“Mom Cooks and Dad Reads”- debunking this stereotype Kerala government ensures Gender-Neutrality through their school books. The objective is to teach gender equality in the minds of children. Both genders should know, learn, and respect each other’s choices. The teachers and the guardians have wholeheartedly welcomed this positive step.
In a zeal to create a gender-neutrality outlook among students of Kerala, such initiatives by the government give hope that such representation accumulates respect for other genders and not look down upon them. Previously, the state government has introduced uni-sex schools that have tried to phase out boys-only, and girls-only schools by converting all schools to mixed schools in a phased manner.
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When did the initiative first come?
In 2021, a girl Vismaya N Nair was found hanged in Kollam due to extreme pressure of dowry from her husband. Her husband was arrested but what the Kerala government decided from this one incident is appreciated. The Kerala government decided to audit gender-neutrality through their textbook to curb the violence against women and to empower them.
“To inculcate a culture of gender neutrality, Kerala’s school textbooks will be revised and audited to cut down words and phrases which disparage women.”- Twitted by Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Education Minister P. Sivankutty said that gender-neutrality and gender-justice would be taken with “all seriousness”. He added that words standing against gender equality must be condemned and changed.
But the decision was not away from difficulties. Experts had cautioned about the lack of Malayalam equivalence of some English words. Academics pointed out that Malayalam vocabulary might not be broad enough to translate every word into English. “English is a highly evolved and cosmopolitan language that has words for everything but Malayalam is not as diverse as English, descriptions find problems.
Kerala has taken several progressive steps from providing rations to healthcare, employment, identity cards, and employment to transpersons since it came in with a Transgender Policy, in 2015. There is no doubt that this trans-friendly state will have non-sexist and Gender-fair language in every sector.
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Gender-Neutrality and School Textbooks
Father grating coconut in the kitchen and helping his wife to make snacks for their daughter- sound unusual right? But this has been done by the Kerala education ministry. Debunking the gender stereotype of ‘Mother cooks’ and ‘Father reads newspaper’ has been challenged by the Kerala government and ensures that the children get a fair idea of gender-neutrality and should know the basic life skills of a boy or a girl.
After a two-month-long summer vacation, the state schools reopened on Monday with a surprise, the school textbooks came with innovative ideas and thought-provoking mindsets. The gender-neutrality has been inculcated in the minds of children.
The pictorial representation of a family cutting across genders involved in cooking and household chores-which was exclusively set for the women in a family. Such picturization and drawings are gaining widespread attention from gender activists, academicians, and parents from different parts of the country.
These books caught wide attention after state general education minister V Sivankutty shared a page from one of such books on his social media handle the other day for its gender-neutrality stance. A class 3 textbook page of Malayalam medium was shared by the minister on his social media handle. The picture shows a collaborative family where the father is grating coconut by sitting on the floor and the mother is cooking dishes. The little boy is playing with a teddy; supposed to be a toy for girls only. The English medium textbook could be seen with the father cooking snacks for her daughter.
Such concepts are unique in a country like India, where families still expect a daughter to be responsible for household chores and take care of the family. Girls’ are trained from a very early age to be modest and decent. She should be patient and should never expect a return for her accountability. Thus we see even in a household of working men and women, the working women still bear the entire responsibility of managing both inside and outside without tiring or complaining.
Pavithra Krishna, a lower primary student of a government school in nearby Vithura, said was amused seeing the pictures in her new Malayalam textbook. “I was turning the pages of the new book and was surprised to see the pictures of a father scraping coconut in the kitchen. I showed this to my father and asked why he doesn’t do this at home,” she told PTI. This portrays the deep impact of gender-neutrality at home.
Sindhu, a teacher of a state-run school in the capital city, said it would surely give a positive message among students, cutting across genders. “This is very positive. Knowingly or unknowingly, there is a general impression in our society that cooking and housework are the sole responsibilities of women. Children are also growing with this sense of feeling because that is what they see in their home,” she told PTI. But the chapters and pictures in the new textbooks give the message that cooking and other housework are the collective responsibility of both father and mother, she said. The teacher further said women are the ones who usually toil the most when it comes to household duties.
