HZ Exclusive: TED Talk Speaker Deepa Narayan On Gender Equality, Domestic Abuse And More

Last year, Deepa Narayan delivered a talk on TED Talks India Nayi Baat. With her talk, she took us through the suppression of women in India. Deepa Narayan's book, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women talked about the 7 habits that dominate a woman's everyday life. She gave her book a lot of time, interviewing thousands of women, all around India. Deepa Narayan also spent close to two decades to find solutions to fight poverty all over the world.

However, as they say, most successful people don't have a perfect journey. Do you know Deepa Narayan's journey to Ted Talk wasn't an easy one? She was once directionless, like many of us are today. There were many hits and misses before she finally made it big and got an invitation to Ted Talk.

Women's day is just around the corner and we had a quick chat with her about her journey, her thoughts on the upcoming campaign theme of International Women's Day and a lot more. Read on.

The Beginning

Talking about her journey, Deepa Narayan said, "When I was 17, my most secret desire was to be attractive to boys. My other desire was to somehow make a difference in the world because my father always said, use your talents to help others. But I didn’t know what that meant or how to do so. For the next 7 years I still had no idea and no sense of direction. I just knew my higher education was the ticket out to independence and adventure!."

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"After many trials, I finally went to the USA to get my Ph.D. in Human Development. And at the ripe old age of 25, I had an ah-ha experience at a lecture I attended on how to provide water to poor people. I was hooked. I realized I wanted to work with poor people to help them solve their problems. I changed my research topic from studying how children think, to understand why poor people have so many children when they can’t take good care of them. I came back to India and did the study near Lucknow to understand how poor women and men think. And I realized that each woman was smart and rational and we do the best under our limited circumstances," she added.

Understanding Poverty

Social Psychologist, Deepa Narayan had this dream of looking for solutions to fight poverty in the world. Talking about the same, she said, I loved teaching young bright minds. But it was far from my dream to understand poverty by living with poor people. After teaching for a short while at the University of Wisconsin, I started living my dream, living in remote villages in Botswana, Indonesia, Maldives, Kenya to listen deeply and to understand poor people’s problems from their perspective, not from my perspective."

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During her journey, Deepa Narayan was also curious to understand the violence again women. She said, "You will be surprised by my conclusions about the roots of violence, including sexual violence, rape against women. It lies in our everyday behaviors and expectations of good women and good men. I conclude that loving middle class parents are preparing their girls to be abused, obviously, they don’t realize this, they are just trying their best to raise good girls. But good girls are only meant to serve others, be nice, smile a lot, always kind, loving, think of others first, be quiet, not be argumentative, not be selfish, not think of self… the list goes on. Girls are expected to be highly moral, have no power, and boys to be entitled and high in authority and power. This sets the stage of abuse."

We also asked Deepa Narayan about her experience at TED talk, she said, "I wrote the book Chup: Breaking The Silence About India’s Women, this led to an invitation to give a Ted Talk. It was wonderful to be hosted by the great Shah Rukh Khan who not only is brilliant but kind, generous and warm. When I got nervous, he asked if I wanted water and brought me a glass of water!! It was also wonderful to be in a group with other amazing speakers."

This year, the theme for the International Woman's Day is Each for Equal. We asked Deepa Narayan how she thinks society can work towards gender balance. She said, "We have made two big mistakes in strategy to achieve gender equality. Gender Inequality is a men’s issue, not a women’s issue. First, we have focused exclusively on women to change gender equality. This is a mistake. Just like poor people are not responsible for poverty and cannot solve the poverty problem alone, women cannot solve the problem of inequality alone. Second, we have made no effort to involve men in real dialogue. We blame them for inequality even before the conversation begins. We need to focus on men, redefine masculinity as more than being tough and having all the control and authority. Men must be involved in conversations about gender equality and must be inspired to change, not beaten over the head to change. That may be necessary for those who commit crimes, but not those who are unequal in their everyday behaviors because that is what they have been taught. So this intergenerational transmission of values and behaviors much change through conversational circles, Chup Circles."

Deepa Narayan also sent across a special message for women who face domestic violence. She said, "Know that abuse is not your fault, you are not to blame. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not defective. It is men and unfortunately their mothers, fathers and relatives who are out of control and engaging in criminal behavior. Gather evidence. Find support, get help outside the family, if nobody inside the family wants to help. Get out. Know that you are not alone, even if you feel alone. Know that you can rebuild life after abuse."

Did you watch Deepa Narayan on Ted Talk? What's your take on it? Share with us!