Aid women to break stereotypes: Mallika Sarabhai

Danseuse and social activist Mallika Sarabhai adressing at the Samathwa-2019 a programme organised by ASAP in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.

Skills should be imparted to women and job opportunities created for them to break gender stereotypes in workplaces, danseuse and social activist Mallika Sarabhai has said.

She was speaking while formally inaugurating the Samathwa-2019 workshop organised by the Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP) on ‘Enhancing gender equity in employment in industries and businesses in Kerala’ here on Tuesday.

Patriarchial moulds

Stressing the need to break patriarchal moulds by improving skills among women and by creating job opportunities for them, Dr Sarabhai lauded the State government for its decision to appoint women as drivers of official vehicles.

“Such opportunities would go a long way in breaking stereotypes. The categorisation of jobs as women and non-women professions need to change to create a gender-equitable society,” she said.

She was also critical of the poor representation of women and people of diverse backgrounds in the corporate world.

Pointing out that the decision-makers in companies were primarily upper-caste men, Dr. Sarabhai said,

Corporate statistics

“Ours is not an upper-caste, male-dominated country. Around 60% of the entire population are not upper-castes, nearly 48% are women, and we speak 28 different languages. Every corporate study that has been conducted around the world has proved that it made perfect business sense to have boards (of directors) with diversity. Besides, it has also been proven that the profitability of a company increases when it has women in the top echelons.”

Gender imbalance

Delivering the presidential address, Higher Education Minister K.T. Jaleel said there existed a visible gender imbalance in workplaces, a scenario that contradicted what was generally seen in educational institutions in the State.

“No form of implicit or explicit gender bias exist in our institutions. In fact, the participation of females in the higher education sector is one of the highest in the country. Our schools and colleges are also known to be women-friendly. Ironically, the situation in our workplaces is different. The problem will have to be examined closely to study whether we have been able to maintain harmony and gender equity in our workspaces, labour laws and work culture,” Dr. Jaleel said.

ASAP chief executive officer Veena N. Madhavan and head (training) Anil Kumar T.V. also spoke on the occasion.

Presentations based on the workshop theme were led by State Planning Board member Mridul Eapen, women entrepreneurs, social activists and other delegates.