hello can everyone hear me okay
so I grew up in a pretty laid-back
family there weren’t that many
restrictions for being going up there as
a girl I grew up at the time when haka
still had very much a part of culture so
I was out in the fields in our para mat
with all the boys every afternoon
running around and playing and you know
it started with the usual childhood
games kind of machito a tree but as we
grew older of course our games involved
and became more adult so we moved into
basketball cricket and football a buddy
I have to say I’m not a cricket fan I
used to find it really boring you know a
lot of standing around and waiting and
then you get to run a little and then
stand more I hope this does not you know
write me off as a legitimate but mother
she so you know I didn’t grow up really
thinking about differences between being
a boy and a girl
but even then I definitely realized that
how I was who I was I was definitely in
fact a girl
and if you ask me when it was the first
time that I realized that being a girl
was different from being a boy it’d be
difficult for me to pinpoint but I do
remember this one time maybe I was seven
or eight years old and me and my brother
who is a few years younger to me we went
and we were staying over at my great
grandmother’s house and the household
there during the meal insisted that my
brother could not have the chicken feet
which was in the curry chicken feet not
chicken leg by the way she insisted that
he cannot have it but if I wanted to I
could which was odd but fine I took it
on my plate and eventually sneaked it
over to my brother when she wasn’t
noticing now if they actually went and
told my mother about this story and I
asked her what this was about
and even for her it took her a little
while to think about this and remember
that there is some kind of a myth where
boys are not allowed to eat chicken feet
and chicken hearts because one is
considered a waist part and the other
will apparently make young boys grow up
to be cowardly men funny right of course
my mother laughed at this and laughed it
off and me when I was hearing this story
from her I laughed along with her and I
didn’t think much about it at least not
then but I guess in many ways they stuck
with me and I realized that even if my
parents didn’t really make differences
between us being a boy and a girl
people other people around us definitely
sauce differently and not only did this
see us differently they believed that we
deserved different things so I guess
this was my introduction to gender 101
just to ensure that we are all on the
same page I would like to ask with a
show of hands how many of you know the
difference between sex and gender
okay about 50% how many of you think
that sex and gender is the same thing
alright so they’re not just for the
basics sex is the biological difference
between males and females so pretty
simply if you’re born with a penis man
you’re born with a vagina female sorry
male and female there’s also the term
intersex which is if which is typically
people who are not necessarily born with
any one of these specifically defined
body parts gender on the other hand is a
social cultural attribute that is placed
upon males and females so it’s what we
expect males and females to look like or
behave for example let’s say boys we
have short hair and girls will have long
hair it’s not necessarily part of our
sex because face it we can both grow our
hair then we can both got our hairs
right but we also say things like boys
or men would be interested in cards and
women on the other hand will be
interested in baking this is a social
expectation of what we’re supposed to be
interested in or we are supposed to move
towards our roles that we expected to
play so I would think cooler ones for
for one of my work projects I get to
travel a lot around Bangladesh for the
work I do and go to really rural parts
of the country very green very beautiful
it’s one of the perks I have and we were
at lunch at this public officials house
and he happened to also be involved in
fish farming star team two women and two
men we’re standing around this table
which is laid out with a whole different
bunch of fish and prawn curries and our
gracious host
exclaims please please good serve
yourself you know how to do it the men
might have some trouble with it talk
about this I actually wonder sometimes
what I should be more offended by
whether it’s the fact that he thinks
serving food is only for women to do or
that men are partly so inept they don’t
know how to reach out pick up a spoon
and put food on their plates this is
what gender has told this man he had
learned that cooking and serving food is
woman’s work and men don’t do it so
there we are asked multi-talented women
we start serving our food and the house
health work walks in to start serving
the men going to be noted the house help
was actually a young man so this is what
gendering had also taught our gracious
hosts cooking and serving food is
woman’s jaw is a woman’s job men don’t
do it unless it’s a man who is providing
a service and preferably of a
socio-economic position which is
inferior to him and that’s what we’ve
learnt as well we’ve learned that
different things that different
attributes of males and females are
valued in different ways we have been
taught that as a woman we’ve been taught
that certain things such as certain
attributes that are considered to be
masculine like say being independent
being opinionated or analytical
these are attributes we we all want
these are all attributes of leadership
and both men and women we want to have
them on the other hand we’ve also taught
we are also thinking that certain
attributes which are considered to be
feminine being emotional being soft
these are looked at as weaknesses and
we’ve picked this up in life
for the longest time when I was a kid I
wished I was a boy and nobody had told
me this I wished it because I liked to
do things which when thought of as
things girls did I liked running around
and playing sports and I watched on TV
cricket games and football games where
the only people on the field we’re men
so it’s supposed to be things boys do I
learned it by seeing other girls in my
school who have been told not to go out
doors so in games classes they stayed in
the class which is not something I
wanted to do so it took me a long time
you know I wasn’t as cool as Nancy over
there so it took me a long time to
embrace my own femininity and I don’t
mean wearing earrings or putting on
lipstick I mean more the attributes that
I talked about earlier what are
considered feminine and what are
considered masculine and I learned to
embrace both those sides of myself but
as I did that I also kept on questioning
whether these beliefs that I bring
myself not just the boxes that society
expects us to fit into but what are the
believes what are the constrictions that
I put on myself I know the more I
thought about this the more I read about
this I kept on realizing that I judged
myself so many times because I felt I
was showing too much anger for a woman
I’ve just other woman too by the way
they behaved or chose to dress because I
felt they didn’t fit into what I thought
was womanly enough I’ve just judged men
around me because I thought they weren’t
being as much go-getters as I expected
them to be so what I’m saying is a lot
of the issues around gender is not just
society putting it on us most of it is
all the things that we’ve learned in our
lives and how we reproduce them in our
everyday lives
to ourselves and others around us and it
doesn’t make my life easier I get to be
in situations and positions and I have
to keep on questioning myself if we’re
I’m expecting out of that situation if
what I want to say is based on what I
think is supposed to be or it’s my own
unadulterated choice and the more I
question myself about this I realized
that we are nothing called unadulterated
choice everything that I’ve learned in
life and picked up by seeing things
around me hearing things there are me
reading things around me I the normal
way is for me to just reproduce them and
I fail at it continuously but you know
what they say if you don’t fail you
don’t learn and if you don’t learn you
can’t change so hopefully as we fail
every day we would start to unlearn
everything that we’ve learned before and
maybe one day we can stand around and
see each other for just our human
elements not the length of our hairs or
the clothes we wear or even the roles we
play thank you
[Applause]
so I grew up in a pretty laid-back
family there weren’t that many
restrictions for being going up there as
a girl I grew up at the time when haka
still had very much a part of culture so
I was out in the fields in our para mat
with all the boys every afternoon
running around and playing and you know
it started with the usual childhood
games kind of machito a tree but as we
grew older of course our games involved
and became more adult so we moved into
basketball cricket and football a buddy
I have to say I’m not a cricket fan I
used to find it really boring you know a
lot of standing around and waiting and
then you get to run a little and then
stand more I hope this does not you know
write me off as a legitimate but mother
she so you know I didn’t grow up really
thinking about differences between being
a boy and a girl
but even then I definitely realized that
how I was who I was I was definitely in
fact a girl
and if you ask me when it was the first
time that I realized that being a girl
was different from being a boy it’d be
difficult for me to pinpoint but I do
remember this one time maybe I was seven
or eight years old and me and my brother
who is a few years younger to me we went
and we were staying over at my great
grandmother’s house and the household
there during the meal insisted that my
brother could not have the chicken feet
which was in the curry chicken feet not
chicken leg by the way she insisted that
he cannot have it but if I wanted to I
could which was odd but fine I took it
on my plate and eventually sneaked it
over to my brother when she wasn’t
noticing now if they actually went and
told my mother about this story and I
asked her what this was about
and even for her it took her a little
while to think about this and remember
that there is some kind of a myth where
boys are not allowed to eat chicken feet
and chicken hearts because one is
considered a waist part and the other
will apparently make young boys grow up
to be cowardly men funny right of course
my mother laughed at this and laughed it
off and me when I was hearing this story
from her I laughed along with her and I
didn’t think much about it at least not
then but I guess in many ways they stuck
with me and I realized that even if my
parents didn’t really make differences
between us being a boy and a girl
people other people around us definitely
sauce differently and not only did this
see us differently they believed that we
deserved different things so I guess
this was my introduction to gender 101
just to ensure that we are all on the
same page I would like to ask with a
show of hands how many of you know the
difference between sex and gender
okay about 50% how many of you think
that sex and gender is the same thing
alright so they’re not just for the
basics sex is the biological difference
between males and females so pretty
simply if you’re born with a penis man
you’re born with a vagina female sorry
male and female there’s also the term
intersex which is if which is typically
people who are not necessarily born with
any one of these specifically defined
body parts gender on the other hand is a
social cultural attribute that is placed
upon males and females so it’s what we
expect males and females to look like or
behave for example let’s say boys we
have short hair and girls will have long
hair it’s not necessarily part of our
sex because face it we can both grow our
hair then we can both got our hairs
right but we also say things like boys
or men would be interested in cards and
women on the other hand will be
interested in baking this is a social
expectation of what we’re supposed to be
interested in or we are supposed to move
towards our roles that we expected to
play so I would think cooler ones for
for one of my work projects I get to
travel a lot around Bangladesh for the
work I do and go to really rural parts
of the country very green very beautiful
it’s one of the perks I have and we were
at lunch at this public officials house
and he happened to also be involved in
fish farming star team two women and two
men we’re standing around this table
which is laid out with a whole different
bunch of fish and prawn curries and our
gracious host
exclaims please please good serve
yourself you know how to do it the men
might have some trouble with it talk
about this I actually wonder sometimes
what I should be more offended by
whether it’s the fact that he thinks
serving food is only for women to do or
that men are partly so inept they don’t
know how to reach out pick up a spoon
and put food on their plates this is
what gender has told this man he had
learned that cooking and serving food is
woman’s work and men don’t do it so
there we are asked multi-talented women
we start serving our food and the house
health work walks in to start serving
the men going to be noted the house help
was actually a young man so this is what
gendering had also taught our gracious
hosts cooking and serving food is
woman’s jaw is a woman’s job men don’t
do it unless it’s a man who is providing
a service and preferably of a
socio-economic position which is
inferior to him and that’s what we’ve
learnt as well we’ve learned that
different things that different
attributes of males and females are
valued in different ways we have been
taught that as a woman we’ve been taught
that certain things such as certain
attributes that are considered to be
masculine like say being independent
being opinionated or analytical
these are attributes we we all want
these are all attributes of leadership
and both men and women we want to have
them on the other hand we’ve also taught
we are also thinking that certain
attributes which are considered to be
feminine being emotional being soft
these are looked at as weaknesses and
we’ve picked this up in life
for the longest time when I was a kid I
wished I was a boy and nobody had told
me this I wished it because I liked to
do things which when thought of as
things girls did I liked running around
and playing sports and I watched on TV
cricket games and football games where
the only people on the field we’re men
so it’s supposed to be things boys do I
learned it by seeing other girls in my
school who have been told not to go out
doors so in games classes they stayed in
the class which is not something I
wanted to do so it took me a long time
you know I wasn’t as cool as Nancy over
there so it took me a long time to
embrace my own femininity and I don’t
mean wearing earrings or putting on
lipstick I mean more the attributes that
I talked about earlier what are
considered feminine and what are
considered masculine and I learned to
embrace both those sides of myself but
as I did that I also kept on questioning
whether these beliefs that I bring
myself not just the boxes that society
expects us to fit into but what are the
believes what are the constrictions that
I put on myself I know the more I
thought about this the more I read about
this I kept on realizing that I judged
myself so many times because I felt I
was showing too much anger for a woman
I’ve just other woman too by the way
they behaved or chose to dress because I
felt they didn’t fit into what I thought
was womanly enough I’ve just judged men
around me because I thought they weren’t
being as much go-getters as I expected
them to be so what I’m saying is a lot
of the issues around gender is not just
society putting it on us most of it is
all the things that we’ve learned in our
lives and how we reproduce them in our
everyday lives
to ourselves and others around us and it
doesn’t make my life easier I get to be
in situations and positions and I have
to keep on questioning myself if we’re
I’m expecting out of that situation if
what I want to say is based on what I
think is supposed to be or it’s my own
unadulterated choice and the more I
question myself about this I realized
that we are nothing called unadulterated
choice everything that I’ve learned in
life and picked up by seeing things
around me hearing things there are me
reading things around me I the normal
way is for me to just reproduce them and
I fail at it continuously but you know
what they say if you don’t fail you
don’t learn and if you don’t learn you
can’t change so hopefully as we fail
every day we would start to unlearn
everything that we’ve learned before and
maybe one day we can stand around and
see each other for just our human
elements not the length of our hairs or
the clothes we wear or even the roles we
play thank you
[Applause]
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