It was during the family’s routine bedtime ritual that Teresa asked her mother, Sonia John, about the embedded gender disparity in books
Six-year-old Teresa Manimala became a viral sensation when her routine bedtime story hour became an occasion to call out sexism and gender disparities.
As she indignantly asks her mother why books use man-made instead of the gender-neutral ‘people made’ or ‘human made’, her mother, Sonia John, can be heard outside the frame telling her that the word man implies women also.
“Aren’t women allowed to build?… Then why don’t they say human made?” she says. Before turning back to her book, she tells her mother with a shake of her head, “It’s not nice, right?”
That simple statement has made her voice heard beyond the confines of her home and family.
Sonia, a data analyst, who lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in the US, says Teresa is a voracious reader with an inquisitive mind. “I am not surprised that she asked these…
