Gender Stereotyping and its effects on young children

Back while I was doing post-grad, a friend and I were kidding around after class, drawing things on the blackboard. My friend thought I was a fabulous artist (just compared to her) and was asking me to draw this and that. One of our classmates, a much older man (in his forties, married with children, who had taken a sabbatical from work to get a post-grad degree) walked in on us, just as I was wondering what to draw next.
"Draw a kolam," he said.
"What's a kolam?" I asked.
"Rangoli," explained my friend.
"Oh I can't draw rangolis."
"Really? How is it that you cannot draw kolam?" asked the man.
"Is it compulsory for people to know how to draw kolam? Can YOU draw kolams?" I asked him.
"No, I'm a man, I don't know. Women should know how to draw kolam."

I got so heated up that I don't exactly remember what I did. But I think I shouted and ranted and walked out, or something like that, coz I remember the poor man's horrified face. He would have been thinking, "Gosh, girls shouldn't behave like this!" Heh heh!

Yes, Gender stereotypes bother me. And I try to counter them from time to time. I know better than to overreact now, but the fact is that it has taken on a new dimension now, with Puttachi at an impressionable age. Because I don't want her to grow up with stereotypical ideas in her head.

The above rangoli example is harmless. But there are others coming at us from all over, without our even realizing it, and that is what gets to me.

"He's a man, he can do it. Women shouldn't do that."

"If a man had done that, I wouldn't have been surprised, but a woman doing all that - it is so difficult to believe that it is even possible for a woman to do that..."

Don't we hear such statements quite a bit?

And it doesn't help that our mythological stories and folktales reinforce the traditional concept of women being the weaker and subordinate sex.

"Agastya was very pleased with the way his wife served him, and granted her a boon."

"The Pandavas felt that Draupadi was too weak to climb the mountain, and wondered what to do."

These statements just portray the culture and traditions of a bygone era - but children who are reading it today don't know that, unless we tell them.

Right now, since Puttachi cannot read full stories, I am the one who explains things to her. I can modify the sentences above and say something like, "Draupadi had a fever/hadn't eaten well and so couldn't climb the mountain." But what when she starts reading herself? There is no way I can control inputs - I can just step in from time to time and try to reinforce the values that I want her to imbibe.

Even my unconscious actions have reinforced stereotypes. I didn't drive for the longest time, and when we sat in my aunt's car in England last year, Puttachi said, "Women can drive? Oh!" I was shocked. Necessity, combined with this incident spurred me to start driving in the next two months. Puttachi's paediatrician is male, and we haven't gone to any other doctor with her. When I told her I'm going to my dentist who is female, Puttachi said, "Oh, are there female doctors too?"

so now, consciously in my stories, I casually bring in female pilots, female doctors, female strongmen (!!) and the like.

I've also tried changing my language at home. The large suitcases in our house are stored in the loft, and they contain smaller suitcases, and so are a little heavy. Though I can bring them down from the loft myself, I avoid doing such work when I am alone at home with Puttachi. What if I am knocked out, or slip and fall, or worse? So I wait until S gets home, but then he, not being one to sit around twiddling his thumbs, gets the suitcases down before I can even pronounce the s of "stool," and naturally Puttachi notices such things.

Earlier, I used to say, "Let's keep our clothes ready, we'll put them in a suitcase after Papa gets back and gets the suitcases down."
Now I say, "I'll get the suitcase down after Papa gets home, and then we'll put the clothes into it."
A small modification, but one, I hope, which will make a difference.

Having said all this, there is a gender stereotype working in our own house that we can simply not ignore. S goes out to work, and I cook and clean and look after my child. Naturally, in Puttachi's play-acting, this gets reflected. "When I grow up, I will become a mother," she says. That bothers me a little. Not that she shouldn't grow up and become a mother - but she shouldn't think that that is the only thing for women to do. I try and get in some of my work during daytime, even when she is around, both for my own sanity, and so that she sees me sitting at a laptop and working seriously. And of course she sees S working around the house and in the kitchen, washing up... I want her to notice little things like that - to see that we have chosen some roles for ourselves in our house because of convenience, but they are not inflexible, and everything is everybody's work, and that we have to help each other.

Besides, I also want her to know that growing up and getting married is not the only aim of life.

Recently, when Puttachi told me something with "When I grow up and get married..." I listened to her, and then said,

So are you sure you want to get married when you grow up?
Why? Everybody gets married.
Well, not everybody, you have a choice not to get married.
But if I don't get married, I will not get a baby, and I want a baby.
(Hyuk, hyuk) Yeah but you can adopt a child. (I explain)

Don't get me wrong. MArriage is a wonderful thing, and I am not discouraging that, nor do I repeat these ideas over and over again, but I want her to know that marriage is not the sole aim of a girl's life. And that is very important for all girls to know, in order to take charge of their lives.

I am perhaps rambling - but I hope you get my point. I would love to know what you do to counter gender stereotypes and give your children the right inputs.

[After I wrote this, I came across this interview of Geena Davis, via Starry's wonderful post. The interview is excellent, deals with gender stereotyping in movies and television. Puttachi doesn't watch TV - yet - so that's one less input to worry about (and man is that a dangerous source!)]

[Here's a great article about combating gender stereotypes.]