SECTION B
Essay
125 marks
Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands – two equally harmful disciplines.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The topic argues that patriarchy harms both sexes: girls through limits on mobility, dress and ambition, and boys through pressure to earn, succeed and suppress emotion. The examiner expects a balanced gender essay that does not downplay women's disadvantage but shows how rigid gender roles damage everyone.
ThesisRestrictions on girls and demands on boys are two faces of the same rigid gender order, and dismantling one requires dismantling the other.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Family: girls are policed on safety and honour while boys are told they must become providers, so both lose freedom of choice
- 2Education and careers: girls are steered away from some subjects and from leaving home, while boys are pushed into high-pressure streams regardless of aptitude
- 3Mental health: boys taught not to cry often hide distress, and girls face anxiety from constant surveillance and limited autonomy
- 4Economy: low female workforce participation wastes talent, while the provider burden on men links masculinity to earning alone
- 5Law and policy: schemes for girls' education and laws against dowry and violence address restrictions, but the demands on boys are rarely addressed by policy
- 6Culture: films, advertisements and social media reinforce the protected daughter and the earning son as ideals
Counter-view
- Some will say the harms are not equal, since women face violence, discrimination and lower pay that boys do not. The essay should accept that the scale of disadvantage differs, and argue that 'equally harmful' refers to both being disciplines that deny choice, so reform must address both
Open and close
- Open: Begin with a brother and sister in the same home on results day: she is told she cannot take the job in another city, he is told he must clear the engineering exam he never wanted
- Close: Conclude that freeing girls from restrictions and boys from demands is one project, because both are released by the same idea: that ability, not gender, should decide a life
Where marks usually go
- Writing a one-sided women's empowerment essay and ignoring the half of the topic about boys
- Arguing that boys suffer as much as girls in every respect, which reads as dismissive of documented discrimination
- Turning the essay into a list of government schemes instead of examining family and cultural norms
Examples that fit
- ThinkerSimone de Beauvoir argued that one is not born but becomes a woman, showing that femininity is a social discipline rather than nature.The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
- ThinkerRaewyn Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity explains how an ideal of the tough, earning male pressures most boys and men who cannot or do not wish to meet it.Masculinities, R.W. Connell (1995)
- CurrentRepeated student suicides in Kota's coaching hubs have prompted Rajasthan and central guidelines on coaching centres, exposing the cost of parental and social demands on adolescents.Ministry of Education, Guidelines for Regulation of Coaching Centres (2024)
- CaseBeti Bachao Beti Padhao, launched in Panipat in 2015, tackles restrictions on girls through campaigns on sex ratio and girls' education.Ministry of Women and Child Development, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme page
- CurrentAfghanistan's ban on girls' secondary and university education since the Taliban takeover in 2021 shows restrictions on girls in their most extreme form.UNESCO statements on girls' education in Afghanistan