Status of women in Delhi
Even when you know that women have different degrees of freedom and empowerment in every country, the manifestation where you see the inequality and unfairness for yourself can be extremely discomfiting. I had an inkling of the situation when my Nepali couchsurf host, a female volunteer teacher/educator who had on her profile something about working to improve the status of women, gave me not her (female) friend's number, but the son's. From the outset, I felt that I would not be able to speak alone with his mother and sister, despite their English probably being better than his. When I arrived the following day at a time when the 18-year old Prince (his name was another indication of the way Punjabi folks reinforce the patriarchal family roles) was not home, his mother conversed uneasily with me. Her English was clearly good. I found out later htat she had also been a teacher (in English) for many years. She was shy.
Prince's older sister is in her final year of an honours Bachelors degree in Commerce, who worked 3 hours every day tutoring a group of 10 students to earn money. I clearly had more in common with her. Each day, I discovered something about the family that confirmed my suspicions about entrenched North Indian gender roles, whilst simultaneously discovering that the family was wealthier than the small kitchen, and neighboorhood with intermittent water and power cuts suggested. When I discovered that they had a car, the rather straighforward and jocular conversation between Prince, his sister and me went like something this,
"So you have a car? What do you use it for?"
"It has tinted windows so I can sit with my girlfriend and nobody will discover us."
"Is that all? Does your mum or sister use it to do the shopping?"
"No. I do not let them use it."
"So you have a motorbike and a car. And they ..."
"Take the rickshaw."
"Would you let me drive it?
"Yes. Tomorrow?"
"But why? You haven't seen how I drive."
"Never trust a girl!", he says, pointing to the new sticker he got on his motorbike.
Whilst his sister and mother work, Prince does not. He hardly attends school because he is an aspiring cricket player. In his spare time he does stunts on his motorbike. The straightforwardness of the conversation was to me, not a positive sign.
This are obviously many more even more explicit acceptable behaviours for women. They should not smoke, nor drink alcohol, else they are seen as easy. The unwritten but well-known list is perhaps 100 items long. Maybe Puni will write it down for me.
A good start might be in these well-written anecdotes from India, which echo the experience of every professional woman I spoke with:
http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009/06/08/surviving-as-a-woman-in-urban-india/
ThereWhereas the general compartments on the train are packed to the raftersWomen have their own bogies (Lisa's vocabulary is larger than mine) in which hardly anyone stands. There are almost no women on buses (the one in the photo, puking, was an exception). Women do not work at the stores and markets; they should not even visit their husbands there.
When I asked at a party, I was told that Delhi middle class is plagued by this "protection" of women because of
- punjab/northwestern patriarchal traditions,
- as an expression of "Indianness", where women's traditional status and role came to be used as the reaction against modernity
And how is it perpetuated? What the upper middle classes do, the burgeouning middle class imitates, and so on. Everyday examples are easily found.
http://mohennaorem.blogspot.com/2010/10/never-volunteers-again.html
There was a fatwah decreed on a muslim actress who pronounced that premarital sex was ok, even though everybody knows it is common, if not the norm. India still has retrograde marriage laws (http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/06/11/an-easier-end-to-unhappy-marriages-in-india/) which make it difficult for a woman to receive an expedient divorce, even in situations of abuse. Honour killings, where daughters are killed for apparently bringing dishonour to the family by marrying below their caste, occur even in posh neighbourhoods of Delhi. [ http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/06/25/india-must-ask-where-is-the-honour-in-killing/ ]
Prince's older sister is in her final year of an honours Bachelors degree in Commerce, who worked 3 hours every day tutoring a group of 10 students to earn money. I clearly had more in common with her. Each day, I discovered something about the family that confirmed my suspicions about entrenched North Indian gender roles, whilst simultaneously discovering that the family was wealthier than the small kitchen, and neighboorhood with intermittent water and power cuts suggested. When I discovered that they had a car, the rather straighforward and jocular conversation between Prince, his sister and me went like something this,
"So you have a car? What do you use it for?"
"It has tinted windows so I can sit with my girlfriend and nobody will discover us."
"Is that all? Does your mum or sister use it to do the shopping?"
"No. I do not let them use it."
"So you have a motorbike and a car. And they ..."
"Take the rickshaw."
"Would you let me drive it?
"Yes. Tomorrow?"
"But why? You haven't seen how I drive."
"Never trust a girl!", he says, pointing to the new sticker he got on his motorbike.
Whilst his sister and mother work, Prince does not. He hardly attends school because he is an aspiring cricket player. In his spare time he does stunts on his motorbike. The straightforwardness of the conversation was to me, not a positive sign.
This are obviously many more even more explicit acceptable behaviours for women. They should not smoke, nor drink alcohol, else they are seen as easy. The unwritten but well-known list is perhaps 100 items long. Maybe Puni will write it down for me.
A good start might be in these well-written anecdotes from India, which echo the experience of every professional woman I spoke with:
http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009/06/08/surviving-as-a-woman-in-urban-india/
ThereWhereas the general compartments on the train are packed to the raftersWomen have their own bogies (Lisa's vocabulary is larger than mine) in which hardly anyone stands. There are almost no women on buses (the one in the photo, puking, was an exception). Women do not work at the stores and markets; they should not even visit their husbands there.
When I asked at a party, I was told that Delhi middle class is plagued by this "protection" of women because of
- punjab/northwestern patriarchal traditions,
- as an expression of "Indianness", where women's traditional status and role came to be used as the reaction against modernity
And how is it perpetuated? What the upper middle classes do, the burgeouning middle class imitates, and so on. Everyday examples are easily found.
http://mohennaorem.blogspot.com/2010/10/never-volunteers-again.html
There was a fatwah decreed on a muslim actress who pronounced that premarital sex was ok, even though everybody knows it is common, if not the norm. India still has retrograde marriage laws (http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/06/11/an-easier-end-to-unhappy-marriages-in-india/) which make it difficult for a woman to receive an expedient divorce, even in situations of abuse. Honour killings, where daughters are killed for apparently bringing dishonour to the family by marrying below their caste, occur even in posh neighbourhoods of Delhi. [ http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/06/25/india-must-ask-where-is-the-honour-in-killing/ ]
posted by whobenefits at 10:29 PM
1 Comments:
Wow, I did not imagine this about India. Interesting though :)
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