editorial:
The class XII CBSE examination results replay a data which everyone who has been through school has experienced – girls outshine boys in performance, this year, even more substantially. While 86.93 per cent of the girls who took the exam passed this year, among boy, the pass-percentage was a much lower 77.83 per cent. It’s a similar scenario when it comes to ICSE, where, in the Class X exams, the pass percentage of girls is 99.15 per cent against 98.19 per cent boys. In Class XII, 98.40 per cent girls passed as compared to 96.30 per cent boys. The ICSE State-topper for Sikkim is a girl as well - Kritika Dahal. Subsequent competitive exam results have posted women as toppers in Sikkim and more of them have cracked the civil services exams than boys from Sikkim. Even at the national level, the year 2010 topper for the universally accepted to be the toughest competitive exam in the country, the Civil Services Examination, is a lady as well, 24-year-old, S. Divyadharshini, of Chennai. When it comes to school examinations, one could argue that girls are short-changed when it comes to accessing education and only the more academically consistent of them reach the class X and XII levels and hence a higher percentage of them get through. This would be a superficial reading of the situation because this has been a trend which has been consistent for a while now. What has, however, not been consistent is the access this academically more perseverant section receives in later years. In less than half a decade since the girls trump boys in class X and XII exams, they start fading away in the years when their education should be in its strongest expression and reinforcing their presence in careers and research.
Centuries of societal discomfort with a women-on-top scenario starts manifesting more strongly in these years and discourage women away from ambition. The society suffers as a result, when the section which has consistently been responsible [like learning well when in school] is pressured away from the responsibilities of policy-making and programme delivery. Male domination of these sectors has been instituted by the historic oppression of women in our country. Our major religion, Hinduism and Islam, are in scriptural and practical terms deeply inhospitable to the emancipation of women. They fool us with the celebration of women as the mother and the homemaker, but prescribe strongly against individualism and independent women. In Sikkim’s case, the experience with Buddhism has not been much better because at heart even this faith is not gender neutral as is made obvious by the preponderance of male reincarnates against the extremely few women who return as Rinpoches. The Dalai Lama appears to have noticed this imbalance and recently even commented that he could even return as a girl. While this might not mean that he will in fact do so, what it highlights is that it is time for faith to become gender-neutral if not pro-women. There is a staggering baggage of historic oppression and its attendant prejudices that women have to negotiate in our country, which is why their outshining males in education [for long dominated by men] is welcome.
While on the topic, one cannot ignore the fact that individual women [not yet womenfolk, unfortunately] – Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalitha, Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee - are also dominating the political space in our country. Of the four, save Ms. Banerjee, the rest, many will have us believe, inherited political relevance. While this might be true, it is also a fact, that while they might have inherited a political mantle, they earned success on their own. Here, one must also bear in mind that women’s emancipation in India started in the early 19th century with Rammohun Roy’s movement against Sati. This was reinforced by Dr. BR Ambedkar when he wrote in a vote as the Constitutional right of Indian women, decades ahead of women even in the West. In Sikkim, they grow politically strong as well with two of the three women elected legislators, making it into the Cabinet. What will be impressive is for them to now secure their political futures through their performance as Ministers and Legislators. It has taken women seven decades of Constitutional guarantees and protection to reach the position from where they shine now. The civil society needs to now guarantee that they receive a level playing field in all that they decide to pursue because this remains a social commitment which has still not been delivered to complement what the Constitution has guaranteed.
The class XII CBSE examination results replay a data which everyone who has been through school has experienced – girls outshine boys in performance, this year, even more substantially. While 86.93 per cent of the girls who took the exam passed this year, among boy, the pass-percentage was a much lower 77.83 per cent. It’s a similar scenario when it comes to ICSE, where, in the Class X exams, the pass percentage of girls is 99.15 per cent against 98.19 per cent boys. In Class XII, 98.40 per cent girls passed as compared to 96.30 per cent boys. The ICSE State-topper for Sikkim is a girl as well - Kritika Dahal. Subsequent competitive exam results have posted women as toppers in Sikkim and more of them have cracked the civil services exams than boys from Sikkim. Even at the national level, the year 2010 topper for the universally accepted to be the toughest competitive exam in the country, the Civil Services Examination, is a lady as well, 24-year-old, S. Divyadharshini, of Chennai. When it comes to school examinations, one could argue that girls are short-changed when it comes to accessing education and only the more academically consistent of them reach the class X and XII levels and hence a higher percentage of them get through. This would be a superficial reading of the situation because this has been a trend which has been consistent for a while now. What has, however, not been consistent is the access this academically more perseverant section receives in later years. In less than half a decade since the girls trump boys in class X and XII exams, they start fading away in the years when their education should be in its strongest expression and reinforcing their presence in careers and research.
Centuries of societal discomfort with a women-on-top scenario starts manifesting more strongly in these years and discourage women away from ambition. The society suffers as a result, when the section which has consistently been responsible [like learning well when in school] is pressured away from the responsibilities of policy-making and programme delivery. Male domination of these sectors has been instituted by the historic oppression of women in our country. Our major religion, Hinduism and Islam, are in scriptural and practical terms deeply inhospitable to the emancipation of women. They fool us with the celebration of women as the mother and the homemaker, but prescribe strongly against individualism and independent women. In Sikkim’s case, the experience with Buddhism has not been much better because at heart even this faith is not gender neutral as is made obvious by the preponderance of male reincarnates against the extremely few women who return as Rinpoches. The Dalai Lama appears to have noticed this imbalance and recently even commented that he could even return as a girl. While this might not mean that he will in fact do so, what it highlights is that it is time for faith to become gender-neutral if not pro-women. There is a staggering baggage of historic oppression and its attendant prejudices that women have to negotiate in our country, which is why their outshining males in education [for long dominated by men] is welcome.
While on the topic, one cannot ignore the fact that individual women [not yet womenfolk, unfortunately] – Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalitha, Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee - are also dominating the political space in our country. Of the four, save Ms. Banerjee, the rest, many will have us believe, inherited political relevance. While this might be true, it is also a fact, that while they might have inherited a political mantle, they earned success on their own. Here, one must also bear in mind that women’s emancipation in India started in the early 19th century with Rammohun Roy’s movement against Sati. This was reinforced by Dr. BR Ambedkar when he wrote in a vote as the Constitutional right of Indian women, decades ahead of women even in the West. In Sikkim, they grow politically strong as well with two of the three women elected legislators, making it into the Cabinet. What will be impressive is for them to now secure their political futures through their performance as Ministers and Legislators. It has taken women seven decades of Constitutional guarantees and protection to reach the position from where they shine now. The civil society needs to now guarantee that they receive a level playing field in all that they decide to pursue because this remains a social commitment which has still not been delivered to complement what the Constitution has guaranteed.
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