'SCERT textbooks not gender sensitive'

ACCORDING to the 'gender audit' conducted by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), the majority of existing SCERT textbooks/manual cover pages are not gender sensitive, and the back cover and inner sides of the cover are either blank or with generic texts.

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Following the audit, the Gender Audit Committee has recommended changes to avoid content that depicts or reinforces notions of female characters in submissive or passive roles.

SCERT Delhi had recently conducted a gender audit of 53 textbooks and curriculum developed by the SCERT in order to assess specific depictions in the textbooks that support gender stereotyping and orthodox gender role categorization in society. SCERT shared the audit report on Tuesday.

The Gender Audit Committee comprised gender experts from NCERT, DU, CIE, DCPCR, NGOs, two faculty from SCERT and DIETs and teachers from DoE and MCD.

The experts made certain consistent observations about the selected SCERT textbooks that identified gaps in contextual understanding from the perspective of gender while developing the curriculum and content of the books.

In the category of contributors, an inequity was observed in the gender representation of team members, contributors, editors, authors, and so on.