“Women in media should aggressively challenge the various norms that we men have established,” said vocalist and Magsaysay awardee T.M. Krishna.
“Patriarchy dictates how issues are viewed and discourses take shape,” he said at a conference on ‘Gender and the Media: Challenges and Opportunities, organised by Network of Women in Media, India — Chennai Chapter,’ in association with Anna University on Thursday.
“Women and men must realise that they have been following a gender construct ingrained in them and there must be a way to deconstruct the prism through which gender is viewed.”
“As a people, we are being influenced by what is fed to us by a patriarchal society. The insidious ways of such a thought process pervaded all fields, including creativity and the fine arts,” he said.
“When women are physically attacked or threatened, the man uses the opportunities to further paint the woman as weak. The fundamental problem is in the way men think about women,” he noted.
Social media
“Social media has held up a mirror to ourselves, revealing the innermost ugliness in us,” Mr. Krishna said citing the campaign of law student Raya Sarkar, whose posts had caused a stir on social media.
T.V. Geetha, Dean, College of Engineering, Guindy, recalled her own experiences about having to fight attitudes. Despite waging a tough eight-year battle, she was unable to influence a co-worker to change his attitude that women need not just be homemakers.
More women students
A. Kannan, convenor of the conference, said the 200-year-old institution now had a large number of women students.
The Department of Media Sciences had more female students.
