A WORD (OR TWO HUNDRED) FROM THE EDITOR

A young scientist visited a junior public school to show children just how gigantic a whale could be. She’d created one out of countless black garbage bags glued together. Inflated, it filled the school’s gym end-to-end, from floor to ceiling. As excited little ones ran in from the “mouth” of the whale and out of the “tail”, a teacher stood watching with a big smile.

“Isn’t it wonderful to see a female scientist?” she asked.

This was in our very early years in Canada and I was volunteering at our sons’ school. To say I was taken aback would be an understatement.

A female teacher in Canada excited about a female scientist in Canada? Were female scientists so thin on the ground?

On days like that, it felt like I was living in a time warp. Or rather, was emerging from one. Raised in an equal-opportunity home in what was then – and still is to a large extent – a patriarchal society, I was blissfully unaware of the less-than-equal treatment meted out to girls across the world. If anything, I was the beneficiary of any possible instances of favouritism that my brother and I now recall as we look back.

As I grew older, though, I spotted signs everywhere.

In the way a lady said her daughter didn’t need to focus on academics as much as her son did – after all, she was going to get married. And this, when the lady was a physician herself. Parents routinely discourage a girl from seeking higher education because it would become difficult to find her a groom – a woman’s place was always a rung or two below her husband’s being the unspoken thought.

Or when our househelp dragged her daughter to work with her while allowing her sons to play in the streets. According to an October 2020 article by Rukmini S in India Today, research reveals that in India, “The disparities begin from a young age. The average male child, aged 6-14, gets to spend more of his day on leisure and learning than his sisters, while the average girl has to spend more time on housework than her brothers”.

Or the shocked response from some family friends when my parents “allowed” me to go on a holiday with my friends with no adult chaperone – they had no such issues with the sons taking off on a similar jaunt.

Or when a male colleague – who regularly enjoyed dipping into the tin of cookies on my desk at work – huffed and puffed about “women taking men’s jobs”.

But that was all in other parts of the world and many years ago. Surely things were different in the here and now? Not so much, I found. The gender gap rears its ugly head in countless ways.

Some are minor annoyances – one might imagine a woman saying, “Tut!” and stepping over them. But most are systemic, societal barriers.

Ceta Ramkhalawansingh and Ishita Aggarwal share their views on some of the issues in our cover feature this month.

Happy Holi!

Happy Nouruz!

Shagorika Easwar