Workshop on gender & masculinity held

SHILLONG: The MLCU in collaboration with North East Network (NEN) and Centre for Health and Social Justice (CHSJ), New Delhi organised a three-day workshop on Gender and Masculinity from Wednesday to Friday on the premises of the university.
The resource persons of this workshop were Abhijit Das, Director and Satish Kumar, Assistant Director, CHSJ, New Delhi. The workshop was attended by the faculty of MLCU and staff of NEN.
Throughout the three days, there were extended, in-depth deliberations on much debated gender issues like gender roles, patriarchy, women rights, oppression, gender stereotypes, violence besides many others.
The workshop started off with an examination of gender and sex both as a biological and social construct where it was said that social expectations lead to various elements of gender being imbibed, normalised and eventually practiced often running the risk of oppression of a weaker sex by a dominant stronger one.
Further, there were also discussions on how social restrictions lead to gender restrictions made worse by other factors like ethnic and economic restrictions. There were also discussions on matrilineal and patriarchal systems and how they have a larger bearing on the operation of the social systems.
These discourses were carried out with emphasis on Meghalaya and the North East.
Issues like power and privilege in the struggle for women empowerment were also examined.