Respect - A Two Way Street

One of the fall outs of this media based gender bias is the power play based on different roles. The narratives on the media create a hyped version of power of one group over the rest based on the content that is being peddled for the purpose. Examples of few such power plays are:

• Parenting - a frenzy around best parenting strategies, what constitutes best parenting, should the child co-sleep or not, should you hold an infant to pacify while upset, to be a stay-at-home-mom or working mom, father the disciplinarian or friend (the same for a mother too), participative parenting vs friendly parenting or any such parenting trend.
• In-laws woes: daughter-in-law or the mother-in-law is the queen of the house, sister-in-law - the influencer of decisions in our home, joint family or nuclear family.
• Boys physically stronger and girls intellectually. Men associated with physical strength (mechanical & civil profiles) and earning potential. Women associated with home based roles & responsibilities and HR & administration related job profiles.

When such biases are projected through the most powerful visual medium, it has a long-lasting impact on shaping one set of people as strong while the other automatically becomes the weaker one.

This leads to toxic expectations of dutiful daughters-in-law and her family to always adjust and submit to the power wielding husband and his family. The society's expectations that the female gender must adjust leads to that gender bearing the various #socialissues metted out against them in silence, like domestic violence, unreported rapes - especially marital rapes. This also leads to early burn out of over stressed and over worked daughters-in-law (professional and homemaker alike) who is trying to meet the high expectations of juggling various responsibilities in her marital home.

On the other side we have the grown men who are caught between wanting to be the supportive spouse for their wives by sharing home responsibilities, but ridiculed for the same by his own family as a Hen-pecked husband. Most ego clashes between married couple are a result of this. How wonderful will it be to see a society where all are deemed equal and there is harmony instead of the struggle to wield power. Harmony doesn't mean lack of power, but it is the existence of power that is equal from all wakes of life. A society filled with self actualized individuals working together towards building a progressive community that appreciates growth and celebrates the differences.

This would, in true sense, be a sign of a matured society in thoughts and action! 

Republished from Momspresso, as they closed down in 2023. I wanted to ensure that the broken links opened to the right article.

Hierarchical or Equal - How do you see the world around?

Recently I attended a gathering and the host suggested that we share our life experiences and how they impacted our family and friends, maybe even our work and community. When it was my turn, I responded "Challenges and choices are what make life. Without either there would be no purpose."

"How do you mean?" said the host.

"Challenges push you to move ahead and overcome it, to succeed and in the process of doing so, you choose which path to follow and what to do overcome the challenge life threw at you!"

"So tell us about who inspires you!"

"I am inspired by everyone around me."

"True, but there must have been one person whom you aspire to be. Isn't it? Someone you think is at a higher place than you which you would like to reach."

That is when I realised that without even a pause I could confidently say that there was no one person like that and I did too. "I really do not aspire to emulate one person. For me, every individual I have met and read about in my life is an inspiration, but they are all peers. Age, race, religion, status, gender or sexual/political inclination was not something that I saw as a hierarchy. For me, these are just attributes associated with a person, not their identities. What differentiates them is their attitude and behaviour and this is something I do try to emulate when I think it is something worth emulating. Even my children can inspire me and I will listen to them if there is a learning in it for me."

I am not sure if I made sense to them or not, and I do not know if this is something that would relate to any of you as well, but I have been this way from the time I can remember. My friends' circle was and still is the most diverse with people from all walks of life, belonging to different age groups and ethnicity. I have always felt that this diversity is what helped shape me into who I am today. This is what inspires me to write as I come across different interesting & inspiring stories from this group of contacts. It has helped me see the world from a different perspective and gives me hope that love and acceptance of what is, can always bring a sea of positive change, that can only benefit the community as a whole.

Some of us enjoy being the privileged lot for reasons that we may not fully comprehend. Let us use this position of privilege to embrace those who aren't so lucky and be the support that we would want if we were to find ourselves in their positions. Drop all the differences and accept everybody as equal - in the true spirit of #EachforEqual, exponentially increasing the happiness quotient in this world!

Republished from Momspresso, as they closed down in 2023. I wanted to ensure that the broken links opened to the right article.

Breaking Gender Stereotypes - Role of Media

We, as a society, tend to excel in passing the blame for bad behaviour or bad influence on someone else rather than look critically at self. Keeping in line with this habit of ours, the easiest soft target seems to be media (any form). We are quick to suggest that media glorifies machoism, heroism, feminism and any other kind of -ims. This is the route cause of chaos in our culture.

Media as well had kept up this image by supporting subtle and sometimes not so subtle, gender stereotyping in the ads, movies and debates. Not so far behind are the product manufacturers and retail business owners who try to cash in on the mindset influence that media has successfully created. We as mad consumers are not so far behind all these.

Let me first list a few examples to make it easier for all of us to be on the same page and understand what I am talking about:

1. The husband and wife jokes where husband bashing or wife bashing was considered fun and applauded. This normalised the aspect of ruthlessly bashing the opposite gender despite the emotional trauma it caused. The justification given used to be, 'Just for fun'. No fun can come at the cost of one or group of individuals' pain!
2. Ads that showed the husband waiting for long hours (not just minutes) before the wife comes down all decked up for function and they leave to the venue only to find it empty, or a wife/mother going crazy at shopping, while the husband waits at the bill counter checking his watch or the child telling that the mother has gone crazy. This is just another form of degrading one gender by saying that they are not time-conscious.
3. Home appliances and grocery ads only feature a lone woman (or a group of women) in the kitchen using the product in focus - a glaring declaration that tells that the kitchen is a woman's fort and no one else is welcome. Not a healthy stereotype. A kitchen is a place where food is prepared, a common need for all genders for survival. By, extension this needs to have the participation of both genders.
4. Kids apparel and toys advertisements showing boys in a blue dress playing in a set up that dominates with blue toys and blue fixtures and girls dressed up in pink, playing with predominantly pink toys, in a pinkish decor indirectly pushed the concept of associating pink to being a girlish colour and blue to being a boy's choice that it is now a norm.
5. Fairness products that started off with saying dark-skinned girls/women needed these products to gain confidence and be successful, thereby insinuating that darkness is a problem and fairness is good. The presence and absence of a pigment - Melanin - is the cause for dark and light skin. Biologically, the melanin pigment is considered to be protective in nature.
6. Subject books in school that define gender roles of family members very clearly indicates that working, driving and buying are Dad's jobs while cooking, caring and cleaning are mother's job. These gender roles are no more reality and need to change.
7. Retail outlets for garments and toys add to this madness by grouping dresses & toys for boys & girls with each one having dominantly the obvious two colours (and related shades) associated with the respective genders. If by chance any parent or child wishes to break the norm, they have to be ready to face the never-ending question (in fact the same content in different forms) of why they chose a colour that is not for their gender!
8. Another irritating fact of retail stores, more specifically for apparels is almost always the dresses, including t-shirts and jeans in the girls/women section are skin tight and a size shorter in length that it will invariably show skin if you are to move your limbs in a free manner thereby saying that a girl/woman needs to be prim and proper if she is to be termed a 'lady'! I thought I was the only one who went to the men's section to buy western wear - t-shirts & jeans, but now my daughter also finds her western wear in the boy's section as it is more comfortable and has colours that she loves.

I can go on and on about how gender stereotyping is so deeply ingrained in our society at various levels and it is going to be a long time before we can break these completely. That said, I am pleased to have come across a few wonderful creators who have slowly but steadily broken these stereotypes. 

We are a long way from making waves in social change with respect to gender norms & stereotypes, but small welcome changes in narratives (in every field) gives hope that we can and will reach there eventually.

As consumers, we can also contribute to pushing this change in the right direction. How you may ask?

1. Stop being a blind mad consumer who believes in the media peddled version of what beauty, confidence and success is all about.
2. Learn and understand what success means to us individually and start defining what our self-image is without being a passive recipient of media's version of an image dependent on our gender or role (another form of stereotyping that has the capability of wrecking havoc in relationships)!
3. Make choices that fit you (not just with retail products even life decisions) and not based on the gender norms. If that means buying pink for a boy/man and blue for a girl/woman, why not?
4. Do not judge when you see someone break the norms & stereotype even if you aren't able to break it yourself. That is your fair share in supporting those working to break these for all of us!

As parents, (a subset of the consumer segment), tell your children to get out of the gender norms by talking to them about conscious personal choice and comfort!

As a community of consumers, when we reject the media-based gender norms and stereotypes and do what is right for us, what is comfortable for us, then there is nothing to stop the change from happening and our children will grow up into sane, practical (logical) adults who are capable of breaking these baseless stereotypes. What do you say co-consumers? Are you ready to do your part in making this world really a place where #EachforEqual is an undeniable reality?

Republished from Momspresso, as they closed down in 2023. I wanted to ensure that the broken links opened to the right article.