Screen Pedagogy and the Construction of Gender Identities

                                                   by Shekh Moinuddin

We all watch TV serials at least to some extent or are familiar about its plots from discussions all around us whether at home, with friends or in social media. My question how does this ‘omnipresent’ T.V serials help to construct gender? How does gender make a difference? I particularly look at our children and how they are identifying themselves and zeroing in particular gender roles even in odd situations.  The roles of children’s are highly visible across the TV serials in myriad forms as children are an integral part of the family structure. So it is natural and inevitable that they occupy a centre stage in the family as well as in the storylines of TV serials. Nowadays reality shows are also running parallel programmes based on children and more often than not they inspire our family structures, and the gender roles played within it.  

I look into ten-child actors/actresses who are essaying different roles in various capacities in these TV serials.  These child actors/actresses are extremely popular and figure in TRPs by various media marketing organization. My attempt here is to critically understand how these little child actors/actresses occupy space in our world via the small screen and leave behind a footprint. How do their screen presence shape, reshape and influence our attitudes in understanding gender. The two key qualities that seem to define gender are ‘selfishness’ and ‘dignity’. They have become the mantra through which gender difference is being constructed and gender identity is being fixed.      

1.            Darsheel Safary                                                                 

We all know this figure when he first appeared along with Bollywood actor Amir Khan in the film Tare Zameen Par and thereafter in many films and subsequently in TV serials like Jhalak Dikhla Jaa, Season 5.  He leaves behind an imprint of hidden potentials in us despite the odds and our struggles to achieve it.  

2.            Jannat Zubair Rahmani

She is popularly known among viewers as Phulwa where she is playing a role of a dacoit. She plays with guns and bullets as easily with dolls in order to regain her dignity. She is fighting to retrieve her and her tribe’s lost dignity.

3.            Arish Bhiwandiwala

He plays a magnificent role in ‘Agneepath’ in character of Vijay (Hirtik Roshan). He is shown as the  son of a school teacher, known for being morally upright but circumstances pushes him to learn, unlearn the values his father taught him. He is portrayed on screen as a young teenager who learns to survive in the dark urban jungle and in Mumbai’s underbelly. Yet flashes of kindness and desire for the normal is visible yet well hidden behind the veil of his self-centric life.

4.            Raj Mange

Popular among viewers as Jai Bajrangbali portraying the childhood of little Hanuman who grows into a strong male protagonist, whose power has limits yet more powerful than the rest of the characters. 

5.            Sparsh Khanchandani

She played a number of different roles but is most popular among viewers from the serial Uttaran where she is innocent little Iccha. While she known among viewers by Sweety, Sherya, Talli and, Rashi at various serials where she played so far.

6.            Avinash Mukherjee

He is popular as Jagya in ‘Balika Vadhu’ where he is shown to be a child bridegroom and over a period of time is depicted as selfish, self- centric person.

7.            Saloni Daini

She known as Gangubai (a fictious character she often plays in her acts) and quite popular through the reality show Chotte Miyan and Badee Miyan and was declared its winner. She also appeared in comedy circus Maha-sangram and continued attracting audiences through her acting. Her roles bring out at one level class differences and on the other the rural-urban dichotomy through which she creates a space, a dignified space for the under-privileged.                                    

8.            Dhriti Bhatia

She is known as little Krishna who is naughty and intelligent and how his many acts of playfulness is seen as acts of innocence that is inherent quality of children and their childhoods. The child-like innocence of children in real life is compared to the reel life of Krishna and where innocence is seen as a ‘god-like’ quality.

9.            Avika Gor

She is popular among viewers as Anandi from the serial ‘Balika Vadhu’ where she is playing a stereotypical character and running pillar to post to fight for her dignity and her family’s. She won national awards for giving a new interpretation of gender empowerment.

10.          Bhavya Gandhi

He is known as Tappu from ‘Tarrak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chasmah’ where he is playing as the son of Jethalal and Daya’s. He is quite intelligent and leads other children in the locality for their own selfish benefits. 

The children no matter in what serials, films, reality shows  they may be playing in or the different characters they may be acting in define how gender is constructed and reconstructed. My argument is gender is not about biological sex alone but includes certain ‘qualities’ and how these are contextualised in our social worlds, particularly within our families and produces our social relations. Apart from traditional stereotypes, these child actor/actress poses new socio-psychological traits like ‘selfishness’ and ‘dignity’. A woman, even a female child is often depicted as struggling and fighting for her and her family’s dignity while the man, even a male child is only interested in him’self’ and his selfish needs. In other words, gender differences are constructed through these binaries where man is seen as selfish and outward bound whereas the woman world is centred around her family, home and hearth and its selfless protection.

Author's Bio- Note:

Shekh Moinuddin is pursuing his Ph.D in Media studies from Department of Geography, University of Delhi.

Gender or Caste: A Process of Exclusion

                                            by K. M. Ziyauddin

The operation and institutionalization of caste as a system and functioning of patriarchy is entwined together and reflective of varied forms of gender roles in the society. Gender is not deeply examined in the socio-cultural milieu of caste in India. It is indeed overlooked in myriad perspectives but not in exclusionary frame of social structure.  

The critical reflection of Ambedkar’s note on gender; guides to examine the social construction not only on the basis of patriarchy in general but how Hindu caste society created and constructed such a complex social order. The thread-like situation arises at this point. Sociologists have looked down the role of caste in re-building a new construction of gender rather it accommodated the existing caste-like hierarchy between male and female. Ambedkar has been remarkable and oriented to re-build the space of gender construction within Hindu social structure and prevailing notions of genders in Indian society. During his lifetime, he was a critic to Hinduism, social democracy and caste based social order which still demands close examinations in the domain of social sciences discourse. This also helps to build all-inclusive understanding about Indian women and how Ambedkar’s concern of gender equality existed in Indian society. 

Looking at the exclusionary processes, it is imperative to say how Usha in her paper states that Ambedkar saw women as the victim of oppressive, caste-based and rigid hierarchical social system and further elaborates that the socio-cultural forces constructed gender relations, that too due to Manusmriti and Hindu religion. The fact of the matter is that both women and men are socially constructed beings and this had been observed by  Simone De Beauvoir that, “women are made, they are not born”. 

Ambedkar adds why Hindu women are degraded by Manu. The degradation is extremely exploitative and the continuity of gender relations and differences between genders are the result of Hindu Brahmanical order, which created the conditions for women to behave in a certain fashion. Women are the result of socialization as submissive, stereotyped, conforming to the feminine attitude, suited primarily only in household activities and taking care of core responsibilities of the family they are married into. 

Indian patriarchy is based on caste and endogamy, and shastras resulting into the institutional downfall of Hindu women. Why killing of women is termed as drinking of liquor and equated with killing of Sudras. Manu advises a man not to sit in a lonely place with his own sister, daughter or even mother. A woman is dependent all throughout her life on a man at different stages of life [1] . Ambedkar carried chapters on women in several of his volumes, such as The Riddles of Hinduism, The Buddha and Marx and Degradation of Women and in all these writings, exposed how Chaturvarna prioritized “birth” instead of “worth”. 

In continuity of this anxiety, the National Policy for the Empowerment of Women, 2001 also claims that: “the underlying causes of gender inequality are related to social and economic structure…..and practices. Consequently the access of women particularly belonging to weaker sections including SCs, STs, OBCs and Minorities… to education, health and productive resources, among other is inadequate. Therefore, they remain largely marginalized, poor and socially excluded” (Govt. of India, 2001:2). In the post Women Reservation Bill era, feminist scholars also believe that without taking note of caste, the debate cannot be inclusive and successful in India. 

Precisely for these reasons, let’s look into the concepts and issues of gender and gender roles in general and closely examine with the field notes and revisit the field. The recently concluded study at Hyderabad; “socio-economic conditions of excluded Muslims in Hyderabad [2] ” also shows the growing aspiration of Muslim women in politics. This study shows a breaking force to the existing notion of gender and may help to re-visit the gender construction. Indeed looking at this study would help to clarify the questions on gender and social exclusion. The study brings the impact of Self Help Groups which have been considerably significant in the selected pockets of Hyderabad. 

[1] Usha, K.B., 2009, Dr. B R Ambedkar- the champion of women’s rights, Samyukta.

[2] Siddiqui, F. and Ziyauddin, K.M., “Socio-economic conditions of excluded Muslims in Hyderabad”, an unpublished paper. 

Author's Bio- Note:

K. M. Ziyauddin is an Assistant Professor cum Assistant Director at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP), Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. His teaching and research interests lie in Social Exclusion of Dalits and Muslims in India and Gender issues.  

He is member of editorial board of International Journal of Social Exclusion, India and several academic and non- academic bodies in the MANUU, Hyderabad. He published two books and one edited volume from Cambridge Scholars Publishing, United Kingdom and is at present, pursuing ICSSR funded research. 

India, a dangerous place for women: What went wrong, Why the tag?

                                                     by Saraswati Raju

The recent rape and the circumstances under which it has occurred has brought forth the issues regarding missing sensitivities towards gender issues anew; not that they were totally absent at any point and yet the explicit invocations were more of academic interests than of general concern. That we need to wake up and become gender sensitized and the process should start at an early stage of socialization is a welcome sign and yet most of the discussions around the proposition end up revolving around girls and women although the vocabulary uses the ‘now in fashion’ term gender. Somehow, we say Gender, but end up talking about girls and women. Much of the misconceptions and twisted notions about what gender constitutes has led to inadequate policy prescriptions and societal handling of problems at hand. 

 Let us decode the term. The term ‘gender’ has a long history and a range of meanings. The root of the word can be traced to Latin, ‘la: genus’ meaning ‘type’, ‘kind’ or ‘sort’. It is also connected to the Greek root ‘gen’, meaning ‘to produce’. Although biology or sex might form the basis of gendered identities, gender is quite different from sex. Simply put, the term ‘sex’ denotes biological differences between boys and men and girls and women and ‘gender’ conveys what individuals would conceive of their roles as boys and men and girls and women, largely sanctioned and ascribed by societal strictures. In other words, gender refers to how societies set the behavioural, social and cultural rules for being a boy/man or a girl/woman. The French philosopher and writer, Simone de Beauvoir, in her classic text The Second Sex argued: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’. 

However, it is also to be noted that ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are no longer seen as mutually independent of each other. It has been argued that boys and men, girls and women socialize into gendered roles through their sexed bodies, whereby sex as biological identity of individual’s plays out how they internalize certain values and behavioural codes as social beings - asking a girls to cover up their bodies appropriately and behave in a certain ways, or admonishing boys for not being strong for example. The crucial point to remember is that biological sex and gendered constructs are interlinked; they are not the same. 

Since gender is a social construct, gendered encodings—behavioural norms for women and men have to change not only with time, but also with locations. Recent development reports in India have brought out how spatial location in which women live makes a difference to even as basic well-being indicator as ‘longevity’, that is, women in Kerala can expect to live longer by a margin of 18 years as compared to women in Madhya Pradesh despite little difference in per capita incomes between the two states. 

The socially architected gendered constructs thrive on misconstrued notions of power and role ascriptions. The macho images of men and the bread-earners’ tag gives a (false) notion of power and familial control to them which is increasingly been threatened and challenged now as girls and women are coming out of age-old framing of their being confined to home spaces or dependency upon the male protectors. The power equations are thus changing and this change has to be accepted by the significant other half – in this case boys and men. For process-induced transformation in male attitudes towards girls and women, boys and men need to change; they need to see and treat girls and women as persons/human beings in their own right, freedom as rightfully theirs as that for boys and men. Ingraining of the values that does not treat boys/men and girls/women differentially have to start at home – there are conscious and subconscious behaviour that is meted out to girls as compared to boys – they can be as innocuous as asking the sister to fetch water for her brother even as they both may have returned from school at the same time or prioritizing the feeding of a son over a daughter. Children emulate what they see around them –the norms start forming. I am reminded of my niece, watching me standing on a stool and nailing on a wall, her comment was: ‘buaji aap papa ban gaye’!

Given the recent upsurge and the role played by the youth across caste, class and regions, the younger generation offers potentials and hope for constructive social changes. Ironically, however, this particular constituency has been rather neglected with the result that while discursive spaces for women and girls have increased, there are very few if no spaces available for young men and boys to deal with emerging gender dynamics what to say of physiological and psychological changes that the growing boys undergo. 

However difficult or contested the proposition that we need to work with boys and men may appear, they are the constituency which requires urgent attention if we were to address the root cause of recent events. The preoccupation with women’s question that has began somewhere in the 19th century in post-colonial India has continued to emphasize on women’s issues rather than on gendered relations, rarely if ever challenging the areas of male control and oppression. In the absence of gender-sensitized boys and men, women’s liberation/empowerment has little realizing dream.

Author's Bio- Note:

Saraswati is a Professor in Social Geography at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her teaching and research interests are in issues related to social development with focus on gendered marginalities in labour market, access to literacy/education/skills, empowerment, and gender and space.  

She is one of the founding members for the International Geographic Union (IGU) Commission on Gender and Geography, member of editorial boards of Annals of Association of American Geographers, Antipode and Progress in Human Geography. She has been at the forefront in introducing gender studies in Indian geography—her co-edited publication of the Atlas on Women and Men in India has been praised as a landmark in this direction. Her recent co-edited books include Colonial and Post-colonial Geographies of India (2006, Sage Publications), Doing Gender, Doing Geography: Emerging Research in India (2011, Routledge), Gendered Geographies: Space and Place in South Asia (2011, Oxford University Press) and her co-authored book titled NGOs and the State in 21st Century: India and Ghana (2006, INTRAC, UK).

She is a recipient of Janet Monk Service Award (2010) for exemplary contribution to the study of gender/feminist concerns in geography. She has also been awarded the 2012's Distinguished Service Award for Asian Geography. The award honours 'outstanding scholars in the field of Asian geography who have demonstrated exceptional scholarship as well as service to the specialty group'.