Box 7.1 Lead in

In their book chapter, ‘Queering family difference to dispel the myth of the “normal,”’ Marrun et al. (2020) argue:

What practices and behaviors are accepted as ‘normal’ in your educational teaching context and the wider community? What are the reactions towards those who are considered ‘abnormal’? In what ways do these reactions marginalize and discriminate those who do not conform the standards of ‘normal’? How do those individuals who are considered ‘abnormal’ transgress?

Introduction

We live in a patriarchal world. Although commercials and TV shows that display women in subservient roles are in many parts of the world less common or blatant than in the past, the dominance of men over women is perpetuated in more subtle ways through social media, popular culture, and the larger neoliberal discourse. A walk into the local shopping mall, main street, or downtown area or a look at media advertisements will present opportunities to see how women are objectified and held to unrealistic beauty standards (e.g., skinny mannequins, hypersexualized women in posters and billboards, commercials comparing buying a car with finding a wife). The World Economic Forum's 2020 Global gender gap report clearly demonstrated gender-related gaps in pay, unemployment, leadership roles, inheritance rights, property ownership, educational attainment, health, and survival across 153 countries. As lessons from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (2014–2016), Zika, and recently COVID-19 have taught, infectious diseases are not gender-neutral but put women and girls at higher risks of exploitation and domestic and sexual violence (Meinhart et al., 2021; United Nations Population Fund, 2020). In various parts of the world, men's dominance – justified on the grounds of their alleged biological superiority – is praised, celebrated, and reinforced at the expense of women's rights and well-being. It did not take long for the Taliban, which returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, to backtrack on their promise to allow tens of thousands of schoolgirls to return to class for the new term, banning any schoolgirl above the age of eleven from attending school.