Genderism in society, schools and colleges [Archives:2006/932/Education]

Dr .M.N.K. Bose
Professor of English
Ibb University
Yemen
I have chosen to use the term 'genderism' instead of 'sexism', commonly used in gender studies literature, mainly because I am aware that the later term might make some of my readers pant, perspire and panic, as any word with 'sex' as a component is tabooed and the speaker or the writer of the word is ogled by others. Both these terms mean that one of the sexes -female or male -is oppressed in favour of the other. Like racism and classism, sexism is against the interest of the students, if practiced in schools and colleges, consciously or unconsciously. Many people have raised their voices against racism and classism, oppression and inequality in terms of colour, wealth, politics, ethnicity and nationality in social and educational institutions and laws against them have been instituted in many countries, but very few voices have been raised against sexism and rarely had any laws been instituted against sexist practices in schools and colleges; even in countries where such laws are in vogue, they remain in law books: curriculums continue to be gender-biased; classroom practices are in favour of one sex; teaching materials are skewed against one sex. Unfortunately, the oppressed sex happens to be the females, irrespective of whether it is a developed or developing country. With the onset of movements such as women's liberation movements in countries like the USA and the practice of equal opportunities policies, girls have gained an edge over the boys, for example in their continuous performance in GCSE, and there are voices calling for reconsideration and, if necessary, reversal of the policies so that positive action is now directed at boys' learning problems.

The main reason for this inequality against females is not difficult to understand. Our society is traditionally a patriarchal one, grounded on three assumptions: that the separate spheres of men and women are natural divisions based on biology-as-destiny ideology; that women are defined in relation to men and children rather than as individual beings; and that women are inferior to men. In India, female children are often unwanted and the government's attempts to educate people against this inhuman practice through mass media drain the exchequer; the results are rather encouraging. In most other countries, including the developed ones, female children are brought up in such a way that they grow weak, meek, submissive and domesticated, based on the belief that biology is destiny. This belief is instilled in girls through socialization practices such as male chauvinism and institutional sexism in male-dominated institutions such as schools, colleges and work places.

Male chauvinism, exhibited at the level of personal relationships, refers to attitudes and activities through which males display their sense of superiority over females. For example, the slang terms such as chick, fox, and bitch to refer to women place them metaphorically on the level of animals; other terms such as broad and party for women refer to things rather than human beings. In some societies like mine, the pronoun used for women is 'adhu / idhu', the Tamil equivalent of 'it', denigrating them to the status of things. In some other societies in India, the husband addresses his wife not by her name but as the mother of X or Y (son or daughter), as if she doesn't possess any name at all. With in the home, male chauvinism is expressed in other ways too. Many men refuse to share the household tasks such as cooking, cleaning and baby caring, as such activities are women's work. Some men feel proud saying that they have never entered the kitchen even for making a cup of tea in their life! 'In our culture', say Hochschild and Machung in their book “The second shift: inside the Two-job marriage””