Dispatches from the Interrupted Other
First Post
Should the “active in society” women again “return to the home”?
We are about one and a half months into the New Year, 2015. We all must hast have typed out ‘Happy New Year’ messages on all forms of social media and communication and must have heralded the new year together with friends and family in high spirits. But, the same cannot be said for the 14-year-old girl who was gang-raped in a police station by none other than two policemen, in the Badaun District of Uttar Pradesh (UP), on the eve of the first day of the New Year. 31st December, 2014 also happened to be the one-year anniversary of the death of the young girl who was the victim in the Madhyamgram Rape Case. She succumbed to her burn injuries. And a fortnight earlier i.e. 16th December, 2014 marked two years since the gruesome‘Nirbhaya’ incident in 2012. In these two years, you would think that, the horror of Nirbhaya’s gang rape and then her death and the uproar the entire incident had created, were still fresh in peoples’ minds and that, such incidents would be few and far in between. But, such is not the case crimes against women are at an all time high all over the country. Parents of young girls shouldn’t be the only ones worried because these molesters apparently don’t discriminate based on age. Violation of 4 year old kids to 80-year old women has continued to make headlines. Of the stories of the crimes against women that make the papers, they only do so when it is too late to do anything anymore, the victim either dead or maimed for life. But, the crimes against women happening everyday in every corner, maybe even in front of you, do not make the papers or the prime-time headlines. Thus, it is safe to say that, in general a deterioration of the status of women has occurred. And this is not only in context of our country but also with respect to the world at large.
Now, when we come out to fight for gender equality, we know we have a tough fight ahead of us and the process will take time, but we also assume that, we will achieve our final goal eventually. We assume that, the betterment of women’s conditions will be continuous but, the victory for our cause is inevitable. Our assumptions are mainly based on observing the change in conditions in our local communities, say, realizing that, girls in our families enjoy much more freedom nowadays than our grandmothers ever did and we expect to be better still for our grandchildren. But, we are most definitely in for a shock because as mentioned earlier, there has been a decline in the status of women globally. Now, many factors may be causing this retrogression, but one of the major causes is the religious fundamentalists vying to return to patriarchal dominance. These groups have been successful in pushing back against progress towards equal rights for women. These groups have also gained ground in the Muslim world, Israel and even within the Republican Party in the US and at home of course we have voted into power a Hindu Fundamentalist government.
Middle East has been seen as the central battle ground for the fight for women’s rights, of course, we see those rights in terms of secular culture and ideals that, we have grown up with and have a hard time considering women’s rights from the standpoint of Muslim cultural ideals. Nonetheless, trends in the Middle East do not bode well for women’s status even in terms of Islamic precepts. In 2012, authorities in Saudi Arabia, refused entry to over 1000 Nigerian Muslim women, who’d, made the long journey for their annual pilgrimage – Haj. The grounds that, the authorities stated to deny entry was that, these women were unaccompanied by a male guardians, as is the requirement under the Saudi Law. Actually, the women were accompanied by “male escorts,” but the Saudis had segregated the Nigerians, male from female, and then claimed the women were unescorted. When their mistake was pointed out to the Saudi officials, they had refused to listen. Now, we could attribute this incident to Saudi backwardness, after all this is a country which does not allow its women to drive cars. Those championing the cause of the women in Saudi Arabia (or the world over), feel that, over time, outside pressure will bring the Saudis around to conform to the requirements of gender equality. But, it is not impossible that, influence may flow the other way. For instance, it was reported that, IKEA, a Swedish furniture company with worldwide sales, purged the company’s Saudi catalogue of pictures of females. They just airbrushed them out. Now, the Swedes generally pride themselves on their equitable gender relations, but obviously some of their business executives were quite willing to accommodate Saudi standards when money was to be made.
Upon the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, most women’s rights were expanded. They had open access to the job market and earned the same wages as men for the job they held. They also had open access to the country’s universities and could enroll under any course of study they wished to take up. Today, women make up more than 60 percent of those enrolled in institutions of higher learning, and women engineers, scientists, doctors, architects and the like are common. That is progress by any standard, east or west. But, Iran caught the world’s attention for all the wrong reasons in 2012. 36 Iranian universities had prohibited women from registering for courses in a range of subjects from chemistry and mathematics to education and business. Apparently, this was a measure demanded by powerful conservative factions who felt that women had become too “active in society” and should “return to the home.”
To talk of religious fundamentalism and giving only examples of the Islam-governed countries would be unfair. So, let’s look at Israel. Surveys done in Israel to determine the status of its women, collected information between 2004 and 2011, the findings paint a dismal picture. Discrimination against women in this country is spread across all sectors of society and culture. Twenty percent of Israeli women live in poverty. This is so even though Israeli women tend to be better educated than men. In the last few years the Israeli problem of gender discrimination, was illustrated by the ‘Back-of-the-bus’ Scandal. Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel often imposed gender segregation and, as those communities expanded out from their traditional urban enclaves, they insisted that secular Israelis conform to their standards rather than the other way around. Thus, busses running routes that went through both Orthodox and secular localities, often tried to get women to restrict themselves to the back of the vehicle. But, what might have begun as women boarding only the back of the bus due to modesty, could very easily lead to the segregation of the Israeli society and eventually women losing space in public life entirely.
The United States of Americas prides itself on being a progressive nation and often occupies the moral high-ground when it comes to fighting for women’s rights in other parts of the world. But, all is not well within their homeland as well. Conservative Christians make up more than 20 percent of the voting public in the United States. Their influence runs deep in the Republican Party, and among the lines pushed by this conservative Christian element is an exceedingly patriarchal view of the role of women. The entire Republican social platform is structured around the idea of the traditional family where men are in the public sphere as breadwinners and heads of households, and women stay in private, taking care of children and serving as helpmates to their husbands. If this Christian conservative sentiment has captured the outlook of one of the nation’s two major political parties, we know better that, it might not stop there. A New York Times report had asserted that there was a widespread social anxiety among American men caused by the confusion of gender roles that had allegedly come with growing gender equality in the U.S.
Since, the Nirbhaya incident in the capital, we have seen a shift of power in the Centre as well. Now, this Government came into power following a landslide victory. So, people expect the new government to elevate the disappointing state of affairs in general of this country. We have been talking of the status of women, so let us focus on that. In the recently held Science Congress in the Mumbai, advocates of this new Hindu fundamentalist Government, who call themselves Scientists, lauded the feats of Ancient India. These ‘Ram-bhakts’ find inspiration in the ancient texts of‘Manusmriti’. According to Hindu mythology,Manusmriti is the word of Brahma, and it is classified as the most authoritative statement on Dharma. It is interpreted as the divine code of conduct and the status of women as depicted in the text is considered to be Hindu divine law. While defending Manusmriti as the divine code of conduct, these people cite the verse which, translates as, ‘where women are provided place of honor, gods are pleased and reside there in that household’, but they deliberately then forget numerous other verses which, are full of prejudice, hatred and discrimination against women. There are verses which dictate to women, that even if her husband is immoral and she suffers in his presence, she must continue to serve him because she can attain a place in heaven only by fulfilling her duty to her husband. The text deems women incapable of living an independent life and must always depend on male guardians be it the father, husband or the son. The text advocates marriage between ‘wise men’ aged between 24 and 30 years to ‘women’ aged between 8 and 12 years. These are only a few of the interpretations of the numerous other abominable ‘rules’ of conduct found within the texts of the ‘Manusmriti’. Now, consider this, if those taking the decisions regarding the betterment of the society for women, were ‘Ram-bhakts’, could they fight for the cause of ‘Sita’? Or those who find inspiration in the pages of the ‘Mahabharata’, could they possibly empathise with ‘Draupadi’s’ trials and tribulations? These Indian epics are merely stories, but since the new government came into power much has not changed for the women. Still every day we find newspaper stories and prime-time headlines announcing the death of another girl, woman.
So, we see from examples all over the world that, the status of women is deteriorating and their progress in society is not inevitable. So, as we embark on a new year, we must resolve to continue our fight against these factors that, are consciously trying to push back and hope that, eventually gender equality is realized.
10th February 2015
