The education department in Kerala’s Palakkad has issued a one-page circular that claims to be a three-step awareness campaign to warn young girls about the dangers of exploitation.
The one-page circular, dated 10 February, instructs principals to hold lectures for female students, followed by awareness sessions for parents of girl children. Principals are also instructed to organise screenings of short films for girl students, to highlight the risks of relationships and to “equip them with the knowledge to resist such advances”.
Conspicuously missing in the circular were any measures for educating male students on how to behave in relationships or in their interactions with women.
The measures were formulated by the Education Department, reportedly in consultation with the district collector Marykutty.
“In many places, girl children get trapped in love affairs during their school days, which end up destroying their lives later. There are people who persistently go behind girls, but the girls must be told not to take them seriously and not attribute importance to such advances," Collector Marykutty told Asianet News.
She also rubbished allegations that the circular was issued to prevent love jihad. “That is not the aim of this circular. Our teenage girls need to be warned against such traps that are lurking around, and the circular was issued keeping in mind the welfare of the girl children,” said the Collector.
The Collector’s entreaties, however, did not keep the administration from drawing criticism for directing its “measures” only at girl children, in an attempt to “save” them.
Aleyamma Vijayan, co-founder of Sakhi Women’s Resource Centre told The News Minute:
We continue to live in a society in which we feel the necessity to address only girls, and men can continue to do whatever they want. We still believe that women need to be protected. One cannot take it lightly, that in a male-dominated society like ours, a woman Collector is herself reinstating patriarchal norms.
Elaborating on the life skills classes that the research centre has been organising in schools across the state, Aleyamma highlights the need to teach both girls and boys the same lessons.
“We feel that there is a huge change in the attitude of the boys, once we are done with the classes. It is through such classes that the boys get to learn more about women, that they need to respect girls, that eventually changes the way they think about women,” Aleyamma says.
She feels that giving awareness classes to the parents of girl children is essentially problematic.
“When we talk about parent-teacher meetings, it is often the mothers who turn up for these and not the men in the family. Again, we are addressing women and telling them to protect their girls and teach them how they should behave. The core of the issue is not being addressed at all,” Aleyamma points out.
(The article was originally published on The News Minute)
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