Joel A. Barker said, “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”
By Shriya Ramesh
Joel A. Barker said, “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”
For several years, Princeton Day School students have tried wholeheartedly to turn their vision into an action plan that encompasses what they want to accomplish, not with the express intent of changing the world, but with the eventual goal of truly helping others in need.
This year, a chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW) joins the Upper School with a vision to promote gender equality and encourage the discussion of gender bias issues. Staying true to this effort and its promise to promote conversations, NOW has partnered with Save, Help, Empower (SHE), a nonprofit organization that focuses on the prevention of female infanticide in countries such as India, China and Africa.
Their partnership would provide a seismic shift in the outlook of the student body, allowing the entire student population to focus on global gender equality. SHE is registered in the United States and India to help educate and empower girls to eliminate female infanticide.
To turn visions into realities, SHE had to create a scenario with a local community that allowed its village members to be as transparent as possible with the secretive practice of female infanticide, while keeping in mind the final goal of allowing the reticent members of a stifled community to speak out. By talking to these women and asking them about the arcane proceedings of female infanticide, members of SHE reached a conclusion.
Based on concatenation, mothers are the ones who often perpetrate the crime, with the support of other women in her network, stemming and growing from the inherent devaluation of women in certain parts of the world. This is exemplified by the words of Suganya Maharaj, a nurse working at a village clinic in Madurai, India: “One of the most important life moments for a girl is marriage. The process of marriage is very long. The boy’s family and the girl’s family must get together and discuss the boy and girl’s ‘jadagam’ or astrological signs. If they match, the girl’s family will discuss the dowry of the girl. The family will promise to give the boy motorcycles, a car and jewelry or ‘nezhai.’ If all goes well, the marriage will take place and the new bride will stay in the husband’s family’s house. During the first years of marriage it is the bride’s family’s duty to provide gold and other material goods for the bride as per tradition. These additional costs although possibly viable for the first two female children, might be difficult for rural families to provide for additional female children – and so the female babies are killed.”
In a moment, in between a mother who believed that the death of her daughter was justified, and a nonchalant, pusillanimous father, it would seem like all hope was lost and the specious village would continue standing, its members solidified with the communal idea that most female babies were useless and deserved to die.
At that point, members of SHE decided the only course of action was to become a vociferous opponent to supporters of female infanticide through awareness campaigns and send forth a trained staff with express intent of changing the village’s attitudes, traditions, and economic outlook to help people understand the importance of social equality.
Another part of SHE’s plan was to search for an economic opportunity for women who wanted to rise up and break glass ceilings. This could be done by providing women with the opportunity to raise the socioeconomic state of their villages. And that’s where NOW’s burgeoning support system becomes beneficial.
After screening “Miss Representation,” a documentary film discussing the portrayal of women in the media, members of NOW at PDS are equipped to discuss the impact of media and the opportunities media provides for countries such as India, whose child appraisal statistics show that the population of girls having been 15.88% of the total female population of 496.5 million in 2001, has declined to 12.9% of total number of 586.47 million women in 2011.
The creation of NOW at Princeton Day School and its partnership with SHE provides a uniquely tenacious group of students and adults who are striving to strip the world of gender bias on a global scale. This group has assumed the monumental task to take decisive action against the patriarchal views of a country, and, more importantly, has turned their visions into action.
Shriya Ramesh is a junior at Princeton Day School.

