Thoughts on teaching and learning about Gender and Health

I teach the Gender and Health module in the MPH
course at IIPHG for quite some time now. Having taught and learned the issues
passionately, I have become a lot more gender-sensitive over time.  I live the topic and tend to see the world
around me – i.e. workplace, family, friends, and students – from a gender prism.  As a facilitator, I remain emotionally
connected to the character, content, and community throughout the course, and
observe the gender-related processes in the classroom and the institute. While
the students get a more nuanced awareness of gender dynamics through discussion
of the science and system issues, they also explore and revisit their self and
society. I understand that the course often becomes heavy on sensitive students,
irrespective of gender. The marginalized and vulnerable students get affected
because of their reflections on the lived experiences of gender disparities and
injustice. As I try to create an equitable environment conducive to productive
discourse, dialogue, and deliberation focusing on the marginalized, I appear
biased because I cannot focus on equality. The patriarchal students therefore get
agitated to grab the attention in a gender-equal space that I try to generate. So,
the atmosphere becomes little heavy for everyone, including myself.

Below are some suggestions on dealing with
emotions and contributing to the process of making classroom learning
meaningful by enabling a gender-sensitive environment. These are applicable to
all of us, as individuals and as a group.

·        
Accept
the society as our collective reality. This reality is dynamic; it is very
different for many of us, cross sectionally and over time. It will further
improve for the rest of us, in the time to come.  This interactive learning will be in the
foundation of such long-term changes. We may not be able to change the world,
but as an individual we can change our little world.

·        
Appreciate
privileges and possibilities, and acknowledge deprivations and limitations of
our individual reality.  Compare our
notes to see how close or far we are from the center.  Create avenues for collaborations within
peers who have similar or diverse experiences to strengthen our position and to
widen our horizons.

·        
Resist
the temptation to find immediate solutions or prescriptions. Gender disparity is
one of the oldest and the most normalized form of social inequality. There are
no “one-size-fit-all” solutions to resolve this. There are no easy pills to pop
and get rid of the problem. One needs to accept oneself as a part of the problem
and prepare for self-to-society changes in the long term.

·        
Engaging
is key not only in learning about gender, but also in dealing with mixed
emotions that these learning generates time to time. This engagement could be
with like-minded friends as well as with people with difference of opinion.
This engagement would need to be to understand alternative viewpoints, and not
necessarily to convince others of our own standing. For a productive
engagement, one may alter the roles for a change. Speak less and listen more of
you are an extrovert and speak generally. If you ae introvert-type and choose
to speak less in general, you can try to claim space to speak more so that the
others can listen to your viewpoints.

·        
The
engagement would be productive and useful if we choose to engage to ask,
inquire and understand rather than to tell or inform. So, when you engage for gender
related discussions, put forth queries and listen to answers.  Avoid speaking to advise, contradict, or inform;
Speak only to share your sentiments and emotions and to empathize

·        
Empathy
is the last point I would like to emphasize. Gender is beyond men and women, or
men vs. women. It is about power inequality that prevails. It is about unearned
but naturalized privileges and lack thereof. So, it is important to put oneself
in the shoes of that of the other to understand them. Various positions beyond gender
also affect man and woman differently. Understand and appreciate these
differences. Empathize with everyone as all of us needs liberation from gender
stereotypes.

·        
Lastly,
the problem is deep-rooted, universal, and historical. There are no easy
solutions to counter this. The impact buzzword in public health like control, elimination,
eradication is not possible in context of gender. Self-awareness and sensitization
are all this module can do, to begin with. Go easy on yourself, your friends,
your family members, your faculty and fraternity.