‘My World’ is a series of insights on gender issues by the people for the people

Riddhima Garg is bright student and an avid reader. With dreams in her eyes she longs for a gender equal world for the women and girls.

Towards the gender equal world

Greetings to all,

I am a 13-year-old girl studying in 7th grade. Ever since I was mature enough to understand the beliefs of people, I have observed that girls are always portrayed as the weaker sex. Welive in a male dominated society and everyone knows it. Come on let's face it, since we were young, we were read fairy tales in which a young girl was in distress and how a guy would save her and end up with all the glory.

There were usually two types of women portrayed in these fairy tales- the good and the evil. The good ones were always beautiful, kind but submissive, weak and looking for a prince. The evil ones were ambitious, intelligent, strong but ugly and rude. This shows that if a woman is intelligent and ambitious then she must be evil, and the society needs to get rid of her. However, if she is kind and beautiful, she will always need someone who can save her and give her a good life.

It's an ancient practice where we just assume girls need help doing everything except all the household chores and looking after children because that after all is a woman's job. We always talk about how girls should cover themselves up but if a man’s just roaming around in trunks, then it's ok, isn’t it? Girls go through periods and give birth, but are still not strong enough to lift a heavy box?

However, gender equality seems like a faraway dream these days. In spite of educating girls, there is no headway in thisdirection. It means educating girls is only half the job. Boys too need to be educated. This education must start at the root level i.e. when a child is young, very young. The male child should also be involved in household chores, taught to respect his sister, etc. If anything bad happens to a girl, it’s her fault- the mindset needs to be changed. Both the sexes should share the responsibility equally. This can happen only when gender equality is made a part of the school system and is practiced everywhere. So, let us hope that the much-coveted gender equality is a reality very soon.