The Future Should Be Genderless
While looking into my son’s innocent eyes it dawned on me that despite the fact that he has so many strong female influences in his life, there are certain roles that he associates with women and men and this is a direct result of the visible gender stereotypes that are prevalent in the community in which we live.
For a lot of young children (whose minds are like sponges), they only learn what they see and subconsciously begin to assign various role to each gender and this is where we as parents I feel need to step in and break the gender stereotype.
What do I mean by ‘gender stereotype’? The United Nations has defined it as “A gender stereotype is a generalised view or preconception about attributes or characteristics, or roles that are or ought to be possessed by, or performed by women and men. A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers or make choices about their lives.” (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Women/WRGS/Pages/GenderStereotypes.aspx). In a nutshell, certain roles, activities and mindsets are ‘suitable’ for women and vice versa for men.
We can argue that we have made significant progress in breaking the gender stereotype in a lot of ways, but we have a very long way to go if we don’t start teaching the youth about equality in gender right now. Boys and girls must be shown how both of the sexes can prosper in any of their chosen fields. Personally, I started to show my son (because I feel he learns better by examples) many instances where there were men and women engaged in ‘non-traditional’ roles. We would drive around until we found a policewoman and I would tell him that women are also in law enforcement, or about a male teacher because men are also in the educational field. I started using the Internet in a constructive way to educate and expose my son to gender equality where women were race car drivers and men were in the kitchen whipping up dinner for the family. We watched videos of women’s sports teams and men’s interior decoration competitions.
While living in an Asian society has many advantages, there are many components that adhere to very rigid principles. Many careers and lifestyle choices are restricted or denied because of the gap between the sexes. This is where gender inequality enters the equation; when its perceptions compromise a certain outcome in an individuals being based purely on their gender. We need to create situations where children can see both the sexes as active participants in non-traditional roles.
We, not only as parents but as a collective conscious society, have to implement the idea that the future should be genderless in terms of dreams, hopes and aspirations.
