Psychological Perspective On Gender Issue

By Dr. Niranjan Prasad Upadhyay

What is Gender? : Gender refers to the relationships between men and women, their roles and responsibilities. Men and women have diverse knowledge, perceptions, skills and practices that are valuable for the management of natural resources for food security and rural livelihoods. It is important that development practitioners, researchers and decision-makers are not only aware of the diversity of human capital but also seek to build on people's own knowledge and abilities to support sustainable development strategies.

The Gender and Governance Program seeks women's full and equal access to all areas and all levels of public life, working toward gender balance in terms of participation and representation, especially in governmental decision-making positions. The Gender and Governance Program focuses on three strategies: raising awareness about the under-representation of women in decision-making positions and the policy difference that women make when represented in critical numbers; spreading a global campaign called 50/50 by 2005: Get the Balance Right; and developing information resources and advocacy tools on strategies to achieve equal representation in decision-making bodies.

Basic gender identity—the concept “I am a boy” or “I am a girl”—is generally established by the time the child reaches the age of three and is extremely difficult to modify thereafter. In cases where biological sex was ambiguous at birth and errors in sexing were made, it has been almost impossible to reestablish the proper identity later in childhood or adolescence. Furthermore, a secondary gender identity can be developed over the core identity, as sex-associated behaviors may be adopted later in life; heterosexual or homosexual orientations also develop later.

Psychological outlook on gender matter:

Psychologists recognize gender as a scheme for the social categorization of individuals. It is a lens through which thought and behavior are framed. Gender as a social category is closely associated with other forms of social distinctions. In particular, gender is closely tied to concepts of power and status Women who work outside the home still bear major responsibility for child care and house work despite their employment. Psychologically, multiple roles are good for women’s mental and physical health. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Employed married mothers often appear to be healthier than homemakers who have fewer roles. For middle class women, at least, the additional income they earn can buy them freedom from childcare and housework. 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 positions and development:

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. On the other hand, Nepal ’s agriculture, particularly in hills, depends largely on women. Improving gender responsiveness is part of an overall process of institutional reform that will be achieved by systematically mainstreaming gender into the internal organizational structure, personnel policies, and working conditions of the civil service.

UNICEF, Nepal found that men are the principal decision-makers on the issues related to child bearing but share few of the 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 discrimination in Nepal :

Systematic gender discrimination pervades women’s existence in Nepal , crosscutting boundaries of class, caste and ethnicity and resulting in the concentrated impact of poverty on women in every social and economic sector of Nepal . Women face high degree of social violence and are often denied many fundamental human rights. Nepal ’s Gender Empowerment Measure is only half the global average and, after Pakistan , the second lowest in South Asia . However, since this index neither seeks to nor captures the main trends characterizing women’s work in Nepal , the disproportionate impact of poverty on women in the country is largely the outcome of restricted access to resources relative to men. According to social norms in Nepal , women are often the last to eat; their positions often defined by what is left over. It is no surprise; therefore, that 75 percent of all pregnant women suffer from anemia or that more than 50 percent of women between ages of 15-49 are anemic. Another revealing indicator of women’s access to adequate nutrition, obstetric care, and levels of antenatal and postnatal care is the maternal mortality ratio, which in Nepal, stands at 475 per 100,000 live births — making it one of the highest in the world.

Women’s limited access to decision making is also evident in the government bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a professional corps of officials organized in a pyramidal hierarchy and functioning under impersonal, uniform rules and procedures . A leader is he or she who can continuously garner confidence of his followers or the general public, take quick and bold decisions on the strength of his or her own understanding and objectivity, relate himself or herself to the changing environment and context and, if possible, becomes visionary for the welfare of his people, country and the world at large.

In 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.

(The author is the Chief Psychologist , Joint Secretary , Public Service Commission)