It is not enough to be gender sensitive, said the chairperson of the state commission for protection of child rights at a workshop on gender sensitivity on Wednesday.
One has to implement the outlook in real life to be able to make changes in society, Sudeshna Roy, chairperson, West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights, said.
The two-hour workshop on Wednesday discussed how being “aggressive” is unacceptable in women and can be seen as a “leadership quality” in men or how it is okay not to have a diaper changing room in a men’s washroom.
The workshop on “gender sensitive approach to child protection” was organised by the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights in collaboration with Terre des hommes foundation and supported by Jayaprakash Institute of Social Change.
“It is not enough for one to be gender sensitive but one should be able to apply that in real life to be able to make changes,” said Roy.
In her introductory speech, Roy said in her childhood it required courage for girls to wear trousers and now it was courageous for men to wear saris.
Stereotypes are so ingrained in people that one finds it difficult to go beyond that, the workshop discussed.
The awareness of gender sensitivity has to be put into practice, Roy said.
“The fact that we are examining this will hopefully bring a change with the coming generation,” said Roy.
The commission for example has been talking about gender sensitivity in a more
structured way in the last few years.
Last year while observing world day against trafficking in persons a transgender person was made the chairperson for a day.
“Gender is not confined to sex. One has to think beyond the binary (of men and women) and that too from childhood,” said Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti, adviser to the commission.
Deep Purakayastha, the primary resource person who conducted the workshop, said men too face gender related issues. Men, too, face a burden of running the family single handedly, he said.
“Often child sexual abuse of boys does not get reported...,” said Purakayastha.
