You are a young female lawyer, you should focus on yourself, earn more money and give it to charity if you want to make a difference to society,” this is what 27-year-old human rights lawyer, Gulika Reddy, who hails from Chennai was told when she tried to point out the gender insensitivity that was prevailing in courtrooms.
Gulika decided she was going to have it no other way than to change the perspective of society; she went back to school to achieve this!
“I had always wanted to become a lawyer so I could make a difference, but when I did become one I realised that the way the judiciary was looking at cases related to gender was very flawed. I heard some lawyers advise a woman who had reported a case of abuse in her marriage to give a rose on Valentine’s Day to the husband, and make peace with him! I also heard insensitive remarks made while dealing with cases of rape victims and sex workers. I thought there could be nothing more insensitive than a lawyer not taking abuse seriously,” Gulika tells DC from Cambridge, where she is currently a Dubin Fellow at the highly reputed Harvard Kennedy School.
“When I tried to challenge such attitudes, I realised it was deeprooted in society, with the judiciary only being a representative of society,”she adds.
So, Gulika decided to start ‘Schools of Equality’, a place where the young from classes 1 to 12 are taught gender parity, human rights, and equality; not through lectures but through interactive presentations, theatre, and art — all this in addition to mainstream education.
“I spent all my childhood in Chennai growing up in a liberal family. My father belongs to Andhra Pradesh while my mother is a North Indian and they got married at a time when inter-cultural marriages were still taboo. I could not find the progressive liberal minds in judicial or public spaces that I could in my own family. The judicial space has very few women, and is highly patriarchal. This is what led me on this journey to address discrimination faced by people of different genders, of various castes, and religions,” Gulika reveals.
She now spends her time between India and the US, as her schools have made their presence in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka.
She elaborates saying, “The process of discrimination starts at a scarily young age among humans. We see young children — not even two years of age — thinking it is not normal for men to be in the kitchen or for women to not be in the kitchen.”
“We want a thought process to start from a very young age and to take what is represented of genders in movies or advertisements with a pinch of salt,” she affirms.
Gulika, who was also a fellow at the Columbia Law Schools, adds that she is glad that her Montessori school she went to in Chennai instilled curiosity and compassion in her, which she still carries. “Chennai is always my true home, and I love the walks and runs along the beaches,” she declares.
Gulika hopes to influence national education policies of the country in future and have equality and social justice be taught compulsorily in all schools. She says it’s a matter of pride for her that some of her students have managed to help other women or men who suffered abuse or harassment.
We live in an age where women are still blamed for a rape, or women are told learning self defense is the only way to live comfortably in the city, she says, adding that even men’s abuse is not taken seriously.
“I hope we can all create a new normal,” she says with anticipation.
