because she was ticked off for talking to a boy. It wasn’t just the scolding she received which precipitated the suicide, but the fear that her parents would have been informed of her heinous crime – talking to a boy.

Strangely, this new item did not shock me. For those of us who have spent many years in Chennai, the ultra-conservatism of its colleges, especially those offering professional courses, is no news. For years now, many such colleges have enforced rigid, gender-segregation policies. Some of their diktats include no conversation between male and female students and separate seating areas on college buses and in classrooms. Lecturers are asked to strictly enforce these policies and some colleges, like the one in this instance, have even installed cameras to monitor students.

All this is done in the name of ‘preventing distraction’ and asking students to ‘focus on studies’. The fact that college administrators deem 18-20 year olds as incapable of managing their own academic work without coercion, says something about the quality of education these colleges impart. Surely, if they had any confidence in the calibre of their own teaching and infrastructure, they would be confident of enabling students, not coercing them.

Beyond that, there is a deep-rooted fear of ‘children getting spoilt’, and of course, interaction with the opposite sex is held to be the root of all spoiling. Dig deep enough, and at the base is the fear of young people making independent decisions on their own lives – decisions that could challenge long-held beliefs about marrying within the boundaries of caste and social status. Rein the girls in long enough (until they finish studying) and get them married soon after (so that they don’t have time to fall in love with the ‘wrong’ person). College authorities are not isolated tyrants – many are the parents I’ve seen supporting them enthusiastically in their gender-segregation drive.

As young people in India begin making their own decisions – whether it is in the matter of careers or partners, the ire of those in authority becomes manifest. Haryanvi Khap Panchayats and Chennai professional college administrators bear a closer resemblance to each other than may be obvious.

The Initiation

Dear students and colleagues,

I am emailing to inform you that I will be taking the lead to organise a weekly 20-overs-a-side cricket match with tennis ball (our facilities don’t allow hard ball cricket yet) each Saturday morning, between 9 AM and 1 PM. We need at least 22 players for a proper 11-a-side contest. The idea is to mix students, faculty members and some campus-based non-teaching staff members in creating two teams on the spot every Saturday morning and to play with the gusto and spirit that die hard lovers of the game thrive on!!

So, please RSVP about your participation in this Saturday morning’s inaugural game to me. I hope to hear back from at least 22 of you so that we can have a rollicking start!! The plan is to make this Saturday morning tennis ball match a regular fixture that students and faculty will look forward to as a form of bonding, competing and… of course, exercising!

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

————————————–

Dear Prof. A,

This sounds very exciting. I wonder too whether some bonding experience might also be organized that would enable the inclusion of female students and faculty, particularly considering that not only is sports generally played by men – but cricket in particular.

I am sure regulating female participates to the sidelines was never the intent – but nonetheless the side effect. I also understand how central cricket is to Indian culture. I hope to engage all faculty in this challenge.

Thanks.

Prof. B (female)

————————————–

Dear all,

I completely second Prof. B. Even the most declaredly gender neural spaces and categories – especially something like sports – turns male by default – so much so for cricket.

Warmly,

Prof. C (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

I’m excited to hear about Prof. A’s cricket plans. I won’t be able to make it this Saturday, but I’m looking forward to being a part of it from time to time on future Saturdays. I don’t think there’s a gender issue with having regular cricket games on campus. Prof. A’s initial email made it clear that all students were welcome.

I understand there was recently an all-female meeting of the Women’s Law Society (WLS), and a decision to only allow female students in the future. I don’t know that there’s any automatic problem with that, although it raises some serious concerns. This may be an area where there is room for discussion and formulation of a non-discrimination policy. At many universities, official student groups are not allowed to exclude any members of the student body based on sex, race, religion, etc. We may want to consider a policy here.

In any event, at this stage in the development of our university, it is important to foster a wide variety of student initiatives, to ensure that there are activities that appeal to a diversity of student interests. To that end, I am excited about both of these recent initiatives and I look forward to hearing about many more in the weeks and months to come.

Regards,

Prof. D (male)

————————————–

The Instigation

Dear Prof. B,

Very valid concerns indeed. The cricket we are planning will be competitive and fast, i.e. all male in likely composition. How about the Women’s Society you are forming getting together and deciding on sporting or other activities that can involve female students and staff over the weekend? I wish your endeavour good outcomes, especially considering that you are an athlete yourself.

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

Speaking from personal opinion:  I don’t think anyone’s slamming Prof. A for his love of cricket. I think the issue was more about disparate effect and institutional sensitivity. E.g., if the cricket match is the primary informal means of interaction between students and faculty, then we need to think about additional options.

Regarding the WLS, there are reasons of disparate effect and unique perspective that militate towards varying degrees of exclusion– as in almost all racial and religious societies. In my opinion, until the legal profession and educational system changes, arguments of reverse discrimination are misdirected, and take focus away from the purposes of such groups as the WLS. That said, any critical inquiry remains an important safeguard.

Best,

Prof. E (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

If more of us had been witness to the first meeting of the WLS (though that might have defeated the point), perhaps this discussion would have taken a different turn.  Luckily for me, since our research centre called the first meeting to session, I was able to attend it.  I was surprised at our large turnout, considering it was after a long day of classes and immediately after another meeting.  I was also surprised at the participation of every student in the room, something I have never quite been able to accomplish in the classroom.  And, I was surprised at what had drawn them to the meeting.  The students were so relieved, it seemed, to finally have a safe forum to discuss what had been going on in their lives, and on campus. They talked about the attitudes of male classmates and how the male students always assume females can’t do things, and that males can.  They talked about how they wanted to show the male students how prejudiced they sounded.

It is important for female students to have a space to meet, without judgment or interference.  Unfortunately, as Prof. E noted, we are in a society and a profession prone to exclusion.  The WLS is one way to help mitigate this.  Another is to foster an environment where females are included in the activities which bond faculty and students.  As someone who spent years being excluded from corporate golf, whiskey, and after-after parties, I can attest to this from experience:  what happens outside the classroom (or the boardroom) inevitably drives what happens in it.   If we exclude female students both from bonding activities and from even bonding together, we are fostering the patriarchy outside and inside the academic setting.

I think it is important to have stronger faculty-student relationships, as the first meeting of the WLS taught me.  I saw students who had never spoken up in class in an entirely new light.  I am sure a cricket match would work towards this too, for some people.  I just want to make sure that those whom it doesn’t work for, and those whom it might actually work against (those excluded for not being fast or competitive enough), have spaces and activities that do work for them as well.  And that when the cricket does happen, it is done in a spirit of inclusion by welcoming (as opposed to allowing) anyone to play.

Regards,

Prof. F (female)

————————————

Dear Prof. F,

Thank you for your email.  While I recognize and appreciate Prof. D’s point that many law schools have adopted policies that prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, religion etc. with respect to membership of student organizations, I want to share with you my experience in private practice.  Large law firms, recognizing both the importance of gender diversity and the business potential of senior female attorneys, have adopted a number of women’s initiatives to foster the professional development of women in big law.  These initiatives are generally available only to women for the reasons that Prof. E and Prof. F have already recognized- namely, current systems of professional and business development take place in traditionally male spaces.  Some the largest U.S. law firms have recognized that while keeping organizational initiatives open to all members of the organization is an ideal goal, the realities of the organizational environment necessitate certain gender specific initiatives in order to attain the ultimate goal of greater inclusion of women in the senior attorney ranks.

If the goal of our university is to provide an education to Indian students that allows them to compete on a global basis, there is no way to escape the critical component of providing an educational space that empowers the female students to compete with their male counterparts, within India or globally.  It certainly is not a given, and I don’t think there was any suggestion by any faculty member, that such an educational space must exclude male students.  Rather, the realities of the university environment at this point in time may suggest that such an educational space for the female students is best created by the WLS that includes only women.  For example, the university has an uneven the ratio of male to female students, female students grapple with a cultural and familial context that may not be supportive of their professional ambitions, female students don’t have upper class/senior students to whom they may look for guidance, and, based on Prof. F’s email, until WLS, female students had not had a forum to discuss their experiences on campus.  As these things change, perhaps in the future the WLS can be opened to both male and female students.  However, at this point, it may be premature to take a context-neutral, gender-neutral stance on the WLS.

Warmly,

Prof. G (female)

———————————-

Dear all:

Ah, now we are speaking! One mention of gender and you can see how things shake up – that’s the power of subversion. Apart from the WLS providing a much needed safe/ non-judgmental space for women on campus, it disturbs the neatness with which we want to go on with our lives within a ‘global’ space, seduced by the promise of emancipation.  It’s the old, still unresolved debate on special rights/ privileges vs. equal rights/ privileges. No space or policy can be gender-neutral or non-discriminatory if the very structure and architecture of that space/ policy is not. And our university is no exception – by the sheer imbalance in the male to female ratio of faculty, students, admin staff, construction workers, service providers.

This of course is not the only marker as Profs. F and G have convincingly pointed out. As I mentioned in my last mail, even declaredly gender/ caste/ sexuality/ disability/ race/ religion-neutral spaces are by default male/ Brahmin/ heterosexual/ abled/ white/ Hindu, and there is an almost unquestioning internalization of that fact – it disciplines us so smoothly that we don’t even recognize it.

Talk of non-discrimination in a space that is structurally unequal will only reinforce the gender hierarchy. I see no reason why the WLS should be looked at as an exclusive space – rather it’s the first step towards turning our university inclusive – making it substantively equal for its women students. It’s not factionalism, it’s solidarity. The very fact that WLS’ formation, or a move to include women students in the gender-neutral Saturday cricket fixtures unsettles us (surprisingly only men!) means that a hierarchy was already in operation. As Foucault has eminently reminded us, resistance to power, is what makes us recognize it. The WLS has done exactly that.

Having said that, as a feminist deeply committed to queering any form of essentialism – I’d like conveners of the WLS to respond to my question about whether a Hijra student can be accommodated within the WLS. This is a question with much larger purport than the WLS itself – of whether we are on the slippery slopes of biological determinism when we create women-only spaces to undo the gender hierarchy which in itself is predicated on biological determinism? How powerful is our subversion if we continue to operate within the binaries of male/ female? Are we subscribing to another hierarchy which places gender above sexuality on the arc of historical disadvantage?

Looking forward to more unsettling discussions.

In solidarity,

Prof. C (male)

————————–

The Closure

Um… excuse me? Could you guys with your subtle post-essentialist analysis and managerial double-speak please stop trying to bring sense into this? I am still hoping to see a grudge match between Profs. A (male) and B (female). If Prof. B wins, the women of our university get to be free of their oppressive masters. If Prof. A wins, we’ll join the British Raj again, wear white for the rest of the year and pay “triple lagaan.” No? Arm wrestling? Push ups? Why am I the only one laughing?

Cheers,

Prof. H (male)

—————————–

P.S.; No one continued the thread beyond this email. The cricket matches have become a hit – though participation of female students is negligible. The WLS meets every week. On the occasion of the 100 years of International Women’s Day they organized the screening of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Deathproof’. Was it a feminist film? You need to watch it to find out.

INDIA IS A populous country, and I’m pretty sure the citizens of India have something to do with it. I don’t think the storks are delivering all those babies, or that they are gifts of the Gods a la Kunti. Thus the move to squash teaching of basic sex education in schools is quite surprising. A few months back, the Committee on Petitions, comprising Rajya Sabha members and headed by BJP’s Venkaiah Naidu, said “there should be no sex education in schools” since “our country’s social and cultural ethos are such that sex education has absolutely no place in it”. ”

Let’s trot out that pony again — India’s glorious cultural ethos. Let’s hide behind it again. We won’t do it because it’s against our cultural ethos. Let’s all burrow our heads in the sand and ignore the problem, because it’s “against the Indian cultural ethos”.

Watch Indian TV nowadays, and if it isn’t Ekta Kapoor’s sindoor-anointed, scheming pativrata naris in backless cholis, it’s pretty young things in short-short skirts swinging to some very suggestive lyrics. Sexy is the new buzzword. Looking pretty is not good enough — you’ve got to look sexy. Most advertisements use women to sell their products. These are mostly pretty women, and they sell soaps, shampoos, refrigerators, hair dyes and even car tyres (Ceat tyres had an animated cartoony advertisement featuring a well-endowed woman in a low-cut blouse and shorts and you can’t see the face of the woman). A lot of these ads feature women in little clothing, mouthing suggestive dialogues.

Watch Bollywood films, and you will realise that most feature women in secondary roles, playing second-fiddle to the men and assumming subservient roles. There are also those, which pandering to the NRI, portray foreign-bred women who are all too happy to trade-in autonomous life to smilingly melt into the arms of our handsome, chauvinistic hero. Women as depicted in such media are shown as having little independence.

Many rural women marry young, conceive early and die in child-birth. Knowledge of contraceptives is limited. There are few people “progressive” enough to go to a doctor for such advice, leave alone uneducated women who have no agency of their own. Attitudes in the country still remain vastly chauvinistic — you’ll read about it in the newspapers (foeticide, infanticide and child marriage) and you’ll see it in the street molestation everyday. The youth remains uninformed about sexual choices and we shy away from educating them because it’s against the “cultural ethos” ?

“The committee ruled that children must be given the message that sex before marriage is “immoral, unethical and unhealthy” ”

The young people of this country are being bombarded by suggestive messages on the one hand and being denied basic sex education on the other. Pativrata nari vs. oomph-laden, skirt-suited pretty woman — guess who wins the image war these days ? Mr Naidu and his Committee might think pre-marital sex is “immoral”, but it’s happening anyway. And if the folk having pre-marital sex don’t know about basic safety, it’s probably adding to the AIDS numbers, if not creating unwanted children.

The urban youth has access to the net and other media. If you don’t give them information straight up, they will find it, and it might be pretty warped depending upon the source. Apart from that, what about curiosity ? If a girl starts menstruating early, she might be a little curious as to what’s going on. Mr Venkaiah Naidu might be blind, but most young folk are not.

“Advocating “instinct control” and “dignity of restraint”, the committee called for a new curriculum to include material on lives and teaching of saints, spiritual leaders, freedom fighters and national heroes.”

While I do think kids should have knowledge of saints, freedom fighters etc, I doubt that learning about Bhagat Singh will help the cause of abstinence any. The cultural invasion has already come. And it’s a little worrying to hear statements like the above from eminently sane people with good vision, and one assumes, satifisfactory hearing. Are they actually living in modern-day India ? Do they actually not see Govinda (now an MP) cavort on screen and thrust his pelvis or have they missed out on all those little gems of fine Indian film-making ? Do they think he is hinting at “instinct control”?

The Committee had better realise that the day for preaching the “dignity of restraint” has come and gone. In other words, that boat sailed. Long ago. And Mr Naidu wasn’t on it. And if at all applicable in this context, there is “dignity” only in not treating our youth as if they were pea-brained. As for restraint, Mr Naidu might apply it to avoid placing his foot in his mouth.

The committee said chapters on Naturopathy, Ayurveda, Unani and Yoga and moral values should be made integral parts of the syllabus to enable “total development of the child”. Chapters like “Physical and Mental Development in Adolescents” and “HIV/AIDS and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases” and related topics should be removed from the curriculum and incorporated in biology books only at the 10+2 stage.

When I was in school, some 20 years back, education on puberty and bodily changes was dealt with in the 9th standard. Much too late, I have always thought. I cannot imagine it being pushed out even further. At that time, a child is already 14-15 years of age, well into the age of puberty. And whether you like it or not, they are noticing these changes. It is high time for adults to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

There is a case to be made for considering the subject essential to proper growth and a balanced viewpoint. And for starting this education earlier. The more we consider this taboo and hide information, the more mystique is built around it. And the more alluring it gets.

It is all very well to talk about the high road and moral values, but it is another to assume that problems will dissappear once we try to inculcate our moral values in young folk, without first answering their pertinent questions. And as much as I am a fan of Yoga, I do think that the Committee is a tad out of touch with the youth’s mindset to think that it would do any good in this respect.

Ignoring sex education for young adults has done enough damage already. From a burgeoning AIDS crisis to exponential population growth, and young folk with repressed sexualities and stunted mentalities, it is bad enough already. It should not be allowed to get any worse.

***

Cook like mummy,

Yum, yum, yum, (repeat thrice)

Let’s have fun together!

Drive like daddy,

Knit like grandma,

Cough like grandpa….

…and by the time we come to “Be like teacher, Shh, shh, shh!” I’m ready to pop a vein.

Since school is located in an affluent Gujarati-dominated neighborhood with a disproportionate share of stay-at-home-mothers (SAHMs) and business-absorbed fathers, the children exposed to these stereotypical gender roles do, in all likelihood, go home to the same images where they get reinforced. [Note: I do not mean to tar all SAHMs or business-owner fathers with the same brush. The point is specific to my experiences at my preschool.] And then I’m met with wide-eyed disbelief when I tell them that girls are pilots too.

So what do I undertake to combat the pigeon holes? A little juvenile song reversal (“Drive like mummy” can be a thought, to begin with right?), some questioning on how many daddies cook (one excited little arm waves at me from among a sea of puzzled heads) and, my trump card: presenting to them a real, live girl pilot in uniform! (Okay, so my life may seem a tad dull to the rest of you, but hey, when work-related travel involves busing to the zoo, I’ll take whatever excitement I get, thank you.)

I observe them at play, loath to interfere, making sure both genders have gender-neutral and –specific toys within easy reach, and then watch a little resignedly as most girls twiddle spoons in tea cups while the boys use balls as missiles. I wince when I watch a parent absently hand out a stuffed animal or doll to their daughter and darts to their son. And then wonder: how much of this is physiological and how much is so ingrained that we’re unable to separate our socialization from the hard-wiring of our brains?

Is it okay to let them believe only grandmothers have the right to a kitchen because that’s what they’ll likely see anyway or is at least a minimum level of exposure on available options necessary? I tend to veer toward the latter choice in the hope that a little boy or girl may someday remember that gender roles and boundaries may exist, but if personal happiness lies in ignoring them, then so be it.

Maybe I am exceptionally jaded now, and five years later, not much surprises me anymore. But back then, that one line stunned me. Rendered me unable to speak (and anybody who knows me knows what a feat that is!) and hurt me infinitely more than any departmental letter of regret would have. I love my mother. Immensely. So this is not a parent-bashing post. But to come from my mother, my educated, learned, aware and fiercely independent female parent who wanted to start med school after becoming an accountant (and was screamed down by both my grandmothers) has been a lesson hard to forget. A lesson in how deeply ingrained certain societal and biological responsibilities are, no matter how much we believe we are beyond them. A lesson that taught me that no matter what my education or career accomplishments, at the end of the day, I’d still be judged a failure or success based on my marital status. A lesson that taught me that for all our fabulous talk about progressive thinking, deep down we still believe that a woman must only marry, at best, her intellectual/academic equal, or better still, someone a couple of notches above her.

I kid you not. I have lost count of the number of times I have been cautioned that men’s fragile egos cannot completely embrace a woman if her independent mind tags along. That I should reserve opinion on controversial issues because it’s all very well to be articulate, but men get threatened. The bottom line being: no man wants a woman who doesn’t make him feel like Rambo. If it means trashing that Ph.D., so be it. And a woman isn’t supposed to resent it either. Gracious acquiescence, my darlings, is the phrase. Of course, now that I’ve gone and ranted to the world and her husband about it, I can already see that last glimmer of testosterone receding into the distance.

Sigh. And then they sing no woman no cry.

Digg This • Add to Del.icio.us • Technorati This • Stumble It!

]]> http://ultraviolet.in/2008/02/04/education-and-the-single-woman/feed/ 23