Going Radical: Only girls can do it!

‘You know; I am so glad today. My daughter is starting to help me. She vacuumed all the rooms perhaps to make her cleanliness obsessed mom happy.’

‘Yeah! You got a daughter, daughters do that, they help in household chores. what to do! boys don’t do it.’

Dear Women,

I couldn’t believe my ears first when I got those responses. I just thought you all would be happy to hear my daughter’s involvement in helping her mother. But you generalized the customized act of my daughter with gender role assignment. I gasped with utter disbelief. I wanted to throw my preaching to you. But, I can’t because everybody owns their perception that's been founded on our background, level of progressive thoughts and I shouldn’t be interpreting your thoughts in negative way. And in my own style, I pondered why boys don’t do those household chores, why they are so destructive unlike girls as all mothers’ claim. Is it because they are intellectually, physically, socially compromised? I immediately get answer they are not because I see them as capable as all the girls are. The only different part is genitalia. Their hands, legs, other body parts are well crafted as their female matches and I guess they are even stronger. So, I conjectured what could be the differences that led them away from the skills of household chores that are so vital and essential in everybody’s life.

So, I want to share what I observed. I feel that the sociocultural aspects play important role rather that their physical, mental and social ability. The role expectation that we carry as soon as the babies are borne depending on the genitalia they carry might have important role in developing the skills, attitude, behaviors by those girls and boys.
When a baby boy is borne, his parents wouldn’t expect him to be taking care of household chores, or doing the things, which normally a girl would do. However, a girl is expected to follow every footstep that her mother take. While raising a girl, it’s so natural to ask her to sweep the floor, clean the dishes, organize the things at home, cook foods, to take care of anyone but on the other hand, a mother or father would never expect their son to do so. As a result, daughter involves in the household works even before she knows her gender role. However, we carry the notion about boys as they don’t do such work and we never ask them to get involved in such activities. Because perhaps this is so unmanly or womanly to do such work. It’s us, be it educated or uneducated we are indoctrinated with the gender role expectation and we simply say, ‘boys don’t do it!' and we chuckle and we raise a boy who even don’t care to clean a room. When boys want to play outside, have you ever heard a mother saying, ‘first clean the room, bring water and then only you are clear to go and play’? but those conditions are expected for girls.

But I just want to say all the mother with children, ‘Please don’t raise a child who wouldn’t even vacuum their room or keep room clean or cook for oneself.’ The world is so competitive. Most will attend colleges, be educated and earn a way of livelihoods and I expect my daughter do the same but what makes your child different is if he or she will be able to do his personal/household care on his own or not, if he will be able to make positive changes or not. Please don’t give a son to the world who doesn’t help her mother or father but cares to continue the legacy of false manhood. Please don’t give the man who ignores the people in his house but care to play whatever ball only because he is male. Please raise a humble child who will help in creating a beautiful, harmonious world. Raise a son the way you want your husband to be and You don’t have to worry later if your son is henpecked husband if he helps his wife later because if he starts doing things since childhood, it seems natural. If you don’t change, we will never see change.

- Fellow mother of a girl child

Wrong Target, Wrong Approach!!

I wanted to pen down my feelings on this subject since long but I couldn’t dare to because I will be unable to fathom its intensity of terror, inhumanity, cruelty and violence. It terrifies every girl, every girl’s parents, family members. I am afraid I won’t be able to express the gravity of disgust I feel towards it.
Once it occurs, it taints the fate of the girl, the self-confidence, and normalcy of behavior; It also changes the perception of society and others towards the girl. Even though she is as pious as before, no one will look with the same eye. Some would be supportive, some would be sympathetic, some would just blame the girls themselves, some would pity the future, some would chuckle and stare condescendingly. This will let people to form their opinion but above all it changes the normal reaction or thoughts that used to be earlier. Day and night in some corner, or in pavement, or at home, many girls are violated, abused and raped. Rape, an extreme violence, sometimes even followed by the murder of the victim, is not only a physical violence, It’s an extreme form of physical, mental and Social violence. Due to which women live their whole life wounded and stigmatized.

When women are raped or abused, we desperately want to prevent their violence, rape and in this attempt we preach girls to prepare for the worst and get ready to defend it. Parents, teachers and societies teach them to be safe always. Don’t walk alone! Don’t walk after certain time frame specifically during the evening and the night! Don’t talk to strangers! Don’t do revealing dress up! However, many rapes are done by relatives and many rapes are just happened due to sudden aggression and temptation of some reckless, psychopath, malicious evil men or others; while it happened even when the girls are properly covered with the hijab and Abaya.

If we just recount the recent cruel gang rapes in India and others in different countries that were followed by murder of the victims. These cases drew immense attention worldwide. And we can see it didn’t happen to only women, who were wearing revealing, supposedly provoking dresses, who were out in the public alone, it happened when they were with their friends, when they were inside their home by their own relatives implying that It can happen to anyone, anywhere. And our preventive approach is focused towards girls while we neglect perpetrators responsible for that situation. If we make our daughter to be strong physically, emotionally, she would defeat couple of men but, unfortunately, there will be numerous of them to challenge her and to defeat her freedom and the feeling of self.

Probably, we are overlooking the real reasons of this violence, the cause is deeply rooted in the patriarchal social structure, no matter what men do, they are ensured impunity. They are regarded highly in the family, community, and found ways to excuse for any wrongdoings as we can see in some countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, where rapists are acquitted if rapists marry the victim.
Such absurd rules mock the very existence of female as human and uncover blatant male dominance. Sometimes our society protects them by not revealing the truth with the fear of stigma to save family’s honor and even fear of ostracism of victims. This phenomenon, however, reflects underlying gender inequality that is deeply rooted in our culture. Patriarchal society and gender stereotypes that openly support submissive role of female and the notion of masculinity characterized by strong manhood, which needs to be able to control of women.

It may be possible we are failing to teach perpetrators proper values or we are failing to devise some mechanisms to control compulsive desires and sick mentality of the perpetrators and we have also devised some loopholes in the rulebooks still prevalent in some countries though some of the traditional countries have come forward to eliminate such provisions. While evaluating the prevention approaches, we must evaluate how harsh the penalties are and how strong is the implementation. We must also analyze the answers of following questions. Are the penalties for rape severe enough to deter the motives of the perpetrator? Are we teaching them the proper values of manhood and equality of gender? How much is the extent of access to pornography and at what age?

Hopefully, time will bring change over the course as more girls and boys are educated, increased awareness level, more men will develop reverent attitude towards women but waiting would cause violence of many innocent females. Teaching boys, before they become men, about how to respect other women in addition to women at home would be a basic step towards violence free society. This seems very simple step but it is very difficult in a real world, where people with disparate ethics, understanding, awareness level exist in the same society. We don’t exist alone and the same interdependent existence would create difficulty in formation of an attitude of a person. Nevertheless, change should start from a point or by a person, so an educated couple could be that person to show what the gender equality is. The prevention programs should start focusing on attitude and behavior change of the people in community. On top of all a stringent law having a deterrent effect on perpetrator is must have intervention in current situation.

By Pramila Rai

A woman or a human?

Who are we?  I delve into this thought often and I ask to myself, " Who are we women?" Are we a bonded labor? 

Like a bonded labor, we always have to ask for something; we always have to fight for the right that should have been granted as a human. But NO! Nothing is granted for women! Your life is not easy and nothing comes in your hand until you shout loud and make others realize you exist and you want to exist as an individual. Don’t single out handful of women, who are privileged and stand out distinct. We are talking the women of commonplace. Many of us have delusion that this is the only scenario in developing countries. But have you heard of women suffrage movement? Women of US and other developed countries had to advocate for the rights of vote when the scenario only allowed males to vote for elections. Votes of women were considered redundant as they are considered to have the same opinion as of their husbands, fathers or sons. Only after years of fight, women were allowed to participate in parliamentary election even in developed countries.

Women Right in Nepal's constitution

Even when the Nepal went much reformation and formed a new reformed constitution, believed to be practical in this era of civilization, globalization and technological advancement and guidance of New Nepal, women advocates had to advocate for citizenship rights. Still discriminatory practice continues in the new book of New Nepal.

Women Evolution

The day family is created; a woman is bonded to house labor that is considered of petty value. She becomes engaged for all the active hours of a day and she forgets about her individual growth and potential. She will not get opportunity to be a human for her whole life. That is the reason few women are listed in the list of scientists, entrepreneur, poets, writers. 

Fight with the stereotypes

The saddest part is we tend to believe the stereotypes established by the people and we tend not to believe our own ability and capacity. We believe in myths and we flow with that myth. For example, People say women aren’t good at geography, mathematics. However, I believe its up to her socialization and exposure and the focus.  We set limits on our own capacities. May be this hypothesis is right but what about giving them opportunity without tags of stereotypes.  We mightn’t change the already encrypted DNA code over the night but this can be changed in certain span of time, if we believe in theory of evolution. 
Just take an example of "Nimble finger theory", according to which women and children are good at doing things which needs fine skills, dexterity and patience as in carpet, embroidery factory, beedi and silk silver industries. Have you ever thought what could be the reason for this? Of course children are good at learning and they have sharp vision and they can pick up the thing easily that are hard for adult. But women! They are almost always engaged in such area from the history of human evolution and that skills have been transferred from mother to daughter, generation to generation like a cultural tradition, becoming a physical tradition. I would like to refer it as skill integration in DNA code.

The Way forward

If you still have the doubt, raise your child differently; you can see the difference. I have witnessed a parent with a girl child and those parents never mentioned "because you are a girl", "girls are like this" sentences and she was provided everything without differentiating her gender. She was not given the toys with only colour purple and pink so at her later stages, she didn't show the peculiar attributes thought to be of only girls.

I don’t want our girls to be tomboy but I believe in breaking up the gender stereotypes that would inhibit one’s limitless capabilities. I think every parent should provide all the things regardless of gender. Lets make them human instead of woman, who is so vulnerable and sensitive.