Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

The Reinforcement of Gender Stereotypes 211
food has to be cooked and the water drawn from the tuikhur (water point).
During the course of the day, a Mizo woman collects firewood and weaves
cloth. Evening is once again time to draw water, feed the pigs and spin.
During the cultivating season, both men and women are extremely busy;
in jhum fields (swidden, that is, slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation),
the men cut the vegetation and may help in the harvest, but all other
farming tasks are carried out almost entirely by women, especially weeding
(see Krishna 1998). Men construct and repair houses, do basket work
and lay traps for birds and beasts. The tasks performed by women, such
as cooking, collecting firewood and water, washing clothes and playing an
active role in agriculture, are extremely strenuous and exacting in the difficult
terrain of the mountains.
Several scholars such as Verrier Elwin, C. Von-Furer Haimendorf and
more recently, Zehol (1998 on Nagaland), have almost ecstatically stated
that tribal women generally have a high and honourable position compared
to women in caste society. In recent times, it is being argued that
rather than talking about the low status of women in the context of tribal
societies, it is more appropriate to treat it as gender inequality (Xaxa 2004).
According to Xaxa, the division of labour in tribal society is based on
gender and age and not on hierarchy and occupation. Exactly when these
differences began to be graded is not precisely known. Nongbri (1994 on
Meghalaya), too, has argued that gender inequality is not alien to tribal
societies, but is obscured by their poverty, which compels men and women
to cooperate in joint economic activities. (This is not to undermine the
significance of tribal moral codes and ethics that govern behaviour.)
The position of women in Mizo society, though not as low as their
counterparts in the plains, is still inferior to that of men. However, what
is striking in the case of Mizoram is the visibility of women and the easy
companionship that exists between men and women. It is easy to see that
the values enshrined in the school curriculum are in consonance with the
gender stereotypes prevalent in society. These findings are similar to those
arrived at by researchers elsewhere, which indicate that school textbooks
embody the dominant ideologies of the social and the public domain,
and thereby reflect the relations of domination and control that are inherent
in society. 2 Indeed, gender equality is a myth, as has been amply
demonstrated by Sarkar and Karlekar (1991) and Nongbri (1994) in their
examination of the tribal customary laws in Mizoram and Meghalaya