Today, the results of the CBSE class 12
results were announced across India and the kids seemed to have done pretty
well. Although I don’t believe in the present system of examination myself, I’m
sure we have a lot of proud parents today and others who are saying, “Look,
Sharmaji’s son got 0.2% more than you! Which college will accept you now? You
have destroyed your career and my reputation!”
Meanwhile the media is all about ‘Girls
score better than boys!’ ‘Girls beat boys’ and so on and so forth all over social
media. They’ll probably do the same thing on the front page of their newspapers
tomorrow morning. And well, the news channels will be doing it right now.
Really! Go check.
Ever since this dialogue of sexism has come
to the forefront in India, we have been all about the empowerment of women and
highlighting their successes and praising their leadership skills. All that is
well and good and it is actually helping. But then the media goes ahead and
creates the kind of tension that is counterproductive to everything else they
think they’re doing for women empowerment.
Image Courtesy: dailymail.co.uk |
While the only thing they’re doing is:
They’re
creating unhealthy competition
Almost every media house in India has
tweeted something to the effect that girls have performed better than boys in
this academic year. What they don’t seem to realize is that they’re
unconsciously widening the gender rift in academia which is already bad in
India. Competition is good, but competition based on plain old gender divisive
lines is ridiculous.
They’re
creating familial rifts
Nobody can understand this point more than
those who have risen in a house with a sibling of another gender. In a still
very much patriarchal Indian society, a boy scoring less than a girl is
perceived as a shame as it is assumed that the boy is going to be the
breadwinner of the family. Looking at such headlines from the family
perspective, the media is just putting more pressure on boys to do well. No
wonder cases of suicides are going up every year.
Their
idea of feminism is as evolved as a chimpanzee
Oh Indian media, when will you figure out what you're really doing?
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