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.