Paradox of gender gap

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Paradox of gender gap

Thursday, 21 March 2019 | Praful Goradia

Paradox of gender gap

The will to dominate does not lend itself to team spirit. Perhaps women have the potential to exude greater team spirit, a sine qua non for group sports

Say if Saina Nehwal or PV Sindhu is one of the best badminton players in India at present, why should both not play for the country even in the men’s singles or doubles if there be any? The same should apply to Sania Mirza if she is the best in tennis. This logic should also extend to hockey and cricket. If a girl or two or more are better than any male player in their positions, surely they could replace them. Strictly, the concept of separate men’s and women’s teams and tournaments reflects an old mindset based on the women being weaker, less skilled and, therefore, not able to play in the same teams.

Yes, women were much weaker physically than they are today. In the old days, their diet was inferior in all respects, except in wealthy families. Then there were the issues of early marriage and reproduction.  Because of high infant mortality, women became even weaker in the days of low technology. Shah Jahan was arguably the wealthiest man in the world in his day. Yet, of his 14 children born, he could save only seven of them — Dara, Shuja Aurangzeb, Murad, Jahanara, Roshanara and Gauhar. Inevitably, women were considered weak, for childbirth took a heavy toll on their systems. They were deemed virtually a different species.

In older times, bodily strength was placed at a great premium. Often, the king was the strongest man in his court. Weapons were comparatively crude, so fighting or defending fell on the man’s body with the weapon serving as an aid. Whereas since then, revolutions have taken place, not to speak of missiles and nuclear arms. The balance of strength began to shift with the advent of the musket being invented in the 16th century. Its use reduced the importance of the user’s personal strength. As more sophisticated guns replaced the musket, they also became lighter in weight, enabling women to use them with as much facility as men. In the Iraq wars, women fought as frontline soldiers. Their relative or presumed weakness did not prove any handicap. If on a battlefield women can prove equal to men, why not also on the tennis or badminton court or the cricket field? Strangely enough, even chess and carrom tournaments are played generally by men or women but separately. What else is the explanation than a sexist bias?

It was not so long ago, only a matter of decades, when on the Indian stage, whether in Kolkata or Mumbai, even the heroine, the obvious role of a woman, was played by a man; and not necessarily an effeminate one, but by whoever was available and, therefore, pressed into service. All other female characters were enacted by men. This experiment, of course, was not the choice of the director of the play but the reluctance of families to allow their daughters to participate in performing arts that were considered not such a respectable profession. For a woman to flirt with a stranger on a public stage, to hold his hands, to embrace him or even kiss was considered more immoral than moral. However, in the case of tennis, badminton, table tennis  or hockey, no comparable intermingling with men is entailed. In this context evidently, the stage, as well as the celluloid, has gone ahead; whereas sports have marked time.

Referring back to the Iraq wars, we need to make it clear that deploying women on the frontline, whether in the infantry, cavalry with tanks or in the air force as pilots of fighter aircraft, come with the risk of an assault on their chastity if they are taken as prisoners of war. But that is an extreme case. If the world, not only on the stage but also on the battlefield, has travelled so far, why does the world of sport observe what the Islamic world calls taqlid or orthodoxy? Our own Sania Mirza was upbraided by the clergy for wearing functional shorts while playing tennis. Sportswomen from such orthodox countries insist upon their women participants wearing salwar kameez as well as donning the hijab.

It is true that men and women are temperamentally different. The former can see far as well as wide. They can look into the future with more perceptiveness; whereas women are more committed to their survival and observe the immediate practicalities in time and distance more accurately.  Many of them are also credited with greater intuition. They should be more successful than men at obtaining immediate results.

Of late, this female strength is being repeatedly demonstrated in school board examinations, where girl students score higher mark percentages. Surely, this asset can be utilised on the sports field as well?

It is true that the male, whether in the animal or human world, is tempted to dominate; whereas the corresponding female is able to function comfortably in a position of subordination. This may be a reasoning of nature in order to enable the female to carry the responsibilities of child-bearing and breeding. In this regard, nature has been partial; if we notice, the male elephant has tusks, the lion has the mane, the peacock has feathers, the cock the red plume. The will or desire to dominate does not lend itself to team spirit as much as less of such desire. Stretching this reasoning forward should lead one to conclude that perhaps women have the potential to exude greater team spirit, a sine qua non of group sports like hockey or cricket. It is just possible that the readiness to be subordinate might have been cultivated over centuries by a hierarchical society to denude the role of the wife to the normally patrician husband.

The tea gardens the world over are an interesting instance of an old mindset. The managers, their assistants, as well as their subordinate staff have been male through decades,  whereas two-thirds of the workers in labour-intensive enterprises have been female. What a paradox! This oddity did not even attract the attention of either experts or tea board members, except some 15 years ago when fewer and fewer young men were applying for garden assignments. Yet, compared to men, very few women are deployed in the factories. They are just sent out to pluck the green leaves from the bushes and occasionally do other agricultural work. This man-woman inequality, unfortunately, continues in all corners of the globe. Despite progress, women are scarce among senior leaders. Very few women are CEOs of the world’s largest corporations. As of the 2018 Fortune list, only 24 women (4.8 per cent) were CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. This needs to change, now.

(The writer is a well-known columnist and an author)

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