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.
