Role of Education or Educational institutions for Gender Equality:
(i) Education has a special and unique role to play in all societies. It is the social institution, which has been entrusted with the responsibility of transmission of culture from one generation to the other. Education is imparted both through schools and institutions outside the school, including the family and the church/temple. The school has a very strong influence in the formative years of a child's life. Images and impressions created in the school have a long way to go in moulding a child's views about gender. The National Policy of Education, 1986 had laid down that gender discrimination must be completely eliminated from the educational system. Yet, many school textbooks continue to present women/girls in negative images. Look at these examples:
(a) Father is the head of the family.
(b) Father is the breadwinner for the family.
(c) Mother cooks in the kitchen, while the father reads the newspaper.
(d) Some women also work as nurses or teachers.
(e) Kamala helps her mother in the kitchen while her brother Raja accompanies his father to the market. and
(f) Leena washes the clothes in the backyard while her brother Ameer is studying in the hall.
(ii) The central idea conveyed by all these examples is that a woman's place is in the home and a man's place outside. Such lessons also uphold the idea that domestic work is the sole responsibility of a woman, and that the world outside the home or public spaces essentially belongs to a male. This gender bias in school textbooks affects young minds correspondingly. In spite of the fact that a large number of women are engaged in gainful employment and contribute to the well being of their families, their contribution is overlooked. Even otherwise in most families these are the images, which children get to see day-after-day and textbooks often strengthen these gender stereotypes (projecting women and men in roles considered typically male or female). Even today in many schools girls and boys are not permitted to play the same games or mingle freely.
(iii) At higher levels of education some courses are considered more suitable for women than men. No college will directly tell a woman that she can not apply for a certain course. But in practice women are not really welcome in many courses. Even though the entry of women in higher education is on the increase in recent times they are still concentrated in such disciplines as liberal arts, biological sciences, computers and electronics. These are considered 'soft courses' and hence, more suitable for women. Thus in so many ways, education still upholds gender discrimination.
(iv) Education should function as the most powerful instrument of social change. It is through education that new ideas are to be created and circulated, but in reality does not always happen so.
