Friday, May 11, 2012

Gender Perspective on Education and Peace


Gender Perspective on Education and Peace
Director, PGSR, SNDT Women's University, Mumbai

Peace of course can have two faces, two forms- Public and private. Peace in the community, go hand-in-hand with the peace in the family life. Hence the need to deal with domestic violence and women’s grievances. There may be an apparent stability and absence of conflict in situations of successful intense repression-beating, abuses, psychological torture wherein all dissent is brutally, immediately, and surgically suppressed. This is a condition in which only one group (men, in-laws, bully neighbours) dominates, in which women’s views and dignity is not allowed to exist.  The other situation is one in which democracy and human rights reach their pinnacle in each and every core of the community and domestic lives. It is the condition in which there are always avenues of settlement of differences and disputes without a breakdown of the framework of mutual respect, recognition of the rights of the other, and belief in good faith of the ‘adversary’. It is the condition in which negotiations and persuasion are the methods of overcoming even major digressions in points of view. It is a condition in which people have the right to be different and where difference is not denied. It is also the state of affairs in which difference is not a cause of hierarchy, where the other is not the enemy or the lower or the higher being.

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