WRECKING BALL OF GENDER EQUALITY
I know that all of us aren’t enthusiasts of feminism or gender equality. In fact, most of us couldn’t care less about being implicit promoters of gender roles and not making conscious effort to stop it. So, I hope to address this issue in a way that both the indifferent and the enthusiasts feel equally involved.
I recently read an article in The Economist and it shook me hard. The article was called How India fails its Women with a subhead that was equally catchy and gloomy.
The female employment rate is lower than in any big economy bar Saudi Arabia, and falling.
Upon reading further, I learnt that the female employment rate in India has fallen from a low of 35% in 2005 to 26% now. In fact, more Indian women have been beaten up by their husbands than are in work.
Feel those shock waves yet?
The article, very logically, put some intriguing and reasonable causes across. One of them was lack of employment opportunities that suit women. Another counterintuitive reasoning was that too much time is invested in education which leads to women putting off work entirely. Women who study for long have been observed to not enter the workforce at all. Also, richer households are typically less likely to send their women off to work.
Some not-so-obvious solutions were also chalked out for us like reforming India’s labor market and men helping with household chores so women get more time to work. But in my simplistic opinion, if there’s ever going to be a game changer, it’s going to be this.
Gender Roles. That’s our wrecking ball.
A deeper understanding of both our economy and our society simultaneously can explain the years of unrest. Gender roles in our country are so prevalent. Very few of us have been able to dodge that bullet. In fact, most of us have pulled the trigger ourselves at some point, knowingly or unknowingly.
From values to behaviours, the messages that we send out to our girls and boys are different in their essence.

Compromise is a value commonly thrown around for girls. I’m not saying it’s a bad value to give to your girls, it’s not. Give it to them but don’t forget to remind them of its limits too. Remind them of how a compromise in choosing an outing plan is different from a compromise of their self-respect and freedom to make their own decisions. And teaching your boys the same value only adds icing to the cake. But even for an idealist like me, I know that concept is still a little far-fetched for most people.
Girls are implied to prioritize relationships and boys to prioritize careers.
Girls are expected to suck it up while boys are nudged to “man up” and take a stand in every situation that demands it.
While these discussions are becoming more common — thanks to the youth and the open minded — there’s a cautionary tape that’s inevitably wrapped around it. More often than not, people end up observing this as a one-against-the-other situation.
An awareness that this isn’t another one of those men vs women situation is crucial to the understanding of this social issue. For what it’s worth, I think it comes down to the conscious vs the indifferent. Having 84% women in our country believe that men have more right to work than women when jobs are scarce, we know we have a lot of work to do on both ends of the spectrum. Work that’s going to require some ingeniously applied solutions that break the stereotypes.
Just like charity, change begins at home too.
It’s going to begin in our everyday conversations. Instead of instinctively claiming that “girls are weak” when they freak out in a complicated situation, pause. And think. If that’s what you’ve constantly observed, then why is that? Upon asking yourself such questions, you will realize that it’s never as simple as that. Maybe, girls aren’t weak. Maybe, they just haven’t been frequently exposed to complicated situations. And that makes them relatively inexperienced to handle those situations. Top it off with a gentle reminder that inexperienced and weak aren’t synonymous.
India believes in protecting and perfecting their girls more than enabling and empowering them. It’s time we changed that ball game and completely erased some of the most basic and destructive roles that we have dwelled on in the past. So watch it, when you are about to make another sexist remark that associates girls or boys with a certain quality. Even if it is somehow proved to be factually true, don’t do it before asking yourself a series of whys. Do it because our seemingly harmless statements play a major role in shaping our behaviour, and in return, our economy.
I would like to end this one on a positive note. I hope that our conversations and joint efforts lead us all right to that one day. That one day when our kids know little about the obvious difference between pink and blue.
I hope that we are closer to seeing that day than our cynical hearts lead us to believe.
