International Day of the Girl-Child

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For those of you who do not know, today (Thursday, October 11, 2012), is the first International Day of the Girl-Child. This is an UN-sanctioned holiday, celebrating the importance of educating young women throughout the world. If you are in the United States, odds are that you haven’t heard about it, or, if you have, it was in passing and had no major impact on your daily life. At Shanti Bhavan, however, we (volunteers, teachers, and male and female students) have been preparing for weeks to put together a celebration worthy of TV.

You see, SB has partnered up with Intel (yes, THAT Intel), who wanted to show its support for girls’ education in India. Therefore, they have helped us prepare a big shindig, with speeches and entrepreneurship classes for the older girls and the presentation of a new song (written by the lovely Lizzy to the tune of “Lean on Me”) sung by the girls in the choir. They even allowed my eleventh graders some time to present art projects inspired by the idea of “education for all.” These events are going to be videotaped, and then eventually (according to my understanding) be used for Intel promotions. I am quite excited to be part of this celebration, because I feel that it recognizes a deep need in society, and while in India, I have seen evidence of the gender disparities.

I write this entry with some level of wariness, as I don’t want to be that traveler who draws drastic, ignorant conclusions based on some choice encounters. You should be aware, therefore, that the information I write here is based on a month’s exposure to the Indian culture, and is therefore not nearly as nuanced as it could eventually be. I feel compelled, though, to bring out certain observations (both my own and other volunteers’) regarding gender relations in India. I do this because SB is unusual in its dedication to education for everyone, and at times even its students struggle with gender equality because of the gender expectations of the society.



Firstly, I’d like to point out that, as a white woman, I am an outlier. Depending on the situation, I am treated both “as a woman” and “as a man.” For instance, when riding on public transportation, Indian women ideally sit next to a relation or another woman. When given the option between seating a white woman or an Indian woman next to a man, the bus official will always choose the white woman (because then the Indian woman can sit next to her). However, whenever possible, the bus officials will seat white women next to other women (or white people). I have also noticed this when people would stop us to take pictures with us. One man, who wanted to take a picture of Peter and me with his wife and son, insisted that the wife stand next to me instead of the son, but some younger folks don’t take those precautions.

As I mentioned before in “Humming in Hampi,” there was a distinct lack of women celebrating at the Ganesha Immersion procession. What I didn’t mention before was their eyes. They were gathered together at Virupaksha Temple, watching the festivities from behind a fence (not built for this purpose, mind you, but a barrier all the same) with a haunting darkness in their expressions. In my English classes, we read a poem called “An Old Woman” by Arun Kolatkar that has the lines: “You look right at the sky./ Clear through the bullet holes/ she has for her eyes.” And that’s the sort of thing I saw in their gazes. It made me feel like a traitor or a schoolyard bully—that I was taunting them with my privilege to dance. In retrospect, I wish I had stood next to them, talked to them, instead of giving in to my rhythmic (or, rather, arrhythmic) impulses. I can’t help but wonder what they were thinking, seeing all of these foreign women participate in their ancient celebration, when they themselves cannot?

Stephanie, one of my coworkers, spent the week off in Kerala, and she went through several rural villages, visiting friends and their relatives. One of these friends even agreed to bring together a group of men from the village to answer her questions. She asked things about their lifestyle, about their quality of life, and about the infrastructure of the area. At some point, she got onto the topic of alcohol, and the men started talking about how they worked all day and would often go drink in order to decompress. Stephanie, who knew that rural women are not allowed to do this, asked, “What about the women? They work hard all day, too. Don’t they deserve the same thing?” The men responded by saying that that wasn’t what a woman should be doing. Then Stephanie started asking about gender, and the men became uncomfortable, saying that they had to focus on fixing the caste system before they could fix gender relations. Then, when asked what would happen in women ruled the world, the men’s response was very telling, “The women would punish us for what we’ve done to them.”

One thing that may strike a person in rural India is that women always seem to be “dressed up,” even when they’re working in the field. They wear their colorful, beautiful saris and gold nose piercings and earrings and necklaces. To the American eye, it seems strange, but upon further thought, I realized that they were wearing their wealth. Many rural folks do not have access to banks, and the gold would not be safe in a poor Indian home (if there is a structure at all—I cannot tell you how many tarp-homes I have seen along the sidewalks in the city). So, they wear what they own, and, in effect, are forced to display what they are worth.

I have noticed that a woman’s appearance in India is highly valued. As in the United States, ads are inundated with products meant to improve women’s looks. You have the usual shampoos and creams and what have you, but you also have things like skin whitener, which really gets under my skin (excuse the pun). I know that this is also a product in the United States, and I am equally disgusted by it, no matter where it is. Watching movies in India, I am struck by how many of the popular male actors are darker than the female actors. Looking at the mixture of faces at SB, I am struck by how beautiful all of the girls are, and yet how some of them are going to go into the world and be considered less beautiful because they were born with darker skin. That is a problem that the boys will never have to face.

I can see evidence of these various forms of social oppression, even at SB. The girls are often quieter, and have less self-confidence than the boys. In one of the first papers I assigned—“Which character in Macbeth do you most admire?”—I was amazed at how many girls said Lady Macbeth. They commented on her power, “even” over a man, and discussed how important it was for them to have “control.” In class, conversations that would have been purely informational in the United States become jarringly real. For instance, I was lecturing yesterday about Edgar Allan Poe, and started (as I often do) with his life history, including the information that he married his 13-year-old cousin when he was much older. There was a bit of a strange pause after I said that, and then one of the boys asked, “They do that in the United States?” I assured him that they used to, but it is very rare now. He paused, then replied, “They do that in India, you know.”

How is a person supposed to respond to something like that?

But here, on International Day of the Girl-Child, I am struck by how wonderful these students are, and how lucky they are. This blog includes their art projects, and a couple of their presentations, in hopes that they can tell you about their experiences in their own words. There is hope for equality, and this is just the beginning.



Love,

Lynn

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Photos

Art Process
Babu working on his group's sculpture: "The Statue of Liberty."

"The Statue of Liberty"
The sculpture's right half is uneducated (carries a dustbin and a frown); the left half is educated (carries a book and a smile).