By Ida Indawati Khouw

By Ida Indawati Khouw

Teacher puts gender equality into practice

JAKARTA (JP): Lucky are the children who have a teacher like
Henny Supolo Sitepu. They have the rare opportunity at school to
learn about gender equality in their early years.

Henny is a teacher at al-Izhar Islamic School in South
Jakarta, which proudly claims to have been promoting gender
equality since it was founded in 1987. While awareness of gender
issues has been largely confined to public discourse, the school
has gone as far as attempting to instill it in its students.

Henny knows all too well that textbooks are packed with gender
bias, but she simply looks at it as a case of books giving the
wrong message about gender.

Creativity is the key to success in instilling gender equality
in school children, according to the graduate of the University
of Indonesia's School of Letters who also has a master's in
curriculum and teaching from the Michigan State University, USA.

Born in Kediri, East Java, Henny is the second of four
daughters. When growing up, Henny was never made to do
household chores like cooking.

Her source of inspiration was her late grandmother,
Supadminah, one of the founders of Aisyah, Nahdlatul Ulama's
women's organization, and also a participant in the historic
Indonesian Women Congress in Yogyakarta on Dec. 22, 1928.

Her grandmother would discuss a wide range of topics with her
such as politics, religion and social issues, Henny recalled.

Together with her husband Mulia Sitepu, a medical doctor who
is also a lecturer at Atma Jaya University in Central Jakarta,
Henny treats her son, Narantara, 18, and her daughter Anindita,
16, equal.

Before being employed by al-Izhar, Henny worked with various
organizations, among them the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute and an
educational magazine published by the University of Southern
Queensland.

Henny is also a columnist on children's education and women's
issues as well as a writer of short stories.

Following is an excerpt of an interview with Henny at her
residence in the Pondok Indah residential area in South Jakarta.

Question: What is your comment on gender bias in school textbooks?

Answer: I cannot generalize about all textbooks. Gender bias is
usually obvious in book illustrations, not in the content. For
example, my 1994 research showed that from 30 illustrations in a
textbook on natural science for elementary school, 20 of them
showed the males doing some kind of project while the females
passively watched the activities or even prepared drinks. This
is, of course, very biased.

While another book described a situation in a courtroom --
that all of the people there were male, while in fact there are
students whose mothers are judges, lawyers, prosecutors,
policewomen and so on.

Q: So how bad are textbooks then?

A: The teacher is in fact the key. A teacher can play a major
role. For example, a teacher should not always pick male students
to do tasks like praying, or solving math or science problems,
and assign the female to do routine jobs like reading out
stories. How many teachers would allow male students to take
cooking lessons in vocational programs?

Teachers' gender bias often takes a toll on a student's
talent. It is difficult to correct this tendency because teachers
may not be aware of what they are doing and that's why it is
called "bias".

In education, gender awareness is very important because it
relates to the principle that all students, boys and girls, have
the same rights to develop based on their potential, not on the
teachers' or parents' ideas.

Q: Has any research been done on the impact of gender-biased
textbooks on children?

A: Not in Indonesia, but according to research in America, the
impact includes lower grades and lower achievement in math and
science. It is also apparent in the world of work: the higher the
position in an organization, the more it is male-dominated.

At al-Izhar we teachers support male and female students
equally to compete for leadership in the interschool students
organization (OSIS).

At present, our school soccer team has a female manager and
all of the players are male. It shows that females and males
often have the same interests but they do not have the same
chance due to gender bias.

Q: So the key is really the teacher?

A: Exactly. We can, actually, use biased illustrations in books
to convey the opposite message. In this case, a teacher needs to
be creative.

So when an illustration shows a girl doing housework and a boy
flying kite, a teacher can ask why the housework should be done
by the girl and not the boy.

I remember we assigned students to write a story about ideal
parents. It involved 27 elementary pupils-- 80 percent of them
had working mothers, some of whom couldn't cook. We asked them to
write what an ideal father and mother would be like. Most of them
said that an ideal mother was a good cook and an ideal father a
breadwinner.

They made a list of criteria to make an ideal mother and a
short list for an ideal father. They knew both the mother and
father were breadwinners in their families, but interestingly
they mentioned only the father as the one who financed their
schooling.

We then discussed the bias views with the pupils. Some female
students then commented that they didn't want to marry if it was
so tough to become an ideal mother.

We wondered how the pupils got the ideas. Surely not from the
family because most of them had working mothers who did not cook.

Apparently, they learned it from books, soap operas, films,
etc. Remember that visual media is very effective in a child's
learning process.

Q: What are the results of your gender-equality approach?

A: The female students saying that they don't want to become
mothers if becoming the ideal mother was so hard shows that they
are aware of gender issues.

But the most important thing is that the awareness came from
themselves and was not imposed by the teacher.

Q: Do you think it is time to revise textbooks?

A: Actually, I observe that there has been some improvement
regarding textbooks over the last two years. They are not as
gender-biased as they were before.

But it is not fair to put the blame solely on textbooks for
the biased attitude among children. Their way of thinking is
influenced more by TV, magazines, newspapers, etc. So I am not
too worried about textbooks.

Q: Do teachers need training on how to develop gender awareness?

A: Of course. Teachers have to believe in gender equality to
instill the values in pupils.

Q: How do you teach your own children gender equality?

A: My principle is the same (as that I apply to pupils). Give a
girl and boy the same chances and treatment. Give them the
freedom to pursue what they believe is good and take
responsibility for what they do.