GENDER SENSITIZATION

INTRODUCTION TO GENDER, SEXUALITY R IGHTS AND PATRIARCHY

By Sanjukta BasuWriter. Photographer. Feminist Researcher.

REVERSE THE GENDER, IMAGINE THE SPACE

Fisher men in Puri sea beach

REVERSE THE GENDER, IMAGINE

THE SPACEMall Road, Manali

REVERSE THE GENDER, IMAGINE

THE SPACEWomen’s rightful place? A kitchen at a village home in Bihar

SEX AND GENDER – WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE •Biological Signs•Determines physical appearance and capabilities

•Social Constructs•Determines social roles and responsibility, limits our choices•Determines what is masculinity and feminity•Determines what is good and bad•Determines our identity and fate

GENDER IS ABOUT POWER

A Ladakhi kitchen where the man, head of family, sits away from women folks, closer to the guests

MASCULINITY TO FEMINITY IS A SPECTRUM

In April 2015, Supreme Court of India affirmed the constitutional rights and freedoms of transgender persons, including those who identify as third gender and those who identify in a gender opposite to their biological sex, i.e., persons, assigned female sex at birth, identifying as male and vice-versa. By this Court has broken the binary gender construct of ‘man’ and ‘woman’.

“It is the right of every human being to choose their gender” ~Supreme Court

National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India & Ors. [Writ Petition (Civil) No. 400 of 2012 (‘NALSA’)]

“One is not born, but rather

becomes, a woman”

“If we believe men are innately aggressive and violence there is little chance of change”

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex

(1949)

“We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

Gayle RubinThe Traffic in

Women: Notes on the 'Political

Economy' of Sex (1975)

Gloria SteinemMy Life on the Road

(2015) Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

(1995)

PATRIARCHYA social system where power lies in male head of family. A family and society based upon gender, age and caste hierarchy

In the film Mrityudand (1997) Madhuri Dixit and Shabana Azmi play sisters-in-law (bahu) of a patriarchal, patrilocal family. In a particular scene where Shabana was visibly pregnant, Madhuri surprisingly asked, “yeh kiska hai?”Shabana replied, “Mera”

FROM HUNTING GATHERING AGRICULTURE PRIVATE PROPERTY

INDUSTRIALIZATION•Primitive society more egalitarian – simple division of labour and common property•Emergence of private property and man’s need to own and control it - World historic defeat of the female sex •Agriculture needed labour –control of women’s reproductive potential•Brahminical Patriarchy led to caste based society, ownership of land, ‘purity’ of blood – control of women’s sexuality and reproductive rights•Industrialization gave way to sexual division of labour – gender segregation of space as private and public space

•The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1886) by Friedrich Engels•The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) by Gerda Lerner•Gender and Caste Through Feminist Lens (1994) by Uma Chakravarti

GENDER SEGREGATION OF SPACES HAPPEN AT

ALL LEVELSBoat in river ganges

PUSH THE BOUNDARIES,

CHALLENGE THE RULES,

RECLAIM OUR SPACE

Out of hundreds of boatmen in the river ganges in Varanasi, this brave girl is the only female ‘Boatman’