Manjrekar, N. (2013) Gujarat: Patriarchy Revisited – A Dress Code for Teachers. Economic and Political Weekly, 48(43)
The paper addresses the phenomenon of making a dress code compulsory for teachers. This in turn points towards the authoritarian approach of bureaucracy as also towards the attempt to curtail the freedom of teachers, in their personal domain of choice of clothes. It is even more stringent for women teachers.
The incident that sparked the debate is the 2013 order that required teachers in State run schools in Gujarat to wear sarees. Men were allowed to dress in western formals. The errant teachers were pulled up in subsequent training sessions and even marked absent in instances of non compliance. In a state that is marked by communal overtones, the issue was also interpreted as an attempt to impinge on the freedom of Muslim women teachers to follow the dictums of their religion and dress accordingly. Manjrekar points towards the dilemma of Muslim women teachers who feared facing disciplinary action by the State run school boards if they did not follow the orders and the ire of their families and communities if they followed the orders. The same was not faced by men in the community who could also be more vocal towards the issue faced by female counterparts of their community.
The move is also seen as an attempt to control para-teachers (Vidyasahayaks or helpers of knowledge). By enforcing this dress code, the State attempts to control the length of their service as non compliance can lead to termination and break their claim to regularization.
Women’s initiatives have taken a stand against the idea of imposing a dress code as unconstitutional, and an attempt at curbing the personal freedom of women. However, the phenomenon of imposing a dress code is neither restricted to only State run school or to the state of Gujarat. Many private schools also impose unwritten dress codes. The new age international schools sometimes also ask teachers to wear corporate like attire of wester formals that are fashionable but decent. It is significant that this specificity for the need for teacher’s attire to be ‘decent’ also finds mention in national level documents of the NCTE (code of professional ethics of teachers) and the Right to Education Act. This often takes the garb of the generic statement of maintaining the ‘decorum of the teaching profession’.
None the less, the imposition of a dress code on women teachers and the resulting resistance expressed by women seems to have become a regular feature across schools and colleges across the country, including Hindu College in Delhi University.
The paper concludes by raising the significant issue in which dress codes are discussed by people of various communities. The way a woman teacher dresses is a bone of contention in terms of the need felt by young women to be fashionable, likelihood of growing young men becoming distracted, and the attempt to control their sexuality. This entire episode is marked with the contextual backdrop of a state that has seen years of sexual abuse in a teacher education college in Patan and excessive sexual violence in the 2002 riots.