how to compare a unicode string in model field and choices? django

I am not sure which part I am doing wrong but somehow I am trying to compare two values and I am 100% sure they matches but somehow code would not execute.

Let's say I have this model (please forgive for a bit typos for models and field names)

class TestOne(models):
    gender = models.Charfield(max_length=10, choices=GENDER_CHOICES)

my choices

GENDER_CHOICES = (("MALE", "MALE"), ("FEMALE", "FEMALE"))

I am so sure my gender field is MALE for the object so I am doing this statement as check that if it's MALE do something.

if a.gender is `MALE`:
    # do something here

but it never reaches it as true. I checked a.gender is a unicode type so I even did str(a.gender) to make sure it's also a string but still no luck.

Am I doing anything wrong here?

P.S. I did a print with a.gender and made sure that the output is MALE

Thanks in advance