Personal rebellion of Indian women

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In a diverse country the size of a continent, our experiences of womanhood vary deeply depending on class, race, climate and where we live. Certainly, the urban readership of this letter is not representative of the nation. There is no unbroken ‘Indian woman’ and neither do I have the confidence to write on her behalf. Between women sipping gin-n-tonic in clubs and rural solidarity groups pushing to ban alcohol in states, our social landscape is so complex that there’s an easy one-dimensional look at how gender relations have evolved. to present the story.

Statistics can give direct answers to some questions. Assuming a free income and access to freedom of movement as ‘freedom’, India’s rank in the world’s bottom five in terms of women’s economic participation, our data on clear and consistent gaps between men and women in the job market, and Compromising the safety of women in public places shows that not much has changed dramatically. If we measure the voice and leadership of women, the results are not pleasant either. Most of the decision-making systems in India—the courts, local governments, and the law—remain masculine. The state and the family—two important institutions of Indian life—have entrusted all the unintentional burden of caring for women. Yet, women’s work, paid or unpaid, within households, is barely supported by men, labor laws or infrastructure programs. Despite rising educational achievement and declining fertility rates, women have little access to jobs, technology, property or communication tools – the oil of 21st century freedom. Research shows that women’s aspirations have expanded in the decades following the economic reforms of the 1990s, especially in urban India. It seems that school education, increased access to the media and the Internet have encouraged women to re-imagine their ways of being and doing.

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Since I don’t have the courage to sum up the messes of everyday life into a simple number or narrative, I’ll try an alternate lens to approach the question of how much freedom women have gained for themselves over the years. For 15 years, talking to hundreds of women across the country, as I researched my book on the economic and emotional lives of Indian women born in the 1980s, I found differences in attitudes between mothers and daughters within different generations. Glad to see generational changes. family. This mother-daughter duo can hardly tell the story of the whole country. But his life experiences reveal many stories of social change that statistics hide.

Across all states and races, I have learned that the radical change in the freedom and independence that women claim for themselves is taking place in this ‘missing middle’ of the gender narrative – women who are neither leaders nor heroes Neither are victims of brutal crimes. These are the normal women all around us, who wear different clothes, who are spending more time in school than ever, who are quietly renegotiating the rules of their marriages, relationships and workplaces. Any attempt to capture the quality of freedom enjoyed by ‘Indian women’ would be remembered without respect to these revolutionaries who aspired and achieved far more freedom than their grandmothers. Her struggles and personal rebellions give four important lessons about the progress of women’s lives in contemporary India.

First, the family remains the primary site of every woman’s freedom struggle. India may have gained independence from its colonialists, but women are still not free from the control of the family and the caring roles associated with it. If we believe that economic opportunities are an important road to women’s independence, domestic duties within the family remain an everlasting obstacle.

Data shows that marriage removes women from paid jobs. The latest Periodic Labor Force Survey highlights how 48% of urban women cite domestic care work as the primary reason for not being in the paid labor force. Beyond caregiving duties, data on gender-based violence or economic discrimination highlights how domestic and intimate relationships are where women’s autonomy has been eroded, where constitutions have been trampled upon, where non-conforming women are oppressed. Taxes are levied, and where open and covert abuse is rampant.

Over the course of 75 years, the Indian state has supported only single women after experiencing marriage—programs designed for widowed, divorced or abandoned women; Not for women who are unmarried because they do not desire marriage or family life. The lack of support and protection for single women is one way to ensure that we remain locked into the traditional patriarchal family as the only source of status, security and survival.

Every woman I followed—regardless of her class or caste—was socialized to believe that being marriageable was her primary job and that she needed family permission to pursue her interests. Most enjoyed or reluctantly accepted the idea, with some rebelling against it. But the rebellion required covert encouragement from family members and a thriving market for the training and recruitment of women. For example, Gold Mendiratta, a girl from Jaisalmer, fled her family to become an in-flight attendant after a boom in aviation jobs and a stir in her arranged marriage prospects. She was only able to execute her plans as her older brother paid her fees at an ‘airhostess academy’ and helped her find safe accommodation without notifying her disgruntled father. Mendiratta ended up as the first woman in his family to marry for love, find a steady paying job, and leave his home-state.

Second, friendship and solidarity groups play an important role in allowing women to seek and achieve well-being and independence. Nearly all of the women I surveyed reported being the first in their family to make friends beyond the circle of family. While their mothers socialized within networks of cousins, aunts and in-laws, the women I interviewed gained friends and acquaintances through jobs, self-help groups or schools. These networks became their safety net, giving them time to explore opportunities, discuss experiences and hopes, and relax. For example, Zaheera Pathan, a Muslim apparel worker who worked and lived in a low-income neighborhood in Ahmedabad, was able to leave her abusive marriage because of the protection offered by her fellow garment workers. Sandhya Mandal, a part-time Bengali domestic worker in Delhi, would drop off her children at an informal day-care organized by women in her slum when she went out for work. Both women educated their daughters in good schools, with contacts made through their work aided in admissions.

Thanks to this education and access to new role models, their daughters are no longer ready to participate in an arranged marriage. Pathan’s daughter lives in Mumbai and continues to work as a survey investigator in a market research firm.

Pathan was the first woman in her family to earn an income, lived as a single mother and was part of the 11% of urban Muslim women who hold paid jobs. She paved the way for her daughter to aspire for more independence. The fact that her daughter will never wear a dupatta to cover herself, that she can explore the possibility of premarital love, that she has a mobile phone of her own, that she can easily access the Internet, that She can confidently call me and declare that she thought an actor was sexy, that she knew and used the word ‘sexy’ freely and repeatedly while away from her family, because she Nothing less than a revolution in the realm of freedom in your family. traditionally enjoyed. Her maternal grandmother never went to school and always kept a veil.

Third, each woman I followed interpreted the notion of freedom very differently. For Pathans, freedom meant freedom from earning a living. She complained about how the men were no longer living up to the end of the breadwinning contract. She wanted to quit her job. For Mendiratta, this meant freedom from an oppressive arranged marriage and freedom to explore one’s own sexual appetites. As far as Mondal was concerned, independence meant being free from hours of load-shedding and erratic water supply so that he could watch cable TV for an hour in peace. When I asked these women how they saw the ‘status of women’, no one used laws or statistics to explain themselves. They expressed their quality of life through the ease and security with which they could laugh and have fun, the quality of eligible single men and their family relationships, and the quality of food given to their children.

While their views of independence differed, each woman complained about exhaustion and chronic time-poverty due to the burden of managing work deadlines, household dishes, and feminine dignity. Such a framework defies any narrow technical definition used by experts to measure women’s ’empowerment’ or well-being.

Finally, while women from marginalized communities insist on greater independence for themselves and their daughters, the stories of upper caste elite societies are more worrying. Upper class women highlighted the growing conservatism and resentment of posh men and women towards professionally ambitious women. Every English-speaking elite and middle-class woman gossiped about ‘liberal brothers’ who professed progressive beliefs and barely practiced them. This is in keeping with our current politics where powerful leaders give public lectures on how women should have a role within the home and support the economic upliftment of men.

Patriarchy has become increasingly sophisticated among our elite. The ‘upper’ castes report one of our lowest female employment rates. The latest government data released in June 2022 shows that 21% of the richest 10% in urban India have a paid job for women, compared to 60% of men. While patriarchal controls are more transparent and open to questions in the midst of our predicament, the elite continues to avoid any real change by socializing educated women to believe that they are loved and nurturing exclusively within the family unit. carry the burden of. After the economic boom after liberalisation, upper caste men derived most of the benefits from development. Participating in patriarchy became more profitable in the growing economy and many aristocratic women continue to support and defend abusive boys’ clubs while singing the praises of the brotherhood.

To conclude, while every woman I followed led her own unique path toward freedom, each paid a unique price for achieving greater freedom. Everyone I interviewed told me they had lost the tag of being a ‘good woman’. Social judgment and dirty gossip were the punishments that women had to pay. Their grandmothers had never faced such a backlash, a sign of how far some of us have traveled in a society that insists that non-conforming Women feel ashamed of themselves. Perhaps the best measure of how far ‘Indian women’ have come is our growing shamelessness.

The author is an economist and author of Desperately Seeking Shahrukh

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