Talking about gender equality in the country is a nuanced and intricate conversation, and educating people about it is obviously a hard task.
But taking a step in that direction has been Hyderabad’s own Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) that introduced a mandatory course on
gender equality, the first in the country to do so.
The course was introduced for second year B.Tech students on December 7 at JNTU and colleges affiliated with the university — around 350 so far — taking after the recommendations of the University Grants Commission’s Saksham Report that suggested gender equality be taught and propagated in college campuses across the country.
“It was introduced as a lab course so that it remains practical-activity based. We conduct group discussions, show films, give case studies... we make our classrooms highly interactive. We don’t want to make it just an eye-wash — we want the students to really learn something from it and bring change and awareness among them,” says Dr Parvathi Vudumula, Chairperson, Board of Studies at JNTU, adding, “Even during the external evaluation we’ve made it an open-book system, so that we don’t burden the students and they understand the idea behind it all.”
Accompanying the course is a textbook titled Towards A World Of Equals: A Bilingual Textbook On Gender, which captures gender imbalances in the modern setting — such as sexual harassment, recognising privilege and features pop culture references like Dhanush’s song Why This Kolaveri Di — and even includes a unit on caste discrimination.
Susie Tharu, a former professor at the English and Foreign Languages University who oversaw content for the textbook as its editor, says that real change is a long process, but getting students to talk about it matters just as much.
“Our aim really was to start a discussion among students. We chose topics that concerned young people — growing up, relationships in families, sexual harassment and violence, relationships,” she says.
Around 200 teachers had also undergone a two-day workshop conducted by the people who put the course together before the beginning of the second semester of the academic year, with another batch expected to be trained in the coming month.
And while Susie agrees that such courses could certainly be introduced for students at a much younger age, keeping issues age appropriate will help move things in that direction.
