Women in Academia are extremely vulnerable

[First published in Women's Web as St Xavier’s University Kolkata Allegedly Slut-Shames Woman Professor Over An Instagram Story]

A 30 year old Associate Professor at a well-known University, according to an FIR filed by her, was forced to resign because the father of one of her students complained that he found his son looking at photographs of her, which according to him were “objectionable” and “bordering on nudity”.

There are two aspects to this case, which are equally disturbing, and which together make me question where we are heading as a society.

When the father of an 18 year old finds his son looking at photographs of a lady in a swimsuit, he can do many things. What this parent does is to dash off a letter to the University which states:

“Recently, I was appalled to find my son looking at some pictures of Prof. [Guha*] where she has posed in a sexually explicit way causing deliberate public exposure. …[this] is utterly shameful for me as a parent, since I have tried to shield my son from this kind of gross indecency and objectification of the female body. It is obscene, vulgar and improper for a 18 year old student to see his professor dressed in scanty clothes exhibiting her body on a public platform.”

First, the photograph was not on a public platform. The photograph had been posted on a private account on Instagram where it was visible for 24 hours to a tightly controlled audience. The only way the son could have accessed the photographs was if he had sent the Professor a ‘follow’ request which she accepted, or by hacking into her account. If the former, he had reached out to her. If the latter, he is guilty of a cyber-crime. In either case, the Professor cannot be blamed for the fact that her student was ogling at her photographs.

Second, the father says that he has “tried to shield my son from this kind of gross indecency and objectification of the female body”. If we accept this statement at face value, then clearly the parent has failed in his stated duty, since the son had voluntarily sought out content that the parent deems objectionable. To shift the blame to the Professor is just an attempt to cover up what by his own admission is inadequate parenting.

Third, are these the only photographs of “scantily clad” women that the student has gawked at? Surely there must be other women who’s photographs have also come under scrutiny- why then single out the Professor? Don’t teachers have the right to living a personal life? As long as they are competent in their job, and adhere to the workplace code of conduct, how does it matter what clothes they wear and what photographs they post on their private Instagram account?

The reaction of the father smacks of a giant failure in parenting. The child is 18 years old, an adult. Ideally, the father should not be micro-policing what he chooses to do in his spare time. However, this is India, where even people much older are made to feel they are answerable to their parents, random family members and the entire neighbourhood!

The father has caught his child doing something he deems objectionable- instead of holding his son accountable, the father shifts the blame to someone who is not even directly involved in the incident. By writing to the University, and having the Professor removed, the father is sending out the message that his child can behave as irresponsibly as he likes, and the father will always be around to clean up the mess.

The attitude displayed by the University is equally wrong. Ideally, when a frivolous complaint like this was registered, the University should have stood by their staff, and told the father in no uncertain terms that the Professor was engaged to teach, and what she did in her personal life was nobody’s business. Even if the University has a code of conduct which does not permit its staff to put up photographs on their private Instagram accounts, knowing that the Professor had joined only two months earlier, the University should have first asked her when the photograph was uploaded before launching an investigation that ended in her dismissal. In this particular case, the photograph was put up on Instagram stories in June 2021, and the Professor joined the University only in August 2021. Since Instagram stories are visible only for 24 hours, at the time of joining, there were no photographs that could be deemed “objectionable” on the Internet, unless the account had been hacked into and photographs downloaded.

By proceeding with an investigation on photographs taken and uploaded before the Professor even joined the University, they have also set a precedent which leaves women vulnerable to blackmail. Now, any acquaintance who has photographs or videos which are even remotely compromising can threaten to use it to against women in similar positions.

The manner in which the investigation was conducted also exposes how vulnerable women are to harassment in the workplace. According to the FIR filed by the Professor, printouts of the photographs which the parent deemed objectionable were circulated among by the committee members, which included two men. When a woman posts a photograph online, particularly if it is in a tightly controlled private group, it does not mean she is giving consent to the photographs being printed and passed around in another setting. By doing so, the University was invading her privacy, and putting her in an extremely vulnerable position. As she says, “It is a mystery to me till date how the university accessed those pictures. I felt so distressed and humiliated at that moment that I couldn’t bear to examine the rest of the pictures. I was in a meeting where my private pictures were being circulated among people unknown to me, without my consent.”

The Professor also mentions in her FIR that she was repeatedly slut shamed by the members of the committee, most of whom were unknown to her. Though she was dressed in a swimsuit, the members of the committee repeatedly referred to them as “nude” photographs. She, a grown woman of 30 with two PhDs from foreign universities was infantized and asked if her parents knew about and approved of the photographs. There is a decorum to be maintained while carrying out investigations, so the dignity of the woman is maintained, but that was clearly not followed by the University.

More than anything else, this incident exposes how vulnerable women in Academia are. Students and researchers have made allegations of sexual harassment against male professors who were in a position of power over them. Yet, years later, despite those allegations not being properly investigated, those professors continue to hold their positions and are treated as respected professionals. Yes, a woman is slut shamed for sharing photographs of herself with a tightly controlled group of people for a 24 hour period, and is forced to resign because someone who shouldn’t even have access to the photographs made a complaint against her.

This case, if not properly investigated and resolved, can have wide reaching implications for Women, particularly Women in Academia, and each of us should be extremely concerned about it, and should keep raising our voice till the Professor gets justice.

School Reopening- Part 3

[Third in a three part series on school reopening. Here we look at the challenge that the education system faces and how it could perhaps be converted into an opportunity.]

Minimizing the risk of COVID outbreaks is just one part of the challenge. The greater challenge is to engage the students who are returning to school, address the gap in learning level, and address the psychological needs of the students.

According to a report released by UNICEF (United Nations Children Emergency Fund), less than 10% students in India had access to online education during the pandemic. Other reports put the figure a little higher. Whatever the actual number, the reality is that the vast majority of students found themselves at the wrong side of the digital divide. Families did not have a digital device that could be used for online classes; those that did had to prioritize which of the children would get to use it; students that had a device had to struggle to find reliable internet; and after all those conditions were met, the screen was often too small for an optimal learning experience. It is safe to conclude, that except for a very small minority of students, practically no teaching or learning has occurred since the start of the pandemic.

During the time when there was no school, many of these children went into the informal workforce as child laborers. Though we do not have firm numbers, we know that many adolescent girls fell victim to child marriages. Though some of them might be able to negotiate with their families and re-enroll in school, for them, the opportunity cost of coming to school is high. Unless they feel they are learning something significant in school, they (and their families) may decide it doesn’t make sense to continue with an education and may therefore drop out of the school system permanently.

The vast majority of students have been promoted two grades without attending any classes. They will find it extremely challenging to learn from a grade appropriate curriculum without the benefit of bridge courses, and this might cause them to drop out in frustration. It is, therefore, imperative that teachers change their methodology of teaching to ensure that the students are able to learn, and the experience in school remains a safe and enriching one.

Even before the pandemic, there was a huge ‘learning gap’ between the expected learning level and the actual learning level. According to the Annual Status of Education Report released in 2018 (ASER, 2018), less than 30% students in grade 3 in rural India could read grade 2 level text, and by the time they reached grade 5, only half the surveyed students could read grade 2 level text. Similarly, in mathematics, more than half the students of grade 8 struggled with grade 4 level mathematics. Since literacy and numeracy are the basic skills without which other subjects cannot be taught effectively, this is a clear indication that not much learning was happening in India despite students getting automatically promoted at the end of the year.

This gap, which was already significant before the start of the pandemic would have been exacerbated by two other factors. Studies conducted in India and abroad have shown that there is a significant drop in learnings levels during the summer vacations due to disuse of literacy and numeracy skills. With schools closed for more than 18 months, it is safe to conclude that a vast majority of students would have lost even the limited skills they had acquired. At the same time, students have been automatically promoted, leading to an even wider gap in basic literacy and numeracy.

The single objective of the education system should be to address this learning gap in literacy and numeracy. Even if that is the only thing that is accomplished in the current academic year, it would be sufficient. The most practical solution would be to forego written examinations during the current year, and to use the year to reinforce the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy with the goal of ensuring that the gap is narrowed, if not completely bridged. By the end of the academic year, at least 50% of the students should be at age and grade level in literacy and numeracy, and the gap should have been significantly reduced for the rest. The pedagogy for bridging the learning gap exists, and appropriate workbooks should be printed and distributed to the students. The workbooks should be designed in a manner where they can be used under supervision in the classroom, and for self-study. Since the progress of students will be tracked as they proceed through the workbooks at their own pace, and will give them a sense of accomplishment and motivate them to continue.

Students who have a strong foundation in literacy and numeracy can be encouraged to mentor the other students. This will develop team work and communication skills, both of which are important life skills to learn. Since some of the exercises can be completed through self-study, adopting this model will also reduce the amount of time that students need to spend in school, thereby reducing overcrowding in schools.

Other subjects like science, literature, history and geography can be taught orally, so students with without sufficient literacy skills are not left behind. This can be done using a mixture of lectures, discussions and simple projects. Students with age/ grade appropriate reading and writing skills can be encouraged to dive deeper into the topic covered in the subjects. Grading for all the students can be done based on class participation and/ or project work.

By shifting the focus from completing the curriculum to strengthening fundamental literacy and numeracy skills, the system will ensure that all students are brought upto a basic foundation level. If this can be achieved in the current academic year, it will lead to a paradigm shift in the quality of education imparted to the students.

All of this will require a major shift in the way students are taught and what we want them to learn. The situation the education system finds itself in is unprecedented. If we rise to the occasion, it can be a tremendous opportunity; if not, we would have put our students at risk for questionable returns.

When one door closes another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. — Alexander Graham Bell

Now is the time to seize the opportunity which has presented itself to us.

School Reopening- Part 2

[Second in a three part series on school reopening. This looks at the steps to be taken to minimize the risk of COVID outbreaks.]

Whether we like it or not, over the next few weeks, schools are going to reopen for all students. While some students might continue to have the option to take classes online or offline, the vast majority of them will return to physical schools despite the fact that none of them are vaccinated. The question now is, what next.

The education system will have to deal with two major challenges- putting in place adequate precautions to minimize the risk of COVID outbreaks, and developing appropriate curriculum and pedagogy to ensure optimal learning. Unless both these aspects are addressed, the entire school reopening exercise could end up being an experiment in futility.

Schools have re-opened in several other countries, so we do have a good idea of what works and what does not. It is imperative that we learn from the experience of these countries while framing the guidelines for school reopening. This would be a huge challenge in India given the fact that most schools in the country are overcrowded, and people have not yet internalized COVID appropriate behaviour. While all schools require of mandatory masking, double vaccination of teachers and staff, hand hygiene and periodic disinfection, this alone is not enough.

Each school would need to come up with specific processes, keeping in mind their own special challenges. In the broadest sense, this would fall into three main buckets- Awareness about COVID, adoption of COVID appropriate behaviour and setting up a safe physical environment.

By studying outbreaks across the world, it has been found that all other factors being the same, three situations contribute to the spread of COVID.

These ‘Three Cs’ which should be avoided are-

• Closed Spaces, with poor ventilation
• Crowded Places, with people nearby
• Close Contact settings where adequate distancing is not observed

It may not always be possible to eliminate all three in a school setting, but in order to minimize the danger of a COVID outbreak, each school should take steps to mitigate the risk from each of these should be mitigated to the extent possible. By conducting an audit at the school level, appropriate processes should be drawn up for individual schools and they should be clearly communicated to all staff and students.

All teachers and staff of the schools should be trained on how the virus spreads and steps to be taken to mitigate the spread. They should also receive training on the symptoms of the disease so they can take informed decisions on asking students to quarantine themselves, and should be aware of the myths around the disease so they do not get duped by wrong information. Post- workshop, teachers need to clear a test before they be allowed to take classes.

Prior to reopening schools, both parents and students should be also be made to undergo a session on adopting COVID appropriate behaviour, particularly on proper masking, physical distancing and hand hygiene. Students, particularly older students, should be made to understand how the virus spreads, so they can take adequate precautions. Parents should also be cautioned to not send their children to school if they are feeling unwell, and to inform the school of the same immediately so other students can be asked to quarantine if required.

Both the staff and students should internalize adopting COVID appropriate behaviour, and they should be total compliance. Everybody should be properly masked at all points of time, with the nose and mouth appropriately covered. Sharing objects should be discouraged, and if it is absolutely impossible to avoid it, hands should be sanitized both before and after touching the shared objects. If space permits, teachers can let individual students leave the classroom for short breaks if they start feeling claustrophobic with the masks.

Wherever possible, classes should be staggered so there are fewer students in the school building. This can be done either by operating in two batches, or by reserving a few days for self-study where students do not have to physically come to school.

Schools which can should designate separate entrances and exits and should try to regulate movement in corridors or on stairs in one direction only. This will reduce the possibility of people coming face to face with other people. If possible, some classes can be taken outdoors to increase safety.

The use of common facilities needs to be regulated to ensure reduced crowding. This can be done by staggering break times so the entire school does need to access them at the same time. Since students will not be able to keep their masks on while eating, lunch/ meal breaks should also be staggered to reduce close contact.

Exhaust fans need to be installed in classrooms which have poor ventilation, and schools were classrooms are airconditioned will need to invest in air-filteration systems.

Schools will also have to keep a supply to disposable masks to give out to staff or students in case of an emergency. They will also need to make arrangements for the proper disposal of masks and other bio waste, should it be required.

If all these precautions are taken, the risk of COVID outbreaks can be reduced to some extent.

Despite taking all precautions, there will be situations where staff or students get exposed to potential infection. In such cases, the school should work proactively to trace the people who may have come in contact, and ensure that they self-quarantine.

Most importantly, each school should make arrangements to providing learning support to students who’s family may not be comfortable sending them to school. This should be a no tech or low tech solution, so all students can access them.

Minimizing the risk of COVID outbreaks, however is just one part of the challenge. The greater challenge is to provide an education to students who have been out of school for so long they have probably forgotten most of the things they learnt.

School Reopening- Part 1

 [First in a three part series on school reopening. This examines why reopening may not be a good idea, and how we could have done better last year. ]

“Should schools reopen?”, is no longer a question up for debate. Schools have already reopened partially or fully in many states, and others are in the process of doing so too. Some states have given schools the flexibility to continue with a hybrid model, others have reopened only for high school students, but the reality is that unless there is a sudden spike in number of infections and/ or hospitalizations, by the end of the year every parent with children of school going age will soon have to decide whether or not to send their children to school.

One could question why we are in such a hurry to open up. Unlike this time last year, we now know that children below the age of 17 are also likely to get infected, and the symptoms can be severe enough to require hospitalization. It is no longer just a case of children being carriers of the virus and infecting grandparents and older relatives- we have seen how the capacity of pediatric ICUs have been stretched to the maximum and of how children have died of the virus. What then is the scientific basis for re-opening of schools, especially since none of our school children are vaccinated? There is none.

Unfortunately, it is not science that is driving the decision to reopen schools; the haste is entirely on account of sociological, developmental and economic factors. School closure and shifting to the online model has effectively blocked off access to education for millions of children of school going age. Studies have revealed that there has been a drop in learning levels among children on the wrong side of the digital divide. Most of these children have been pressed into child labour, and many have fallen victim to child marriage. There is a real danger of losing an entire generation of learners, which is why many are pushing the government for a reopening of schools. Medical doctors, who should be giving advice from a scientific/ medical perspective have, unfortunately, fallen for the rhetoric; they cite “our students cannot afford to lose another academic year” as the reason to reopen schools.

While there is certainly merit in the argument that students have already lost too much learning, and that further delays could potentially be irreversible, what most people are ignoring is the fact that reopening schools without putting proper procedures in place will only put millions of children (and unvaccinated members of their family) at risk.

Ideally, the issue of loss of learning should have been taken up and addressed last year. When India went into Lockdown, the service sector immediately moved to the online mode, and a few weeks later, private schools followed suit. While there were a few examples of the TV being used to reach out to students enrolled in government schools, for the most part, any teaching that was done was done online, using the Internet. Very few families had digital devices suitable for online classes, fewer still had reliable internet, and even those families which had both needed to prioritise which of their children would have access to the device.

Knowing that the vast majority of students would fall on the wrong side of the digital divide, an attempt should have been made to use other means of reaching out to students. Radio or TV have much better penetration than mobile phones, and either could have been used to reach out a much larger number of students.

More importantly, instead of merely reducing the curriculum, the Boards should have taken the decision to focus on reinforcing verbal and numerical skills. Given the fact that a majority of students do not have age/ grade specific verbal and numerical skills, this learning gap could have been bridged using a combination of self-study workbooks and on-on-one assistance from community level volunteers. Subject specific concepts could have been taught using either TV or radio. Students with age appropriate learning levels could have been taught concepts using a combination of self-study and TV or radio programs. Had this strategy been adopted, the pandemic would have proved a blessing by enabling India to address and bridge the challenge of the steadily increasing learning gap.

Unfortunately, all we did during the previous academic year was to shift what would have been taught in the physical classroom to a digital classroom. And today, we are left with a generation of students who have been promoted two grades, without attending a single class in over 18 months. The learning gap, which already existed, has now become wider, and it remains to be seen if and how teachers and students will be able to bridge it.

This, probably will be the greatest challenge to the education system.

The Batch of 2021

Saturday, March 14, 2020 was like any other day for my son. He went to school, took his exam, and returned home. Some of them planned to celebrate the end of the exams on Tuesday by going out for a milkshake, so the good byes were rather hurried. Little did any of them suspect how long it would be before they met again.

That weekend, the Telangana Government declared that all schools would be shut for two weeks. The exam was hastily postponed to March 31, and my kid grumbled at having to revise Science for two weeks instead of two days. Then lockdown was announced, and extended. Somewhere, the school authorities decided to promote the entire class.

Grade 10 started with online classes. A few weeks dragged into a few months, and then into the entire year. There was a project they were working on, which lay in school abandoned. Even if we wanted to rescue it, we couldn’t have.

My son never really spoke about his classmates, but you could see he was missing school. “I wonder if someone is feeding the rabbits?”, he asked once. We concluded that it would be the goat that most missed the students and the staple diet of cold rotis and subji that they fed it.

Mid term exams came and went. The second semester began. There was talk of Practical Classes being conducted in school, but to the delight of the teachers, the parents vetoed it. Instead they were given substitute experiments they could perform at home.

We had to go to school to fill up the forms for the Board Exams. There was awkwardness when they met their classmates. It was as if the masks established barriers of formalness, and they could only be themselves while interacting online.

The curriculum got over. The online classes were for revision purposes only. This was the time when they should have been having farewells, both formal and informal. When they should have bunking classes and playing their last basketball games in the grounds that had been home for six years. When they should have been watching the last cycle of tadpoles metamorphosis into frogs in the lily pond. When they should have been reading the last books two books left unread in the school library. When they should have been reliving old memories and creating new ones what would last a lifetime. They were isolated at home, instead.

My son’s batch has been luckier than most. None among them tested positive for Covid. The parents that did were largely asymptomatic. There were no major upheavals in any of their lives. Very few of them lost family members from the extended family. But a year back, would we have considered that ‘lucky’?

The batch was supposed to have their Board Exams this year- that rite of passage that marked our graduation from kids to young adults. Despite an academic year like none other, the Board Exams were going to be as conventional as they had always been, with the addition of face masks and sanitizers.

Then the Exams were cancelled. People said they were ‘lucky’ because they passed the exams without having to take them. But is that really luck? Despite all the uncertainty, they worked hard throughout the year. They self-motivated themselves and attended the classes even though they knew the teacher would not find out if they didn’t. They adapted to a teaching methodology as unfamiliar to the teachers as it was to them. They figured out ways to seek help from each other, despite being miles apart. They were denied a ‘normal’ year, yet they did what they had to. They were also denied a logical culmination to the year- despite having prepared for them, they would have no Exams.

They should have been chilling after taking the Board Exams, trying not to think about the results. Instead they are at home, cut off from each other, unofficially locked down. They can’t bring themselves to put their books away, and to look at their ugly school uniforms one last time. They are worrying about COVID. They are trying to help connect people to resources. They are trying to distract themselves with the IPL. They try to escape reality, and they try to pretend this is what is normal.

As a batch, they have coped with more uncertainty than any other. They have developed a resilience which even many adults do not have. They have grown as people. If the Board Exams are a rite of passage, the Batch of 2021 didn’t have it, but they have learnt so much more.

They had a farewell party on Friday. They should have worn their sarees and suits. Taken lots of photographs. Eaten and drunk and danced too much. The party was on Zoom. My son didn’t attend.

~ Tai ~

 

I was 14 when my husband died

A man I barely knew.

A man who’s life mine was linked to.

I was forced to 

    climb

      on

        his

  funeral pyre.

She rescued me. 

Allowed me to have my child.

She taught me to read

Made me a teacher.

Stood me on my feet.

Helped me marry the man I loved.

I owed everything to her

I would have given my life for her.

But the guilt remained.

One day, it burst forth- 

“Tai, I silently watched

    while my sisters 

       threw stones at you”,

           I confessed.

“I know”, she said.

And smiled.

[Savitribai Phule was born on Jan 3, 1897.

An illiterate girl from a lower caste, married off when still a child, she went on to become one of modern India's first female teachers, and founded a school for girls which rivalled those run by the government by young boys.

A staunch feminist and an anti-caste advocate, she dedicated her life to the upliftment of women and to the abolition of the caste system. Her protests earned her the active animosity of Brahmins, who saw her as a threat to the privileges they took for granted. Yet, most of the battles she fought were against unjust practices that affected Brahmin women the most. She could have chosen to look away, and only work to benefit the women of her caste. But she didn’t, because she realized that women couldn’t be free, unless all women were free.

Long before the term ‘intersectional feminism’ was coined, Savitribai Phule was one.]