It’s time education became gender-neutral in India

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It is exam result season and the familiar headlines give a shiny picture with a high overall pass percentage. One standout again is that girls outperformed boys recently in the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations. This has become a trend of late with girls doing spectacularly well in the Board exams.

This puts the focus on letting girls chase their dreams, academically and career-wise, even on the sports field and helps them realise them.

Even with all the talk about gender equity and opportunity, there needs to be a real effort in some places to turn talk into action. A recent seminar on diversity had a workplace manager stating that their space had an equal men-to- women ratio when it came to workers who are freshers or in the very early years of their careers.

However, once the years go by, and employees become senior, the ratio becomes skewed with a lot of women dropping out, as responsibilities of home and family start weighing on them.

When it comes to sporting avenues, girls may be encouraged to get into sport and compete till a certain age. Post that, there is pressure from different places to give up on these pursuits. A look at our roads reveals that on holidays, boys and men, too, take advantage of empty roads and public spaces to play cricket or football. Not so, the girls or women. While urban academia is different, in small towns girls are still told to give up their studies after a while, while boys may not be told to do so.

While we cheer on the academic results, there is little meaning to these marks if they are not followed by equity in the truest sense of the term and throughout one's life. Academics must be followed by equality, options, avenues and opportunity.