Breaking Gender Stereotypes In Education: Key To Empowering Girls And An Inclusive Future – News18

Last Updated:March 08, 2025, 11:40 IST

Encouraging girls without bias empowers them to take challenges, lead, and build a strong voice—gender-sensitive schooling is key.

A simple question from a bright young seven-year-old girl puts into perspective everything we need to know about gender-sensitive schooling. “Why is the nurse always depicted as a female and why is the doctor always a male?” This inquisitiveness stemmed from a seemingly innocuous illustration she had spotted.

Being exposed to a rather stereotypical portrayal of gendered roles and careers is sure to leave an imprint on a young mind, making her perhaps believe that she doesn’t have what it takes to become a doctor. For a child, who spends most of her time learning in school, challenging these norms and breaking away from gendered stereotypes through education, then becomes most imperative.

While we have taken great strides in making education equally accessible to all genders, to achieve inclusivity in its truest sense and accelerate real action towards equity, gender sensitivity needs to be at the core of school and classroom environments, teaching approaches and pedagogy.

Firstly, Integrating a gender-sensitive curriculum that effectively challenges stereotypes and encourages inclusivity must remain critical. Learning material must be reviewed to ensure that they are free from any information that propagates gender bias, even subtle nuances, such as in illustrations. Teachers can integrate case studies, stories, and group discussions into their lesson plans which can help to dismantle traditional stereotypes.

In a country such as India, social and cultural norms and practices sometimes seep into deeper layers of curricula, beyond the formal one, into what is frequently referred to as the ‘hidden’ curriculum. These include all the underlying lessons that may be translated via behaviors, and personal preferences of educators as well.

Secondly, this brings me to perhaps one of the most important aspects of achieving gender equity – the role of teachers. Teachers can be active change makers to achieve gender equity. This also means that effective education which is gender sensitive relies greatly on well-trained teachers.

Teachers need to be made aware of their own gender biases which might be reflected in their teaching. Something as simple as believing that boys are better at science and math than girls. They must be trained to identify practices that might favour one gender over the other and understand gender dynamics, which can help create a gender-responsive pedagogy.

There are enough case studies and literature to show that this pedagogical approach can benefit quality outcomes for not just girls but boys as well.

For teachers, access to resources online, workshops that analyze teaching styles and possible gender bias, and the constant evolution of teacher training initiatives such as NISHTA are key to realizing change on the ground. Interactive classroom sessions which focus on inculcating gender-progressive attitudes in students early on will mean that we have high-schoolers who are exhibiting gender-equitable behaviour, which shapes their lifelong personality and perception.

While teachers will play a critical role in creating an environment which encourages equality, it is also important to provide further mentorship to go beyond gendered expectations. This will encourage more girls to work towards STEM careers. Gender-specific programs for girls right from primary and middle school to encourage curiosity in science and technology must be mandatory. Programs with leading tech institutes, for example, the Indian Institute of Technology’s STEM mentorship program for school girls is a brilliant initiative that motivates and hones young girls interested in the sciences.

We need to expose our girl children to the right mentors and leaders who can motivate them outside of their curriculum. We have to make them meet female scientists, engineers and technology analysts who will inspire them to work towards a career of choice, even when it is in a field that is traditionally not seen as their gender’s domain.

In India, internalized gender bias, research has shown, impacts even parents to unfairly favour boys when investing in STEM education for a child. Systemic changes early in schooling which break traditional stereotypes can help transform parent and community behaviors that create these barriers for the girl child.

Overall, a policy framework that addresses gender equality and equity across all areas of school environment, learning approaches, and teacher training must be at the heart of national education reforms and strategies for the future of education.

When girls are encouraged without any bias or gendered expectations, they are brave enough to take up challenges, have a powerful voice, a stronger agency, and lead and gender-sensitive schooling is the very first step to achieve this goal.

(Written by Devyani Jaipuria. The Author is the Pro Vice Chairperson of Delhi Public School, Gurugram; Delhi Public School-Jaipur; Dharav High School-Jaipur; and DPS International-Gurugram. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.)