In 2023, we were in Grade 7, participating in the overwhelming intellectual excitements of typical 13-year-olds – our mutual hatred for Math, the rotating cast of annoying classmates, the looming catastrophe of exams – when suddenly, the topic pivoted to what a certain classmate had said: “Andrew Tate is so cool, he makes so much money and gets so many women, I wanna be like him when I grow up.”

And so we began talking about how Sexism had practically enrolled itself into our school, attended every lecture, and probably planned to show up at graduation. And in the way most great things happen – not in a boardroom, not in a TED talk, but in a smelly library after PE – SPECTRUM was born.

S – Defeating Sexism
P – Demolishing the Patriarchy
E – Achieving Equality
C – Initiating Change
T – Trying to spread awareness
R – Redefining Gender Roles
U – Helping People Understand each Viewpoint
M – Ending Misogyny

The main idea of SPECTRUM was simple – to spread awareness and information about gender, sexuality and sexism via assemblies at our school.

We, a hopeful team of three, approached our then school principal, let’s call her Principal A – she was eager, and loved the idea, even roping in the school counsellors.

Without wasting any time, we enthusiastically approached students across various classes whom we had perceived to be non-sexist and competent human beings. A total of 18 in a school of 400.

Passionate discussions on misogyny began in our WhatsApp groups. We originally had four boys in the team, but one of them left immediately after committing because he was scared he’d get teased by other boys for being part of the initiative. Down to 17 members, woohoo!

We had a huge roundtable meeting with Principal A, with all our members, where we spoke about all the different kinds of sexism sashaying around our school. She agreed and asked us to create a script for our first assembly. Then we were shot in the head 50 times (she got fired).

And so we had to then start anew, discuss this idea with our interim principal, who had no clue it even existed. She made us run through rings of fire, jump through hoops, send tributes to The Hunger Games, and retrieve the long lost treasure from Jumanji (we haven’t seen the movie, we assume there was treasure).

And when we finally got an appointment with her, she totally bailed on us and made us wait in the waiting room for the period that Tilikum (the orca) was in the tanks at Seaworld (almost his whole life), and then pushed us to the deepest part of the tank, like Tilikum did to Dawn (cancelled the meeting).

When she finally deigned to see us, she began to question whether sexism even existed at our school, and we imagine our heads looked like giant question marks at the time, denial (The Nile) is a river in Egypt indeed. We tried to explain why we formed SPECTRUM and pointed to the various strains of sexism that floated down the hallways of our school just as she did with the newest iPhone and her Prada glasses. We sought in vain to gain an ounce of pity and empathy from her.

While this whole fiasco was going on we reached out to our supposed support system who Principal A had connected us with – the counsellors, who of course hadn’t read a single email we had copied them on, and expected us to recap everything instead of pulling it up on their laptops. So, sadly, we had to repeat it all, with the slightest hope that they would reach out and be the adults in the situation and actually do the job they were assigned to do (woah, sounds super difficult, I take it all back, it sounds incredibly taxing to follow up with everyone – oh wait…).

Then of course, the interim principal lost the on-going competition for 100% principal wala position.

And so we had to start all over with Principal B.

Principal B was basically Lady Jane Grey, she added a bunch of rules and laws, and was then promptly beheaded (sacked?). She did however give us fruitful suggestions to improve our script and make it a skit (which actually turned out well), where we discussed basic gender stereotypes (not even the controversial stuff, just the usual, “boys should not cry” “girls can’t do sports”).

Then came Principal C, who made it difficult in the beginning, throwing possible dates at us as dog trainers do with treats, but eventually with our positively mind-blowing script and sheer grit and determination (not even joking at this point), we managed to get a date.

September 3, 2025. (Yep, two years later, super efficient system that we have.)

It was supposed to be after the general assembly that class 10A had.

Our part of the assembly was supposed to be after theirs was over, but the assembly of September 3, 2025 was suspiciously passed on to class 6C, when it was definitely 10A’s turn to do it, and so the Battle of the Dates began. We ran back and forth to retrieve dates like we were trying to find clues in an escape room (impossible to find).

We did get another date, which then got cancelled just like when Netflix cancels shows you’re invested in.

Four principals in two years – and before you ask, no, we did not do that. They just kept leaving or getting fired, as adults in positions of power tend to do when things get mildly inconvenient.

Alexander Hamilton wrote like he was running out of time. We wrote like we were running out of principals. Alexander Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 essays that form The Federalist Papers in a span of six months and people called that ambitious. We wrote assembly script after assembly script for an audience that received it with the same enthusiasm as a Terms and Conditions page. At least he got a cabinet position. We got our school’s waiting room.

Even Lewis Hamilton from Formula 1 walked away from his crashes. We just kept getting back in the car.

Overall, Principal A took our initiative the most seriously, even talking to the chancellor of the institution about it (why does a feminist initiative need to go through him?) to get his approval. The very fact that she sought his approval shows that she was (even if just a little bit) scared of some possible pushback, and didn’t want to take responsibility.

However, other student-driven initiatives such as environment protection projects, didn’t require a call to the chancellor, and were instead shown as glittering symbols of what student intellectual curiosity looks like.

Which begs the question, that if they agreed with what we stood for, why didn’t they follow through with it?

They weren’t scared of fighting for the environment, in fact they took us around campus on environment drives, encouraging us to scream slogans like banshees. Perhaps because our fight for the environment is a universally acceptable fight, at least at a school level.

But when questions of patriarchy arise, especially when misogyny is still at the forefront of our generation’s mindsets, where Andrew Tate is worshipped like a God and “chutiya” is the most common insult, it is then that they’re all sizzle, no steak, because fighting back results in backlash, perhaps in the label “man-hater”, and who wants that?

Often, when the question of “making a change” arises, one assumes that a simple, non-obstructive method could be spreading awareness through assemblies and talks. But even in this case, the most non-threatening of methods didn’t make the cut. Spreading information for something as basic as treating everyone equally without gender biases should not have been as difficult as it was. However, acknowledging a clearly existing bias against women is considered controversial. Not just by mass media outlets, where they’ve gone into radio silence about women in Afghanistan, but also in schools, where allowing students to speak for 15 minutes about basic gender stereotypes, is out of the question.

They will give us dates, they will give us meetings (although with great difficulty), they will agree with us, but when the time comes to speak on a stage, in front of 400 students, all of whose parents share different politics, it becomes seemingly impossible. Because spreading information about sexuality and gender ultimately deconstructs patriarchal norms which everyone has readily accepted, so much so that principals of schools are worried about endorsing an initiative whose goal is simply to spread awareness that sexism exists.

In theory, everyone is for gender equality, but we’ve reached a point where people say, “Oh, women already have all the rights they need, what more do they want?” Our interim principal questioning whether sexism even existed in our school is a case in point. People have come to the conclusion that all the information we need is common knowledge already accepted by society and already the norm.

Although school principals and administrators may themselves, as individuals, be progressive and say that they support gender equality, they will never say that they stand with feminism, because to stand with feminism is to risk alienating their conservative stakeholders.

Discussing sexuality demands a level of public courage that private agreement simply cannot sustain, and it forces institutions to choose between progressive education and preserving a neutral standpoint. Neutrality, in the eyes of the administration, is essential for a school, but education has never been, and will never be neutral. The very fact that we as women are attending school is political.

Cover image by Cole Marshall on Unsplash