The Equality Syndrome

 

I first presented on ‘Gender Equality’ at the IATEFL conference in Brighton, UK in 2011. It was an interesting group of people I presented to, from Canadian and Scottish education ministry and some who worked in refuge centres. My first tête-à-tête with policy makers whether at a country level or institute level. Post that in an informal chat, one of the participants wondered what kind of experiences of gender inequality I must have had while growing up to make me look at education and learning from this perspective.

I was completely thrown by the question and had to take a moment to think back to how it was growing up. Not that I understood about equality or inequality then. But games were unisex whether it was climbing trees or making mud-forts for Diwali; team games like seven tiles and kabbadi and later ring tennis and badminton.  So were books – books and magazines were for everyone whether it was Tolstoy or Enid Blyton or Arthur Clarke or Jules Verne or PG Wodehouse or Jackie Collins. Issues of the Readers' Digest which we devoured with the greatest attention. And a steady monthly diet of Science Today among other periodicals.

Growing up I don’t think I felt unequal to anyone reciting Sanskrit shlokas or singing songs from Bollywood movies, writing essays for the school magazine or leading on the Ganpati and Navratri aartis (devotional songs) at home when my father was away on his business trips. The inequality seeped in slowly after not then. So no, that isn’t what motivated me to look at things through this lens.

 I was once at a fund-raising programme organised by an Engineering college in Trivandrum. The programme was to go on till 8.30 pm. Girls from the Engineering college were all standing together swaying to the music. At around 8 pm the emcee announced they were on track and that the programme would go on for the next half hour. Just before the performers could continue, someone came running on the stage and announced that the girls from the college who stayed at the hostel were to leave immediately. Their buses were lined-up outside for them.  And this large group of young ladies vanished. I met some the next day when I went to judge a competition at the college that was a part of their college festival. I asked them why they didn’t request to  wait for the last half hour of the show. One of them said, They asked us to leave. I said – Did you tell them that you all wanted to wait for half an hour? That you were enjoying the music!  ‘No’, another one said, ‘its always like that.’

This is perhaps the reason. You notice inequalities because you know; you have experienced that things can be different! Even better! That the bar can be high and by calling out inequalities you can make a difference!