Breaking Down Walls for Women Empowered Women Trainers Serve as Role Models

As gender-sensitive women teachers can be role models for girls, empowered women trainers can help teachers they train to understand and reduce stereotypes and prejudices by drawing on women's experience, or "lived realities." They can turn demeaned and devalued traditional female behaviours into respected assets that benefit themselves, their professions and their societies. All cultures have long recognized that "different" is too often a synonym for "deficient" and seen as a consequence of immutable female "nature." This can confine women to stereotyped and restricted gender roles. Feminism in the 1970's understandably accepted the "gender blind" argument that women's differences were a result of nurture (or lack of) rather than nature and if women were given the same opportunities as men, these differences would disappear. Since the 1980's a voluminous body of literature has acknowledged and heralded women's ways of doing things in which differences--such as skills in and attention to consultation, cooperation and facilitation; and process and consensus building --are celebrated and esteemed and their capacity to transform society is promoted. Gender neutral participatory activities in the TEP brought to the surface many of the differences between men and women and the need to address them directly. Over the past two decades, the link between women's private and public lives has been at the heart of the international women's movement and the subject of worldwide media attention.

In private, women behave a certain way with a certain kind of freedom. When they are in public or around men, the behaviour change is significant. There is a consistent implication that the presence of men (in a setting outside the home) creates a public domain, even in an informal setting. When there are just women, there isn't this tension. Women are not assertive or empowered in the public sphere. With dramatics, singing, action, lots of activity, it comes much more spontaneously to them; except when doing it publicly. If they are outside the classrooms, they will not do it because they will be afraid, what will people think--they are dancing in front of other people.

For the TEP to succeed in empowering women, the influence of a gender-sensitive woman trainer on both men and women teachers cannot be underestimated.

The percentage of women teachers in schools has been increasing steadily in recent years. From 43.46% in 2008-09, it rose to 44.83% in 2009-10, 45.51% in 2010-11 and 49.21% by 2014-15. The shift started in the 1990s, when the government launched Operation Blackboard, reserving 50% of jobs in schools for women. The trend is likely to intensify. In 2010-11, according to the University Grants Commission, education was the only stream of study to have more girls than boys: 3.24 lakh girls as opposed to 2.64 lakh boys had signed up to take up teaching as a vocation.

The data of enrolled girl students in B.Ed. programme shown by few states universities yearwise is:

States/Year	Enrolled Percentage of Girls in B.Ed. Programme
	2013	2014	2015	2016
Delhi	65	69	74	80
Rajasthan	46	49	52	64
Haryana	52	56	62	65
Punjab	58	52	59	65
Uttar Pradesh	NA	67	73	76
Madhya Pradesh	56	59	64	73
Bihar	54	61	68	72
Uttrakhand	50	58	62	65

This data shows that our Govt. policy and improvement in education system has opened the door for females in teaching profession. The females of India have also playing an important role to make a successful pragramme for women empowerment.  

Dr. Sanjeev Kumar

Assistant Professor

JIE, Gr. Noida