ONE YEAR!

Reflections and Results (Part 1)

Sethulakshmi V

It’s been exactly a year since Vaishnavi and I started brainstorming about starting gender sensitisation workshops in her school in Kumbakonam. Now, after an year, when we have completed sessions for over 500 students, 60 teachers and 100 parents, it feels necessary to look at where it all started from and whether it has met our expectations. What prompted this idea as far as I remember was one of our usual discussions on sexist tropes in cinemas, and how it encourages and almost glorifies harassment. This led to more discussions to lack of awareness about gender concepts and sexist stereotypes in text books and complete absence of any form of sex education in our schools.

This led us to read up on gender theories, ideas syllabuses from other similar initiatives across the world. With discussions over phone and mails, we finally created a syllabus for the students for the school. At this point, this was more like a list of topics we needed to cover such as gender roles, stereotyping, menstrual taboos, child abuse and more, and soon we had to segregate and customise them for students, parents and teachers.

By June end last year, we had our first session with teachers, most of whom were women. The session left us with many lessons on how to better our approach. The responses from teachers were supportive. Rather than a resistance to the new ideas we had presented we were welcomed with a qualm that they never  had any platform till now to express and discuss these concerns. By July, we initiated our sessions with the students covering those from 7^th std to 12^th Std. They opened up about their own stories of being discriminated, their perspectives and even instances of being abused.

 I would travel to Kumbakonam now and then and  Vaishnavi organised sessions on constitution, caste and theatre along with the sessions on gender and sexual harassment. It was amazing to see these children, who were shy and hesitant in the beginning, open up and voice their opinions and assert their identity quite openly over a period of time. At the end of each session we did our survey and feedback exercises. Reading those feedbacks were the most entertaining part of the day for us – it ranged from honest confessions about their prior ignorance on topics concerning all things gender, to really quirky questions and queries to the very pleasing and ego boosting compliments for the beautiful akkas (the last one was far and few in between, nevertheless it did boost our fragile egos!).

 In October, we decided to finally conduct an art workshop for the kids. And I was given the responsibility to create along with the students, a giant mural in the school hall. Having never done this before, I was nervous about this ordeal.  But I was welcomed with a vast set of paintings – abstract,  imaginative drawings and doodles that the kids had drawn. We had asked them to draw anything that would represent the world of their dreams and they responded with their art works on  alternative universes, utopian societies where animals conversed openly with humans, and a world where there was no stereotyping.

At the year end, we were left with piles of papers of data to analyse. This didn’t seem like that interesting exercise, and with just two of us in the team, we had no one we could delegate this boring work to. But at the end of looking at the data from over 500  kids, we were amazed and humbled at the response we had seen.

We conducted the workshop for roughly 600 students and around 400 children participated in the pre and post workshop surveys.

 At the end of our first phase of gender sensitisation workshops, we have seen that awareness among kids about the concept of gender grew by more than 50 %.

It is quite satisfying to know that the awareness about laws related to sexual harassment and child abuse grew from 23% to 64%.

Along with awareness one of our focal points through these sessions was to observe and affect the perceptions of these communities about gender roles, socialisation and stereotypes.

At the beginning of the sessions, more than half of the students believed that boys are stronger than girls. This came down to 35 % towards the end, with most students responding in fact that boys and girls are equal. 

In the pre-surveys, more than three-fourth of the participants(77%) believed that boys cannot be sexually harassed. By the end of the workshops, only 38% still went by this belief.

It is also worthwhile to note that responses of children, teachers and parents were alike in questions that tested their perceptions and social conditioning, reminding us how important childhood interventions of these kind are.

Some perceptions like who is responsible for an event of sexual assault were hard to shake even with informative sessions like ours. Most students and teachers considered both parties – assaulter and the survivor to be at some fault in an even of sexual assault. By the end of the session, most children and some teachers responded that assaulter is solely at fault in this case. These were some of the most challenging topics while taking the session.

It was really encouraging to see more children open up about their own experiences of discrimination, abuse and exploitation. It was heart-breaking to know that more than 12% of our participants had experienced some form of sexual harassment in their life. Some of the responses detailed the places and the people they were scared of, like relative’s house, roads and public places. We had long conversations in the class about child abuse laws, statistics and helplines with the children. These dialogues, though often uncomfortable we need to observe and see how this evolves.

Observations- Teachers Survey

• More than 60 % of the teachers who had participated in the workshops agreed that teachers pay more attention to boys than girls.
• 45 out of 62 respondents believed that sex education is extremely necessary in the school education system.
• 50 % of the respondents believed that women make better teachers than men.
• At the beginning of the session close to 40% teachers thought that boys cannot be harassed which went down to 10 % by the end of the workshop.

Like students, over half of the respondents in the teachers’ workshops believed that both parties are to be blamed in the event of sexual harassment and this came down considerably during the course of the workshop. Most teachers responded that they will be shy, uncomfortable and hesitant to talk about sexual harassment to their students. Some stated that they receive hardly any training  to broach these sensitive topics.

20 out of 62 teachers admitted that they have had someone close to them including students share about an experience of sexual harassment they had faced. When asked how would they respond in case if someone was to share such a story with them, responses ranged from listening wholeheartedly to some admitting that they would avoid interacting with that person.

At the end of one year, I believe we have learned much more than the wisdom we sought to impart. We learned about how strong social conditioning can be on the perceptions and attitudes of both children and adults alike, we saw that media especially Tamil movies has an extremely strong influence on the gender perspectives and thought processes of the children, we learned that teachers are often restricted by their own ideologies and limited resources to intervene and influence children positively. We saw that even with the slightest input, children responded in the brightest, exuberant and emotive fashion and it was a joy to see them open up and embrace their identities and stretch their aspirations. Our children went on to initiate clubs on discussing climate change, organised extensive surveys on garbage collection system in the town, and went on to receive praise and  accolades for their efforts. Most importantly, these sessions made us confront our own insecurities and ideologies, and be constantly challenged in the process while also exposing us to the complex realities which we work with. It has been humbling, satisfying, frustrating but also made us more empathetic and compassionate in our lives.

You could read the detailed study here,https://bit.ly/3fcH9gi