August 12, 2022
Agastya Foundation: Bringing Gender Sensitivity into the Agastya Sessions with Children
D Data from across the globe shows that girls do not get the same educational opportunities as boys; this trend is marked in the STEM fields. An important goal for the Foundation is to instill a sense of caring in its team and the children it works with. 80% of Agastya Instructors are young men. Each Instructor interacts with 80-100 girls and boys every day. In addition to general aspects of caring, Agastya focuses on gender sensitivity because gender biases are deep-rooted, widespread and difficult to address.
Children imbibe these biases from the discriminatory environment around them and carry them through life. The Agastya team set out to make girls feel as valued as boys in their sessions.
...a boy in the group is doing the experiment, not letting the girl next to him help even though she is eager to do so...
Gender Bias Among Children: Children unconsciously absorb gender bias from their social environment as this incident demonstrates.
Students of Class 7 are participating in a session on "Soil" in the Agastya Kuppam campus. They are working in mixed groups of girls and boys. The activity involves putting layers of different types of soil into a measuring cylinder and seeing how liquid travels through the different layers. A boy in the group is doing the experiment, not letting the girl next to him help even though she is eager to do so. Now they are told to empty the cylinder, wash it and bring it back. Promptly the boy gives it to the girl and "orders" her to wash it and bring it back to him. Fortunately, this caught the eye of the Agastya Teacher who told him gently but firmly to wash the cylinder and let the girl do the next activity.
Gender Sensitivity Guidelines in Agastya Sessions:
The training of instructors as well as the quality monitoring parameters include simple gender sensitivity guidelines, listed below, that are implemented in the sessions.
1) Children work in groups and each group is given the name of a scientist. At least, half the groups should be named for women scientists so that girls have role models and boys know that the scientist in the white coat can be a woman. When this practice was started, predictably, children could name many male scientists but the list of women scientists hardly ever went beyond Marie Curie and Kalpana Chawla. Because the team put in the requirement of having names of women scientists, everyone concerned realised how little was commonly known about the achievements of women scientists. An International Women's Day Quiz Competition on women scientists helped children realise how women have contributed to scientific knowledge and the barriers they had to face.
Wherever possible, the team tries to break gender stereotypes. There is a general feeling that IWD celebrations are mainly for women and girls. For the Quiz, the team broke this stereotype by ensuring that boys and girls participated in equal numbers.
2) In most sessions, the Agastya team observed that girls are not confident about speaking. So, Instructors give the girls the first chance to participate.
3) Instructors ensure that boys and girls treat each other with respect and do not laugh at or embarrass each other.
4) Instructors consciously avoid using sexist language like "why is the girls' group so slow", "why are you noisy like the boys?"
5) Children look on the Agastya Instructors as friends. One Agastya Instructor shared the important insight. that as young men, it was easier to show their appreciation to the boys since they could pat them on the back or shake their hands. But he had noticed that girls felt left out because of this camaraderie between Instructor and the boys. The Agastya team came up with a simple solution – the instructor would not touch any child, girl or boy, except if the child was in danger. (This is also in line with Agastya's policy of Zero Tolerance to sexual offences).
Simple measures like the ones described here, help to enhance gender sensitivity in Agastya.
Posted in Blogs and tagged Blogs, Gender Sensitivity, Agastya Foundation, Gender Bias, Social Environment, Gender Sensitivity Guidelines
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