NOTES
- Gender justice is an important issue to be highlighted.
- The society we grow up in teaches us what kind of behaviour is acceptable for girls and boys, what boys and girls can or cannot do.
- The roles women play and the work they do are usually valued less than the roles men play and the work they do.
• Growing up in Samoa in the 1920s:
(i) The Samoan islands are one of the large groups of small islands in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean.
(ii) In 1920s, children on these islands did not go to school. Fishing was a very important activity on the islands. Young people, therefore, learnt to undertake long fishing expeditions. But they learnt this at different points in their childhood.
(iii) When the babies started walking on own, they were left under the care of their older brothers and sisters. Children as old as five years looked after their younger siblings.
(iv) After attaining nine years of age, boys joined the older boys for outdoor activities like fishing and planting coconuts. However, girls continued looking after the younger ones.
(v) When girls became teenagers, i.e., 14 years of age, they were allowed more freedom as they could then go for fishing and plantation activities or help their mothers in cooking, etc.
• Growing up male in Madhya Pradesh in the 1960s:
(i) In Madhya Pradesh, India, boys and girls had a different outlook.
(ii) The girls’ school was designed very differently from the boys’ school. They had a central
courtyard where they played in total seclusion and safety from the outside world. The boys’ school had no such courtyard and the playground was just a big space attached to the school.
(iii) As a result, the girls seemed to be more purposeful and disciplined as they walked in lines. The girls always went in groups, perhaps because they also carried fears of being teased or attacked.
(iv) In most societies, including our own, the roles men and women play or the work they do, are not valued equally. Men and women do not have the same status.
• Valuing Housework:
(i) Many women work in offices and many do only household work.
(ii) Across the world, the main responsibility for housework and care-giving tasks, like looking after the family, especially children, the elderly and sick members, lies with women. However, their roles and work are not valued.
(iii) Valuing housework is an important element which needs to be propagated in society.
Lives of domestic workers:
(i) If we look at the lives of domestic workers, they are involved in activities like sweeping, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes and dishes or looking after children. Most of these are women.
(ii) A lot of housework actually involves many different tasks. The work includes strenuous and physically demanding situation. Hence, women need to work very hard.
(iii) If we add up the housework and the work, women do outside the home, we find that women spend much more time working than men and have much less time for leisure.
• Women’s work and equality:
(i) While the constitution does not discriminate between males and females in reality, discrimination still carries on.
(ii) The government has set up Anganwadis or child care centres in several villages to help women.
(iii) The government has passed laws that make it mandatory for organisations that have more than 30 women employees to provide crèche facilities. The provision of crèches helps many women to take up employment outside the home. It also makes it possible for more girls to attend schools.
EXERCISE
Q1: Are the statements given alongside true or false? Support your answer with the use of an example-
- All societies do not think similarly about the roles that boys and girls play.
- Our society does not make distinctions between boys and girls when they are growing up.
- Women who stay at home do not work.
- The work that women do is less valued than that of men.
Ans:
- True. Our Indian society believes that the roles of boys and girls are different and are not valued equally. Broadly speaking, our societies are mostly patriarchal i.e., a male is always the head of the family. For example, in Indian society, boys are encouraged to handle outdoor work and girls are encouraged to manage household chores. The work that women do within the home is not valued as work. Most domestic workers are women. The work women do is strenuous, time consuming and demanding. However, in some Latin-American countries, both boys and girls are encouraged to take care of their younger siblings and also to manage both outdoor and household work. Both boys and girls are expected to do the same kind of work.
- False. Our society does make distinctions between boys and girls as they grow up. This can be exemplified as follows: The girls' school was designed very differently from that of the boys. They had a central courtyard where they played in total seclusion and safety from the outside world. The boy's school had no such courtyard. Boys used the streets as a place to stand around idling, to play and to try out tricks with their bicycles. For the girls, the street was simply a place to get straight home. The girls always went in groups for the fear of being teased or attacked. Girls are usually given toys such as dolls, whereas boys are given toys such as cars, bat and ball etc. As compared to boys, girls spend more time in the kitchen and they are the ones who help the mother in taking care of the requirements of the household. On the other hand, boys are more involved in outdoor activities. They are not shouldered with much responsibility.
- False. Though it is a preconceived notion that women who stay at home do not work, it is not true. Women who stay at home do almost an equal amount of work as compared to their male counterparts by running the household, which is not an easy task. House work is time consuming. On an average, women spend more time working as compared to men in tasks such as cleaning, washing clothes, cooking, taking care of children and the elderly, etc. However, their work goes unnoticed because a bulk of their work is household-related and does not contribute to the generation of income.
- True. It is a part of a larger system of inequality between men and women. Since our society considers men to be the breadwinners of the family, any work that a woman does is not valued much because it does not contribute to the total income of the family. However, it must be noted that the amount of time women spend in taking care of the household, which involves tasks such as preparing three meals, getting children ready for school, taking care of the general cleanliness of the household, managing rations, dealing with maids or other such domestic help etc., is truly commendable. It is also assumed that this is something that comes naturally to women. It, therefore, does not have to be paid for. And society devalues this work.
Q2: Housework is invisible and unpaid work. Housework is physically demanding. Housework is time consuming.
Write in your own words what is meant by the terms 'invisible', 'physically demanding', and 'time consuming'? Give one example of each based on the household tasks undertaken by women in your home.
Ans:
- 'Invisible' here means something which is not noticed. A good example will be cleaning the house. It is expected that the house should be clean at all times, however, women have to put in great effort to maintain the cleanliness. Cooking three meals for the entire family is also take for granted and they expect more varieties for every meal.
- 'Physically demanding' means something which requires hard work and physical exertion. An example of this is washing clothes which require physical labor. In rural areas, women and girls carry heavy headloads of firewood. Tasks like cleaning, sweeping and picking up loads require bending, lifting and carrying.
- 'Time consuming' means something which takes a long time to be done. Cleaning the entire house is an example of a time consuming household task. Cooking involves standing for long hours in front of hot stoves.