The New Nation - Internet Edition

Introducing reproductive health education in schools

Laboni Guha Roy

I was in class seven and taking part in the annual sports competition of our school. All on a sudden, I found my personal attire choked with blood. As I had no idea about menstruation, I got nervous and was crying under a tree,"recalls NGO worker Tamanna Tabassum.

She goes on: "Then I got back home, but could not tell my mom what happened. I have no elder sister either. It was really a bad experience for me."

Syeda Akhter Millie (not her real name) works for a newspaper in Khulna. She says she experienced the first menstruation at the age of 16, a bit later than the usual time. Millie did not have adequate knowledge about it, and the elders of the house were not well aware about hygiene matters. Therefore, she had to use unhygienic old clothes.

Millie says, "We had a maidservant, who was a little bit older than me. And she was the first to teach me about periods. To be honest, she actually did more harm than good, causing a long illness to me."

There is nothing new in Millie and Tamannas cases. Many adolescent girls are suffering for lack of sex education. Adolescent boys are no exception. They also suffer from similar problems due to lack of education.

Taposi Saha (this name has also been changed to protect privacy) is a government primary school teacher. She says there is hardly any woman who was not subject to abuse or harassment either in a crowd or a fair or somewhere else. Lack of moral values and proper education among a section of men are blamed for the situation. Teaching about sex in educational institutions is essential in addition to discussion about it at the family level.

Mahbuba Sultana Moni, a BBA student at a private university, says: "Actually, our whole curriculum appears to be incomplete. Counseling on sex education is necessary both in families and educational institutions. For example, when advertisements about AIDS, condoms, contraceptives and sanitary napkins are shown on TV we tend to change the channel. We simply forget those advertisements and hardly talk about physical relationship."

She further says many of her friends at class ten got attracted to adult films and porno magazines just out of curiosity. If a little bit about physical relationship is taught in schools, the distorted inquisitiveness might recede. It will be easier to accept sex issue if awareness is increased.

"Including sex education in school curricula is not enough. It has to be taught,says NGO worker Dina Afroz. "In class eight, there was a chapter on menstruation. Our teachers used to tell us to study that at home. Jharnamoni of Daily Bhorer Kagoj, writer Sebika Debnath and MA student Nurnaher Shanta are also of the same opinion. Nadira Begum, assistant head teacher of Agrani School and College, also acknowledges that. She says, Our teachers dont feel comfortable to teach sex education as such an environment has not created yet for such teaching. And we cant be easy with the students. Emphasising the need for teaching sex education in rural schools, she says it is necessary to include sex education in textbooks more elaborately. Arranging training for teachers on this is also important.

Keya Bala, a teacher of Geography at Government Kabi Nazrul Islam College, says, Both girls and boys of the 12-13 age group could be taught sex education. The families must come forward in this regard. The issue of sex education should be made compulsory for all SSC and HSC students.

Prof Atiqur Rahman of Dhaka University says many untoward incidents take place in the country's educational institutions for lack of sex education. In our society, there is a tendency to keep things secret, which creates a lot of problems.

Stressing the importance of sex education from class six to HSC, he says, "While including the subject in textbooks, we'll have to keep in mind the issues like our culture and religions. The subject of sex education should be women-friendly. It must provide both girls and boys a clear idea about modern reproductive health."

According to experts, most families in the country are not yet ready to talk about sex with girls and boys.

And that has been a problem for the youngsters. There should be a concerted effort to make elders understand that frank discussions about it will in fact do their kids a big favour. They will be able to take the right decision.

They say the inclusion of sex education in school curricula is a must. Students in our country are obedient to their teachers. Therefore, if the teachers teach them properly, the students will be knowledgeable about it which will ultimately help them lead a good life both physically and mentally. They also emphasise involving specialists in reformulating the school curricula to have a better result.

Policewomen can demotivate young offenders effectively

Samsuda Akter

There is a controversy today over whether women's policing style are similar or different from men's style and whether this might be harmful or beneficial to policing. According to the legislation, women and men were equal but this equality was limited to political slogans and very little was done in practice to evaluate and improve gender equality. Absolute equality between women and men was officially declared but the meaning ascribed to the term was somewhat asymmetrical and did not reflect the real situation. The equality practiced during this period hide the real discrimination against women and their low status in society and in the workplace.

Many of the areas of police activity, women are especially adaptable and can even perform better than men. female officers is key to the success of community policing goals, key to reducing police brutality and essential to better handling of the crimes of domestic violence and rape.

They are gaining more and more experience concerning working with police groups dealing with domestic violence and juvenile affairs. Policewomen are generally more acceptable to women and children who have been the victims of the fault of men. Girls and young children have more confidence in women.

At the same time, the field of crime prevention is becoming more important to police agencies and here policewomen play their greatest role. Policewomen are very adept at evaluating parents and poor home situations which do not always meet the eye. They are also gifted in gaining the confidence of small children and in determining whether behavior is normal or antisocial.

The employment of policewomen offers the best method of finding out the real problem; find out what the runaway girl experienced while away from home, and then determining the best course of action to pursue.

Most outstanding is women's ability to verbally de-escalate volatile situations. Relative to male officers, women have dramatically lower rates of use of excessive force, of officer involved shootings, and a lower rate of citizen complaints. Women officers rely on style of policing that uses less physical force, are better at defusing and de-escalating potentially violent confrontations with citizens, and are less likely to become involved in problems with use of excessive force.

Additionally, women officers often possess better communication skills than their male counterparts and are better able to facilitate the cooperation and trust required to implement a community policing model. Female police officers often respond more effectively to incidents of violence against women and will ultimately improve response to domestic violence.

The service-oriented style of policing reveals women as less likely to misconduct themselves, or become suspicious toward citizens.

They are considered at least equal to male officers in most areas of police work. Female officers are equally capable as their male counterparts when it comes to job performance, and have demonstrated no consistent differences in the quality of their performance in street policing.

To effectuate the arrest, search, interrogation, controlling assembly & procession they are most successful specially in case where women-folk are involved as counterpart.

It's a tenacious and harmful myth that police work is dangerous. Policing is challenging a job -so it is for the brave son/daughters of the soil- and no room for cowardice in policing.

Fatality rates may not be much higher than such common occupations as electricians, construction workers, and truckers. Also contrary to common belief, half of all police on the job fatalities are caused by guns. The myth of danger keeps too many women from considering police work as an excellent, noble and visionary career.

Women weavers suffer job insecurity

Anurag Tiwari and Sandeep Pandey

The once-famous Benarasi saris of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, and their makers are under threat from globalisation. The looms that used to clap in homes in and around the holy city are falling silent because work is simply vanishing. First came the power looms. They snatched away the jobs of hundreds of thousands. To make matters worse, China-made saris and silks then began to flood the market. While the Central government's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) proscribes machines in work to be offered to the rural poor, there is no such law to protect the sari artisans.

Today, the Muslim-dominated Daniyalpur and Dubkiyan villages in Chirai Gaon Block of Varanasi district has been deeply affected by this trend. For generations, families here have woven the finest silk saris. Unfortunately, if five years ago a family of six members, including children, could produce a sari a week and earn Rs 500 (US$1=Rs 43.2), today they get only Rs 400 for the same amount of work. Ironically, while prices of all the essential commodities have risen, the wages of the artisans keep falling. They now get to weave no more than two or three saris per month, and that only because the designs are too intricate for the power looms to manage.

Two decades ago, Afsana, around 45 years, and other members of her community worked on a contract basis and were paid per sari by the middlemen. Her earnings enabled the family to buy their own home in Daniyalpur. But the good times soon ended. Today, the family can often only afford to eat a few mashed potatoes with the sub-standard rice they get from the Public Distribution System (PDS). They have no other source of livelihood. They have not even considered the idea of working under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (a government initiative to provide a guaranteed job for 100 days a year to one member of a family) because they think it below their dignity to do unskilled manual labour. "We would rather commit suicide than dig and carry earth as labourers," says Afsana. She smiles while she says this, bravely trying to hide her desperation.

On the other side of Varanasi, in the Araji Line Block, are Hindu families who had until some time ago also pursued the tradition of weaving Benarasi saris made of imitation silk. While the saris they made were cheaper and of a simpler design than those made by Afsana's family, their earnings were considerably higher. In fact, a family in the Araji Line Block could earn almost Rs 400 per day. Today, they too have been displaced from the market. With charges in the child labour law and with the city of Surat emerging as a textile centre, the weavers in Araji Line Block have lost their only source of earning a livelihood.

As their looms came to a standstill, this particular community did take refuge under the NREGA. But there are problems. These weavers admit that they are not physically strong enough to do hard manual work as they were used to working only on looms. As a result they are unable to meet the prescribed schedule of rates. Under the NREGA, a worker gets Rs 100 for digging 100 cubic feet of earth in a day. The weavers, however, are not able to earn more than Rs 40 per day. Bela Devi, Savitri Devi, Prabhawati, Nagina, Nirmala, Chamela, Amrawati, Munta Devi, Sushila, Phulgena, Tara Devi and Malti Devi of Sajoi village now wonder how they are expected to feed their families on such low wages.

What makes matters worse is that women have been totally overlooked in the allocation of work. Among the list of 10,000 workers registered in Araji Line Block who work under the job scheme, there are hardly 10 to 15 women. It has become the norm in UP not to include the names of women in the job cards given to families, although by law the job card should carry the names of all the adult family members in a family who desire to working under the scheme.

It is the same story in village after village. Social audits of the NREGA conducted in the four blocks of Hardoi and Unnao districts of central UP between 2006 and 2008 clearly revealed this reality. The women were just not aware that their names should rightfully figure on the job cards. The Village Development Officer or pradhan (village head) issued the job cards only in the name of the male head of the family. Even families headed by women were not issued job cards. The officials were of the firm view that women would not work because, traditionally, they did not do work that involved digging. Yet, when the women themselves were interviewed, they all indicated that they wanted work. In a couple of cases in Sitapur district, when women arrived at the work site demanding their right to work, the pradhans brought the work to a halt rather than include them. Unlike in the neighbouring states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where women have exceeded the quota of 33 per cent reserved for them at some work sites under the NREGA, there is a clear bias against women in UP. They are being systematically denied work. The implementing authorities fear that if women are not able to do enough work to meet the schedule of rates then they would have difficulties completing their measurement books. However, this is just an excuse. The muster rolls and measurement books are still being fudged to indicate that more work is being done than is actually the case in order to siphon off money.

P.K. Jha, Commissioner of Allahabad Zone until recently, has shown how through innovative approaches women can be included in NREGA schemes and their work targets met. But this requires political will and a commitment to empower poor women. But both will and commitment are sadly lacking in a region that was once the home of the resplendent Benarasi sari. (Courtesy: Women's Feature Service)