Manufacturing Success:How to Cultivate Growth Mindset in Children?
Part 1: Empowering Women
By Zulfiqar Ashraf Chaudhry
Roseville, CA
Cultivation brings images of a beautiful garden to mind. Behind every beautiful garden is a Maali (gardener). This Maali works tirelessly to make this garden beautiful. He waters, fertilizes, prunes, and protects this garden.
Perhaps our children are like flowers of this beautiful garden and our parents and leaders its Maalees. Now imagine if our Maalees were gender-biased! That is, they were neglectful of female flowers, while envious of male flowers. “What nonsense!” you protest. But that's exactly how our local and national Maalees (with all their good intentions) have been treating our female population, especially in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Bill Gates was once invited to speak at a large gathering in Saudi Arabia. Once he got there, he noticed he was facing a segregated audience: men were seated on the left side of the room, while women, clad in black cloaks and veils, were seated on the right side. During the question answer session of the talk, someone from the audience asked whether it was realistic for Saudi Arabia to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010? Bill Gates pondered the question for few seconds, then answered, “Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” All the women in the hall erupted in wild cheering.
Perhaps in the deep recesses of our subconscious, our Maalees think female gender is less “talented” than the male gender. This question was elegantly answered by a Hungarian psychologist Dr Laszlo Polgar. He was convinced that he could make a genius out of anyone, regardless of their gender. So, in late 1960s, DrPolgar advertised in the local newspaper that he was looking for a wife, who would embark with him on a life-long natural experiment. This experiment would involve training children, from an early age to become experts in a given domain. Fortunately, a school teacher, Karla, responded to his ad and married this unusual man. They decided to make their future children chess masters. At the time, chess was a male-dominated sport. It was believed that women did not have the brain power to engage in such a highly intellectual and strategic game. Moreover, there were thousands of books written on chess, plus it had a formal way of evaluating progress, with rigorous competitions to objectively prove the best player. Fortunately, Polgars had three daughters and no son. This was at a time, when even wise men, like Samuel Johnson famously said, “A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” With Polgars’ disciplined training, “each (of his daughters) became among the very best in the world in an area in which the measured performance is extremely objective.” (Ericsson et al., Peak, p 182.)
Unfortunately, women have been wronged in almost all cultures and countries, including our own United States of America. Maalees, even in this new enlightened World, have stunted their mental, physical, and spiritual growth. For example, in describing his findings from the Termen study (which studied 1526 brightest children, with IQ of 140 or higher, in California, starting in 1922 until now. These children are in their 80s now), Dr Valliant, in his insightful book,Aging well, states, “At age 78, we asked each of 40 Termen women whom we interviewed, “Do you believe society has given a fair chance to achieve your potential?” One woman, who “had an IQ of 154, had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Among her many gifts was the ability to memorize anything by reading once. Interested in art history, she had graduated with honors but, instead of pursuing her own career, she had worked as a medical secretary to put her first husband through medical school. Next, she worked for ten years as a Stanford department secretary, for she was rewarded with a $50 per month pension. I felt sure that no male janitor at Stanford had been treated so shabbily. The fact remained that society had treated Terman women badly” (Vaillant, 2003, p102). Surely, we all know of such women, who were exceptionally bright, but their growth was stunted by our society. They are capable of negotiating extremely thorny issues, but we are wasting their talents to negotiating vegetables from local shop keepers. Even the way they negotiate vegetables, one can see how they could have negotiated F-16s for Pakistan: they would have gotten Pakistan twice the number of F-16s, for half the price, and on time!
But at a macro scale, attitudes towards women are changing. China is one such modern example. “A century ago, China was arguably the worst place to be born female. Foot-biding, child marriage, concubinage, and female infanticide were embedded in traditional Chinese culture…girls were rarely educated, often sold, and vast numbers ended up in brothels of Shanghai.” (Kristof et al.,Half the Sky, 2009, p 207). Yet now, China has made more economic progress because it improved the status of its women. China realized a century ago, what Bill Gates told his Saudi audience: “If you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” The Chinese came to this realization, without Bill Gate’s help, and fully incorporated women in their work force. The result has been the envy of all countries, including Pakistan.
Pakistan is full of talented females. But one usually thinks of high profile females, like Fatima Jinnah, Benazir Bhutto, or Malala Yusafzai, when describing female ‘heroines’ of Pakistan. Let’s take the example of Benazir Bhutto. Her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), was the rising star and the future hope of a bleeding country, whose Eastern wing was just severed by another female, Indira Gandhi of India. Although ZAB did not know at the time that his daughter would become the future Prime Minister of Pakistan (twice), even he could not hide his bias against female leaders. He said of Indira Gandhi, "No, no. I have nothing against women as heads of state, though I don't think women make better heads of state than men. Nehru instead was a great politician--she should have half her father's talent! To me she's a mediocre woman with a mediocre intelligence. There's nothing great about her;...it's that throne that makes her seem tall... If she were prime minister of Ceylon, she'd be nothing but another Mrs Bandaranaike (who) got thereby the simple fact of being Bandaranaike's widow and Mrs Gandhi by the simple fact of Nehru's daughter. Without having Nehru's light, with all her saris, the red spot on her forehead, her little smile, she'll never succeed in impressing me." (Fallaci, Interview With History, 1976, p200)". One wonders, if ZAB’s words (about Indira Gandhi) would apply to his own daughter, Benazir Bhutto. More relevantly, would his words apply to his male relatives? We all saw what credentials propelled his son-in-law, Asif Ali Zardari, to the limelight. Perhaps, his grandson will do better. Surely, history has no shame: it exposes all our inconsistencies and biases bare naked for all the world to see.
The popular heroines of Pakistan are an exception to the general rule. Despite their greatness, they do not represent millions of females living in substandard conditions, as second class citizens. One cannot help but ask, “How can one change the ‘second class’ status of Pakistani female population?” Saima Muhammad, an obscure woman, living the outskirts of Lahore, provides an answer. (see Kristof et al., Half the Sky, 2009, p185).
Saima Muhammad was a nobody. Her status was little higher than the cow, tied to a peg. She was tied to her husband, who was unemployed, and would take out his frustration on her by regularly beating her. Although she would not be sold to the butcher, like the cow, as long as she did her “duties.” Nevertheless, a butcher-like knife of uncertainty hung over her head. Her fault was that she produced another daughter, instead of a coveted son. (Never mind, her husband’s ignorance of Biology that males contribute the “Y” chromosome that determines a baby’s male gender.) Her neighbors also resented and mocked her, when she decided to send her daughter away to live with her sister because there was not enough food to go around. So, when she had the audacity to bring another daughter into this world, her status decreased lower than a cow’s status. After all, cow brings in money by giving milk, while she was bringinga daughter into this world, costing money. So, Saima had every reason to fear “the butcher”. Her mother-in-law, though of the same gender, did not help. She actually fueled her son’s fire to get another wife and get rid of this useless “cow”. But fate relented and Saima got a chance to redeem herself. As she could not sink to any lower depths, she decided to take matters, especially financial matters, into her own hands. She seemed to manifest Martin Luther King, Jr.’s saying, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” She decided to take out a micro loan of $65 from Kashf foundation. This was the most fortunate and significant decision she made in her life. It changed her life and elevated her status above the cow, at first, and later, even above her husband
Saima used this loan to buy beads and cloth, and transformed them into beautiful embroidery. Then she sold this beautiful embroidery in the bazaars of Lahore. Because she had to travel in buses to get to the bazaar, her family and neighbors disapproved of her new adventure. They labeled her a “loose woman”. After all, pious righteous women should stay within the confines (“chaardiwaree”) of their homes. Didn’t her parents and Mullahs teach her any Islamic values? But Saima did not care. It was a matter of survival for her. Earning money would mean getting her older daughter back—the same daughter she had to send away to live with her sister because she could not afford to feed or clothe her. Earning money meant she would ward off the threat of divorce. And even if her husband divorced her, she could stand on her feet, with her new found economic independence. Surely, her pious neighbors and Mullahs would understand her reasons for traveling to the market place. Wasn’t it the Prophet’s wife who hired him (SWA) because she had a business and was economically independent?
That’s exactly what Saima ended up doing: she employed her husband. Her business flourished beyond her wildest dreams. Her work was so much liked by her customers that she hired more women from her neighborhood--the same women who used to hurl curses at her and question her integrity and reputation-in order to fill all the orders. By becoming economically independent, Saima Mohammad escaped her husband’s daily beatings, got re-united with her daughter, fixed the roof and plumbing of her house, enrolled her daughters in better schools, and even hired tutors for them. As for the threat of a second wife to bear her husband a son, her mother-in-law said, "No, no...Saima is bringing so much to this house ...she's an exemplary daughter-in-law. She puts a roof over our heads and food on the table." Indeed, economic independence can do more for women than all the good intentions, charity, and empty promises of politicians put together.
Saima Muhammad’s example shows that women’s emancipation lies in their economic independence. Both local and national Malees (i.e., parents, countries, and organizations, like Kashf) can facilitate this process. In the final analysis, like Bill Gates said, and China practically proved, “If you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.”
“Every bud in the garden longs to bloom to release the fragrance in its body,
So awaits the lute the plectrum, touch its chords, listen to its melody”
“Impatient and agitated are notes to burst forth from the strings;
The mountain of Moses trembles eagerly to be ignited by Your lightning.”
Iqbal, Shikwa
Once we treat our and male and female “flowers” equally, in the next article, we will discuss specific ways to nurture ‘growth mindset’ in our children.
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