Your move, Girls!

Riding a micro bus on my way to Ratna Park, I looked through the window and saw the wide open ground of Tundikhel. My eyes saw many people playing cricket and football, but my mind noticed something different. There were tall boys, short boys, fat boys, thin boys, young boys, old boys and so on, but not even a single girl was to be seen. I moved my eyes here and there, from one corner of that plain ground to another, but I could see nobody except boys. The place looked like a “girl-free zone” to me.

It’s quite astonishing how the female population outnumbers the male population in our country, but in the context of people being in the public sphere, the male population has always been higher. Women have been given a 33 percent quota, still we find girls lagging behind in the public sphere. It may be because of our own perception too. For example, when we are riding a bus being driven by a woman, we think that she is very courageous and amazing. But when we see a woman driving a car, we take it as a normal thing. The thing is that we are preoccupied with the concept that public vehicles are only driven by men, and we’ve grown up seeing that too. So, we can’t take it normally that a woman can be the driver of a public vehicle too.

Recently, I won a vox pop challenge held by a newspaper. I was awarded a free dinner coupon at a renowned hotel at Durbar Marg (quite far from where I live) and also a free ticket to attend a musical event which would start after 6 pm. My family, which doesn’t believe in gender discrimination, still hesitated to let me go to the musical event. One of the reasons they gave was that the event would start late and could last till midnight, and that it would be risky for me. What I feel is that unless parents let their girls experience a new environment, they will neither be able to explore new things nor will they have a broadened mind.

To this, I say that because of being born as a girl, I couldn’t go to that musical event. Or let me say that I couldn’t be in that public sphere just because I was a girl. Why I disagree with society is that they’re conceptualising places and environments in favour of men. The open ground at Tundikhel is just an example to show how girls are still lagging behind in the public sphere. Unless the girls themselves break the walls and come out into the public sphere and explore things, they will be far behind. And only after they start breaking the walls will girls be seen throwing balls and swinging bats in the open ground of Tundikhel or the public sphere along with boys.