The Boy Who Cooks and Cleans

"With his actions Rohit is dismantling patriarchy, challenging deep set notions about household and a woman and man's relation to it. It's time we follow his example and question ourselves to find how we are perpetuating and normalising patriarchal roles in our daily lives."

This video is meant to challenge the idea that just because, traditionally, certain roles have been assigned to women does not mean they are fixed and immutable category. It is just one of a series of videos created by the India-based international community media organisation Video Volunteers, or VV (see Related Summaries, below).

The videos emerged from VV's Dismantle Patriarchy Campaign, called #KhelBadal: The idea is that, to "reverse the stranglehold of patriarchal status quo in our society we need a game (Khel) changing (Badal) strategy. #KhelBadal is all about having conversations that invite all of us, irrespective of our gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity, to reflect on our own, subconsciously internalised sexism and challenging it. Launched in November 2016, the 1-year campaign is taking on patriarchy, conceived as the root cause of all gender discrimination, through stories of women and men who face, negotiate, and challenge patriarchy in everyday life - at home, at work, at school, and in cultural and public spaces. To that end, VV trained 63 Gender Correspondents across 16 states to make films that capture the nuances of routine, normalised gender discrimination and to run Gender Discussion Clubs where lively, introspective conversations are happening. Simultaneously, they are generating online discussions with their staff and online followers and encouraging them to share their stories. "We're bridging the digital divide and enabling urban and rural women to exchange experiences and learn from each other."

Specifically, this video challenges the viewer to ask: If we believe men and women are equal, should they not be working equally? The video is a portrait of the daily life of 16-year-old Rohit of Bhardakala, Chhattisgarh, India, who started helping his mother and sister with household chores. He cooks, cleans, washes clothes and helps his two younger siblings with their studies. When people make fun of him, this plucky young boy says, "I give appropriate responses to them so they don't say anything anymore". According to VV: "He is the living example who shows that there's nothing 'natural' or 'inevitable' about gendered division of labour....Rohit shows that to change our perception is simple, but to be consistent in the change is the hard thing."

VV believes that, as this video series is meant to demonstrate: "Gender discrimination is normalised and perpetuated through our families and unless we are able to transform our private spaces to more gender equal ones, we can never end sexism and discrimination in public arenas."