This video is about a mother’s little chat with her son. It is a non-preachy but straight forward little video that shows how to tackle the endemic and deep rooted misogyny and the cultural lack of respect for women that we see in our society.
Share Your Story with Your Son (#ShareYourStory) is about a boy harassing females in a seemingly innocuous way. Most Indian mothers will dismiss this as a boyish prank instead of identifying it as misbehavior, an act of harassment or a gendered transgression; usually actions such as these will be dismissed with breezy boys will be boys type of excuse.
This mother not only refuses to overlook the harassment her son is guilty of; she corrects him in a gentle, unobvious and effective way. Rather than rebuke or scold him, she tells him a little story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BautGoiUIKA
It would be a great idea for more Indian women; particularly the mothers of sons to have similar conversations with their sons. The primary social conditioning of males is at home. How his father treats his mother; how his sister is treated vis-à-vis himself or his other male siblings; how the apportioning of limited family resources is done among family members – all this informs his perception of gender relations and guides his responses to women. If no kind of disrespect for females is tolerated at home, he is that much less likely to be disrespectful of other women outside the home.
So go ahead, # ShareYourStory with your son; let him comprehend what it feels like to be on the receiving end of harassment; even if that harassment is vicarious. As the video suggests, mothers need to break their silence on matters of sexual harassment and to open up inter generational dialogue to effectively counter this malaise of abject gender inequality in our country.
Author: Reena Daruwalla
