School Life: What is in a school uniform?

Most schools have a uniform policy or other rules guiding the appearance of their students. There are benefits in having a school uniform, as a uniform can instill pride, support positive behaviour and discipline and contribute towards the ethos of a school. The other benefits include helping to ensure that all pupils irrespective of their backgrounds feel appreciated, protecting children from social pressures to dress in a particular way, nurturing cohesion and promoting good relations between different groups of pupils. The accepted standard for school uniforms in most schools in Rwanda is that girls wear skirts or dresses, while boys done shorts or trousers. Whilst many children complain of their unflattering attire, their scratchy jumpers or their restrictive ties, a more fundamental issue is largely ignored. Recently, I met a young girl and we had a chat about school life - from feeding, behaviour, dress code to teachers’ perceptions of different things. She, at some point, hinted that she felt skirts disempowered girls. And her argument was simple. Skirts may restrict motion for instance. “A girl won’t run fast because she is afraid that the wind will blow her skirt up. She won’t climb the mango trees because she is scared of what someone might see from below. And every time she sits down, she will cross her legs. If a part of her brain is always occupied with minding her skirt, tell me how will she ever do the best that she can? Why can’t she wear pants like the boys? If, for the first 15 years of her life, she drills into her the habit of minding her skirts, you cannot expect that she’ll be cured of that simply because you put her through a women empowerment workshop.” To me, what she said made a lot of sense, but again I was afraid that the idea of school uniforms is something that is just taken for granted. In many schools, girls, in general, are made to wear skirts and dresses, while boys wear shorts or trousers. Although some schools also permit girls to wear trousers, others enhance the gender divide further by allocating coloured ties or jumpers to boys and girls. Much as this may seem like a minor detail, and an issue that is not worth bothering about, it is indicative of the entrenched gender stereotypes within our society. What others think “I don’t think girls should be restricted from putting trousers. It’s fine for girls to put them on as long as it’s what makes them more comfortable. I even think it would check such behaviour as the tendency for girls to wear mini-skirts,” says Patience Isaro from New Life School. Bibiche Latifah Keza from Gashora Girls Academy notes that, “Restricting girls from putting on what they want creates that distinction. It implies that you’ve already set a boundary for girls, and going beyond would mean challenging the conventional norm. It surely portrays society’s idea of what’s for boys, and what’s for girls.” Keza reiterates the need for a new school uniform policy, noting that the current policy is biased and restricts new boundaries and creativity. “As a solution, we could have a day for all students to select their own wear and ask them to explain what it means to them. So school administrators would get to understand how they are shaping a generation of creative people, which I think is every school’s dream,” she says. But for Toni Kasinja, a teacher from Fawe Girls’ School, wearing or not wearing trousers has nothing to do with gender inequality in a school because girls do, to some extent, put on trousers during some school activities like sports and drama. “However, I would suppose that girls are allowed to wear trousers depending on the school policies and community. If they are refused deliberately then that can be discrimination,” he says. What about a gender-neutral school uniform policy, as a way of accepting that all students should have the right to wear clothing they wish to no matter what their gender is? According to Martin Masabo, the headteacher of Lycée de Kigali, the gender-neutral school uniform doesn’t really define students’ rights and gender. “I think girls putting on trousers does not translate to gender equality as long as they are given the right to study. The other thing is that this is not a single-sex school. If a girl wants to put on a trouser as a result of a problem, we look at it and resolve it; otherwise we don’t accept them to put on trousers,” Masabo notes. On his part, Janvier Gasana, the director-general of Rwanda Education Board, says, “I think this is not a big deal; first of all, we Africans, particularly Rwandans, have our own rich culture. Students shouldn’t be carried away with western traditions and think that it’s being denied their rights. However, if someone has a unique issue at school, he/she wouldn’t be restricted from dressing in a way they feel comfortable with.”