Why female teachers must wear sarees

We recently posted this teaser on some of our social media profiles (with the asterisk to footnote that a clarification would be forthcoming, lest someone believed we were actually advocating for the saree 😯):

Some people thought we were being sarcastic and gave us ha-ha reacts, but we are dead serious. Let’s break it down.

1. Why do people insist that female teachers wear Saree?

Duh. “It’S oUr CuLTuRe”

Actually, we shouldn’t SpongeMock it — that answer is 100% correct... Depending on what we mean by “culture”.

So, what exactly in our culture requires that female teachers wear saree?

Some people claim this is about our traditional dress. If that were true, we should require female and male teachers to wear traditional dress. But most male teachers wear shirt and trousers because they are allowed to choose practical, comfortable clothing. So this must be about some other aspect of our culture, right?

2. What is the role of schools?

Every society needs to prepare its children for the future (i.e. educate them) and schools are the main vehicle for doing so. This preparation comprises, broadly, two areas:

First, schools have a role in equipping children with the knowledge and skills they will need. These are the things that are in the visible curriculum — it’s documented in the syllabus, you can see it in text books, you can hear it in class rooms, it’s tested in exams, etc. For this, the saree doesn’t matter — teachers could teach in sarees, in shalwars, or in skirts and blouses; it wouldn’t make a difference.

Second — and this is what’s important for our claim — is that schools transmit the culture of the society to the next generation: this is mostly via the Hidden Curriculum. And this culture includes not only what teachers are allowed to wear, but also who makes that decision.

3. Understanding Culture: Power Distance

To understand culture, we will make use of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory — he identified certain dimensions to help understand a society’s culture and how it influences individual’s values and behaviour.

Of these dimensions, we are concerned with Power Distance:

In any society, there is inequality — some people have more power, others have less. Power Distance defines the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. This is important because a society’s inequality is endorsed not only by the leaders (who benefit from the inequality), but also by the followers (who suffer from it).

Sri Lanka is a country with a high Power Distance; i.e. people with less power are highly accepting of the fact that they have less power. And here are some symptoms of countries with high power distance:

• Hierarchical organizations with a strict command and control structure
  - Only leaders can make decisions
  - Low-ranking individuals cannot challenge superiors
• Leaders are not held accountable for their actions
• Nepotism: Leaders distribute power to family, friends, and allies (in low power distance countries, appointments must be justified by merit)
• Have a high degree of corruption
• Low-ranking individuals are controlled and monitored closely.

As schools transmit culture, we can expect that countries with high Power Distance (such as Sri Lanka) will have schools that nurture and promote high Power Distance, while low Power Distance countries (such as Finland) will have low Power Distance schools.

By the way, the reason we took Finland as an example is because it is generally considered to be a country with a good, progressive education system that many countries, including Sri Lanka, are trying to emulate. However, copy-pasting a low Power Distance Finnish school in a high Power Distance Sri Lankan host will not work.

4. How schools transmit culture

Or more specifically, how do schools promote high Power Distance?

Let’s start with an easy example — Sri Lanka has a high degree of acceptance of nepotism and corruption, and this is inculcated in school: for starters, the admission process is not only rife with both corruption (“DoNatIoNS”) and nepotism, they have become so normalized and formalized that it’s unthinkable to even question the process. And this isn’t only about how one gets in to a good school, it extends to how one gets ahead within the school as well — like how in some sports one cannot get in to the team without additional paid coaching sessions, or how children are selected for leadership roles based on the “influence” of their parents.

The Civics teacher (saree-clad or otherwise) can preach her heart out about corruption and nepotism being wrong and unacceptable, but it will be in vain: actions speak louder than words, and children will learn that in order to succeed you either need money or connections.

Let’s move on to a trickier one — how do you teach low ranking individuals to not question their superiors? By imposing arbitrary rules and restrictions to control them, of course. This means

• Adults impose arbitrary rules on children — especially ones that limit their personal freedoms, like uniforms (in comparison, Finnish schools do not have uniforms), restrictions on hair styles (Finnish girls are not required to tie their hair in pig tails, and boys are not prohibited from having long hair), etc.
• Men impose arbitrary rules on women (because misogyny is also part of Sri Lankan culture)— like the saree.

5. The role of uniforms

We chose uniforms as examples of arbitrary rules because they are also an artefact of culture; in terms of Power Distance, uniforms help to communicate rank (as evidenced by the respect accorded to military and clerical uniforms). They also communicate membership of a group — this relates to another dimension, Collectivism, that Sri Lanka also scores highly on.

This adds another twist to the tale: For many teachers, their uniform is part and parcel of their identity as a teacher. If you have spent your entire career wearing the saree as a uniform, and especially if the only other reason you wear saree is for special events like weddings, dressing down can feel like a betrayal — an act that lowers the prestige of your profession. In this sense, the impracticality of the saree (such as the expense of maintaining the wardrobe and the limitations on mobility) actually adds to the value of the saree — it isn’t a burden, it is a sacrifice.

This is possibly why many teachers do not support relaxing the dress code — even though they would still be free to choose to wear the saree, it would no longer be part of the teacher identity if it was not compulsory.

6. Conclusion

So now we can qualify our statement:

For schools to function effectively, in its role of transmitting culture, it is essential that female teachers continue to wear saree, because Sri Lankan culture requires that low-ranking female teachers do not challenge high-ranking male decision makers.