On the occasion of International Women’s Day, we bring you some of the most notable and distinguished women eduleaders from the education industry to share their incredible journey, insights, and experiences. Here are the excerpts from the interview
Aishwarya Kurra
Founder and Managing Director
The Shri Ram Universal School, Hyderabad
It is important to create gender-expansive environments that affirm all children by reducing gender role stereotyping and allowing them to express their interests and find confidence in their strengths. Ultimately, gender stereotypes can shape students’ beliefs about their abilities, career choices, and the like, changing the trajectory of their future, and at times, keeping them boxed in when they should be free to explore their talents and interests. We should thus rise above the notion of holistic development of girls/ boys and change it to holistic development of children.
Statements such as ‘girls are strong’ and ‘boys are sensitive’ are true. At TSUS, we conduct many gender equality awareness programs involving both boys and girls. For instance, the task involving picking up the broom to clean the surroundings (an initiative for an environmental awareness practice) that we conducted was led by both boys and girls.
Our leadership council elections for the senior students do not have gender-specific titles. Boys and girls compete equally for the positions. Self defence programmes are pursued as life skills and not gender specific options. Peer mentoring and various counselling programmes further strengthen this thought.
Boys and girls are equally capable of holding the positions of responsibility, of attaining awards for clay modelling or martial arts, and both boys and girls hold open doors for other children showcasing empathy and sensitivity in truest way.
Women are stereotyped – nurturers and care givers with limited decision making power and financial independence. It is important that we break these stereotypes by educating young minds. Both genders to be taught that they hold equal responsibility of the family and their well –being, have equal decision-making power and equal right to be educated and build any career they choose to have
On leadership
Simon Sinek said, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” In our case, once we communicated the ‘Why of our existence’- many passionate individuals- educators, colleagues and parents who shared this common dream joined us along the way. We formed a beautiful ecosystem that is built on trust, empathy and appreciation. We created an iterative process of taking feedback and incorporating it to find solutions into the system which helped us evolve and succeed. The transparency and honesty has resulted in bringing about noticeable change in our staff, students and parent community.
Our deep rooted faith and conviction in the essence of Shri has ensured that the path we follow in our personal and professional lives is built on the core values that we abide by. While the school, staff and students have won many laurels and recognitions in various fields and platforms, watching all of them overcoming the many obstacles and challenges they faced by working together, have been the true awards we have won and this brings a sense of satisfaction and pride in all of us. And that is the crux of what it means to be a leader. My biggest learning through this process is to “Listen, Understand, Adapt and Embrace”.
