In the final episode of our current Womens' Health Series, bilingual health educator Gagandeep Kaur Cheema at Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH) began a discussion with the Punjabi community about gender equity, gender norms and gender roles, asking each of our listeners to question prejudices which maybe entrenched in all our minds.
She kicked off the discussion by explaining the difference between gender equity and gender equality.
“Gender equity is a fair process where everyone gets opportunities according to their needs”.
Gagan used the popular analogy of letting people of different heights lined up on one side of the fence, who all want to see what's happening on the other side of the fence.
She explained, “If we provide steps of equal heights to everyone, this is equality - but not everyone will be able to view the other side because of their variable height. Some people are tall, some are short. So even though we treated everyone equally, not everyone was able to see what lay on the other side of the fence."
"However if we provide steps of various heights according to how tall each of those individuals are, this is equity - everybody gets to view the other side of the fence, and everybody gets an equal opportunity."
"So gender equity is a process of fairness of treatment of men and women according to the individual’s needs.”
Gagan then went on to explain the notion of gender roles and gender norms within families.
She encouraged the listeners to think of incidents as children when they were told to behave, walk or talk in a certain way just because they were either a girl child or a boy child.
Sharing a typical example she gets at group sessions, Gagan said “Many little girls were told to stop moving or swinging their their legs while sitting (because that's not proper), whilst this is often considered ok for their brothers to do exactly the same”.
A girl playing with a toy kitchen Source: Creative Commons
"We as a society must identify such gender norms, those rules that are different for boys and girls, and ask ourselves, are they fair?"
"Even though women have biological differences, most of the differences that we hear are the labels that society has put upon women, rather than biological. Likewise, there are labels on men too."
Gagan described gender roles as those roles/responsibilities which we often get taught right in the childhood.
"We make girl children play with kitchen sets, and buy cars or helicopters for the boys. This kind of differentiation may be engraved in those children forever because subconsciously, the girl is being told that she'll be cooking when she grows up, and the boy is being programmed to look after the cars."
"Families practicing not-so rigid gender roles and norms generally tend to have healthier relationships."
Gagan also shared some characteristics of healthy relationships.
Bilingual health educator, Gagandeep Kaur Cheema Source: Supplied
"Respect for each other, trust and honesty from both sides, non-threatening behaviour, support and shared responsibilities, shared-decision-making, empathy and understanding, are all signs that a relationship is healthy."
Gagan finished with a request to the listeners to consider starting a thought process of identifying gender roles and gender norms within their families.
"Let's expose our children to these roles and norms more sensibly.This way we can make their futures bright as it will build a foundation for healthy relationships as adults, and they will be in a better position to respect the process of gender equity."
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