Strength TogetHER 3 - Session 6

September 12, 2020.

Strength TogetHER facilitated by Lokopakar has been providing a platform for girls where they can share their thoughts, feelings and build peer support. Its a virtual program where girls don’t feel any kind of obligation and speak without fear.

It was a memorable journey of 5 weeks and I feel sad that is the last blog for Cohort 3. The feeling of our first lesson and last session was so different. From sharing our thoughts about gender equality to expressing our dream job, I feel very comfortable to speak with these girla by now. Each of them inspired in one way or another. We had our amazing Ms. Rozina Dahal with us for the last session. 

Our last session’s topic was “Beyond pink and blue”. The topic itself speaks a lot. It was more about gender-stereotyping and we know we have spoken about this topic before but this one turned out different from previous ones. We girls and boys are living in a typical society where we have to pursue our dreams according to our gender. We have to focus on careers like the air hostess, nurse, daycare worker for girls while on the other hand boys have to do more masculine jobs to show how strong and macho they are. This happens a lot in our society but we are still forbidden to speak about it. We have been so ghosted that we don’t even give a second thought about gender stereotyping. We have been delusional about it because we are taught to think the same as our past generations have been doing. Living in 21 st century and so much has happened from our ancestors to now but yet we haven’t changed our thoughts about these ones. The society normalizes about stereotyping and that’s why we don’t think more about these kinds of stuff and we understand, so in a zoom call Saturday 4 pm we girls spoke about our experience and our thoughts on gender stereotyping ;

• Our first speaker explained how she had to come across a situation with her own brother where she felt uncomfortable with him because he was against washing his own dish because his brother thought those were female's roles.

• Another speaker shared with us how one of her male friends couldn’t choose hotel management because his family doesn’t think males doing the cooking is a real job. 

 

• Our next speaker spoke about how females are always blamed for everything while men play the victim role even if isn’t female’s fault. 

 

• Our last speaker spoke about how "gender revealing event" causes gender stereotyping even before the child is born because pink is for baby girls and blue is for baby boys.

 

We, humans, are the only creature in this world who can talk, laugh, reason and many more. So, why are we fighting against roles and responsibility? Why are we not bringing harmony between these two genders? As we can see the top chef in the world is dominated by males. Our society just has to normalize men in the kitchen. If we female are doing household jobs then men can do it too. If men are working outside the house females can do it too.  Society doesn’t change in our next generation if we do not bring change in this generation. Our parent's mindset will not change if we don’t change them. We need to bring equality in this generation so the upcoming generation isn’t even aware of the word inequality. 

The session ended with a great note. Everyone who participated shared their best ideas and experiences with us. I have interacted with these girls and shared vary of points of view. It was both inspiring and sisterhood that I shared with them. It was the end of our cohort but not the end of our bonds.

Thank you Lokopakar and the entire team for such a great platform where young minds like mine could express their bottled up emotions and form a bond for lifetime.

Written by - Christy Gurung ( Cohort Coordinator)

Edited by - Aastha Shrestha ( LOKOPAKAR)