TIME TO ORANGE THE WORLD !

The colour Orange is associated with life, joy, warmth , happiness  ,sunshine etc. Historically orange has been used to portray these qualities as well as in spirituality and well being.  Last month, UNESCO launched a campaign named “Orange the World” on Nov 25^th, the International Day of Elimination of Violence against Women. The color orange symbolizes a brighter future, free of violence. It also serves as a means of demonstrating our solidarity in eliminating all forms of violence and it is therefore used as the color of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today and is a threat to millions of girls and women online and offline. It affects women regardless of their age, background, or level of education. This violence takes many forms, including physical, sexual, or psychological violence, as well as economic abuse and exploitation.

Patriarchal notions and rampant sexualisation in media has led to a society which is still undermining the real capabilities of women. Of course we do have strong and highly successful women role models in all walks of life. Yet, they too fall victims to these traditional mind sets and notions at times.

I along with two other female academicians, Dr. Nimitha and Dr. Nidhi recently did a research study to understand some of the psychological aspects of social media users, especially in the context of the #MeToo Campaign. Sexual harassment is still an unbridled issue that every part of the world faces and this movement led to an awareness as well as instilled a fear of exposure for the perpetrators.  Though #metoo campaign started in 2006, it was on 24 October 2017, the #MeToo hashtag began trending on Twitter. African American women’s rights activists Tarana Burke’s attempt was backed by response from actress Alyssa Milano which then captured public and media attention. The hashtag was used 12 million times in the first 24 hours alone!

Our research was to find out some of the perceptions of the social media users about reading the #MeToo stories in their social media feeds. Some aspects of the results were indeed surprising and others were as predicted. For eg: A significant number of men felt that many of the stories that women came up were false stories against men. Interestingly both men and women did not feel sorry or disgust when they read these stories. Both men and women agree that women are prone to sexual harassment both at home as well as at workplace and they also felt that it takes courage to come openly about the sexual harassment incident.

However, the most important finding of the research is that people with an egalitarian gender role orientation were the ones who engaged in such stories than those with a traditional gender role orientation. Gender role orientation is independent of whether they are male or female or transgender.

Since the results are yet to be published in an academic journal, I am not divulging more information at this stage. The reason why I quoted this study is this: Even in the case of social media reaction to an incident of sexual harassment, gender role orientation plays such a significant role. This simply implies the significance of gender sensitisation and the right gender role orientation to all genders at the right time to combat the occurrence of sexual harassment in the coming years.

Are our educational system giving such a gender neutral environment and gender education? Are our organisations and workplaces providing gender sensitive ecosystem? Are our workplaces training the members on Prevention of sexual harassment or do they implement policies for providing necessary support to men and women who face such incidents? Of course, we have the POSH Act. But do we conduct the necessary interventions out of real interest or do we just do it because of compliance issues?

Well, let’s think about these and paint the world in Orange in the coming decade! After all, women are fifty percent of the world population. Imagine if we can colour them orange by making their world safer and violence free, we sure can make this world a better place for everyone.

As 2020 is almost here, my wish for the world is also this: ORANGE THE WORLD!

Wishing all my readers, an advanced Happy New Year! 

#CeeVee

December 2019

 Did you read my poetry collection? If not
, You can buy it here 

The proceeds of this book completely goes to the NGO which I run, Prayaana Labs , based in India. Prayaana works towards empowerment of Women in providing skill development and entrepreneurship trainings.

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