How happy is this 'childhood'?

“Ladhko ko ladhkiyo wale kaam nahi karna chahiye, nahi toh unka mazak banta hai, movie mein bhi uske dost uska mazak udhate hai”, shares 11 year old boy after watching movie Kiski Kitchen, a movie based on gender roles. Isn’t it surprising that a 11 year old kid believes that cooking is ladhkiyo ka kaam? Probably no, because that’s what he has seen at his home or in his neighborhood, what is more surprising is how these messages conforming the gender roles are delivered to his innocent mind! To my little surprise many other boys nodded in the support of the statement. Few girls stated that in their homes both the parents work, on probing still who cooks in their family- they said either their sisters or again mother. I feel this is how gender plays vital role in our lives, without us even knowing about it, it strangles us in a dense mesh of what to do and what not based on whether one is a boy or a girl.

Playing, learning and drawing

Taking this energy ahead, we played chit games, where we distributed chits having gender roles written on them and asked them to form 2 different queues (one for boys and one for girls) depending on who does what work mostly.

What is gender?

In the second round, they were asked to form 3 queues depending on whether boy, girl or both can do the roles written on the chits. Interestingly the queue ‘both can do’ had highest number of participants. We then co-created the story of human beings from day one till today, exploring how they lived, what they ate? Was there any difference in the work that man did or woman did? What made them settle at one place? How the concept of marriage and offspring came up and related?

Co-creating story around gender

Through many such interesting steps and questions, we did arrive at a story but realized that just like the game of Chinese whispers, generations after generations messages changed and things that happened because of a situation had now become acceptable norms that need to followed to be a ‘girl’ or ‘boy’.

Gender differences in various spaces

After understanding gender, we engaged in how it is different 'being a girl' or 'a boy' in family, school or with friends.  During this activity, a girl shared innocently that her teacher warned her to stay away from boys as their touch is a “bad touch”  but she didn’t know why that is a bad touch? She also inquired, "Why kids are supposed to be born after marriage?" Her sharing was an eye opener as these are few of the curious questions that keeps jumping around in the brains of adolescents and constant bottling up leads to choosing a wrong path. The idea of power, strength and masculinity also came up through various examples – like boys play basketball, cricket, football because they are powerful whereas girls prefer gossiping.

Now the feedback time! The boring and monotonous process was transformed into creative, colorful and fun activity where kids became artists and sketched things that transcended into the vision of gender equality. The seriousness with which they drew the feedback was simply unmatchable. Yet another gender sensitization workshop with children at My Perch made me wonder and ponder about the depth of existent gender realities and their impact!  

Gender Feedback