A government-aided girls’ school in Behala has introduced shirts and trousers as the uniform for its Class XI students, replacing the salwar-kurta.

Shirts and trousers are more “gender neutral” and the switch will help create less gendered spaces, the headmistress of the Children’s Welfare Association High School for Girls, Sarbari Sengupta, said.

She said the idea was to tell the students and society at large that girls are not necessarily expected to dress in a particular way.

Class XI students at the school began wearing the new uniform from the start of the academic session on June 10.

The change has not been enforced on the current Class XII batch so that they don’t have to get new uniforms stitched midway through the plus-two course.

“It is we, the people in society, who have created certain gender stereotypes and keep perpetuating them... creating distinctions after birth about what a girl child is to play with or how we expect her to dress,” headmistress Sengupta said. “It’s time we taught our girls to break free of these stereotypes.”

The request for the change of uniform had come from girls of previous batches. The school held a managing committee meeting and then met the parents to communicate and discuss the change.

In a government-aided school such as this, many of the girls are first-generation learners.

While the parents agreed with the school’s decision, a few of them still harboured doubts, some of which were communicated to their daughters.

Class XI girl Sangita Das had to explain to her father that she was not wearing “a man’s clothes to school”.

“I told him that just because men have been wearing trousers doesn’t mean it is a man’s attire alone,” Sangita said.

Some neighbours and friends, too, expressed their disagreement, a few girls said.

How can a girls’ school introduce “shirts and pants” as the uniform, Arpita Yadav was asked by friends in her neighbourhood.

Arpita told this newspaper: “It’s not just the boys but girls, too, often have a certain mindset and that needs to change.”

Mindsets will change with more awareness, a teacher said.

“We conduct programmes where we talk about gender equality to our girls. That this request came from them shows they have been thinking about it and, as a school, we need to support them and their liberal thoughts,” Sengupta said.

Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti, adviser to the West Bengal Commission for the Protection of ChildRights, said any effort toward creating gender-friendly spaces and a more liberating environment was welcome.

“This is a way of breaking stereotypes and, in the long run, opening up spaces,” Chatterjee Chakraborti said.

Amrita Dasgupta, director of the feminist organisation Swayam, said clothes were not the only avenue to breaking gender stereotypes and that the onus lay not just with women.

“We always expect women to break the gender stereotypes but not the men,” Dasgupta said.

“The focus has to be on changing mindsets because what I wear is much less important than what and how I think.”