Why is there a Women's Day?

And other questions my gender-blind boys ask

Hola Global Jigsaw,

Why is there a Women’s Day? What about a Men’s Day? Why do women need special treatment if we are all the same?

My boys, aged 11 and 14, often ask me these, and similar, questions with genuine bewilderment. It’s understandable. Their experience of life so far, has been gender-blind. The girls in their school equal the boys in numbers, academic merit, and personal autonomy. The boys live in a city, Madrid, where women occupy public space with loose-limbed confidence, gossiping over gin and tonics after work in al fresco cafés. Their mother travels the world, and their father makes them breakfast.

But while in some ways it is a thing of wonder that my children inhabit the world in this cocoon of privilege, I am aware that naiveté can be harmful. That ignorance is not innocent. As parents we tread a fine line between protecting innocence and perpetuating ignorance. Not only is feminism’s work far from being done in the developed parts of the world, but in the country that forms half the boy’s familial inheritance — India — girls are still killed in the womb and outside of it, for the crime of being girls.

According to data analysis from the Pew Research Center, there were at least 9 million girls in India "missing" between 2000 and 2019: the result of female infanticide. And those that survive the womb are less likely to be educated, given adequate nutrition, or medical care, compared to boys.

Talking about women in India is a sorry, gory story of acid attacks, dowry deaths and gang rapes.

But how does one discuss such brutality with one’s children? I want them to think of India as the land of nani and tiger safaris, poori aloo and hill stations. It’s impossible to square this idyll with sexual predators and misogynists.

When we are in Delhi, I hide the newspapers from the children because I don’t have the words to discuss gouged-out intestines with them. I want them to be proud to be boys, but how can one know the atrocities perpetrated by one’s gender and remain unsullied?

My teenager has recently begun to preen in front of the mirror. He’s asked me for acne cream, and he puffs up his hair with the help of generous lashings of gel. Any mother knows the signs. He’s trying to look good for the girls. How does one tell this sweet romantic, that the world of male-female relations is not just about good hygiene (he’s also taken to deodorant with passion)? That there are predatory men who dehumanise their female prey much like enemies are stripped of their humanity by soldiers in a war.

I choose therefore to focus on other, less brutal, facts that try to make them self-aware of their privilege in having been born male. This is not their fault, of course, but it does mean they have certain responsibilities for creating change.

At home, we acknowledge that girls and boys are different in many ways. Physically, possibly emotionally. But where they are unequivocally equal, is in their intellectual capacity, and their right to self-determination.

I try and excavate the surface for my boys. We talk about structural biases —  the confidence gap, the pay gap — that exist between the genders, to the disadvantage of women. About the stickiness of these “gaps” in a world that can superficially look like it favours women — given diversity quotas and other affirmative action policies.

A dinner-table conversation recently involved a discussion about studies that show men to have a greater self-worth professionally than women. While men and women tend towards parity in their workplace performance, research has shown that men consistently overestimate their abilities and performance, while women underestimate both. Women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions and they predict they’ll do worse on tests. They negotiate lower salaries, believing that they deserve to earn less than what men of equivalent competence and skills hold to be true about themselves.

The boys phoo phooed all this, telling me that the girls in their class were bursting with confidence and often put the boys down. So, I told them about a story closer to home. About their dad and I.

While we were still at university in London, their dad had decided he wanted to live in Beijing. He’d found applications open for paid internships in China funded by the European Union. Although he’d met several of the application criteria, I’d been quick to point out that he had no work experience, despite it being clearly mentioned that at least two years of professional experience was needed. My beloved had breezily reasoned that various summer jobs he’d done while at university were enough. I would not have applied for that internship on the basis of his qualifications. Yet, their dad did. And he got it!

There was much mirth at the table, following this yarn. But I hope that conversations like this are a drip-drip that will eventually coalesce into a larger awareness about the persistent structures of patriarchy. The key, I think, is to ask the children questions.

Both boys love chess. So, I ask them why there are so few women chess-players at the highest levels. I ask them if they can imagine the Russia-Ukraine conflict with women in charge. I ask them what they think the implications of the difference in physical strength between girls and boys are for how they experience the world. I ask them why their mom, me, always knows where everyone’s socks are — but not their dad. I make them watch nature documentaries and ask them why human males seem so much less nurturing of their offspring than Emperor penguins.

Their instinct is to roll their eyes and come up with non-sequiturs about how annoying girls are because they obsess about their hair and take too many selfies. But at other times, they pause a fraction before replying. And in that pause, there is a world of learning. As parents, it's enough to do just that: create a pause for thought.

*****

I hope you enjoyed this. And happy Women’s Day! Until soon,

Pallavi

PS: Please do subscribe. It’s important to pay for what you consume- even, or especially (?) when the product is words/ideas.