Normalisation of sexist harassment must cease for gender equality; educational institutions should embrace gender sensitivity

Sexual violence is widely equated with rape cases. The media spotlight brings spotlight on increasing crime rates, violence against women and safety of women. But sexist harassment, the most commonplace and everyday occurrence, is normalized.
Sexist harassment is consumed as something very normal. This normalcy is because of the patriarchal perspectives. There could be a fear factor too, for the victim might be unsure about raising voice. The act of sexist harassment for many simply means “a friendly gesture” or “a naïve joke.” Thus, as rightly pointed out by Sheela Suryanarayanan, there is “an expensive silence” about sexist harassment.
Sexist violence begins from domestic spaces that formulate and foster different rules for women and men. This further gets reinstated at social institutions. Human minds are thought to be chastised by all kinds of biases when they become educated, on the premise that higher education institutions are considered as places that host healthy debates on social taboos to enable the youngsters to transcend boundaries of narrow mindedness, social inequalities and identity crises.
Sadly, gender discrimination and sexist violence creep into higher education institutions and contaminate all possibilities of establishing gender parity. Misogyny is palpable in all sectors while educational institutions are transforming into habitats of sexist ideologies that victimise women students, faculty, and non-teaching staff alike although the nature and gravity of violence varies.
An integral constituent of educational institutions is the student welfare office. When this office itself operates as an agency that endorses sexist notions either by visibly channelling or by metaphorically sanctioning them, it is important to underscore that everyone who consumes or disseminates such ideologies becomes a part of misogynistic propaganda.
Many of the educational institutions impose separate rules for the female students with regard to the dress, behaviour and their conduct on campus. Even during arts and sports festivals which allow the men students to be part of the festivities, the women can be a part of it until it is the time for them to get back to their hostels as there is a “gendered curfew” on campus. Authorities circulate notices that prescribe separate rules for women students and their men counterparts.
However, sexism operates covertly through subtle references towards the character of the girl who violates the popular gender expectations of the authorities. If confronted about the unjust treatment and policing, the authorities always defend themselves using benevolent sexism, with the best intention to protect the womenfolk!
Recently the Dean of Students’ Welfare of an Institution of Eminence in central India issued a pamphlet on dangers of drug use, worded supposedly for witty and catchy slogans, created by students as part of a competition. These slogans were accredited and enlisted as the best entries from the contest.
“Drug and Death - Couple with No Divorce” topped the rest and the acknowledgment of the nuanced and metaphorical references to the wife and husband never to be divorced appears both compulsorily heterosexual and naïve, not to mention the valorised nature of the marital relationship as the ideal and the goal of all youthful relationships. This slogan is an allegory of the conservative reinforcement of the institution of marriage and propagating such ideas in a university campus where youth must engage in critical questioning of institutions that must be condemned. The pamphlet institutionalised the ritual of sexist harassment.
To begin with, why is there a need to gender the drug-use and drug-menace?
‘Heroine’ being punned with ‘heroin’ and the appeal to be a ‘hero’ without the counterpart are all such supposedly ‘powerful slogans’ that disturbingly equate drugs with women. “Be a hero without heroin” is an index of the masculine construction of heroism where the absence of the female counterpart adds to the glory of being a hero. Thinking in binaries, having a choice of either this or that, encourages irrationality. This is very evident in the immediate one that follows - Heroin will make you loose [sic] Heroine! Although it sounds apparently innocent and jocular, this slogan shows the sheer absence of gender sensitivity.
Secondly, it normalises the prevalent gender stereotypes and patriarchal prejudices that exist around us. Women connoting drugs, inebriation and destruction being hailed as winning slogans is a reinforcement of unjust gender relations through not-so-veiled metaphors in the minds of the youth.
Benevolent sexism and ‘concerns about protecting the rich cultural traditions of India’ had been metaphorically showcased when the men students of another central university in northern India covered the university’s walls with the picture of a ‘caged bird’ in which each bar of the cage represented ‘faith’, ‘dignity’, ‘submission’ and ‘morality’ with an inscription that cancelled any attempts of women to claim their human rights as ‘evil’ acts. In the same institute, women students were denied access to the library as the head of the institution believed that their presence unnecessarily invited boys to the library! The academic implications of this curfew had already been debated back in 2014.
Thus, the passive consumers of sexist ideology in fact indirectly or intently become its spokespersons later. A woman scholar from an institute of national importance states: “In a recent sports event, our batch won the overall championship. One of the teammates, a boy, said that the girls should go and collect the trophy even though they did not partake in the match. When asked about the reason for this he said that it was a compensation for cheering them which came as an insult for all of us girls. Our gestures of solidarity were misread and our male friends considered us cheer girls”.
Despite clearing the UGC National Eligibility Test (NET) and securing a Master’s and a B. Ed. Degree from two different central universities, a woman lecturer was reduced to her clothing by the management of College of Applied Sciences (CAS), Kodungalloor, Kerala. The lecturer refused to meet the management’s condition of wearing a saree and had to resign. This incident resulted in the state’s higher education department issuing a circular, in November 2021, that clarified that the teachers do not have to adhere to a particular dress code.
It is embarrassing to understand that the statutes of various Central Universities, IITs and NITs carry gendered language. The references in these documents to the principal administrators like the Vice Chancellor, Director, Deputy Director and Registrar have taken the personal pronoun ‘he’ with its variant possessive forms wherever required. Does it mean that there is a predominant assumption about a woman’s incapability to assume positions of power? Or is it mandatory that a woman, if at all fortunate to be in an office, compromises with the male oriented linguistic constructions evident in these documents?
Sexist harassment and the prevailing misogynistic sentiments around us certainly do have a negative impact on women’s personal and professional development. It is high time society, especially its educational institutions, stopped objectifying women as pleasing gadgets/substances or as powerless secondary citizens.
Gender equality is one of the development goals that we need to strive towards for a sustainable society.

The author is Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, at National Institute of Technology-Trichy (NIT-T)