Teachers’ dress code and gender-bias reality

Every now and then there is something in the public domain that diverts people from their woes temporarily. This time round it happens to be the female teachers’ dress code – its supposed cultural significance and educative role in schools. Saris are said to inculcate ‘discipline’ in students, and so any hint of deviation from it is summarily dismissed. However, there is no insistence that the male teachers should wear the corresponding cultural dress, which is the national dress (jathika anduma), for the purpose of disciplining students.

The implication is that the western dress, when it sits on male teachers, is quite ‘proper’ and exerts the same disciplining influence on the students as the sari is supposed to do. However, the very same western dress (trousers and blouse) is supposed to exert a corruptive influence on students if female teachers choose to wear it instead of the sari. It seems that culture has a way of hiding such obvious incongruities under an accumulated ‘authority’ and self-righteousness.

It is hard to imagine the basis for not allowing the female teachers to wear any other suitable dress except the sari. For one thing, wearing the sari is undoubtedly the most time-consuming and frustrating morning chore of a teacher if you happen to be a female. It seems that males are exempt from carrying the burden of exhibiting our culture. That’s gender equality for you!

For another, if all that hassle is for the sake of appearing ‘decent’ to set an example for the students, sari has nothing more decent about it than the trousers and anybody can wear it in a jiffy. If covering the whole body is the criteria for measuring propriety in dress as, far as our culture goes, surely the western dress that both men and women wear is far more decent than a dress six yards long, which you have to painstakingly wrap around you only to leave a fair portion of your trunk exposed. How about a male teacher coming to school with his shirt trimmed from the bottom to look like a jacket (hattaya) in terms of height, exposing his midriff? Indecent? Seriously? Pray, what is so indecent or anti-cultural about a man’s exposed waistline, the same stretch of skin, which is supposed to be part of our cultural uniqueness the moment the relevant area belongs to a woman?

Sadly, culture is often restrictive, if not repressive, rather than liberating. The very word “culture” is loaded with conformism. It is a structure built on the representations of almost everything that we think, say and do within a community with established norms, and often it provides accepted models for the individuals to conform to, for the tacit acceptance of society. This means that there is an inevitable clash between culture and new thinking, because humans tend to constantly push boundaries and move towards progress. Theodor Adorno, thinker and leading member of a group of critical theorists known as the Frankfurt School, has this to say about culture: “That which is specifically cultural is that which is removed from the naked necessity of life” (The Culture Industry). Necessity, which is said to be the mother of invention, can also be the mother of useful cultural changes.

Insisting that female teachers wear the sari, and no other dress, can do precious little to preserve our so called “culture”, which is mistakenly or perhaps expediently conceived as an unchanging entity. Culture is continuously in transition, and every generation has a section of it that is always skeptical about the rather stagnant and irrelevant parts of its culture, whose outer layer- the more visible and ceremonial part- controls our collective instincts and social conduct. On the other end of the spectrum, there are vested interests, who find the status quo gainful, who naturally hate any changes that are likely to demystify the sanctified cultural relics that keep the average person feeling sheltered and complacent.

However, it is a fact that values, customs and rituals that are relevant at one point in time, cannot be forcibly made to appear relevant at a different point in time in a different context. Progress, science and technology that go together create culture and not the other way around. Johan Huizinga, one of the founders of modern cultural history says: “If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.” No matter how much eulogized and admired a component of any culture is, it cannot earn the same encomiums when the ground realities change, forcing people to shift to new situations. People are not likely to live their lives for the sake of preserving culture. As Austrian pianist and composer, Eduard Steuermann, once articulated, “The more that is done for culture, the worse it fares”.

With all due respects to our legendary musician and singer, Sunil Santha, whose well-known melody “Mihikatha Nalawala” depicting the rural belle – the idolized school teacher of pristine beauty, draped in a sparkling sari with all due adornments, leisurely walking to the village school is far too removed as a model from today’s lady teacher, who is still weighed down by the sari – notwithstanding all the duty-related, circumstantial and economic changes that have taken place in a fast changing world.

Our education authorities often wax eloquent on enhancing the students’ creativity, innovation, rationality, inculcating positive values and attitudes etc. Sadly, the talk of imposing a dress code on teachers on the basis of gender, flies in the face of all that rhetoric and, what’s more, reveals a close-minded, gender-biased attitude. That such an absolute ruling comes from the authorities of education, of all people, is lamentable. It looks as if Adorno is still relevant when he says: “Whoever speaks of culture speaks of administration as well, whether this is his intention or not”. Today, many students are well informed and sensible in their thinking, thanks to their exposure to the outside world. They might want to know why female teachers are denied the freedom enjoyed by their male counterparts with regard to their dress.

SUSANTHA HEWA