The task is to inculcate the message in the next generation. The message is about breaking the walls of inequality between the genders and sharing the load of life and house chores equally. For years, it has been about the woman of the house owning the responsibility encompassing all responsibilities within the four walls of the house. It has been all rooted in our senses, heart, blood, and mind that a man is not supposed to contribute in house work right since our childhood. That is what we are observing for last generations.
Prevalent thought, men will become women if they do laundry, or cleaning of the house. And those who have guts to defy this thought have had to face taunts within the family, society, office, and where not about performing feminine tasks.
Nobody bothered to break these barriers created around women. On one hand, the load of responsibilities kept weighing in on women. They were allowed to step outside, join office, earn, contribute to family income, work full time; but still the responsibilities inside the house remained with them. They had to manage it on their own without any help from men of the house. And it went on silently. Women never raised a voice against it. Those who dared to, were silenced. Even when kids of the house raised their voice against it they were silenced with a reason that it is what it is supposed to be like.
Probably it had to be absorbed in the minds of those who felt it to be wrong. But for how long? Gradually the demon of inequality had been raised so high to a level that it became difficult to resist the abolition of gender inequality by people on the other side who were favoring this notion rather than opposing it.
Being a teacher, I knew that the easiest way of doing a thing is 'doing' rather than preaching about it and wasting time. I started this chain of inculcating the message from my school, to my students itself. The benefit of starting from school was that at the same time, this thought-provoking message will reach many homes together. Even if it creates and impact in half of those homes, it will mean a lot.
I started teaching my students about why they should not tolerate gender inequality at home and how to overcome it so subtly and positively that the tides are forced to change their direction on their own. The students understood it faster than my male colleagues at school. A number of relevant posters were made by my students to spread the word around. They even started this mission at their respective homes in their own small ways.
These students started sharing their stories in school with me, on how they gradually offloaded this jinx out of their parent's minds. Raghu, my student in Class 7 told me that he helped his mother in washing the utensils last night. Vidya, my student in Class 9 told me how her brother amazed their parents the last evening and forced them to start thinking about breaking all the barriers when her father called her to clean the table and her brother did it despite her father telling him that it is not the job of the boys or men of the house. The impact was invincible when her father declared that now onward the laundry of the house was on him to #ShareTheLoad with her working mother.
So many stories started pouring in day after day. Each one was accompanied by unique and amazing realizations. The ripple was strong enough to reach and impact the male colleagues who also ended up supporting the notion to #ShareTheLoad.
Prevalent thought, men will become women if they do laundry, or cleaning of the house. And those who have guts to defy this thought have had to face taunts within the family, society, office, and where not about performing feminine tasks.
Nobody bothered to break these barriers created around women. On one hand, the load of responsibilities kept weighing in on women. They were allowed to step outside, join office, earn, contribute to family income, work full time; but still the responsibilities inside the house remained with them. They had to manage it on their own without any help from men of the house. And it went on silently. Women never raised a voice against it. Those who dared to, were silenced. Even when kids of the house raised their voice against it they were silenced with a reason that it is what it is supposed to be like.
Probably it had to be absorbed in the minds of those who felt it to be wrong. But for how long? Gradually the demon of inequality had been raised so high to a level that it became difficult to resist the abolition of gender inequality by people on the other side who were favoring this notion rather than opposing it.
Being a teacher, I knew that the easiest way of doing a thing is 'doing' rather than preaching about it and wasting time. I started this chain of inculcating the message from my school, to my students itself. The benefit of starting from school was that at the same time, this thought-provoking message will reach many homes together. Even if it creates and impact in half of those homes, it will mean a lot.
I started teaching my students about why they should not tolerate gender inequality at home and how to overcome it so subtly and positively that the tides are forced to change their direction on their own. The students understood it faster than my male colleagues at school. A number of relevant posters were made by my students to spread the word around. They even started this mission at their respective homes in their own small ways.
These students started sharing their stories in school with me, on how they gradually offloaded this jinx out of their parent's minds. Raghu, my student in Class 7 told me that he helped his mother in washing the utensils last night. Vidya, my student in Class 9 told me how her brother amazed their parents the last evening and forced them to start thinking about breaking all the barriers when her father called her to clean the table and her brother did it despite her father telling him that it is not the job of the boys or men of the house. The impact was invincible when her father declared that now onward the laundry of the house was on him to #ShareTheLoad with her working mother.
So many stories started pouring in day after day. Each one was accompanied by unique and amazing realizations. The ripple was strong enough to reach and impact the male colleagues who also ended up supporting the notion to #ShareTheLoad.
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