“Gender Equality is not a Woman’s issue. It is a human issue. It affects us all.” – Anonymous
Gender disparity is one such social aspect which is hardly understood and rarely addressed. Gender issues has been prevailing at all levels in the society since time immemorial and knowingly or unknowingly we frame our own views according to the gender of a person. With the changing times, this discrepancy needs to be mitigated, so as to make the society a more balanced one. To start with, we need to change the mindset of children right from the school level, so that they don’t carry along with them the difference of being a boy or a girl.
Gender Sensitization denotes respecting each other as an individual and not judging people according to their gender. A gender responsible school inculcates gender sensitivity in the students leading to developed mutual respect and trust between boys and girls. Gender awareness requires not only intellectual effort but also sensitivity and open-mindedness. The role of a teacher is immensely important in creating gender awareness among the students.
To capacitate the teachers, a CBSE workshop on Gender Sensitivity was conducted at SAI International School on Tuesday, February 19, 2019. Ms. Uma Patra, TGT, Mathematics of SAI International School and Shri Dhananjoy Pan, Principal, DPS, Paradip Refinery were the Resource Person. It was attended by sixty-one teachers from various CBSE-affiliated Schools across, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri districts.
Various individual and group activities were conducted focussing on breaking gender barriers and ensure unbiased participation of both boys and girls in the learning process. Through real life examples, teachers were trained to use gender sensitive language and foster gender neutrality.
Teachers were briefed on key terms of gender like gender gap, gender relations, gender stereotype, social construction, gender mainstreaming, femininity, gender neutral, gender blindness, gender empowerment etc. They were also briefed on power in gender relationship and the different kinds of power that can be used in different ways. Participants learnt how to build and support an environment, system and processes that are sensitive towards the requirements of students of both the genders.