Gender
A Vital Issue

By Dr.Niranjan Prasad Upadhyay

THE concept of gender has been theoretically grounded in sexuality and procreation. Today, it is a new paradigm but it is deeply rooted in the feminist movement of 1960’s. Gender specialist, Lorber (1994) argues that gender inequality is located exclusively in the structure of gendered social practices and institutions. Gender refers to the social classification of men and women into "masculine and "feminine". It is man-made concept. In Nepal, men are the heads of households, bread-winners, owners and managers of property, and active in outward activities. Women, on the other hand are expected and trained to bear and look after children, to nurture the sick and old, do all household work, and so on.

Scheme

Psychologists recognise gender as a scheme for the social categorisation of individuals. It is a lens through which thought and behaviour are framed. Gender as a social category is closely associated with other forms of social distinctions. In particular, gender is closely tied to the concept of power and status.

Globally, women hold only 14 per cent senior managerial positions (UNDP Report, 1995). In the context of Nepal, the Ninth Plan (1997-2002) highlights that women are still found suppressed, exploited, neglected and forced to live insecure life because of illiteracy, ill health, poverty, orthodox tradition and discriminatory legal system. Psychologists, Williams and Best (1990) claim that in both modern and traditional societies around the world, from Asia to Europe, people expect men to be, and perceive them as, more dominant and driven than women.

Women in Nepal lag far behind men in social development access to economic resources, and positions of power and the maternal mortality rate is the highest. However, Nepal’s agriculture, particularly in hills, depends largely on women.

UNICEF Nepal found that men are the principal decision-makers on the issues related to child rearing but share few child rearing responsibilities. Gender experts insist that male-ness and female-ness are not biological givens, but rather result of a long historical process.

Consequently; men and women develop a qualitatively different relationship to their own bodies. Under capitalist conditions all women are socially remarked as housewives, and motherhood has become part and parcel of this housewife-syndrome.

Gender specialist stresses that in working class homes in south Asia, girls do not play with pots and pans, they are made to start cleaning real pots and pans, and real homes, looking after real babies while they are still very young; whereas boys are sent to school or made to work outside home. This kind of differential treatment, the interests of girls and boys are channelised differently and they develop different capabilities, attitudes, aspirations, and dreams.

Both men and female children are exposed to traditional masculine feminine activities from their very childhood. Girls are asked to help their mothers with household chores, boys to accompany their fathers outside. In communities where the sexes are segregated, girls and boys live in two distinct spaces and are exposed to very different activities. It is through these processes that children imbibe the meaning of masculine and feminine, and internalises them unknowingly.

Gender researchers urge that very often education itself is patriarchal; it justifies and perpetuates inequalities between women and men. Particularly, such type of differences are observed in almost all academic disciplines and is one of the main battles being fought by the women’s studies practitioners.

In the Nepalese context, families, even mothers, often regard girls as a burden, despite the fact that from a very early age they help with household and agricultural work. Boys are sent to school, but girls are kept at home to tend to the younger children. Family must pay a dowry to the husband’s family at the time of her marriage.

Gender researchers, Acharya, Meena and Lynn, Bennett (1981) studied on the status of women in men. Nepal. They highlighted that who women live in the more orthodox Hindu communities and are largely confined to domestic and subsistence production display a much less significant role in major household economy decision than those in the Tibeto-Burman communities where women participate actively in the market economy. Also gender specialist, Strishakti (1995) observes that men predominantly interact with the outside world, while women’s major sphere of operation is within the households. It is said that Nepali girls and women work more than the boys and men do, spending 25 per cent to 50 per cent more time on household’s tasks, economic and agricultural activities.

Health Sector Support Programme, Reproductive Health Project, Nepalganj, Friday that women work hard in the home and fields from early morning to late at night. In contrast, men have less work. Even when they are pregnant they have to do the same amount of work. Approximately, 80 per cent of pregnant women are found to be iron deficient.

Nepalese sociologists pinpoint that at the community level, males play more significant role than females. Males are considered as the chiefs of the family. If children and women make some mistakes, males should be responsible for their mistakes. Mostly, men carry loan-taking and giving businesses. Similarly, the local shopkeepers do not give goods on credit to the females without consensus of the male partners.

The Ministry of Women, Children and Social welfare was set up in 1995 with the goal of ensuring women’s participation in mainstream development through gender equality and empowerment, so that women have their legitimate place in family, society and the nation at large.

Outstanding

In conclusion, issue of gender is very outstanding subject to every developing country like Nepal. Psychologically, gender difference surfaces in childhood. In reality, adult relationships extend this gender difference. The two sexes are the two sides of a coin. As supporting this doctrine, the government of Nepal approves an affirmative action policy in the context of women’s representation in the civil service, including measures to increase the percentage of women in decision–making positions.

Pushkin: Russian National Poet

By Tejeswar Babu Gongah

OSTENSIBLEY read and profoundly recognised by the litterateurs Alekshandr Sergeevich Pushkin is the natioal poet of the people of Russian Federation of the day. Born in 1799 Pushkin was an outstanding literary personality of his time. Nonetheless, Pushkin’s creative contributions to the work of litterateurs has made him an immortal being despite the fact that he had survived for thirty eight years of mortal life. He died in 1837.

Seminal Nature

"For all the controversy that has surrounded his texts, Pushkin has no plausible rival for the romantic title of "national poet", and it was already extended to him by admirers during his life time, such as Nokolai Googol heaving aside for the moment the luminosity of his achievements in a dazzling array of genres or the ability of his texts to capture and define the critical conflicts in Russian Culture (Russia/ the west, folk/gentry, religious/secular, state/individual, Pushkins title rests premarity on the seminal nature of his writing."

Todd, William M. of the Stanford University, USA gives expression to his mind with regard to Alekhsandr Sergeevich Pushkin through his contribution in the hand book of Russian literature edited by Victor Terras, 1985, Yale University USA.

Pushkin’s contribution to literature ranges from verse to drama and to prose. His lyrical compositions have caused to put impressive remarks on the connoisseur’s heart. He has been accredited for having created the modern Russian literary language. It was Pushkin who exhibited all of the Russian lingual spaciousness in his lifetime. It has been well recognised that Pushkin admitted words from several sources into his creative write-ups along with syntactic patterns and lexical principles for use.

Pushkins novel in verse Eugene Onegin (1833) had precursered in setting climates, characters, and relationship to the Russian Novel. In so doing he drew on the vast precedents of European and Russian social and literary codes and conventions capable of giving hints to subsequent novelists like Lemontov, Turgenev, and Tolstoy. Pushkin’s endeavor toward the direction was concentrated on how to capture relevant actuality and also to encode them into the novel.

Years between 1812-1817 were the outstanding period in the emergence of Pushkin’s individual poetic genres encompassing variety of moods, images, styles and authorial Personae writes Tood, William M. His joining with Arzamanians was a turning point in developing a sense of poetry as play and competition with contemporaties and also the poets from other cultures.

The Pushkinian approach, which he had demonstrated through his creative writings, was geared toward establishing a thoroughfare line of inter connection between life and literature. Literature as a means to communicate and propagate ideas in course of generating an ideal model for behaviour and polite socio-cultural norm does play an integral part in the society through the cult of the creator’s personality that gets reflected in the creative writings. Pushkin offered himself in making relevant inquiries on the relationship between life and literature. The aesthetic sense and the ethical values that were searched by the Pushkinian approach in literature during early 19th century got involved around his life and creative literary work. Pushkin tried to demonstrate a demarkation between the social status of a gentleman and the cultural position of an author. He tended himself to devote upon the theme through most of his penetrating letters, verse, notebooks and critical essays. Sandwiched between the status of an ancient noble family of pre-pertrine origins on her material linage and from a captive Abyssinian general through the patronage of peter the great’s daughter Pushkin had a precarious life situation then. Bitter experiences that were accumulated during his life cycle caused him to put impetus to create such demarcating write – ups.

Because of the syntactical excellence and powerful display of words his verses were equally appeasing to be the autocrats of the days then and also to a wide range of readers of then Russia. However, Pushkin had to undergo a process of exile form the capital cities for about six years (1820-26) for his rebellious verse. Due mainly to exile he was destitute of getting involved in the Decembrist movement and uprising. Virtually Pushkin was in a state of realising the fact that the state would count more of obedience and orthodoxy than the enlightened talent or talented enlightenment. Irrespective of any consideration, Pushkinian texts had hold grips upon having discourses with regard to cultural as well as aesthetic concerns. It was however,not to such astonishment either in having controversies over social, political and literary front as well as it goes without saying that there is always room for pros and cons.

It has been observed that Pushkin having had contributed series of dramatic verse or verses in drama forms had zoomed his mind toward obsessions history, and prose dealt with the psychological and social perspectives.

Artistic Touch

For Pushkins, Verse is something deliberated with an artistic touch between rhyme and metre, while the prose a way of thinking, a mode of human existence groomed in intellectual and the analytical stream of thoughts. And Pushkin put with these words; "Prose demands thought" with regard to the prosaic. Novelisation of verse, which was then put into operation by Pushkin back in 1810s-1820s, were adopted by late Philosopher – poet and dramatist Balakrishna Sama in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Late Sama dedicated himself to the cause of the dramatisation of verse in the arena of the annals of the history of the Nepalese literature at best, Pushkin’s "Southern Poems" were the token of narrative poems entitled" A prisoner of the Caucasus," The fountain of Bakhchisarai," and "The Gypsies" "the Bronze Horseman" by him is the widely recognised output embodied with most enduring and culturally significant qualities.

Unfortunately enough, Pushkin who stood with the rebellious emotional drive had his tragic end in a culturally driven duel prevailing during the days.