Are we are Gender Neutral Society? Recent online trend ‘reels’ on a popular social-media mobile app is a great tool of entertainment for all ages. I am no exception and find it equally enticing to explore the micro-videos trending globally. The content is creative, addictive, or sometimes plain-lame but overall a right way to kill boredom. However, a few last visits have brought-up some ‘highly viewed and appreciated‘ videos which I personally felt mean or biased towards a particular gender.
This made me implore more into the social thread of gender stereotypes. It is a rude shock to my inbuilt system to see, gender biased behavior is still very common and accepted as a norm by the society at large. What is gender inequality and how to address this issue?
But before we go further into the discussion, let us first understand the basics of living ‘gender-neutral’.
What does it mean to be Gender Neutral?
As per dictionary – “Gender neutrality or gender-neutralism is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures, gender roles, or gender identity) should avoid distinguishing roles according to people’s sex or gender.”
In easy terms, it simply means equal treatment to every individual, irrespective of their binary gender. Gender-neutralism doesn’t categorize people in pre-dominated gender roles as men and women in society. It considers them as individuals without specifying anything about their sex. And hence uses wider terminology or language, the one we call, gender-neutral language.
Are we ready for Gender-Neutral Society?
There is no denying that we live in a gender-obsessed society. Just think about it, the moment you announce your pregnancy, everyone starts wishing for a baby boy. Indian sub-continent isn’t the only place obsessed with gender-dominance roles, many western and eastern countries are also fighting gender-specific battles. And I have not even started talking about non-binary gender.
Since I have started reading the documentation available online for my research, it became clearer how deeply rooted ‘gender-inequality’ is. It is just not limited to pay-checks at the end of the month or professional progress anymore.
Categorization starts very early in life, firstly the inner circle brings discrimination unintentionally. We all have grown and seen these stereotypes around, throughout our lives. Then comes the peer pressure which acclimates us with already carved biased roles.
The gender gap (disproportionate difference between men and women and boys and girls) is vast and challenging to cease. Despite the best intentions, we end up in the vicious circle of age-old biases.
- For example – women don’t participate in fitness weight-training as enthusiastically as compared to their counterparts.
- Or men do not spend as much time as women in the kitchen, preparing food, or other household chores.
- In job interviews, men/women are asked a different set of questions based on pre-conceived notions of gender roles.
- Even in equal-parenting, the role of the father is limited to indirect requirements, whereas the mother does all baby-related duties.
There are various such examples where gender stereotypes come knocking at the door, even when you are ready to shun them on the face.
As a parent, I am aware of these gender-gaps and try inclusive parenting with my child. It is not an easy task as what is been taught/peached at home will be challenged outside by society. Even the simplest of things like books, toys, clothes, food, sports, are gender tagged too.
So, even if you try to beat the biases and start following gender-neutral parenting at home, the far-reaching influence of stereotypes will definitely impact their perception at some point of time in their lives.
I strongly believe we as a society have to start viewing people beyond the perquisites of binary gender and identify them as people inclusively. And also ACCEPT it as a social-evil. I honestly think, accepting gender-inequality as an ‘issue’ will start carving out ways to fight back.
‘This post is part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter‘
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16 Comments
Insightful article. Loved reading your views on the hope of a gender-neutral society.
Thank you so much, glad you like it.
loved your views on gender neutral parenting… as you rightly said some stereotypes will definently come in the way but it is what we teach and preach will influence our child one day too..its a slow process but in guess there is more awareness about it now
Yes it is a sad reality of our so called modern society where despite being educated people behave and react in a certain way and create a state of gender discrimination . many times women did not get chance to explore or follow her passion just because she is a female and society has set some fixed norms for women. it is really great that you had shared more about gender neutral parenting. I believe this is one of the best way to have a better and gender neutral society for our future generation.
Absolutely! Preconceived notions about gender and their role in the society has been detrimental to the whole societal progress. It is time we start with the basics.
Gender neutrality, thanks to parents like us, is being talked about now and that’s reassuring. I believe that it the society at large needs to acknowledge that education, responsibilities, pay etc cannot be gender-based. Hope these changes happen!
That is the biggest challenge we have to tackle, on one side we are teaching our kids gender equality and on the other hand their learning is being questioned and judged by the society. I just hope that the day comes and the society at large sees this as an issue and work towards building a gender neutral society.
It’s difficult to wipe out this evil from our society but I strongly feel that parenting ways can help uproot this in a big way.
From eons gender inequality has been alive and even in this century women are fighting for equal rights. As a parent, I am trying my best to raise gender neutral kids where my son n daughter both love to spend time in kitchen helping me and both love to play with cars and dolls. Both learn karate and dance and both learn to speak up against wrong doing.
Very nice topic to raise awareness. I think it is hard to wipe out completely this thing from our society but we can work to improve this mentality by giving proper parenting since childhood.
We as a society has to bring in the change and if we, the present generation starts filling the gap then surely we are making the difference. Yes we all have a long battle to be won and for that we have to pick small fights to address. While communicating with kids we also needs to be neutral and we have to explain to the kids why these age old saying are about gender and how they don’t stand true in current scenario. Looking forward for your posts on this cause.
Gender neutrality should start at early age. Like girls wearing jeans is common, boys wearing nail polish should be normalized too. A simple example. You have pointed out an important aspect of the society that we generally tend to ignore .
True, gender biasedness is deep-rooted in our society. It starts with daily routines and household chores. But, slowly I do see the change towards a positive move in our society too. Modern-day Dads have started doing household chores and babysitting, unlike our dads. We, parents have to bring that change by upbringing our kids in the right way.
Indeed we are far from being a gender neutral society and not only in India, I mean even the Western countries. US infact has so many biases and stereotypes. The whole blue and pink obsession was perpetuated by marketing in the US for example.
These are such important points covered. I wish our society sees a change soon and coming generations don’t have to face it.
[…] the last post on Gender equality, we discussed the need for a gender-neutral society. Now, that we already know the basics of gender-neutrality, it is time to deep dive further into […]