Rebecca Winthrop
Director, Center for Universal Education, The Brookings Institute

Protests continue in India, weeks after the horrific gang-rape of a 23-year old university student on December 16th and her subsequent death two weeks later – and rightly so, the incident itself was beyond the pale. A young couple in Delhi boarded a private bus after seeing a movie and instead of discussing character development and plot turns on the way home, the bus doors locked and they were subject to brutal attacks by the other passengers and driver as the bus drove around the city for over two hours. Witnesses driving by did nothing and the victims were eventually dumped out of the bus under an underpass.

But the awful details of this crime are not the main reason for the protests. Instead it is the deep and pervasive gender inequality in India of which this heinous act is a symbol. Girls and women are attacked every day and Indians across the country, particularly young people, are sick of it. Enough is enough they say. There are real reasons why half of all the girls in India don’t want to be girls, and it’s time to change.

If there is any silver lining to this tragedy, it is that the issue of gender equality is on everyone’s lips. Urvashi Sahni, an alumna of our girl’s education Global Scholars Program, is tracking this issue from India and writes that for one of the first times the debate on gender equality is “engaging voices from all sectors of society including students, civil society, academia, political parties, the police, the judiciary and the government.” Now the question remains: what will India do to improve the status of girls and women?

Much of the public discussion focuses on short and long-term solutions such as reforming the law enforcement systems, updating the legal code, supporting the women’s movement, developing new systems of accountability and, of course, having “greater dialogue about India’s patriarchal norms.” All of these things are important but it is the last that is perhaps the most difficult for policymakers and bureaucrats to tackle. Even if it is the most difficult, upending gender norms is perhaps the most fundamental thing needed for long-term sustainable change. Without transforming, in the deepest sense, how girls and women are valued in India, important interventions around such things as legal reforms and police training will end up in the problematic category of “necessary but not sufficient” for developing gender equality in society.

If done right, education can play an important role in redefining gender norms in India. Around the world, there have been numerous excellent examples of education changing people’s way of viewing the world and leading to new forms of behavior, ways of relating with others and ultimately social norms. Indeed, there have been decades of academic research on this topic, so much so that entire subfields of education theory and practice have developed (see for example Jack Mezirow and the field of transformative learning and Paulo Freire and the field of critical pedagogy).

India itself has good examples of education changing social norms towards gender equality. An interesting case of girls’ education programs run in the province of Uttar Pradesh demonstrates that schooling, if done right, can help change gender norms, even in the most marginalized societies. Founded by Urvashi Sahni, the Study Hall Foundation has demonstrated that at the same or lower cost per student as the government schools, their schools can educate girls in a way that enables them to both excel academically, but more importantly emerge as empowered young women. In one of their schools, Prerna, girls outperform their peers both within the province and across India. Ninety percent of Prerna girls complete their education to year 10, compared to below 30 percent nationally, and they do so while outperforming in virtually all subjects (in math and science the Prerna girls perform about 20 percentage points higher on exams than the national average). But most importantly, these girls are changing the gender norms in their communities. They are beginning to fight back when they or their peers are planned to be married off at too early an age. Through street protests and cajoling discussions, they have convinced their parents to keep them in school instead. They initiate community-wide discussions on violence against women. They apply for higher education scholarships and convince their families to let them go once they receive them (an incredibly 88 percent of the girls go on to higher education).

The success of this program is not because the students come from well-to-do families, they don’t (the average family income of students is $108 and 60 percent of their mothers and 40 percent of their fathers have never been to school). It is also not because teachers have higher qualifications or are better paid than government teachers. Rather, according to Mrs. Sahni, it’s because every day the girls’ talk about their worth, value and the issues they face around gender equality. “Gender equality needs to be taught, like math, science, and any other subject” says Sahni, who describes how in Prerna gender equality classes are regularly taught alongside a government curriculum. Then, she is quick to point out, teachers need to be encouraged and supported to fulfill their role as social change agents.

Now this is an idea that the Indian government would do well to listen to. It very well may be a center piece for transforming India’s “patriarchal norms”.

Dr. Urvashi Sahni
Founder, Study Hall Educational Foundation

The unspeakable horror of the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old girl in the capital of the world’s largest democracy, India, on December 16th has brought to the forefront the cruel, fatal, highly discriminatory gender norms prevalent in a country that now claims to be one of the worlds rising economic stars. A window has opened for responses that challenge these gender norms through critical dialogues and empowering education.

There is probably no woman in the country regardless of caste, class, religion or region who has not been the target of sexual harassment in some form or other at home, in the work place or on the street. India has one of the lowest sex ratios in the world, one of the highest rates of incestuous sex abuse,  and the worst gender differential of children aged between 1 to 5-years-old such that girls are 75 percent more likely to die than boys. Approximately 1 million girls arekilled in the womb before they are born, 25,000 die due to dowry related deaths and the gory list goes on and on. We are not a nation that values our daughters, or one that knows how to keep them safe.  They are neither safe in the before birth, or at home or in the streets.  And we do nothing about it! The nationwide protests are protesting just this. They are protesting against an apathetic administration, against sexist mindsets of the police, the judiciary and the legislature. They are demanding more just laws, speedier redressal in courts of law and conviction of criminals.  What is noteworthy is the large number of students, men and women who are on the streets, braving lathi charges (administered by stick) and tear gas to make their voice heard. It has now been over 20 days and the protests continue. This continuous, nationwide, mass protest in light of the gang rape- on the scale of the Tahrir square uprising – is not only unexpected, especially in a country like India, it is unprecedented and historic.

While I can only hang my head in shame at this awful crime, I will admit to a sense of exhilaration at the huge response it has generated among the nation’s youth, raising many gender related issues, leading to discussions and debates spanning both the length and I am an educator and the head of a school in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. Last night I went to light a candle in a city park.  Our school is closed for the winter, but many of our students were at the park lighting candles and engaging in critical dialogues.

The media is also making sure the issues do not disappear from the spotlight as is often the case. It is engaging voices from all sectors of society including students, civil society, academia, political parties, the police, the judiciary and the government.  Everywhere people are discussing gender discrimination, gender norms, and the sad status of women and girls in India. Nirbhaya’s (the pseudonym given to the deceased rape victim) brutal rape and murder should not pass in vain.  We hope that this is the turning point.  Everyone is being forced to sit up and take notice of the millions of girls who are being attacked, raped, killed every day all over the country.

Along with the strong measures that the government should take to ensure the safety of our women, as a long term measure we should be working at educating our young people towards more equitable gendered perceptions.  Everyone is clamoring for a change of gendered mindsets and I add my voice to the uproar – we should include gender studies in the post-primary curricula of all schools for both boys and girls. This is one way of ensuring that future generations of men will grow up respecting women and their right to bodily and sexual integrity. If it is important to give our children an understanding of math and science, it is equally important for them to understand equality of gender. Educators have an important role to play in creating a safer, more just world for girls and women.