MANE-004

Gender and Society

Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

1
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF GENDER
UNIT 1
Conceptual Perspectives on Gender 5
UNIT 2
Patriarchy and Male Dominance 19
UNIT 3
Discrimination and Subordination 31
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Formerly Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Professor Rekha Pande Discipline of Anthropology
Professor of History, SOSS and IGNOU, New Delhi
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) IGNOU, New Delhi
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Studies, School of Social Sciences Assistant Professor
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur
Associate Professor Dr. P. Venkatramana
Faculty of Sociology Assistant Professor
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C.J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Academic assistance provided by Dr. N.K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate (DBT) for the Expert Committee
Meeting.

Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi

Course Coordinator: Dr. Mitoo Das, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Content Editor
Prof. Subhadra Channa
Department of Anthropology
University of Delhi, Delhi

Blocks Preparation Team

Block Introduction Unit Writers
Prof. Subhadra Channa Dr. Ajailiu Niumai, Associate Professor (Unit 1)
Department of Anthropology Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion & Inclusive
University of Delhi, Delhi Policy, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad
Dr. Prashant Khattri, Assistant Professor (Unit 2)
Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi
Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha
Dr. Prashant Khattri, Assistant Professor (Unit 3)
Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi
Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha
Authors are responsible for the academic content of this course as far as the copyright issues are concerned.

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November, 2012
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BLOCK 1 INTRODUCTION

Gender has been a much discussed and debated concept from the seventies
onwards although the roots of the discourse were laid much earlier. The
contribution of anthropologists towards gender as a theoretical construct was
based largely on the huge amount of cross cultural material that is the sustaining
data base of the discipline. From the material from various cultures and societies,
anthropologists were able to take on a critical stand towards existing myths of
gender construction and patriarchy such as the nature –culture debate, the concept
of biological determinism and the public /private dichotomy, to name a few.

The interface of gender as an analytical tool with previously existing social and
cultural parameters such as class, ethnicity, caste, sexuality, kinship and marriage
(to name some) gave rise to a staggering amount of literature and research work.
Some of these extended way beyond the limitations of gender to affect theory at
the macro level, especially those that challenged the objective character of science
and what was deemed a masculine methodology of assumed ‘objectivity’.

The introduction of gendered subjectivity into theory building challenged the

very foundations of scientific methodology and the assumption of truth status
for many so called ‘scientific’ facts, including Freudian psycho-analysis and many
biological and anthropological assumptions.

Gender was seen as one of the prime yet cultural constructs that had a powerful
effect on the organisation of social relationships; particularly manifested in the
almost all pervasive existence of patriarchy. The assumption of a universal
patriarchy gave rise to feminism as a theory and a movement but anthropology
has constantly engaged in a troubled relationship with feminists theories often
making seminal contributions of its own, based again on cross cultural
perspectives. Anthropologists have shown that concepts formulated in a western
context, often have different meanings and implications in different cultures,
like patriarchy may operate at a completely different dimension than as understood
in the west or the meaning of terms like public and private may differ as economies
and societies are organised along completely different premises.

In the three units here you will learn about the theoretical premises of the
construction of gender, reflected in how masculine and feminine are understood
differently cross culturally and how such constructions may vary across both
time and space. Gender constructions are informed through cosmological and
other political and economic structures of society and consequently change as
these social conditions change; gender is thus both dynamic and transformative
in nature. You may also learn that not all societies confine gender to a dichotomy
and there may be more than two genders (as in India). Patriarchy may manifest
itself in various ways and kinship norms and values are both organised around
and inform gender constructs. We find gender norms and stereotypes reflected
almost every aspect of our daily lives and it is hoped that after reading these
lessons the student will be able to understand that many, day- to- day myths and
taken for granted aspects are nothing but constructs that are culturally constructed
and socially transmitted.
Approaches to the Study of
Gender

4
 Conceptual Perspectives on
UNIT 1 CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES ON Gender

GENDER

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Definition of Gender
1.3 Concept of Gender
1.4 Differences between Gender and Sex
1.5 Gender Ideology
1.6 Gender Stratification
1.7 Gender Identity
1.8 Gender Stereotype
1.9 Femininity and Masculinity: Meanings
1.10 Origin of the Terms Femininity and Masculinity
1.11 Dichotomy of Femininity and Masculinity
1.12 Relation, Significance and Contribution of Femininity and Masculinity on
Religion, Sexuality and Culture in India
1.13 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After reading this unit, you will be able to:
 understand the concept of gender and its varied ramifications from an
anthropological perspective;

 comprehend the theoretical discourses on gender and understand about

relationships within and across gender; and

 augment your perception on femininity and masculinity and its critical

relations with culture, sexuality and religion.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
The unit begins by exploring the definitions of gender and investigates the
interface between the concepts of gender and sex. It highlights the matrix of
relationship of gender with other related spheres like sex, identity, ideology,
stratification, stereotype and the like. It also investigates the issues revolving
around femininity and masculinity. The impact of the discourse of femininity
and masculinity on religion, sexuality and culture are also discussed.

5
Approaches to the Study of
Gender 1.2 DEFINITION OF GENDER
According to Ann Oakley (1972: 18), Gender is a matter of culture; it refers to
the societal classification into Masculine and Feminine. In other words, gender
refers to a specific cultural meaning system that attaches to being a male or a
female. Gender is a sexualised identity of individuals in relation to the customs,
traditions, ways of life and the like. It is the social and cultural construction of
roles, tasks, attitudes, values and qualities of males and females. The formation
of gender differs from one culture to the other, as it is a culture specific aspect.
The community or society as a whole contributes to the definition of gender.
Often, our society influences us about the ways in which we expect males and
females to behave and live in a certain way.

1.3 CONCEPT OF GENDER

Gender is a multifaceted reality that is culturally constructed and socially
determined by the society. In other words, gender portrays culturally and socially
constructed roles, responsibilities, privileges, relations and expectations of women
and men. Because these are socially constructed, they can change over time and
differ from one place to another. Gender refers to behavioural differences between
males and females that are culturally based and socially learned (Appelbaum &
Chambliss, 1997:218).

Sometimes, gender is referred mistakenly only to women although it deals with

the distinctive social construction of both men and women. The basic difference
between men and women is the principle of biological reproduction in which
this biological difference overshadows the other qualitative variations and
achievements. Juliet C.W. Mitchel opined that the concept of gender was
introduced in the early 1970s to distinguish the acquisition of social attributes
from biological ones, for which ‘sex’ was reserved. In her view, gender is now
an inclusive term that ultimately has come to include even biology. Mitchel
believed that gender did not have a history or a psychology in which gender has
come to replace women, as in ‘Gender Studies’ versus ‘Women’s Studies’, at
exactly that point where the intimate association between women and procreation
is tending to wither away. She argued that to think of women is to think of
women and children; to think of gender is to think of men and women but it is
also to think of women and women or men and men.

Margaret Mead’s (1935) study of the three societies in the New Guinea Islands,
though contestable on several grounds, contributed significantly to the shaping
of the concept of gender in the latter half of the 20th century. The functionalist
notion of ‘sex-role’ was also a crude precursor of the concept of gender. It
suggested that men and women are socialised into sex-specific roles, namely
‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’. These roles were regarded as the basis of a
complementary relation between men and women, which along with the sexual
division of labour, contributed to a stable social order. Scholars have questioned
the focus of this conceptualisation upon ‘individual’ men and women who are
socialised into sex-specific roles. They suggest that gender is something more
than roles performed by men and women just as economies are something more
than jobs performed by individuals (Lorber 1984). Critics have also pointed out
that socialisation is always a precarious achievement and that agency,
6
interpretation and negotiation are a part and parcel of how gender identities are Conceptual Perspectives on
Gender
actually constituted.

1.4 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENDER AND SEX

Gender gives attention to the socially constructed characteristics of men and
women. Gender is a social construct whereas sex is the biological make-up of
male and female. Sex is what we are born with, and does not change over time,
nor differs from place to place. According to Kendall (1998:68), sex is the
biological difference between men and women. It’s the first label we receive in
life. In some cultures, gender deals with women’s supposed vulnerability, their
identity as the second sex or fairer sex and their need to be protected. The main
gender difference is basically in the biological functions of reproduction. Barbara
F. McManus (1997) also argued that Feminist scholars have been differentiating
sex from gender and view the latter as a socially or culturally constructed category.
She asserts that gender is learned and performed; it involves the myriad and
often normative meanings given to sexual difference by various cultures. She
opines that feminists may differ in the importance they assign to sex, which is a
biologically based category, but the idea that gender norms can be changed is
central to feminist theory. Although sex and gender systems differ cross-culturally,
most known societies have used and still use sex and gender as a key structural
principle organising their actual and conceptual worlds, usually to the
disadvantage of women. Mc Manus has the same opinion with feminist scholars
who argued that gender is a crucial category of analysis and that modes of
knowledge, which do not take gender into account, are partial and incomplete.

The distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, which came to dominate theorisation
in the sociology of gender in the 1970s, is premised upon the idea of universality
of ‘sex’ and variability of ‘gender’. Ann Oakley’s Sex, Gender and Society (1972)
made the sex-gender distinction very popular in sociology. For Oakley, sex is a
word that refers to the biological differences between male and female: the visible
differences in genitalia, the related difference in procreative function. The term
‘sex’ and ‘gender’ can be traced to Robert Stoler, an American Psychiatrist, who
used them to deal with cases of individuals whose biological ‘sex’ did not match
their ‘gender’.

The prominent theorist of feminist anthropology, Henrietta Moore (1988) argued

that there was nothing self-evident or determinant about gender, and that
anthropology with its capacity to understand how differently cultures around the
world conceive of gender and sex, it could not treat the idea of womanhood as
straightforward and unproblematic. On the other hand, Simone De Beauvoir
(2010: 21) states that males and females are two types of individuals who are
differentiated within one species for the purposes of reproduction: they can be
defined only correlatively. At the same time, Ariyabandu (2009) states that gender
refers to the biological or sexual differences between men and women, which
make substantial distinctions in how they behave, relate and respond to needs of
the family, kinship, caste, community, society and the state. These factors are
indications of gender differences and gender roles, which were facilitated by the
process of socialisation, customs, norms, historical traditions and the government
machinery.

7
Approaches to the Study of Undoubtedly, the epistemology of sex needs to be briefly examined through
Gender
Michel Foucault’s philosophy. Foucault (1976) argued that the role of sex and
sexual activity in the discourse of western society during the 17th century made
a fundamental and radical change. His investigation of discourses on sex arrives
as a consequence to the commonly held conviction that there was a gigantic
repression of sex. Foucault raises questions on whether or not sexual repression
is truly an established historical fact; whether prohibition, censorship, and denial
are truly the forms through which power is exercised in a general way, if not in
every society, and whether there really was a historical rupture between the age
of repression and the critical analysis of repression. He pointed out that through
the evolution of Christianity and its doctrine especially of making confessions
regarding sexual sins, society was compelled to start on an elaborate and
inexhaustible discourse on sex. Simone De Beauvoir (ibid) opined that one is
not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Beauvoir clarifies that gender differences
in society make men superior through their role as breadwinners.

The theoretical framework of gender needs to be drawn further from Margaret

Mead and Simone De Beauvoir. Mead (1928), revealed how the behaviour of
men and women differed from one culture to another and thereby challenged the
notion that all gender differences were innate. On the other hand, Beauvoir (ibid)
argued that the division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human
history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman
has not broken it. The couple (man and woman) is a basic unity with its two
halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is
impossible. The critical trait of woman is that, she is the ‘other’ in a totality of
which the two components are essential to one another. Beauvoir argued that
woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change
gradually.

Even till today, although women’s legal rights such as Dowry Prohibition Act
1961, Domestic Violence Act 2005, Hindu Women’s Right to inherit property
and the like are legally recognised, a long-standing custom prevents their full
expression in the mores. Despite the Constitutional guarantees, Indian women
do not enjoy absolute legal and equal rights with men. Our people uphold the
gender biases and culture of patriarchy that are deeply entrenched in the society.
In Beauvoir’s view, both men and women can also be said to make up two castes
from economic perspective; other things being equal, the former hold the better
jobs, get higher wages, and have more opportunity for success than their new
competitors. She asserted that in industry and politics, men have a great many
more positions and they monopolise the most important posts. Today, women
are beginning to take part in the affairs of the world, but it is still a world that
belongs to men. To decline to be the ‘other’, to refuse to be a party to the deal –
this would be for women to renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by
their alliance with the superior caste.

Leela Dube (2001) deals with the intricacy of gender in her empirical study of
the Gond tribal society in Southern Chhattisgarh during the 1950s. She pointed
out that an encounter between an ‘anthropologist as a woman’ vis-à-vis ‘society’
appears to be a relationship that is determined by gender, with the understanding
that flows from a sensitivity of understanding by the actors involved. Dube,
being a woman anthropologist with a rich experience and having the same
biological and cultural imperatives of marriage, family and childbirth that every
8
woman encounters in her life, was able to create a conducive rapport in which Conceptual Perspectives on
Gender
she interacted meaningfully with the Gond tribal women and understood about
their struggles.

With regard to gender roles, Macionis (2002: 262) cited Talcott Parsons, an
American sociologist who claimed that complementary gender roles between
men and women promote the social integration of families and society as a whole.
In other words, Parsons opined that gender forms a complementary set of roles
that bond women and men into family units for carrying out various important
tasks. Women take primary duty for managing the family and raising children
whereas men join the family to the outside world through their participation in
the labor force. Parsons argued that distinctive socialisation teaches both men
and women about their suitable gender identity and skills. Boys were taught to
involved in the labour forces and also to be rational, self-assured and competitive.
On the other hand, girls were taught to be absorbed in the process of child rearing,
domestic chores and being sensitive. The processes of socialisation facilitate
children to learn and internalise the norms and values of the family, community
and society and learn to perform their respective roles. Both boys and girls were
nurtured to become men and women through socialisation in child-rearing, family
beliefs, education, various jobs or service and cultural practices. Gender role
deals with different responsibilities and expectations that society defines and
allocates to men and women. These are not necessarily determined by biological
make-up and therefore can change with time and in different situations.

Gender involves the matrix of relationship between men and women, which can
be changed from a patriarchal to an egalitarian one. Therefore, gender is a
collective and societal formation, which is often stereotyped and can be altered
while sex is perceived as unchangeable, as it is a natural institution in the past.
However, with medical advancement, innovation and scientific technological
revolution, sex can be altered in our contemporary society. The subject of ‘sex-
change’ or ‘sex-transplant’ or ‘trans-gender’ has become a critical and sensational
public discourse in India today.

Box 1
Trans-gender: Transgender is an individual who is often assigned a sex at
birth, but who consider that he or she belong to the opposite sex and his/her
natural given sexual characteristics is an imperfect description of himself/
herself.

Here, we would provide a brief description about gender ideology and how it
influences the process of gender stratification and gender identity. It will also
examine the way in which gender stereotypes take place in the society.

1.5 GENDER IDEOLOGY

According to Andre Beteille (2000: 18), an ideology is that set of ideas and
beliefs which seek to articulate the basic values of group of people – what they
cherish for themselves and for others – to the distribution of power in society.
An ideology is not a systematic theory, although it has systematic properties and
it often strives to be a theory. It may or may not succeed in articulating basic
values to the distribution of power, but such articulation is part of its purpose
9
Approaches to the Study of and design. Greetein (1996b: 586) describes gender ideologies as how a person
Gender
identifies herself and himself with regard to marital and family roles that are
traditionally linked to gender. In other words, gender ideology may refer to the
value of distinctive roles, rights and tasks for men and women in their respective
society. Sometimes, it deals with the prevailing legitimate gender inequality based
on caste, class, tribe and the like. In view of Andre Beteille’s idea on ideology, it
can be argued that gender ideology is also a part of beliefs that sustain gender
stratification.

The noted feminist and anthropologist Sherry Ortner (1996) pointed out the
intricacies of gender ideology in her work in Nepal among the Sherpas. She
opined that in every society, women are viewed as closer to nature, whereas men
are identified with culture, a prejudice that she blames for the universal second-
class status of women. She also examined at men’s obsession with female chastity,
and their systematic control of women’s social and sexual behavior in traditional
societies. She maintains that this ideology was bound up with the emergence of
patriarchal extended families, social hierarchies and the state.

1.6 GENDER STRATIFICATION

Russ Long (2012) opined that gender stratification, cuts across all aspects of
social life, cuts across all social classes, and refers to men and women’s unequal
access to power, prestige, and property on the basis of their sex. To be more
precise, through the process of socialisation, individuals encompass gender into
their personalities or gender identities and gender roles. In the context of
patriarchal Indian society, men are given more power and resources as compared
to women. Therefore, gender becomes an important dimension of social
stratification. With regard to resource distribution among the matrilineal society
(a system in which descent is traced through the mother’s line or maternal
ancestor), an individual belongs to one’s mother’s lineage and the children or
offspring would inherit immoveable or moveable property and titles or surnames
from their maternal lineage. In India, the Garo and Khasi tribes in Meghalaya,
the Muslim tribe of Kalpeni in Lakshwadeep and the Nairs of Kerala are
matrilineal societies, although the Nairs have gradually transformed themselves
into patrilineal society at present. Here, gender is a crucial factor of social
stratification even in matrilineal societies.

Gender stratification maybe analysed from a structural-functional paradigm. The

structural functional paradigm is a theoretical framework that perceives society
as a complex system whose parts work together to advance solidarity and stability.
The major insight of the structural functional paradigm is that gender functions
to organise social life as emphasised by sociologist Talcott Parsons. Macionis J.
John (ibid: 332) argued that gender implies more than how people think and act.
It is about social hierarchy. The reality of gender stratification can be seen first,
in the world of work.

1.7 GENDER IDENTITY

Gender identity is defined as an individual’s perception of oneself as male or
female or third gender and it also deals with how society views you. This concept
is closely related to the concept of gender role that reflects gender identity. Madhu
10
Kishwar (1996) in her article, “Who Am I? Living Identities vs Acquired Ones,” Conceptual Perspectives on
Gender
argued that she became conscious of her identity as a woman only on those few
occasions when she was discriminated against on account of her gender, for
example, when facing sexual harassment or biasness in employment. Otherwise,
her gender identity is only one of her multiple overlapping and crosscutting
identities, which peacefully coexists with other identities. From a sociological
perspective, gender identity involves all the meanings that are applied to oneself
on the basis of one’s gender identification. In turn, these self-meanings are a
source of motivation for gender-related behavior (Burke 1980).

Sometimes, gender identity is imposed on individuals by society. Gender identity

is also self-identified, as a result of a combination of inherent and extrinsic or
environmental factors; gender role, on the other hand, is manifested within society
by observable factors such as behaviour and appearance. The formation of gender
identity is a multifaceted process that commences with conception and it involves
processes during gestation and even learning experiences after birth. In some
societies, the traditional norms insist that every one be classified either as a man
or a woman. When the gender identity of an individual makes her a woman
although her genitals are male, she may experience what is known as ‘dysphoria’
that means a profound depression caused by experience of herself as a woman
and her lack of phallus. Gender role is normally an external expression of gender
identity. Majority of people believed that gender identity and gender role are in
accord. Sometimes, cultural differences proliferate in the expression of one’s
gender role, but in some other societies, such fine distinction is accepted since
gender norms can play a part in describing gender identity.

Box 2
Gender Division of Labour: It is the consequence of how a particular
society divides work among men and women according to what is considered
appropriate to each gender.

1.8 GENDER STEREOTYPE

Gender stereotypes are one-sided and exaggerated images of men and women
which are deployed repeatedly in everyday lives. Stereotyping is a process by
which children are socialised into sex roles, and by which adults and children
are denied opportunities for more individually varied development (Marshall
1994). Gender stereotype is the assignment of roles, tasks and responsibilities to
a particular gender on the basis of preconceived prejudices. It is also the
assumptions made about a particular gender that may be positive or negative.
Often, we observe that gender stereotyping is based on past speculations although
it may not be true. Gender stereotype barely convey truthful information about
other people. Alternatively, gender stereotype is a basic overview about the gender
characteristics, disparities and roles of individuals and groups. Whenever people
apply gender assumptions to others, they are propagating gender stereotyping.

Gender stereotyping often reveals conventionally simplified visuals concerning

the standard social roles of men and women. Some of the stereotypes of men and
women are: ‘men are not sensitive’; ‘women are not great drivers’ and ‘women
love nagging and gossiping’. Gender stereotypes are beliefs held about
characteristics and activity-domains that are considered being appropriate for
11
Approaches to the Study of men and women. The typical characteristics of traditional Indian women are
Gender
submissiveness, piousness, obedience and passiveness. In other words, a
traditional Indian woman’s role is to be in charge of domestic chores like serving
her husband, looking after her children, cooking and cleaning. Such women were
appreciated as “virtuous ideal Indian women”.

In India, our culture upholds that respectable women are sensitive, caring, dresses
decently and speaks softly which are considered as core values to make women
more feminine. On the other hand, power and authority are traits commonly held
by Indian men. The men are perceived to dominate the activities related to
economics. The economy mode largely determines the social position of men
and women wherein men are the center of family and society, whereas women
are a part of property of men. Such type of gender stereotype creates a negative
impact on women’s lives. Nevertheless, it is a fact that gender stereotypes are
dynamic and not static. It is influenced by the ideology and economic situation
of a particular era. Both men and women carry out their responsibilities according
to the division of the innate characteristics of gender. Gender stereotypes are
reflected in marriage, family and community.

Activity
What is gender inequality? Find out how does gender inequality come into
play in educational institutions (in the classroom, selection of courses and
administration)?

1.9 FEMININITY AND MASCULINITY:

MEANINGS
Femininity is a quality of being feminine whereas masculinity is a manly
characteristic that distinctively describes men and boys. The terms ‘masculinity’
and ‘femininity’ are gender categorisations whereas ‘male’ and ‘female’ are sex
categorisations. Both femininity and masculinity are rooted in the social rather
than the biological. Jan E. Stets and Peter J. Burke pointed out that societal
members decide what being male or female means (e.g., dominant or passive,
brave or emotional), and males will generally respond by defining themselves as
masculine while females will generally define themselves as feminine. Because
these are social definitions, however, it is possible for one to be female and see
herself as masculine or male and see himself as feminine.

In India, the main driving forces of socialisation such as family, kinship,

community, peer groups, schools, print and electronic media and the like
strengthens the cultural definitions of what is feminine and masculine. Leela
Dube (2001) made a distinction between the ideas of femininity from the concept
of femininity that is a characteristic of women’s identity at a structural level in
which she saw it as a continuous process in women’s lives. She argued that these
processes have effect in the existing space between biological truth and kinship
relationships. In her argument, women are perceived as upholders of kinship
who also determine the relationships between genders. Dube focuses on the
patrilineal, patrilocal descent pattern of the Gond tribe while studying their kinship
structure that determines the rule of descent and the sharing of property and
resources.

12
Margaret Mead was one of the first to empirically ground the distinction between Conceptual Perspectives on
Gender
the biological and social characteristics of men and women. She did this rather
dramatically through her study of the conceptions of masculinity and femininity
among the Arapesh, Mundugamor and Tchambuli, three non-western societies
in the New Guinea Islands (Mead 1935). She found that, among the Arapesh,
both males and females displayed a “feminine” temperament (passive, cooperative
and expressive). Among the Mundugamor, both males and females displayed a
“masculine” temperament (active, competitive and instrumental). And, among
the Tchambuli, men and women displayed temperaments that were different from
each other and opposite to the western pattern. In that society, men were emotional,
and expressive while women were active and instrumental. Mead’s study caused
people to rethink the character of femininity and masculinity. It becomes obvious
that, different gender-related traits, temperaments, roles and identities could no
longer be inextricably tied to biological sex. On the basis of this study, Mead
argues that the western equation between masculinity and aggression on the one
hand and femininity and nurturance on the other is but one among a number of
possible permutations of characteristics which have no intrinsic relation with
biological sex.

1.10 ORIGIN OF THE TERMS FEMININITY AND

MASCULINITY
Today, the psychoanalytical studies of gender identity have attempted to
understand the origin and relationships of femininity and masculinity. The origin
of the terms femininity and masculinity emerges after Sigmund Freud (1962)
formulated his theory of sexuality based on the anatomy of men and women.
Sigmund Freud showed interest in the discourse on femininity and masculinity
during the late 1870s in which he attempted to examine this issue from the bisexual
and psychosexual development perspectives. His works in Three Essays on the
Theory of Sexuality (1962), and in his article, “Feminine Sexuality” (1931)
espouse the idea of a bisexuality that involves, in every human being, a more or
less harmonious synthesis of feminine and masculine characteristics. According
to Freud, the antagonism of femininity and masculinity go before the other pairs
of opposites like active and passive, phallic and castrated which pave the way
for it. He also opined that femininity emerges after the reorganisation of the
psyche at the time of puberty. The antagonism between femininity and masculinity
tends to be hazed, in view of the fact that both sexes are amalgamated in the
similar rejection of a femininity that is equated with being deprived of the phallus.
He was not entirely at ease in his approach to the questions of feminine sexuality
and bisexuality. His critics pointed out his limitations in this area, particularly
with regard to his equation of femininity with passivity.

1.11 DICHOTOMY OF FEMININITY AND

MASCULINITY
The term dichotomy has become a critical query in contemporary epistemological
debates. The meaning of dichotomy deals with ‘a division or contrast between
two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different’
(Oxford Dictionary online 2011); it can be perceived as dualism which categorises
how we believe. A dichotomy presumes a belief in the reality of dual contradictory
13
Approaches to the Study of principles in every aspect. In this method, dichotomy operates hierarchical
Gender
intentions by defining what is normal and abnormal, what is evil and good, what
is excluded and included. The dichotomy of femininity and masculinity becomes
critical in contemporary society. In our everyday lives, people would expect us
to act, behave and live according to our specific gender. Many people are not
able to live up to standards that are set for women and men.

Often, parents in India would advice their children to behave according to their
gender. For instance, girls are taught to be coy, sober, sensitive, soft-spoken and
submissive whereas boys are encouraged to be aggressive, dominant and tough.
Masculinity is manifested in being strong and tough whereas being weak and
soft are associated with femininity. It is not possible to call these Indian cultural
phenomena “natural”. From the moment a child is born in our family, questions
would be raised whether the baby is a boy or a girl. And, the cultural expectations
are formed around the children, based on gender. Conscious and unconscious
motives of having the family legacy continue through the boy bring delight.
Toys like cars, lions, guns and elephants are bought for him preferably blue and
never pink as it is categorised with masculinity. When a boy grows up, he would
be taught to act brave, valiant and ‘not cry like a girl.’ He is trained to suppress
his emotions as he is told it is ‘feminine’ to express it. He is encouraged to
pursue sports, manage finance, drive, involve in decision-making but discouraged
from domestic chores. He has fewer restrictions while going out owing to his
masculinity, which also defines his primary role as breadwinner.

On the other hand, if a girl is delivered, her room is maybe decorated with the
supposed feminine colour pink and dolls are purchased for her. The infants do
not care concerning their identity being associated with colours. They are not
even conscious of the significance of pink or blue colours which people link
with femininity and masculinity. In India, a girl child is often considered inferior
to a boy child. The thought of ‘giving her away’ and ‘saving for her dowry and
marriage expenses’ may bring misery for her parents. She would be encouraged
to learn cooking, dancing, singing, housekeeping and the like and she may have
restrictions on going out. Her gender would define her role and function at home as
sister, aunt, wife, mother and homemaker.

Activity
Are masculinity and femininity related to prejudice? If your answer is ‘yes’,
to what kinds of prejudice are they related?

Box 4
Gender gap: Unfair differences in the situation or access to service of men
and women. These may result from religious prejudices, traditional practices,
social assumption, myths and taboos among others.

14
 Conceptual Perspectives on
1.12 RELATION, SIGNIFICANCE AND Gender

CONTRIBUTION OF FEMININITY AND

MASCULINITY ON RELIGION, SEXUALITY
AND CULTURE IN INDIA
Here the question arises as to how does religion affect femininity and masculinity?
Why will religious beliefs, practices, or organisations reflect or deviate from
dominant patterns of gender inequality? To what extent will religious influences
affect gender inequality? It is evident that religion, culture and tradition in India
are commonly used to justify women’s inferior position in the society. The main
religious texts have been interpreted to strengthen the power of men in our society.
Gonsoulin (2005) asserts that women’s usefulness have been defined from a
male’s perspective. This is explicitly witnessed in Hinduism. There is an intrinsic
link of femininity and masculinity, in which the notion of Goddess as ‘Devi’
represents the female characteristic of the divine being among the Hindus. The
concept of ‘Shakti’ (power) symbolises the divine feminine creative power and
also signifies the sacred force that moves through the entire cosmos and the
agent of change. ‘Shakti’ indicates the feminine counterpart without whom the
masculine characteristic, which represents consciousness or discrimination,
remains powerless and negated. ‘Shakti’ is also known as ‘Prakriti’ being the
feminine manifestation of Brahma who is the supreme God of wisdom by which
the universe exists and functions. The comprehensive force known as ‘Yoni’ in
Hinduism is feminine in nature with motivation being the life force of creation.
Indisputably, Hinduism celebrates femininity and masculinity in distinctive
dimensions.

Traditionally, the subject matter of sexuality is a taboo in the public domain.

However, it is remarkable to mention that the ancient Hindu sculptures and idols
positioned in various temples across the country, including the historic Ajanta
and Ellora caves reveals the sexuality, femininity and masculinity associated
with gods, goddesses and religion. The specific carvings and wide-ranging designs
covering several temples show deities in almost every sexual position that you
can imagine. Such portrayals of sexuality may be appalling for some people but
if we understand Hinduism, the display illustrates an Indian conventional way of
thinking about sexuality. In our country, gods and goddesses have always been
seen to embrace diverse kinds of sexuality, and the physical connection between
two beings is perceived as a means to attain spirituality - ‘nirvana’. The center of
attention in Hinduism is not on whether the sexual participants are biologically
the same or different to each other. Interestingly, trans-gendered gods can be traced
in Hinduism too. It becomes clear that gender is socially constructed, and that
sexualities have been displayed in India through its religion for many centuries.

The division between femininity and masculinity represents the Indian traditional
model, where differences between genders are often exaggerated. Both genders
(men and women) are biologically determined and unchangeable wherein they
are distinct, with separate spheres of influence and qualities. Hence, the discourse
on transgender, gays and lesbians are not accepted at ease in India. At the same
time, masculinity is more highly valued in our culture and it is expressed through
certain characteristics like chivalry, power, courage, boldness, achievement,
invention and poise, which are perceived as being inherent to them. These qualities
15
Approaches to the Study of have been acknowledged as masculine in biological as well as physiological
Gender
aspects. It is perceived that the contributions of femininity and masculinity are
different but it should be valued in the same way.

It is important to point out that; the Hindu masculine cultural values refer to the
spirit of struggle, wealth, competition, goal, power and authority. Intriguingly,
the feminine cultures give emphasis to additional value on relationships between
people and attributes of life. On the other hand, the masculine cultures highlights
the differences between gender roles which are more dramatic as compared with
the feminine cultures wherein men and women possess similar values emphasising
compassion and humility. It allows us to reflect and perceive new ideas of gender,
sexuality and religion. India stands for unity in diversity wherein every ethnic
group and caste is different from each other, but we tend to believe that deep
inside all people are the same especially when the question of sexuality arises. In
the sense, we tend to minimise cultural differences with regard to sexuality. In
order to be able to understand and gain esteem with regard to cross-cultural
relationships between different castes, class, ethnic groups, tribes and communities,
we need to create massive awareness of the diverse cultural differences.

1.13 SUMMARY
Femininity and masculinity have been the central representation for understanding
gender. Femininity and masculinity signifies the social outcomes of being female
or male and their respective characteristics. Some feminists assert that biological
differences get heightened through social descriptions of femininity and
masculinity. As Judith Butler opined, any theorisation about gender introduces
the idea of performance of gender in terms of masculinity and femininity.
Therefore, performance of gender becomes instinctive as gender gets internalised
through the socialisation process within the dominant discourses of patriarchy.
Gender is performed at different levels within the family, kinship, class, tribe
and caste. We socially enter into our gendered categories of femininity and
masculinity from the day we are born. Today, social categorisation of femininity
and masculinity are blurring. There is a constant shift in the conceptualisation of
men and women as controlled by complete biological or social forces.

References
Ariyabandu, Madhavi Malalgoda. 2009. “Sex, Gender and Gender Relations in
Disasters”. Enarson, Elaine and Chakrabarti, Dhar, P.G (eds), Women, Gender
and Disaster: Global Issues and Initiatives. New Delhi:Sage Publications.

Applebaum, Richard. P and William J. Chabliss. 1977. Sociology: A Brief

Introduction. New York: Orient Longman.

Beauvoir, De, Simone. 2010. The Second Sex, translated by Constance Borde
and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. London: Vintage Books.

Beteille, Andre. 2000. Antinomies of Society – Essays on Ideologies & Institutions.

New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York and London: Routledge.

16
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter – On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New Conceptual Perspectives on
Gender
York and London: Routledge.

Burke, Peter J. 1980. “The Self: Measurement Implications from a Symbolic

Interactionist Perspective”. Social Psychology Quarterly 43: 18-29.

Dube, Leela. 2001. Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields.

New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Foucault, Michel. 1976. The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality. London:
Penguin Books.

Freud, Sigmund. 1931. “Feminine Sexuality”. SE, 21: 221-243

Freud, Sigmund. 1962. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans, James
Strachey. New York: Basic Books.

Gonsoulin Margaret. 2005. “Women’s Rights and Women’s Rites: Religion at

the Historical Root of Gender Stratification”.Electronic Journal of Sociology.
Source: http://www.sociology.org/content/2005/tier1/religion_gender.pdf

Greetein, T.N. 1996. “Husbands’ Participation in Domestic Labor: Interactive

Effects of Wives’ and Husbands’ Gender Ideologies”. Journal of Marriage and
Family, 58: 585 to 595.

Jan E. Stets and Peter J. Burke. “Femininity and Masculinity”. Edgar F. Borgatta
and Rhonda J. V. Montgomery (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Sociology, Revised Edition.
New York: Macmillan.

Macionis, J. John. 2002. Society: The Basic. New York: Prentice Hall.

Marshall, Gordon. 1994. Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford, U.K: Oxford

University Press.

Kendall, Lori. 1998. “Meaning and Identity in “Cyberspace”: The Performance

of Gender, Class and Race Online”. Symoblic Interaction. Vol 2, Issue 2.

Kishwar, Madhu. 1996. “Who Am I ? Living Identities vs Acquired Ones,”

Manushi, 94, May-June.
McManus, F. Barbara. 1997. Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics.
New York: Twayne.
Mead, Margaret. 1928. The Coming Age in Samoa. USA: William Morrow and
Company.
Mead, Margaret. 1935. Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies.
Chicago: Harper Perennial.
Moore, Henrietta L. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press.
Oakley, Ann. 1972. Sex, Gender and Society. London: Temple Smith.
Ortner, Sherry. 1996. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. New
York: Beacon Press.
17
Approaches to the Study of Russ Long. 2012. Introductory Sociology – Institutional Discrimination:
Gender
Gendered Stratification. Source: http://dmc122011.delmar.edu/socsci/rlong/intro/
gender.htm

Suggested Reading

Beauvoir, De, Simone. 2010. The Second Sex, translated by Constance Borde
and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. London: Vintage books.

Freud, Sigmund. 1962. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans, James
Strachey. New York: Basic Books.

Sample Questions
1) What do you mean by the term gender? Define and discuss.
2) What are the problems due to which there is gender inequality in Indian
society?
3) How do we conceptualise and evaluate femininity and masculinity in others
and ourselves?
4) How is gender related to culture?

18
 Conceptual Perspectives on
UNIT 2 PATRIARCHY AND MALE Gender

DOMINANCE

Contents
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Theoretical Perspectives on the Origin of Patriarchy
2.3 Sexuality of Women and Male Dominance
2.4 Historical Perspective on Women’s Productive and Reproductive Roles
2.5 Patrilocality, Matrilateral Kinship and Patriarchy
2.6 Marriage Pattern and the Institutionalisation of Patriarchy and Male
Dominance
2.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After having read this unit, you should be able to:
 define and understand patriarchy and male dominance;
 understand the origin of patriarchy;
 understand that how control over women’s sexuality is a reflection of
patriarchy;
 understand the dynamics and linkages between production, reproduction
and patriarchy;
 locate patriarchy in an anthropological, historical and archaeological
perspective;
 understand the institutionalisation of patriarchy and male dominance through
kinship, family and marriage patterns; and
 understand how caste and patriarchy are interlinked and how caste becomes
an instrument of male dominance and patriarchy.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
We are living in the so called modern or by some standards post-modern world,
which is based upon the ideology of egalitarianism and universality but try and
look around and you will find lots of examples that are contrary to the general
conception about this 21st century. We are still carrying the burden of traditional
divided society which was based primarily on ascribed statuses that ensured the
place of a person in a particular community, caste or group by virtue of her birth
in that particular group. Prejudice and discriminatory attitude is something that
has not changed much over a period of time. This is true even in the case of
19
Approaches to the Study of gender discrimination which is a manifestation of patriarchal mindset and ideology
Gender
that stops short of calling this century a truly modern one. While penning down
this unit, there is a debate going on in electronic and print media about the issue
of male dominance and patriarchy. Cases in point are the recent molestation of a
girl by a mob in Gwahati, Assam and pronouncement of patriarchal diktats by
khap or caste panchayats in Uttar Pradesh. In Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh,
a caste panchayat announced that the women of the village will not carry mobile
phones with them and their movement in and around the village will be monitored
and restricted. Similarly in Assam a girl was molested by a mob publically and
in full view of the media. These incidents also highlighted the insensitivity and
callous attitude of some agencies that were supposed to be the custodians of
women rights. This brings us to the point where we should understand and rethink
about how our society is structured in a manner that is biased towards the male
members and overlook the rights and privileges of women (Rajalakshami, 2012).

Sometimes the state apparatus also behaves and is structured in such a way as to
promote male dominance. One can look at the example of Hindu Succession
Act, 1956 which was amended in 2005 but still contains provisions that are in
favour of women’s husband’s family. This act relates with the succession of
property. It is stated in the act that the self-acquired property of a women who
dies without writing her will and in the absence of her husband and children will
belong to her husband’s family and not to her parents. This is a clear reflection
of the societal and traditional norm where a woman after marriage is considered
to be a member of her in-laws family and not to her natal family. Similarly in a
marriage alliance a woman is not considered as an equal partner in marital property
or husband’s property acquired after marriage. This inequality devalues her
contribution towards the marital property in terms of her labour that she provides
under the rubrics of house-keeping and as a primary care giver to her children
and husband (Singh, 2012; Rao 2008; Pal 2004). Beside these examples there
are other more visible instances like sex-selective abortions that indicate towards
a generalised discriminatory attitude towards women. These examples also reflect
a patriarchal mind-set and male dominance. The next section will deal with the
definition and theoretical perspectives on patriarchy and male dominance.

Activity
Make an inventory of similar issues that depict male dominance. Look
around for such examples, read newspaper and magazines for such news
that depict a power relation between male and female.

2.2 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE

ORIGIN OF PATRIARCHY
Now one may wonder, how can we define patriarchy. It is a rather tricky question,
as with other kinds of definitions related with social phenomenon and concepts,
defining patriarchy in its entirety is not always possible. It is therefore better to
understand the concept rather than getting into some watertight definition.
However, patriarchy can be defined as “a system of social structure and practices
in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women” (Walby, 1990). This
definition clearly outlines the nature of patriarchy which is engrained in our
social structure that gives it a very fundamental character. Based on this social
20
structure, men dominate and exploit women and their action gets legitimised by Patriarchy and Male
Dominance
the existing structure through institutions like family, kinship, marriage, religion,
class, caste, race, etc. Patriarchy envisages within itself a form of power relation
between men and women. In this relationship a hierarchy exists that places men
in an advantageous position and this makes a complete recipe for female
exploitation. In a more literal sense patriarchy (pitrasatta in Hindi) denotes rule
of father in a male-dominated family. This rule emerges from an unequal resource
distribution like land which is invariably inherited by the male line of descent.
This control over the resources later gets translated into control over the production
and reproduction of women. However later in this unit we will also see that how
matrilineal and bilateral kinship structures alter this power relation in family and
outside.

Feminism as an ideology has always tried to deal with the question and conception
of patriarchy. There are different philosophical traditions in feminism that
conceptualise patriarchy differently. Prominent among them are: Liberal
Feminism, Marxist Feminism and Radical Feminism. Liberal Feminism is based
on the philosophy of individual rights. The birth of Liberal Feminism dates back
to the 18th century when it was realised that women should no longer be subjugated
to the authority of males. It was in this context that liberal feminists challenged
the customary and legal framework that reflected a biased understanding of
women based on their inferior physical and intellectual capabilities which were
used as instruments to subjugate and subordinate women. It is with the writings
of Mary Wollstonecraft that one traces the birth of Liberal Feminism as a separate
feminist movement. In her magna carta- “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”,
Wollstonecraft advocates for equal opportunity for both men and women. She
emphasises that it is imperative that women are educated and made aware of
their political and social rights in order to claim equal status at par with men. In
the 19th century John Stuart Mill emerged as the leading scholar of Liberal
Feminism and advocated that women are required to participate equally and
pro-actively in various societal affairs and hence strive for equality (Mill, 1869;
Eisenstein, 1981). Liberal feminists advocated that women should not only be
confined to the domestic domain and there should be equal opportunity for them
to participate in the public and political spheres of life. According to them
patriarchy has confined women to the four walls of the house and therefore they
need to get liberated in order to come out of the clutches of patriarchy. Liberals
attacked the myth that women, because of their feminine behaviour are not suited
for outside world and therefore they seek refuge and security within the domestic
sphere of life. However, Liberal Feminism is being criticised on the issue of
being very individualistic and therefore totally overlooking the structural, societal
and familial basis for male dominance and patriarchy. Liberal feminists do not
take a critical view of family and are focused solely on capturing space and
rights for individual women in the public domain. They are also being criticised
for being elitists since most of the rights gathered in this manner will be availed
by the so-called upper class/caste women. Therefore this stream of feminism did
not voice the concern of other differentially suppressed women on the basis
either of class, caste, race etc. Again, on the issue of origin of male dominance
and patriarchy liberal feminists are found wanting. They do not provide with a
theory that can explain the circumstances that led to patriarchal set-up and male
dominance in society.

21
Approaches to the Study of This gap was however filled by Marxist Feminism that deals with the issue of
Gender
origin of patriarchy and male dominance. Marxist feminists are of the view that
patriarchy originated with the origin of private property (Engels, 1948). It is
with the emergence of private ownership of property and its transfer through the
male line of descent that patriarchy as a social structure was born. They also
relate the concept of patriarchy with the capitalist mode of production. However
they have been criticised for just adding the issue of gender to their already
existing framework of class oppression. They are also silent on the issue of women
oppression before the advent of private property. There are empirical evidences
that point to the fact that women oppression and male dominance was present
even before the advent of private property. Claude Levi-Strauss observed that
the exchange of women is the basic form of exchange and it took place because
of some taboo on incestuous relationships (sexual relations between close relatives
like father and daughter, brother and sister, mother and son etc.) in each and
every society. This kind of taboo required that women be acquired from a group
outside one’s own and thus clan, lineage, village exogamy originated. This gave
rise to the manipulation of female sexuality and hence the emergence of male
dominance.

Another group of feminist scholars known as radical and revolutionary feminists

tried to understand and explain the origin of patriarchy and male dominance
through the notion of female sexuality and its manipulation by the male. They
are of the view that biologically women are different from men. This is the basic
fact recognised by this brand of feminism. This biological difference defines the
role of women as child bearers. This biological role is however translated and
interpreted as related to the notion of “motherhood” which defines the role of
mother in terms of both child bearing and child rearing. They are of the view that
biology alone is not responsible for such skewed power relations between male
and female but their cultural interpretation is responsible for the same. ‘Gendering
of sex’ takes place in the socio-cultural context. In other words the control of
male over the reproductive capacity of female is the root cause of patriarchy.
Sheila Jeffrey, one of the revolutionary feminist puts her point on the origin of
patriarchy by saying that there are basically two systems of class that operate in
a society- i) the class based on and originating from the relations of production
and ii) the class that is based on and originates from the relation of reproduction.
It is the second system of class that is responsible for women subordination and
patriarchy. Similarly, Finella McKenzie argued that the first kind of division of
labour was between men and women and it originated from women’s reproductive
capacity and men’s greater strength. This made women dependent on men and
thus gave rise to unequal power distribution. However she also writes that it is
not only because of this differential reproductive capacity that subordinates
women but this biological differentiation is turned into psychological dependency
by men and the social structure as a whole. This stream of feminism is however
criticised for being biological determinist and reductionist. It also does not provide
any alternative to end patriarchy or improve the condition of women. They
advocate that women should be made aware of this kind of subordination which
in turn can help in improving their condition (Beechey 1979; Lewin 2006; James
2010; Ranade 2007).

22
 Patriarchy and Male
2.3 SEXUALITY OF WOMEN AND MALE Dominance

DOMINANCE
The male control over the sexuality of women is considered to be a manifestation
of patriarchy. This control is exercised by the male within the structure of marriage,
family and kinship. Especially in the patrilineal societies like ours in India the
institutions of marriage, family and kinship becomes a site for reproducing the
patriarchal structures. In a marital alliance a virgin bride is always desirable.
Pre-marital sex is seen in terms of moral pollution which is more severe for the
women than for the men. It is considered that through the sexual intercourse a
woman gets internally polluted whereas a male only gets external pollution.
Internal pollution is related to the pollution of the substance. The concept of
substance holds a great importance in maintaining caste distances (Beteille, 1991;
Dube, 2009). The caste hierarchies and distances are maintained through the
concept of selective exchange of women to a certain caste or castes. In this way
the sexuality of women gets connected with the larger social structure based on
caste. Again the concept of hyper-gamy and hypo-gamy demonstrates a strict
control over the female sexuality. Hyper-gamy to some extent is permitted where
a man of higher caste can have union with a woman of lower caste but hypo-
gamous unions are strictly prohibited. Even if a woman of higher caste gets
entangled with a lower caste male, it can bring serious consequences to both the
families. There are numerous such examples where honour killings took place
in the name of such unaccepted marital or love unions. This exemplifies that the
control over the sexuality of women becomes an instrument of reproducing caste
hierarchies. This also exemplifies a kind of corporate control over the sexuality
of women. In this kind of control female sexuality gets attached with the honour
of an entire village, caste, community or family and any infringement over the
same can bring a lot of dishonor to the entire group. This kind of corporate
control over the sexuality of women is also demonstrated by anthropologists
like D.N. Majumdar who in his monograph named ‘The Himalyan Polyandry’
on the people of Jaunsar Bawar region of Dehradun documented fraternal
polyandrous marriage alliance between a bride and all the brothers of a particular
household where the marriage gets solemnised. Here the main issue is related
with the right of access to the female sexuality which by such alliances gets
restricted to the family or household as a unit. There are other such studies that
have documented the marriage alliance of a bride with several brothers. Other
studies have also documented that there is an unwritten rule or an accepted practice
where after the death of the husband, the widow has to marry her husband’s
brother. This can be analysed in the light of retaining the women and her children,
if any, within the family or lineage so that the right over the father’s property
remains within the household or family. This indicates a strong feeling of
ownership of women, her labour and reproductive power. The patriarchal mind-
set is quite well observable in Hindu marriage rituals and relations between the
bride and grooms family. A kind of power relations exist between the families of
bride and groom. The exchange of gifts and dowry indicate this kind of unequal
relationship. A bride is considered to be a financial liability and burden over the
groom’s family which must be compensated adequately in order to solemnise
the marriage. This undermines the productive work which women generally
perform within the household. Household chores are considered to be non
consequential as their labour is considered to be non-productive and taken for
23
Approaches to the Study of granted. Therefore women are rendered powerless both at the level of production
Gender
and reproduction.

At the level of family, the sexuality of women is under the control of her brothers
and father. Leela Dubey (2009) explains this with the help of a very general yet
powerful observation that brothers in the context of South Asian countries like
India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are provided with the task of keeping an eye on
the movement of their sisters. They have the responsibility of protecting their
sisters. This kind of responsibility gives them the right to exercise power over
the female and dictate their behaviors according to their own whims and fancies.
There have been several incidents reported where the brothers killed their sisters
who were found guilty of illicit love or wanting to marry against the wishes of
their parents. Exemplifying cases from Andhra Pradesh, Dube states that brothers
often scold their sisters if they found them standing at the doorstep during the
evening as they consider it to be gesture adopted by the prostitutes in order to
invite their customers. However Dube further compares the situation of control
over female sexuality in patrilineal South Asia with that of matrilineal and bilateral
South-East Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. She argues
that the kinship system based on matrilineality and bilateral concept has greater
tolerance and less control over the female sexuality. She argues that in countries
like Malaysia where Islamic influence is seen, there are restrictions on sexual
behaviour placed on women before marriage but such restrictions are also placed
equally on the men. It is quite common in Indonesia for women to migrate for
work to urban centers and leave their husband’s behind to look after their land
and children. In Thailand women take to the profession of prostitution to support
their families but they do return to the ‘mainstream’ and get married after
sometime. This cannot even be imagined in the context of South Asia. The basic
idea that underlines this behavioral attitude pertains to the fact that men are not
the users of women’s sexuality (Dube, 1988; 2000; 2009).

Activity
Discuss on the issue of sexuality of women depicted in Indian Cinema and
its impact on the larger society.

2.4 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON WOMEN’S

PRODUCTIVE AND REPRODUCTIVE ROLES
The relation of production and reproduction needs to be analysed historically in
order to understand the consolidation of patriarchy. Uma Chakraborty in her
essay on Brahminical patriarchy in early India tries to understand this relation of
production and reproduction during historical periods. She has based her analysis
largely on pre-historical, proto-historical and historical accounts and evidences
that throw some light on the dimension of women’s role both in production and
reproduction. Her argument starts with the contention that in the hunting and
food gathering stages women’s role was not restricted only in terms of
reproduction but they also played active role in food gathering and also sometimes
in hunting which she argues is evident in cave paintings of Bhimbetka and other
archaeological sites in central India. In many such paintings women are depicted
wearing some sort of head gear (depicting power and authority) and are shown
taking part during hunting activities. The reproductive role of women was also
24
considered important since they were considered as ‘life givers’ and thus having Patriarchy and Male
Dominance
close association with the events of life and death. This belief places women in
some sort of mystical and supernatural space which is in sync with the evidence
found related with the cult of mother goddess. During the Indus Valley Civilisation
the position of women and the emergence of patriarchy cannot be established
based on the evidence since the in-situ evidence is not supported by written
documents as they are not yet decisively deciphered. However, there are evidences
of class formation which are depicted and present in the form of rural and urban
centers, citadel, surplus grain stocks etc. Presence of female figurines, mother
goddess icons and dancing girl statues can be seen as pointing towards the
important role of women in relation to reproduction. But nothing can be said
with conviction regarding the gender relations.

It was with the coming of the Aryans that the real consolidation of patriarchy and
male dominance took place. It is intended in early Vedic literature that the Aryans
had to fight with the indigenous people of the land and in this fight they conquered
their cattle, land and women. This is the first ever historical evidence of women
taken as captives by the Aryans. These women then were assigned different roles
that related with serving the Aryan race and were also used as gift items thus
depicting a control over their sexuality. Later-on various texts including the
Arthashastra and Manusmriti outlines the behaviour of women and laid down
rules for controlling their productive and reproductive capacities. There are written
evidences that are sufficient to show that the state also had some control over the
reproductive powers and sexuality of women. In this context it was laid down
that the king can punish a woman for her adulterous behavior. This state control
was guided by the principal that the sexuality of women needs to be controlled
and this controlling power lies mainly with the husband after the women is married
and if the husband is not able to control her then the state can take action against
such ‘culprit’. This also had some effect on the role of production of women.
With such strict control over her sexuality, she was now mainly confined to the
domestic sphere of life. Here also the kind of importance that must be accorded
to a women’s productive role was absent (Chakravarti 1993).

2.5 PATRILOCALITY, MATRILATERAL KINSHIP

AND PATRIARCHY
Kinship structures form an important part of social organisation. Kinship structure
of a society decides and ensures the membership of people into various groups.
Like in a patrilineal kinship structure a son remains a member of the family of
orientation whereas the daughter has to leave her natal house and move to the
family of her affinal kins after marriage. She becomes a member of her husband’s
patriliny. It is through these membership rules that the society perpetuates itself
within a definite structure. These kinship structures have special bearing on the
perpetuation of patriarchal social structures. The rule of residence after marriage
is an important reflection of the principles of kinship. Leela Dube has rightly
underscored the relation between rules of residence and kinship principles when
she says- “Residence is a material as well as an ideological expression of
principles of kinship” (pp.- 93). In the patrilocal form of residence, a couple
after marriage resides with the family of the groom. This kind of residential
arrangement is found in large parts of India. It is based on the basic premise that
the daughter is not a permanent member of her natal house and she has to move
25
Approaches to the Study of out after marriage. This really has an important bearing on her productive and
Gender
reproductive capacities and autonomy. It also influences the rules of inheritance
and daughter’s share in parental property. It is generally argued against the
daughter’s claim over her parental property that if she gets a share of the property
then it will eventually belong to her husband and her in-laws. Also the notion of
payment of dowry dilutes her claim over the property since it is believed that the
dowry is in lieu of her share in the property. The idea of partilocality entails that
a daughter has to sever all ties with her natal house upon marriage. Her in-laws
house is generally a new place where she has limited access and control over
productive resources. Her sexuality is also controlled by her husband and in-
laws in the form of demands placed on her to give birth to a male child (Dube,
2009).

As in the case with patrilocality, Karin Kapadia in her study among the Brahmins
and Non-Brahmins of Aruloor village in Tamil Nadu points towards the institution
of matrilateral kinship and argues that with the changing socio-economic context
matrilateral kinship is falling into disrepute and is replaced by patrilineal kinship
and prevalence of dowry during marriage. This in turn perhaps leads to male
dominance and lower status of women in the society. Kapadia explains that among
the non-Brahmin caste of Aruloor village the matrilateral kin in the form of
Mother’s Brother (MB) and Mother’s Brother’s Son (MBS) holds immense
importance in the life of women and her children. MyB (Mother’s younger
Brother) and MBS are considered as prospective grooms for a woman’s daughter.
MB is also obliged to give expensive gifts during the life cycle rituals of his
sister’s children. This ceremonial gift is known as ‘sir’ which is considered to be
a replacement for a woman’s share in her parental property. Thus it is both
obligatory and woman’s share in true sense in contrast with the institution of
dowry and stridhan practiced among the patrilineal groups. Among the Brahmins
of Aruloor the patrilineal kins hold more importance since matrilateral kins do
not provide prospective grooms for marriage. Women are married to complete
strangers as compared to the MBS or MyB in case of non-Brahmins. This accounts
for forming new relations among the in-laws as compared to more familiar
relations in the latter case. However with the passage of time even among the
non-Brahmins matrilateral kins are losing their importance and dowry is gaining
grounds since a dowry marriage is considered as “high-status marriage” and
thus people are keen to make it a part of their symbolic capital (pp-861). This
has far-reaching implications for women subordination and male dominance in
the society as the negotiation and practice of dowry makes bride’s family
subordinate to the groom’s family (Kapadia, 1990;1993;1994). This
metamorphosis from bride-price to dowry in marital alliances is also evident
among the Gonds of Vidarbha in Maharashtra. The reason for such a
transformation can be located in increased interaction of this tribal group with
the larger society where dowry is the norm. It is a result of peer pressure and a
fear of ridicule that is generated if things are not according to the wishes of
dominant social groups in an area. This again bears certain consequences for
female subjugation and subordination (Khattri et al., 2012).

26
 Patriarchy and Male
2.6 MARRIAGE PATTERN AND THE Dominance

INSTITUTIONALISATION OF PATRIARCHY
AND MALE DOMINANCE
Patriarchy and male dominance as related twin concepts are reflected in the
institution of marriage. Marriages in India are mostly solemnised in the form of
some kind of arrangement between the bride givers and bride takers. In such
arranged marriages the consent of the boy and girl are not that important as that
of their household heads or patriarchs. This is also a reflection of patriarchal
mind-set. Kate Millet in her work on Sexual Politics has tried to define patriarchy
in two ways- i) male dominating female and ii) older males dominating younger
male and female. Therefore the notion of arranged marriage is a conceptual
outcome of the older males dominating younger male and females on the question
of choosing their prospective brides and grooms. Dipankar Gupta while analysing
the Hindu marriage pattern states that the notion of arranged marriage is still the
norm in modern India whether in rural or urban settings. We are all aware of the
consequences in the form of khap and caste panchayat diktats that a young couple
has to face in the event of marrying by his or her own choice. Gupta further
argues that such arranged marriages are based on the notion of inequality between
the bride givers and bride takers. A kind of hierarchy is set based on the notion of
male dominance which is evident in the form of bride takers having a superior
status than the bride givers. This male dominance and inequality gets reflected
in certain marriage ceremonies like pao pooja (worshipping the feet) of the groom
which the father of the bride giver has to perform. This reflects a kind of ritual
hierarchy.

The notion of male dominance also gets reflected through the kanyadaan (giving
away the virgin girl to the groom’s family in the form of a gift) complex. This is
considered to be the gift of the highest order that cannot be matched by any other
kind. This sets a hierarchical relationship between bride giver and bride taker.
The two categories of bride givers and bride takers as outlined by Dipankar
Gupta can also be understood in the form of institutionalisation of patriarchy
and male dominance where not only the male that is dominating and having a
superior status but the female of the bride takers side (especially the mother-in-
law of the bride) becomes an agency of negotiating power in a household. This
is an excellent example of how patriarchy and male dominance is so engrained
in the social structure that it takes different forms to get manifested through
power sharing on the issues of production and reproduction. The very process of
giving birth to a male child places the woman on the bride takers side. This is
also the reason that even women long for a male child. The control of mother-in-
law over the bride’s household activities is a clear manifestation of her acquired
status of a bride taker (Gupta 2001).

2.7 SUMMARY
It is now important to have a panoramic view of the twin concepts of patriarchy
and male dominance. To start with, this unit dealt with the present issue of the
kind of treatment that is given to women in our society. The unit opens with a
debate on the position of women in terms of their rights and privileges. Recent
examples of molestation and property inheritance rules became the backdrop
27
Approaches to the Study of through which patriarchal structure can be understood. We also discussed that
Gender
how state acts as an extension of the general patriarchal mind-set in the form of
property inheritance rules and acts that are to some extent skewed towards to
male members of the society.

The next section of this unit tried to explain how patriarchy as a social organisation
principle emerged at the first place. This question has been answered by different
schools of feminist thought. Liberal feminists focused more on the issue of
individual rights of female and are of the view that women can only be liberated
from the clutches of patriarchy through the process of individual participation in
the public and political domain. However this view has been criticised on the
grounds that it does not explain the origin of patriarchy and is individual centric
thus neglecting the structural design of patriarchy. The shortcomings of Liberal
Feminism are taken care of by the Marxist feminist thought. According to the
Marxist Feminism the world historic defeat of women began with the advent of
private property. Marxists focused more on the issue of relations of production
and how women are placed within this structure. However they are criticised for
just adding women to their already existing theory of class struggle and have
nothing new to offer in terms of the establishment of patriarchy. They are also
criticised on the ground that patriarchy and male dominance was present even
before the advent of private property and it is the basic nature of women being
considered as a basic form of exchange that gave birth to the control of their
productive and reproductive capacities. The control over the sexuality of women
formed the basis for the radical and revolutionary feminist scholars. They are of
the view that it is the psychological and social meaning that is accorded to the
notion of motherhood that brought about the control over the female sexuality. It
is the social extension of the role of motherhood to child rearing the brought
about their confinement to the four walls of the house and thus control over their
productive and reproductive capacities.

Then we moved on to understand that how in the context of India, patriarchy

became established. In this section we started with the example and evidence
from the hunting-gathering stage and moved on to the Vedic and post-Vedic
period where state also became an instrument for upholding patriarchy and male
dominance. Further we understood that how kinship structures in the form of
patrilocality and the Hindu marriage patterns have in-built patriarchal structures.
This has been explained with the help of certain examples. In a nut-shell it can
said that one has to be very observant in order to decipher more such models
based on patriarchy and male dominance.

References

Beechey, V. 1979. On Patriarchy. Feminist Review. No.3. pp- 66-82.

Beteille, A. 1991. Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative

Perspective. London: Athlone.

Birx, H. James. 2010. 21st Century Anthropology: A Reference Handbook. New

Delhi: Sage.

Chakravarti, U. 1993. “Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India:

Gender, Caste, Class and State”. Economic and Political Weekly. Volume 28.
No. 14. Pp- 579-585.
28
Dube, L. 1988. “On the Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls In Patrilineal India”. Patriarchy and Male
Dominance
Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 23. No.18. pp WS11-WS19.

Dube, L. 2000. “Doing Kinship and Gender: An Autobiographical Account”.

Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 35. No. 46. Pp 4037-4047.

Dube, L. 2009. Women and Kinship: Perspectives Of Gender In South and South-
East Asia. Jaipur: Rawat Publications

Eisenstein, Zillah. 1981. The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism. New York:
Longman.

Engels, F. 1948. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Gupta, D. 2001. Mistaken Modernity: India Between Worlds. India: Haper Collins.

Kapadia, K. 1990. Gender, Caste and Class in Rural South India. Unpublished
Ph.D. Thesis. University of London.

Kapadia, K. 1993. “Marrying Money: Changing Preference and Practice in Tamil

Marriage”. Contributions to Indian Sociology. NS 27:1. Pp-25-51.

Kapadia, K. 1994. “Bonded by Blood: Matrilateral Kin in Tamil Kinship”.

Economic and Political Weekly. Volume 29. No.15. pp- 855-861.

Khattri, P., Mollick F. and Mukherjee B.M. 2012. Changing Gond Identity: A
Study Among the Gonds of Wardha District of Maharashtra. Unpublished
Manuscript.

Lewin, Ellen (ed.). 2006. Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. U.K: Blackwell.

Pal M. 2004. “Caste and Patriarchy in Panchayats”. Economic and Political

Weekly. Volume 39. No.32. pp- 3581-3583.

Rajalakshmi, T.K. 2012. “The Lesser Half”. Frontline. Volume 29. Issue 15 (Jul
28- Aug 10).

Ranade, S. 2007. “The Way She Moves: Mapping the Everyday Production of
Gender Space”. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 42. No.17. pp 1519-1526.

Rao, N. 2008. Good Women do not Inherit Land: Politics of Land and Gender
and in India. New Delhi: Orient Black Swan.

Singh, K. 2012. “Man’s World Legally”. Frontline. Volume 29. Issue 15 (Jul 28-
Aug 10).

Stuart, Mill J. 1869. The Subjection of Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sylvia, W. 1990. Theorising Patriarchy. Oxford: Basil Black Well..

Suggested Reading

Dube, L. 2009. Women And Kinship: Perspectives Of Gender In South and South-
East Asia. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
29
Approaches to the Study of Lewin, Ellen (ed.). 2006. Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. U.K: Blackwell.
Gender
Leacock, E.B. 1981. Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women
Cross-Culturally. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Rao, N. 2008. Good Women do not Inherit Land: Politics of Land and Gender
and in India. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan.

Agarwal, B. 1994. A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South
Asia. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

Sylvia, W. 1990. Theorising Patriarchy. Oxford: Basil Black Well.

Sample Questions
1) What do you understand by the term patriarchy?
2) What are the various theories of the origin of patriarchy?
3) How are women’s productive and reproductive roles and capacities linked
to the notion of male dominance and patriarchy?
4) How in Indian context is patriarchy consolidated historically?
5) How are kinship and marriage patterns linked with the notion of patriarchy
and male dominance?

30
 Patriarchy and Male
UNIT 3 DISCRIMINATION AND Dominance

SUBORDINATION

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Paradox
3.3 Universality of Discrimination and Subordination
3.3.1 Status of Women in Tribal Societies
3.3.2 The Case of Matrilineal Nayars
3.4 The Construction of Gender in the Cultural Context
3.4.1 The Objective Reality and Subjective Experience
3.5 Gender Subordination and Vulnerability in Emergency Situations: New
Frontiers in Anthropological Research
3.6 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After having read this unit, you should be able to:
 define gender discrimination and subordination;
 understand the gender related paradox in Indian society;
 answer the question on universality of gender discrimination and
subordination;
 understand, how gender roles are shaped in the society;
 appreciate the importance of gender equality; and
 understand the consequences of gender based discrimination.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Before moving on to understand the nature of discrimination and subordination
in the context of gender, we should first look into the meaning of these two
terms and also how they are linked together at literal and analytical levels. As
per the Oxford dictionary, meaning of the term discrimination implies “the unjust
or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds
of race, age, or sex”. However in the Indian context we may also include caste in
the above mentioned categories. If we deconstruct the above meaning for better
understanding of the term then we may find certain key terms that are present in
the meaning or which are otherwise implied implicitly. The English word
‘discrimination’ is made up of a battery of terms that together convey certain
meaning. To begin with, discrimination is a prejudicial treatment which implies
that it entails certain behavioural patterns that may be labeled as prejudicial
towards a defined category or group of people. Now, one may ask this question
31
Approaches to the Study of that how these prejudices develop at the first place? The answer to this question
Gender
is engrained in the social structure of any society. These structures which are
otherwise non-visible to a naïve eye can be detected and understood by
anthropologists, who have always tried to understand basic structure of a society
and how these structures get translated into behavioural patterns. For example
caste is a reality in Indian context which formed the basis for division of labour
and in turn gave rise to a bitter form of discriminatory behavioural attitude towards
people labeled as lower caste. Such discriminatory attitudes are also patronised
by religious texts and treaties. Similarly in the case of gender, prejudicial treatment
stems from some more basic structural patterns that are passed on from one
generation to other through the process of socialisation.

However the term discrimination cannot be seen in isolation from the term
subordination. These two terms are complementary to each other. Subordination
implies the “action of subordinating” or creating a hierarchy or strata. It can be
argued that subordination validates discrimination. Therefore subordination
becomes a tool or an ideological basis for discrimination. Gender discrimination
in particular stems from the ideology that women are subordinate to men and
therefore are not entitled for equal treatment in various walks of life. These flawed
ideologies are also corroborated and integrated with people’s faith and values
and therefore become well established at the structural and functional levels.
The entire ideology of patriarchy is the result of such assumptions (Dube, 2009).

Discrimination and subordination should be juxtaposed with the ideology of

equality to understand the meaning enshrined in these words. The Indian
constitution is based on the notion that every citizen will have the right to equality
and there shall be no discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, sex, race and
place of birth. The preamble of the constitution states that equality of status and
opportunity should be secured for all the citizens of India. It is in this background
that we should try and understand that instead of state apparatuses designed to
secure equality we still come across discrimination and subordination at various
places and situations. This points towards a reality that there is a difference
between the intention and practice of equality. The codified law is unable to alter
the discriminatory attitude of people against specific groups of society. This in
turn should be a ground for getting answers to such intriguing questions of gender
inequality and discrimination. One needs to look deeper into the social structure
and function in order to understand such gender based discrimination and
subordination.

3.2 THE PARADOX

We are well aware of the fact that historically women have been agents of change
in every sphere of life. How can we forget the contribution of Rani Laxmi Bai of
Jhansi and her close aide Jhalkaari Bai who fought bravely against the mighty
forces of the British empire in the first ever battle for Indian independence. Our
history is full with such stories of bravery and the industrious nature of women.
Even in the contemporary society women are making their mark and presence
felt in the political-economy of India. But still one can factually argue that women
are being treated as subordinates to the male members and are discriminated
against. This assertion gets reflected objectively in the skewed sex ratio which is
32
in favour of the male child. Cases of female foeticide from across the length and Discrimination and
Subordination
breadth of the country conveys that society has used it as a mechanism for socially
selecting the male child over the female. Dowry deaths, domestic violence, rape,
sexual harassment, etc are just few visible examples of the kind of treatment that
is being given to the women in our society. There are many other covert situations
that are not quite visible but contribute towards gender discrimination and
subordination. One such example is the gendered analysis of the use of public
space. We would not generally think that space has anything to do with the larger
social structure, but the post-modern conception of space argues that the
architectural design and public space is not gender neutral. Shilpa Ranade in her
ovular article on the gendered conception of public space points towards the fact
that the use of public space is largely limited to the male and women have to
legitimise their behaviour in order to use that public space. She writes that “women
can access public space legitimately only when they can manufacture a sense of
purpose for being their (Ranade, 2007; pp. 1521).” She further argues that the
gendered use of space becomes an instrument and an agent of reproducing gender
inequality and power relations that exist in the society. This is an excellent example
of how the use of space negotiates power and authority in the society. “The
control of women’s movement has been central to the maintenance of a gender
regime informed by patriarchy. So long as women reproduce the discourse of the
hegemonic gender regime appropriately through their socio-spatial performance
of femininity in pubic space, they can largely access it safely (Ranade, 2007; pp.
1525).”

Activity
Observe the public places and find out how it is being differentially used
by males and females.

Gender discrimination also gets reflected in the form of women health and child
malnutrition. It has been scientifically established that weight of a new born
baby is directly related with the nutritional condition and health status of the
mother. Especially India, Pakistan and Bangladesh accounts for holding almost
half of the population of malnourished children in the world. This is linked to
the poor health conditions and nutritional status of mothers in these countries
(Mehrotra, 2006). Thus child malnutrition and gender discrimination are linked
together. It has been observed that women are considered to be the primary care
givers in a family set-up. Normally the household workload exceeds the caloric
intake. It is also a normal practice in the patriarchal household set-up that women
eat at last after feeding their children and husband which accounts for improper
food management which works as a hindrance for better nutrition.

These examples and the paradox observed in the behavior lead us understand
and ask certain basic questions regarding gender discrimination and subordination.
One might ask that is the gender discrimination a universal phenomenon or is
restricted to only few societies? A similar question that can logically follow the
above one can be related with the origin of such discriminations and
subordinations.

33
Approaches to the Study of
Gender 3.3 UNIVERSALITY OF DISCRIMINATION AND
SUBORDINATION
The discipline of anthropology, since its inception, has been concerned with the
dichotomy of local and global, idiographic and nomothetic, and universal and
particular. This dichotomy in the beginning helped in explaining the evolution
of society by locating the particular against the notion of universal. To some
extent, any discipline that claims to be scientific in outlook must possess a
universal, generalising character that can be law generating. In this respect
anthropologists have always advocated micro-level studies with macro-level
implications, which in turn helps in locating cross-cultural studies in a broader
theoretical framework. The notion of gender discrimination and its universality
also reflects the basic tension of the discipline.
Another dichotomy that helps in understanding the universal character of
discrimination is that of public domain and domestic domain. It has been argued
that patriarchal ideology has divided the entire world into two specific domains
with specific roles, rules and regulations. The public domain is largely meant for
the male members of the society where they can negotiate their roles and establish
their supremacy over the ‘second sex’. On the other hand domestic domain is
largely restricted to the female where they work as primary care-givers. In the
domestic domain however, women are not entitled to take decisions pertaining
to family matters which is largely taken by the males (Purkayastha et al., 2003).
This dichotomous view has been criticised sometimes for being ‘western’ in
outlook. It is said that it originated in the western modernised world and has
been generalised to other societies without taking into account the specificities
in those societies. This calls for a revisit to the entire debate of public-domestic
domain and take a re-look through the lens of idiographic, particularistic,
contextual knowledge which has become a hallmark of anthropology since the
advent of functional paradigm and re-instated in the post-modern ideology, though
not entirely but partially. Karen Brodkin Sacks breaks the monotony of
universality by exemplifying the Iroquois society where the dichotomy of
domestic-public is not found and women enjoy an enormous amount of decision
making power in domestic, political, religious and economic spheres of life
(Sacks, 1970). Similarly, Leacock has shown that among the matrilineal Native
North-American Montagnais-Naskapi the division of labour between male and
female members of the society is such that women are not dependent on their
husbands (Leacock, 1981). Their economy is based on reciprocal division of
labour between the sexes. In such societies there is no hierarchical division
between the public sphere and domestic sphere, both the sexes produced goods
that are necessary for livelihood. The above mentioned examples and many other
similar cases reported by different scholars have revealed that there are societies
where social relations are based on the principle of egalitarianism and men and
women are placed equally in terms of their contribution to the society. However,
even such cases do not account for superiority of women over men and the
egalitarianism mentioned is only partial and not total.

3.3.1 Status of Women in Tribal Societies

It is a general conception that tribal societies are more egalitarian than the non-
tribal societies or caste societies in the special context of India. It is a fact that
34 tribal societies are not stratified on the basis of caste, but one might ask, that,
what is the position of women in such societies and how is it different from other Discrimination and
Subordination
non-tribal societies? The answers to such questions are rather tricky and by no
means straight forward. Considering the ethnic diversity in India, tribe is not a
homogenous category rather it is heterogeneous based on language, geographical
area, physical features, social organisation etc. This heterogeneity stops us from
giving a sweeping answer about the position of women in these societies. If one
wants to understand the position of women in these societies then one must
understand that how work is divided between the sexes, who owns that work
and to what extent it is considered important by the society. A shear division of
work between male and female members of the society does not mean that women
will be treated unequally, but the importance that is accorded to that work is
more suggestive. It has been argued that position of women in societies with
different economic and social organisation is different. Those societies where
hunting and food-gathering/shifting cultivation is the basic source of sustenance
accord better status and autonomy to women since collecting forest produce is
considered important for sustenance. Also women in such societies are more
autonomous since they have control over some resources and its distribution. As
societies progressed from hunting-gathering to settled agriculture status of women
started deteriorating since the ownership of land and its transfer followed the
principle of lineage and such lineages were dominated by males. As Engles has
rightly pointed out that the ‘world’s historic defeat’ of women at the hands of
men began with the emergence of private property. In this context tribal societies
must also be seen as societies in transition or transformation since they came in
contact with the so-called ‘outside’ world. This has led to the emergence of the
concept of private property instead of common property resources and dowry in
place of bride-price which in-turn led to deteriorating women status (D.N., 1988).

Apart from the economic determinant of women’s status in the society, the social
structure and organisation in a tribal society provides more autonomy to the
women. Some tribes in the central India had an institution of youth dormitory. It
is known by different names in different tribes like it is called ‘Dumkeria’ among
the Oraons, ‘Giti-Ora’ among the Mundas and Ghotul among the Gonds. Such
youth dormitories functioned as institutions where boys and girls could mix freely.
They were a part of their socialisation process where they learned their gender
specific roles, duties and reciprocity in behaviour while dealing with the opposite
sex. This also regulated the behaviour between men and women and generated a
sense of unity among them in society. Free mixing of boys and girls before
marriage was never seen as a taboo in these communities (Bodra, 2008).

Activity
Collect more such examples from societies around you and discuss with
your friends.

Such autonomy is also visible among the Bhil tribes where the institution of
marriage has certain provisions that accord for greater autonomy for girls and
lesser restrictions and taboo. Bhils are famous for ‘Bhagoria’ marriage where
boys and girls elope together and when they return they are considered to be
husband and wife after paying certain amount called ‘dapa’ by grooms side to
the bride’s side1 . Such kinds of marriage largely take place during the festival of

1
As per the primary data gathered during a fieldwork among the Bhils of Jhabua District of
Madhya Pradesh. 35
Approaches to the Study of ‘Holi’ (the festival of colors). Such festivals are marked with greater intermixing
Gender
of young people who then chose their life partners. This should be compared
with the autonomy and restrictions placed on the women in the larger society
where arranged intra-caste marriages are the norm and any deviance from the
norm is met with dire consequences in the form of honour killings.

Scholars have argued that tribal women also had certain rights over the land.
The rights of unmarried daughters, wives and widows are clearly spelled out.
These rights were largely of two types- a) in the form of having the right to
manage a certain piece of land and b) in the form of having a claim or share in
whatever the land produced. These kinds of rights gave some autonomy to women
in terms of managing and accumulating resources. In this context, the position
of widow in a tribal society is different from the one in Hindu society. In tribal
society, a widow, continues to contribute both in field and forest and thus are
able to generate independent income by selling forest produce or working on the
field. This is in contrast to the traditional Hindu society where a widow is
considered inauspicious and is barred from doing any work and mixing with the
society at large. However, this situation has changed in the recent times and after
several reforms in colonial and post-colonial era related to widow rights and
obligations. With the advent of British rule, the position of tribal women and
their rights in the landed property underwent a change which was a result of the
British policy vis-à-vis land (Bodra, 2008).

The argument centering the subjugation and subordination of women also holds
true in some of the matrilineal tribal societies. Although the position of women
in matrilineal societies are much better than that of their patrilineal counterparts
(Dubey, 2009) but the ideology of patriarchy and unequal power distribution is a
reality that contradicts a very naïve understanding of matrilineal tribal societies.
Tiplut Nongbri while discussing the transformation in gender relations in the
context of Khasi women of Northeast India has highlighted the fact that position
of women in these societies is comparatively better but they are still not free
from subjugation and subordination. It is in the politico-jural domain that men
assert their power which gives rise to a kind of political structure that excludes
women. Men even use their position to generate a kind of ideology that is based
on a hierarchical relationship between men and women. This kind of ideological
churning is taking place with the help of state apparatuses that are being used to
distort the matrilineal system. It has also being argued that traditionally women
were not allowed to take part in the political domain of decision making (Nongbri,
2000). This is quite evident from the fact that women have been traditionally
denied the membership of Khasi durbar (Agnihotri, 2012).

3.3.2 The Case of Matrilineal Nayars

Matriliny is also found among the Nayars of Kerala. Katheleen Gough and other
scholars like C.J. Fuller have provided a detailed anthropological account of
how matriliny is practiced and perpetuated among the Nayars (Schneider and
Gough, 1961; Fuller, 1976; Gough, 1952). In this matrilineal organisation women
were not dependent upon their husbands as they are the members of a matrilineal
group known as taravad. A taravad consists of members belonging to the same
matriline. The institution of marriage among the Nayars is characterised by tali-
ketu-kalyanam and sambandham relationships. Tali-ketu-kalyanam is a
ceremonial tali (gold neckless) tying ritual that marks the transition of a girl into
36
a ceremonial marital alliance with a male member of the enangar (linked lineage). Discrimination and
Subordination
After this ceremony the girl is permitted to have several sexual unions with the
other male members of the enangar who were also considered as “visiting
husbands”. Children born out of such Sambandham unions belonged to the
mother’s taravad. Even the dissolution of sambandham relationship was easy
and was not looked down upon. Widowhood was not considered inauspicious
and divorce and remarriage can easily take place without any social stigma
attached to it. However, this kind of unique kinship and marriage pattern was
located parallel to the socio-cultural matrix of high caste patrilineal Hindus and
people from other religions. People from such communities do not approve of
these relations and kinship patterns as they use to look at the practice of
sambandham with disdain and disapproval. Many Nayar men with western ideas
and education were also skeptical about their institution. It is in this context that
Saradamoni has tried to understand the changing position of women among the
Nayars and the transformation of matriliny. She has argued that the Nayar men
were made to feel inferior and uncivilised by people who look down upon the
practice of “visiting husband”. This led Nayar men to bring about certain changes
in their institution to make them coterminous with the ideology of the west and
other patrilineal communities. This so-called western and progressive ideology
is based on the principal that after marriage a woman and her children become
the responsibility of her husband and the husband is obliged to look-after his
family. This is different from the Nayar’s institution where the taravad is
responsible for the maintenance of women and her children. From the perspective
of women, such changes resulted into subordination and subjugation of women
in the matrilineal institutional set-up of the Nayars (Saradamoni, 1999).

It has also been argued in the context of status of women that we should not
always talk and analyse in terms of low or high status for women in a society.
Thus a dichotomous understanding in this context is not called for. There are
also intermediary statuses in various societies depending upon rights and
privileges accorded to women. It is for sure that in most of the societies across
the world, the status of women is not as good as that of men and specially in
patriarchal societies it is even worse. Patriarchal societies impose certain
restrictions and taboos that need to be followed by women in order to get the
label of ‘good women’.

3.4 THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IN THE

CULTURAL CONTEXT
This section will deal with the question that, how socialisation as a process is
linked with gender based discrimination and subordination? When we say that
something is engrained in our culture or society at the level of its basic structure,
then we must also realise that this culture and structure gets reproduced over
generation after generation. Changes in cultural traits and social structure do
occur either from within the society or forced and adopted from outside. However
for a very long period these changes co-exist with the older or traditional patterns
and show a spatial difference in their manifestation. This is quite evident in the
context of rural-urban patterns that reflect this kind of co-existence to some
degree.

37
Approaches to the Study of Socialisation is a process through which we learn our cultural values, traits,
Gender
customs and rituals. We also learn behaviour patterns that are accepted and
legitimised in the larger societal context. In this context gender specific roles are
learned both at home and outside. This learning is largely observational in nature
and both genders internalise the kind of behavior they receive which is later
projected in their own behavior. Leela Dube, one of the pioneers in the field of
gender studies had discussed about the construction and consolidation of gender
identity. She is of the view that in a patriarchal, patrilineal society like ours in
India, gender roles start taking shape very early in life. The difference in the
enthusiasm of parents at the birth of male and female child is keenly observed by
the female child and is internalised which becomes part of her psyche. Later in
life she observes her mother, grandmother and other female members in the
society and try to become like them in order to gain acceptance in the family and
in society at large. The very notion of women being ‘paraya dhan (someone
else’s property)’ that is largely held in our patriarchal society also contributes
towards constructing the gender identity that leads to discrimination and
subordination. A woman is never regarded as a permanent member of her natal
family as she has to leave that family and move to her husband’s house. This
gives rise to the belief that she will never contribute to the family income and
instead she will take away certain part of the family income as her dowry. In
contrast a male child is considered to be the saviour of the family and as a
permanent member of the family, one who will contribute towards the family
income and take care of aging parents. Such expected roles and identity formation
leads to a stratified system where gender is placed in a hierarchical pattern (Dube,
1988).

3.4.1 The Objective Reality and Subjective Experience

It is an objective reality that women are being discriminated against and treated
as subordinates in the society. This fact gets reflected in the child sex ratio across
the country of India. As per the census report of 2011 the child sex ratio in the
age group of 0-6 years is just 914 girls per 1,000 boys. This is more alarming in
the context of the decadal decline in this ratio which was 976 in 2001. Even in
states like Maharashtra which are still considered as progressive and where other
development indicators are better than many other states in India, the child sex
ratio stands at a meager 883 girls per 1,000 boys. In 2001 this ratio was 913. To
understand the meaning of this ratio better, it should be kept in mind that as per
the global trends a normal child sex ratio should be above 950. Therefore, this is
an objective indicator of gender discrimination and preferential sex selection in
favor of male child (Katakam, 2012).
Now one may ask that how this discrimination is manifested in lived experience
of women. Do women really feel that they are being discriminated? What
difference do they observe in terms of their experience in the treatment that they
receive from family members? Such questions became part of a study that tried
to understand the subjective experience of women vis-à-vis discrimination. The
basic premise behind this study was the fact that what we believe has occurred to
us is more significant than what has actually happened. This premise works at a
psychological level where our perception of reality is more significant than the
reality itself. Therefore it is important to know that what women perceive has
happened with them in terms of discrimination and subordination.

38
It has been found in the study that there is a gap between the objective reality and Discrimination and
Subordination
subjective experience of that reality. This study was conducted among the girls
between the age of seven and eighteen. These girls belonged to six hundred rural
and urban households in eight different states in India. When they were asked
that is there any gender-based discrimination that they face, then the answer was
mostly ‘NO’. They did not report any difference between boys and girls with
respect to health care and food either. No difference was reported in terms of
rewards and punishments given to boys and girls. In the domain of education
also more than seventy percent believed that education is equally important for
both boys and girls.

One may wonder that instead of objective discrimination evident in the statistical
data, the subjective experience is not in sync with it. Sudhir Kakar and Kathrina
Kakar in their celebrated book ‘The Indians: Portrait of a People’ gives a possible
explanation for such a discrepancy. They are of the view that such discrimination
is not directly transformed into behaviour and is filtered and diluted through the
institution of family where a girl child finds herself in a situation where one or
more adult member of the family is sympathetic and loving in their behaviour
and attitude towards the girl. This is perceived and memorised as instances
contrary to the patriarchal dominating and discriminatory values. Also, existence
of a sphere of femininity and domesticity gives women an opportunity to be
productive and lively. This sphere includes other women in the household and it
is here that women negotiate meaning of discrimination and subordination and
their reaction towards discrimination gets diluted. However, in folklores, ballads
and wedding songs women do react against discrimination by portraying men as
faithless (Kakar and Kakar, 2007).

3.5 GENDER SUBORDINATION AND

VULNERABILITY IN EMERGENCY
SITUATIONS: NEW FRONTIERS IN
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
The discourse on gender discrimination and subordination has found some new
grounds in the emerging sub-field of the ‘Anthropology of Disasters’. This new
area of research tries to understand that how gender subordination leads to
increased vulnerabilities in emergency situations. Disasters are seen not only in
terms of hazardous climatic and man-made situations but are also largely
understood as socio-economic, cultural and political vulnerabilities that are in-
built in the societal structure. This view gives rise to a new understanding and
analysis of women and their status in society and how this affects their
vulnerability during and after natural or man-made calamities.

A study was conducted by a group of anthropologists2 in a flood affected district

of Bahraich in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. It was a case-control study where levels
of anxiety, depression and stress was measured among the flood affected and

2
This study was a part of the European Union 6th Framework MICRODIS Project entitled-
“Integrated Health, Social and Economic Impacts of Extreme Events: Evidence, Methods and
Tools”. A group of Anthropologists headed by Prof. P.C. Joshi, Asia Co-ordinator of MICRODIS
and Professor of Anthropology, University of Delhi conducted fieldwork in Bahraich district
of Uttar Pradesh. 39
Approaches to the Study of non-affected populations. It was found that in the flood affected zone the level
Gender
of anxiety and, depression and stress was more among the females than in males.
The underlying reason for such a disparity was found embedded in the relative
status of women in the society. The patriarchal system has clearly laid down
rules for women and is almost restricted to their domestic domain. The main
task of a woman is to feed their children and take care of the household.

Looking from a feminist political ecological perspective, women are seen as

primary resource users and managers, and in terms of the responsibilities they
have towards the dependents in the household and community (Rocheleau,
Thomas-Slayter and Wangarai, 1996). This argument finds basis in the light of
data collected from FGDs (Focused Group Discussions) among the women of
flood affected area. Jum explains (name of the participant): “Men go out in order
to feel some change but the mothers are the ones whom children want. As a man
and a father, no one ever goes to the extent of seeking help at the cost of his self
respect but women will not be able to withstand the hunger and plight of her
children hence she would even beg for them in spite of being abused and ridiculed.
Her only aim is to feed her children at the cost of her self esteem.” To this Sama,
another participant in the FGD further adds: “There are times when the troubles
of the women are more than that of men because men do not have to look after
the basic needs of the children like where to feed them, what to feed them, where
to make them sleep.” This exemplifies that how women subordination increases
their vulnerability in the context of disasters. This is another objective reality of
gender based discrimination and subordination that has obvious consequences
for the well-being of women in special circumstances and for the society at large
(Khattri et al., 2012).

3.6 SUMMARY
Discrimination and subordination are linked concepts. These two terms are
complementary to each other. Subordination implies the “action of subordinating”
or creating a hierarchy or strata. It can be argued that subordination validates
discrimination. Therefore subordination becomes a tool or an ideological basis
for discrimination. The very process of primary and secondary socialisation in
our society clearly demarcates gender specific roles and hence creates a divide
between the public and domestic domains. These two domains need to mix
together. Women are actively coming forward in the public domain and its time
for men to move towards the domestic domain and do not consider it something
exclusively for women. It is only with this kind of sharing that we can achieve
the goal of gender equality.

Gender based discrimination is a universal phenomenon with some exceptions

where the status of women is to some extent equal with that of men. In the case
of tribal societies in India and elsewhere as we have seen in the examples above
that women have greater autonomy in these societies. We should also try to learn
from these examples.

Throughout this unit we have seen that gender discrimination and subordination
are embedded at the socio-structural level. The idea of gender equality enshrined
in our constitution has not been fully realised. Even today we hear news of gender
based discrimination in the form of sex selective abortions, female infanticide,
domestic violence, molestations, rape etc. As responsible citizens of this country
40
it is our duty to stop such discriminatory and criminal behaviour. The first step Discrimination and
Subordination
towards this goal is to realise and understand the kinds of discriminations that
are prevalent in our society and then to act accordingly. The need of the hour is
to discard the patriarchal mindset and start thinking in a rational and scientific
manner.

References

Agnihotri I. 2012. “Social Bondage”. Frontline. Volume 29. Issue 15 (Jul 28-
Aug 10)

Bodra G. 2008. Empowerment of Tribal Women. New Delhi: Mohit Publications.

Brodkin Sacks K. 1970. “Social Basis of Sexual Equality: A Comparative View”.

R. Morgan (ed.). Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of writings from women’s
liberation movement. New York: Random House.

D.N. 1988. “Significance of Women’s Position in Tribal Society”. Economic

and Political Weekly. Vol 23. No.26. pp 1311-1312.

Dube L. 1988. “On the Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls In Patrilineal India”.
Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 23. No.18. pp WS11-WS19.

Dube L. 2000. “Doing Kinship and Gender: An Autobiographical Account”.

Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 35. No. 46. Pp 4037-4047.

Dubey L. 2009. Women And Kinship: Perspectives Of Gender In South and South-
East Asia. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.

Ellen Lewin (ed.). 2006. Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. UK: Blackwell.

Fuller C.J. 1976. The Nayars Today: Changing Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Gough K. 1952. “The Nayar Taravad”. Journal of the Maharaja Sayajirao

(University of Baroda, India). 1(2): 1-13

James Birx H. 2010. 21st Century Anthropology: A Reference Handbook. New

Delhi: Sage.

Kakar S. and Kakar K. 2007. The Indians: Portrait of a People. New Delhi:
Penguin.

Katakam A. 2012. “The Unwanted Girl”. Frontline. Vol 29. Issue 14. (July 14-
27)

Khattri P., 2011. Social Impacts of Disaster: An Anthropological Perspective.

Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. Department of Anthropology. University of Delhi.

Khattri P., Joshi P.C., Wind T., Komproe I.H. and Guha-Sapir D. 2012 (Jan-Jun).
“Understanding Mental Health as a Function of Social Vulnerabilities in a Disaster
Situation: Evidence from Recurrent Flooding in Bahraich district, Uttar Pradesh”.
Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India. Volume 61. No.1. pp- 109-124

41
Approaches to the Study of Leacock E.B. 1981. Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women
Gender
Cross-Culturally. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Mehrotra S. 2006. “Child Malnutrition and Gender Discrimination in South Asia”.

Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 41. No.10. pp 912-918.

Nongbri T. 2000. “Khasi Women and Matriliny: Transformations in Gender

Relations”. Gender Technology and Development. Volume 4. No. 3. Pp- 359-
395

Purkayastha B., Subramaniam M., Desai M., and Bose S. 2003. “The Study of
Gender in India: A Partial Review”. Gender and Society. Volume 17. No. 4. Pp-
503-524

Ranade S. 2007. “The Way She Moves: Mapping The Everyday Production of
Gender Space”. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 42. No.17. pp 1519-1526.

Rocheleau D., B. Thomas-Slayter and E. Wangarai, ed. 1996. Feminist Political

Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences . New York: Routledge.

Saradamoni K. 1999. Matriliny Transformed: Family, Law and Ideology in

Twentieth Century Travancore. New Delhi: Sage.

Schneider D.M. and Gough K. (eds.). 1961. Matrilineal Kinship. Berkley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Suggested Reading

Ellen Lewin (ed.). 2006. Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. UK: Blackwell.

Kakar S. and Kakar K. 2007. The Indians: Portrait of a People. New Delhi:
Penguin.

Leacock E.B. 1981. Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women

Cross-Culturally. New York: Monthly Review Press.

James Birx H. 2010. 21st Century Anthropology: A Reference Handbook. New

Delhi: Sage.

Sample Questions
1) What do you mean by discrimination and subordination?
2) How are discrimination and subordination linked together?
3) Are gender discrimination and subordination universal phenomena?
4) How is the process of socialisation linked to gender discrimination and
subordination?
5) What are the consequences of gender discrimination and subordination?

42
 MANE-004
Gender and Society
Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

2
THEORISING GENDER
UNIT 1
Theoretical Notions of Gender 5
UNIT 2
Feminist Theories and Feminist Politics 18
UNIT 3
Historical Development of the Study of Gender in
Anthropology 26
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Formerly Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Professor Rekha Pande Discipline of Anthropology
Professor of History, SOSS and IGNOU, New Delhi
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) IGNOU, New Delhi
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Studies, School of Social Sciences Assistant Professor
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur
Associate Professor Dr. P. Venkatramana
Faculty of Sociology Assistant Professor
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C.J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Academic assistance provided by Dr. N.K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate (DBT) for the Expert Committee
Meeting.

Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi

Course Coordinator: Dr. Mitoo Das, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Content Editor
Dr. Lucy Zehol, Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
North Eastern Hill University Shillong, Meghalaya.

Blocks Preparation Team

Block Introduction
Dr. Lucy Zehol Associate Professor,
Department of Anthropology, North Eastern
Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya.
Authors are responsible for the academic content of this course as far as the copyright issues are concerned.
Unit Writers
Dr. Sharmila Sreekumar, Associate Professor (Unit 1)
Department of Humanities and Social Science
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.
Dr. Indira Jalli, Assistant Professor (Unit 2)
Department of Liberal Arts
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad.
Dr. Abhik Ghosh, Associate Professor (Unit 3)
Department of Anthropology, Panjab University,
Chandigarh.

Print Production Cover Design

Mr. Manjit Singh Dr. Mitoo Das, Asstt. Professor
Section Officer (Pub.), SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology, SOSS, IGNOU

July, 2012
© Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2012
ISBN-978-81-266-6139-8
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other
means, without permission in writing from the Indira Gandhi National Open University.
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BLOCK 2 THEORISING GENDER

Introduction
This block seeks to help the learners understand the need to theorise gender.
Gender permeates out lives in various ways and it is often difficult to see the
web of connections and social formations in which gender exists. We need theories
in order to help us uncover these and also to think about how they affect individual
and collective lives. We will also see that our ways of thinking about gender may
itself be caught up in existing power-knowledge systems. Theories help us step
back from our commonsense and examine our automatic and natural
understanding of gender.

As students of anthropology we need to be aware of the relation between

anthropology and the feminist school of thought. It is basically an attempt to
dismantle a dominant assumption that anthropology is basically male and
Eurocentric and thus incapable of addressing and accommodating the reality of
‘diversity’ in it. However, this has changed with the advent of postmodern and
post-structural feminist theories and it is now time to explore more innovative
themes and ways of doing feminism in anthropology as well as anthropological
feminism. Moreover, several ethnography-oriented studies began to propose the
primacy of understanding each culture in its own terms and contexts. This in a
way not only erodes ethnocentric and Eurocentric biases from both of these
disciplines but also opens up large avenues for common research.

Anthropological advances in the study of gender have increased the awareness

of women within anthropology, in terms of ethnographic studies as well as in
sophistication of theoretical analysis. This has challenged beliefs, especially
regarding hunting, human origins, women’s productive and reproductive roles
in society as well as the ability of women to do many of the roles that men do
today. Such studies have become of great interest to both men and women.

These concerns and issues of gender and anthropology are covered in the lessons
in this block namely: Unit 1: Theoretical Notions of Gender; Unit 2: Feminist
Theories and Feminist Politics and Unit 3: Historical Development of the Study
of Gender in Anthropology.
Theorising Gender

4
 Theoretical Notions of
UNIT 1 THEORETICAL NOTIONS OF Gender

GENDER

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Seeing Gender
1.3 Thinking about Gender
1.4 Biological Essentialism and Social Constructivism
1.4.1 Thinking beyond Essentialism and Constructivism
1.5 Theorising Gender
1.6 Psychoanalytical Theories
1.6.1 Feminist Psychoanalytical Thought in America
1.6.2 Feminist Psychoanalytical Thought in France
1.7 Literary Theories
1.8 Theory of Gender Performativity
1.9 Queer Theory
1.10 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 appreciate why we need to theorise gender;
 critically examine and evaluate some prominent theories of gender; and
 consider how these can be used in the study of human societies.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
What are some of the prominent ways in which gender has been understood and
theorised? In trying to address this question, this lesson begins by trying to unveil
some of our commonsensical perceptions of gender. It then proceeds to understand
the difference between the notions of “sex” and “gender”. Thereafter it explores
the differences between those who consider gender to be an essential quality of
human beings and those who think it to be socially constructed. This chapter
will also explore some important modes of theorising gender: a) Psychoanalytical
Theories, b) Literary Theories, c) Theory of Gender Performativity, and d) Queer
Theory.

5
Theorising Gender
1.2 SEEING GENDER
Let’s imagine that we are sitting in a tea-shop looking out at the busy road outside.
Let’s further imagine that as a “time-pass” exercise we dare each other to see
gender in the world about us. What a simple, unchallenging exercise it would
be. We would quite easily be able to identify everyone around us as “man” or
“woman”, “girl” or “boy”. There might be an odd baby or a strangely dressed
person who might make us pause. Or perhaps, we might spot a group of hijras in
the street corner. But for the most part seeing gender is a no-brain exercise. It is
everywhere; it is evident, identifiable and already known. So why do we need
theories of gender?

Let’s place this question on the table and take another look about us. Is it the case
that only people are gendered? What about that pink cycle leaning on the
lamppost? What makes us think of it as a “lady’s cycle”? And the 100 cc bike
that is parked beside it, as “100% male”? What makes those pair of blue jeans
“lady’s jeans”, and the other equally blue one “male jeans”? What imparts gender
to inanimate things? Then again, look at the people who are nonchalantly lounging
on the road. Why are all of them men? Why do all the women look as though
they are outside for a purpose—walking briskly to their destinations, waiting for
buses, shopping, or some such? Are spaces gendered? Do different people traverse
the same space (like the road) in gender-specific ways? Then again, look!—why
is it that all the workers in our tea-shop are men and almost all the vegetable
hawkers on the road are women? Are different kinds of labour gendered? Are
work-spaces? And is it the same in all societies and all times? “Hey”, you whisper,
“watch the waiter as he bears the bill to that table”. The woman is carrying a big
handbag; the man’s purse is nowhere in sight. But sure enough, the waiter, hands
the bill to the man and he unthinkingly digs into his pocket; the woman looks on
expressionlessly. Are social expectations, behaviours and interactions gendered?

Activity 1
Conjure up another everyday scenario and attempt to see how gender
operates in this circumstance. Consider how you can classify and analyse
the ways in which you have seen gender in this context.

Clearly, we are already extending what it means to see gender. It turns out now
that it is not only people who are gendered. The things we use, the spaces and
institutions that we occupy, the manner in which we occupy them, the work that
we do, our social expectations, aspirations all appear to be gendered. So what is
it we see when we admit that we see gender? Is gender a “noun”—is it objects,
people? Or is gender an adjective—properties and qualities that objects and people
have which mark them as “feminine” or “masculine”? In other words, is the
pink bicycle gendered because of its “thingness” or because of its “pinkness”, or
both? How can we tell? To examine this puzzle differently: when we saw the
gender of people who were around us, what did we see as constituting their
gender?

Which returns us to the question we had placed on the table: Why do we need to
theorise gender?

6
 Theoretical Notions of
Activity 2 Gender
Go back to the scene of the tea-shop. Can you differentiate the notion of
“sex” and “gender” in that scene?
Also consider whether class, caste, religion, region, race etc. get interwoven
with gender.
For instance, we had noted that most women used the road only for passing
through. The assumption seemed to be that women could not comfortably
inhabit public spaces. And yet, what about the vegetable vendors we saw?
Does their gender stop them from occupying “unfeminine” spaces?

We have already begun to answer that question in some measure. We have begun
to concede that gender is not something that we see as easily and as effortlessly
as we first thought. To analyse what we take to be commonsense, to question
what we take as “natural” can be an extremely demanding task. So much so, we
often need special kinds of aids in order to see and understand gender. How do
we begin to make sense of its immense multiplicity? How do we classify, analyse,
and think seriously about its causes, its impact? Theories about gender offer us
their explanatory potential.

1.3 THINKING ABOUT GENDER

Of course there have been ways of thinking about gender before the “advent” of
feminism. But in this chapter we will concern ourselves only with how certain
feminist theories have grappled with the “problem of gender”.
Most histories see the feminist movement as beginning in the 1960s. One of the
most significant issues that it sought to do in its “first wave” was to differentiate
between “sex” and “gender”. Sex, it maintained describes biological differences
between men and women; gender was crucially different. Far from being a
synonym of sex, gender pertains to social differences. Sex is seen as the business
of biology. It is a label based on hormones, chromosomes and genitalia. “Gender,”
on the other hand, refers to a set of characteristics and behaviours assigned to
each sex. It is what we would call a cultural or a social construct.
Today this very important distinction between sex and gender has become part
of our everyday knowledge. However, when it was first conceptualised, it threw
up breathtakingly exciting possibilities. What are some of its implications?
One of the remarkable consequences of separating the idea of sex from gender is
to show that there is nothing natural about gender. In other words it challenges
the naturalist fallacy of the man/woman dichotomy; it suggests that there is nothing
inevitable about our gender. We could be “man” and “woman” in very different
ways. Indeed, every society assigns different descriptions to “man” and “woman”
and different characteristics to “masculine” and “feminine”. Secondly, it threw
up the possibility that gender regimes were changeable. You can imagine the
impetus that such an understanding gave to both to feminist theorisation and
politics.
However, making a distinction between sex and gender also had other
consequences. It meant that early feminists presumed that there were two
“opposite” genders which emerged from the two sexes. In other words, they
presumed a gender polarisation. 7
Theorising Gender
1.4 BIOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM AND SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Now that sex and gender had been differentiated there were crucial questions
that needed to be addressed: Was “sex” related to “gender”? If yes, how?

These questions have provoked a lot of debates within feminism. You will find
that there are broadly two schools of thought. One school—the biological
essentialists—believes that biological differences between the sexes are significant
and that it is sex that “becomes” gender. In other words, they believe that gender
expresses one’s inner, “essential” core; a person is socially a woman because she
has a female body and is sexed female. To that extent, they believe that gender
cannot be entirely split apart from sex or analysed on its own terms. The other
school—the social constructionists—believe that sex and biology is of little
importance to the idea of gender. They believe that there is nothing innate about
gender; that gender behaviours are learned in particular social environments.

Let’s examine this in more concrete terms: An essentialist is likely to argue that
boys are likely to be competitive and aggressive because of their sexual make-
up—that “boys will be boys”. A social constructionist would argue that it is not
hormones, genitals etc., which engender competitiveness and aggression—that
boys are [aggressive] boys because societies socialise them to be so.

1.4.1 Thinking beyond Essentialism and Constructivism

For all their differences, the essentialists and the constructionists share some
crucial commonalities. Both of them, for the most part, work with the idea of
two genders. Both tease the question of gender but ignore the possibility of
problematising the idea of sex.

Meanwhile there have been researches that have shown that sex is as unstable a
category as gender. How so?

Most of us who have studied biology presume that females have XX chromosomes
and males have XY chromosomes. Anne Fausto-Sterling, in her book Myths of
Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men, explodes this commonsense.
She reveals that we have far more complex chromosomal combinations— XY
females, XX males, people with XXY chromosomes, with XO chromosomes
and so on. In other words, if one were to take chromosomal profiles, we would
find that there are more than two sexes.
And so we find that it is important to ask:
• Are there only two sexes and two genders?
• How does gender relate to sex?
Furthermore,
• How do societies produce and regulate gender regimes?
• What are the effects of being gendered?
• Can we begin to imagine what it means to refuse the current gender system?

8
 Theoretical Notions of
Activity 3 Gender

“The subordination of women can be seen as a product of the relationships

by which sex and gender are organised and produced.”—Gayle Rubin (p.177)
Consider what Rubin says above:
a) What, according to her, are the “relationships by which sex and gender
are organised and produced”?
b) How does this produce the subordination of women?

As we move along to studying particular theories, it might be useful to keep

these and similar questions alive in our mind.

1.5 THEORISING GENDER

One of the places from where we can begin to examine the theorisations of the
sex/gender system is the work of cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin. In her
influential essay “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of
Sex”, she attempts to trace the socio-historical mechanisms by which the “sex/
gender system” is produced. Rubin contends that male dominance is caused not
because of biological differences. Instead, she argues it is a result of a) the
operations of kinship structures and b) the institution of a sexual division of
labour. Let us examine the first one, and then the other.

According to Rubin “kinship systems are observable and empirical forms of

sex/gender systems” (1975: 169). She draws on the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss,
in order to make the argument that kinship gets forged primarily through the
exchange of women among men. Such modes of exchange and allocation of
women permit men to consolidate relations with various groups and thereby to
accumulate power. In order for such exchanges to be effective, women and their
sexuality have to be controlled. This brings us to what Rubin conceives as a
chief element of the political economy of sex— the sexual division of labour. It
is such a division of labour that creates differences between genders and the
subordination of women. According to Rubin, kinship patterns and the economics
of sex and gender, together, weave complicated networks of dependency and
desire between men and women. This configures heterosexuality and also leads
to the “domestication of women”.

One of the critiques made against Rubin’s argument about the political economy
of sex/gender is that she fails to demonstrate how it relates to other forms of
exchange. In other words what are the interconnections between the exchange of
women (sex/gender system) and the exchange of goods and services (economy)?
Marxist feminists and socialist feminists have done considerable work in tracing
the relationship between these two systems. You will read about their theorisation
in the next unit.

For now, we will use Rubin’s widely influential work as a station through which
we can move towards other theories of gender. We will first examine feminist
critiques of psychoanalysis.

9
Theorising Gender
1.6 PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORIES
Why should we engage seriously with psychoanalytic theories? There are several
people who would brush these theories aside because they do not appear to
contribute to our understanding of social processes and relations. And yet, without
appreciating how the “social” comes to be intertwined with the psychological
we will have only a very partial view of how relationships of gender become
woven into the very fabric of our self. Without an account of how subjects
experience and internalise social relationships, we cannot begin to explain the
power of gender regimes—how they get perpetuated, confirmed and resisted.

To simplify a rather complex field we could posit two robust modes of feminist
psychoanalytical thought. At the risk of missing many nuances, let us think of
them as the “American” strand and the “French” strand. Undoubtedly, they share
certain commonalities: they are both concerned with the internalisation of the
regimes of sex- gender-sexuality; with how this process begins in early childhood;
both tend to give primacy to the mother-daughter relationship. However, there
are also significant differences between these two strands.

1.6.1 Feminist Psychoanalytical Thought in America

Much of the feminist engagement with psychoanalysis in this continent began
with the controversies provoked by Sigmund Freud’s works. Some early feminists
like Kate Millet quarreled bitterly with his thought and condemned them as
patriarchal. However, there have also been more positive feminist engagements
with psychoanalysis. Such works primarily draw on Freud’s assertion that
“psychoanalysis does not try to describe what a woman is…but sets about
enquiring how she comes into being” (Freud 1968, 116).

Among the first feminists who sought to uncover the possibilities of Freudian
theories is Juliet Mitchell. Mitchell holds that Freud’s theory shows that our
psychological development is based on patriarchy rather than biology. Another
theorist who concedes the crucial nature of the human unconscious is Dorothy
Dinnerstein. She attempts to show how the relations that man forges with woman,
nature and history are sourced from the sexual division of labour. Dinnerstein
argues that the current organisation of the family is not natural, neutral or private.
Another important theorist who examines issues of mothering, child-rearing and
its significance to gender relations is Nancy Chodorow and we shall examine
her work in some little detail here.

Nancy Chodorow (1978) concentrates on what she calls the “reproduction of

mothering.” She begins with the psychoanalytic premise that the child forms its
ego (its sense of self) in reaction to the powerful figure of the mother. As an
infant, even when it is unable to speak, it feels a storm of desires and dependence
which it has no power to fulfill. These experiences are never really forgotten;
they remain in the unconscious. It is these that impel our sexuality, our desire for
others and for fulfillment in relationships. However, Chodorow maintains that
these processes are very different for the male and for the female child. In order
to grow into a man, the male child must deny its infantile experiences. He has to
deny his dependency on the mother in order to claim a rationality that controls
and dominates. The female child, on the other hand, does not have to disavow
her emotional interactions and connectedness in a similar manner. To Chodorow
10
these formations are not caused by biology, but by specific social expectations Theoretical Notions of
Gender
and modes of organisation. They are formed in and through social relations.

Like Rubin, Chodorow sees the family as a central element in the sex/gender
system. She focuses particularly on the how only women “mother” and how
they produce children with gendered psychological tendencies: i.e. they produce
daughters who will go on to become mothers and sons who will remove
themselves from affective, care-giving relationships, concentrating instead on
public life.

By showing us how the sex-gender system comes to be constitutive of our core

identities, feminist psychoanalytical theorists like Chodorow help us see
something important. They help us to recognise that popular ideas about “sex
roles” and “social conditioning” are simplistic. These ideas conceive of the sex-
gender regimes as simply existing “out there” and believe that these regimes
will change simply by doing different chores, changing roles etc. They do not
take into account the fact that these regimes become internalised in our selves.

A prominent criticism made against theories such as those of Chodorow is that

they assume that everyone shares a universal fate. The human unconscious appears
to be unaffected by history and by specific political, economic and social contexts.
But surely this is not true? Surely the ideas, content and contours of child-rearing
differ in different societies? Surely they vary across classes, races and regions?
[See box for a further critique that has been made of Chodorow’s theories]

Activity 4
A significant aspect of Chodorow’s work is her critique of individualism.
She also critiques the idea of an independent, isolated self which underpin
notions of individualism. In place of what she sees as this “masculine”
ideal she puts forth the idea of a self that is inextricably inter-personal and
relational (Chodorow, 1978).
By glorifying the interpersonal and relational (such as women’s mothering
capacities) does Chodorow’s theory confine women into kinship and
associational bonds? Does she assign women to weak and “feminine” modes
of being individual?
What do you think?

1.6.2 Feminist Psychoanalytical Thought in France

Jacque Lacan’s work has been extraordinarily influential among many “French
feminists”—but not only among them. Central to Lacan’s theorisation is the
idea of the symbolic order. For Lacan entry into language is important. It is
crucial to how we become subjects in society. Reality becomes intelligible only
in and through language. The Symbolic is the term Lacan uses to indicate how
reality becomes meaningful through the mediation of language. Some of the
feminist thinkers affiliated with French psychoanalytic thought include Luce
Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Sarah Kofman, Catherine Clement, and Helene Cixous.
They ask foundational questions about the nature of feminine subjectivity.

We shall stay a while with some of the modes of enquiry initiated by Luce Irigaray.
Irigaray critiques Freud’s conceptualisation of woman as the “other” of man—
11
Theorising Gender as the other who complements him. Irigaray calls this “the old dream of symmetry”
(p. 47). The “old dream” where there is imagined to be a mirror-like (“specular”—
in Irigaray’s term) opposition between man and woman.

The symbolic, the intimate and the social are closely interwoven. Thus we find
that women get figured in language and in man’s desires in very similar ways.
Irigaray coins a term to signal this— “hom(m)osexuality”. By this term she hopes
to indicate that the symbolic and the social are made as: i) an order of the same
(homo) and ii) as the order of men (homme). Because man serves as its reference
point, it entirely ignores relations among women—especially between mothers
and daughters. Women become merely the medium through which men ally with
other men. By obliterating the mother (the woman), men are able to forge vertical
(hierarchical) and horizontal (associational) relations with each other.

In her own work Irigaray seeks to critique the hom(m)osexual order. She does
this so as to make a feminine subjectivity possible. Such a project, she believes
cannot be successful either by simply reversing sexual difference, or by asserting
difference. Both these will only succeed in representing woman in terms of the
already existing symbolic order. In other words, women will become intelligible
only according to the frameworks already set by “hom(m)osexuality”. Both these
modes would, therefore, only strengthen the symbolic, not disrupt it. In order to
challenge this order, we need to find a language for feminine subjectivity and of
sexual difference. The use of language is therefore a political act for Irigaray. It
is a mode of complexly re-shaping the symbolic.

Most psychoanalytic inquiry does not fit comfortably with either the biological
conceptualisations of sex or the sociological formulations of gender.
Consequently, they complicate the sex/gender debate in feminism. These theories
traverse complex ways in which gender becomes embodied, social and
experienced as real.

1.7 LITERARY THEORIES

Feminist attention to literature and to language has moved along multiple
directions. We have just seen the crucial place that theorists like Irigaray give to
language. As you read about Marxist, Postcolonial, Dalit feminisms you will
without doubt find evidence of how they re-shape literary criticism and theory.
Besides these, there are also feminists who draw upon schools of thought such
as semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism and so on. As with the other modes
of enquiry, we will confine only to the broad outlines of this theoretical initiative.

One could say, with some degree of truth, that feminist literary theory began
with the realisation that representations of women in literature affect the
socialisation of women. There are many feminist critics who would hesitate to
see literature and other narratives (like films, for instance) as having direct and
immediate effects on lives. (For example, if a popular novel/film depicts a man
beating his wife, it does not necessarily follow that there will automatically be
an increase in domestic violence). Even such critics, however, are likely to argue
that representations of women have certain discernible consequences. The belief
that drives this criticism is that dominant representations in society hold up certain
acceptable modes of being gendered. If heroines are customarily child-like, wide-
eyed in their innocence, helpless in the face of adversity, prefer to stay at home
12
and leave all that is heroic and agential to the men in their lives, then such images Theoretical Notions of
Gender
would strongly indicate that these are the appropriate ways of being feminine
(and masculine) in society.

Activity 5
Following upon some of the feminist initiatives mentioned here, imagine a
“field” which you might go to study as an anthropologist.
Speculate on how you can seek out and find women’s voices and texts.
Do you expect all women’s texts to necessarily critique patriarchy?
What are some of the strategies you could use to reveal the ways in which
gender is represented in texts?

But feminist criticism does not confine itself only to uncovering stereotypes and
challenging “negative” representations of women. It also engages in a range of
other critical exercises. For one, it analyses the ways in which patriarchy works
in narratives and textual worlds. Besides this, feminist work seeks to recover
women’s voices and stories—either by excavating texts that have long been
ignored or by retrieving voices that have been forgotten. Feminist literary theory
is also involved in revaluing marginalised and belittled texts authored by women.
It has not only reclaimed such texts but have also analysed them to uncover their
complexities and the possibilities which they offer. While seeking ignored
women’s voices feminists have recognised the need to look beyond the genres
(forms) that are commonly accepted as literary. They have thus demonstrated
the rhetorical qualities of genres as diverse as oral narratives, diaries and songs.
They have also found it productive to re-vision the history of mainstream genres.
Take the novel in the Anglo-American context as an example. When we read
about the emergence of the novel we scarcely ever learn that in its early, formative
years most of the writers of novels were in fact women. The novel had not then
been a respectable literary genre. In fact, it was seen as trashy. Women who
wrote this un-sanctified genre, for an audience comprising extensively of women,
served to incubate and foster this form. Today the novel is of course one of the
most robust of literary genres.

All these ventures serve to make reading a political act. They also provoke a
radical critique of the institutions of literature. Feminists have found the canons
of literature—the great texts that constitute literary traditions—to be parochial.
They have challenged literary canons for being, predominantly, a listing of men-
authored texts. Feminist criticism does not merely seek the token insertion of a
few women-authored texts into existing canons. Instead, they promote a thorough-
going overhaul of patriarchal attitudes and assumptions. They seek to make
evident the ideological base of supposedly neutral “male”stream literary
institutions.

1.8 THEORY OF GENDER PERFORMATIVITY

Another mode of theorisation that has become very influential is the theory of
gender performativity. In her ground-breaking book Gender Trouble (1990), Judith
Butler challenges both essentialist and constructivist theorisations of gender.
She argues that even those feminists who rubbished the idea of biology as destiny
failed to problematise the idea of two genders. Rather, as we have noted before, 13
Theorising Gender they tended to see the genders—man and woman—as culturally manufactured
from male and female bodies. In other words, even these feminists did not seek
to question the supposed reality and truth of sex.

One of the most provocative theses that Butler proposes pertains to the idea of
sex. She argues that sex is not the primary ground from which gender proceeds.
On the contrary it is the effect of gender. This radically revises initial feminist
theorisations, for now, it would seem, that it is the idea of gender that produces
the notion of sex and not the other way around. In other words, such a formulation
would ask: how do we know where we have to look for “sex”, which part of our
biology is sex? How can we perceive sex if there is not already an idea of gender
that prompted us into such an examination? Butler would argue that it is gender
that constructs the notion of sex. It constructs it in such a manner than sex appears
as the pre-discursive and “natural” ground for itself—i.e. gender. In Butler’s
own words, ‘the performance of gender retroactively produces the effect of some
true and abiding feminine essence or disposition.... Moreover […] gender is
produced by ritualised repetition of conventions, and […] this ritual is socially
compelled in part by the force of a compulsory heterosexuality’ (1997b: 144).

What then is gender? Clearly, gender is not the cultural expression of a biological
core. It is the effect of social performances. What does it mean to see gender as
a performance?
Butler draws the term “performativity” from linguistics and the theory of language.
According to J. L. Austin, in a performative utterance, the utterance is the action
that is performed. A classic example he gives is when someone says ‘I name this
ship the Queen Elizabeth’. What is happening here? Such an utterance does not
describe the person doing something (like for instance an utterance such as “I
am running” does—which describes an action “I” do). A performative utterance
like the one above does what it refers to—i.e. it is in the very utterance that a
ship gets named. There is no “inward” performance; the outward performance is
all that we have. It is this idea that Butler brings to the idea of gender with
dizzying implications. In Gender Trouble Butler argues that gender is an external
performance without a corresponding internal (f)act. That there is an internal,
anatomical sex that causes gender is a fiction; and this fiction is produced by
gendered performances.
It must be noted that performativity is not the same as acting (performance) in a
theatre. Butler clarifies that there is no stable subject that self-consciously acts
(gendered) roles as actors do in theatre. It is in the very act of performing gender
that we become persons.
Judith Butler’s work clearly signals an epistemic shift—a shift in our knowledge
of what is gender and what it means to be woman. But it is not only epistemology
that preoccupies Butler; she is also concerned with the politics and the ethics of
gender. She holds that gender is a norm. It regulates how subjects must be; it
also serves to exclude and ab-norm-alise those that do not conform. This is
primarily done through the heternormative matrix—the norm by which there is
believed to be two sexes/genders (man-woman) that are seen as companions and
partners to each other. Heteronormativity determines that only certain bodies
which are appropriately and heterosexually gendered matter; others are deemed
not to matter. These “others” are not seen as subjects at all. They are merely the
abject.
14
However, according to Butler, this sex-gender regime is constitutively unstable. Theoretical Notions of
Gender
This is evidenced by the fact that the performance of gender cannot simply be a
one-time event; something that can be done once and thereby accomplished and
held secure for ever-after. On the other hand, one must continually and constantly
reiterate gender performances. One must continually identify with the norm and
repudiate the abject. But this also makes it foundationally unstable because no
two iterations can ever be the same. In this Butler sees the possibility for change.
Change is what is inevitable with each iteration. These allow for multiple (not
just two) articulations of gender. They yield the subversive potential of gender
confusion and of ‘gender trouble’.

This idea offers us a corridor to move into Queer theory—a theory which seeks
to reveal the falseness of heteronormativity’s claims to naturalness.

1.9 QUEER THEORY

The term “queer” started out as a word to abuse homosexuals, but it has now
been adopted as a coalition term for all those who wish to show the hegemony of
heterosexuality and to demonstrate the hollowness of its claims.

It is also a place-holder for the theoretical initiatives that have emerged from
lesbian and gay studies. But queer theory is not just another name for lesbian-
gay studies. It is different from the latter in that queer theory is not based upon
any one stable identity. It even calls into question identities like “man” and
“woman” by inserting issues of drag/cross-dressing, hermaphroditism, gender
ambiguity, transgender and transsexuality. The idea of being queer, challenges
the easy fit that is usually assumed between sex-gender-and sexual desire, where
the one leads seamlessly into the other.

One of the strongest criticisms against queer studies is that it has suddenly become
a “sexy” and fashionable mode of enquiry that has been adopted by funding
agencies, academic institutions, publishing industry etc. Many suspect that it
has become conceptually and politically moribund.

There are others who hold that queer resists the idea of being an identity-category.
Unlike identities, queer is not self-evident and already known. It is a category
that is constantly in formation.

1.10 SUMMARY
In this unit we have examined some of the theoretical approaches to gender. We
have examined how each of these theories understand gender and relate it to the
idea of sex. We have seen that these theories take a wide a range of concerns and
focus on the individual, the institutional, the interactional or a combination of
the above.

It is time now to revisit the question that we started out with. Why do we need to
theorise gender? From what we have traversed in this chapter so far, it would be
evident that precisely because gender permeates out lives in various ways; it
becomes difficult for us to perceive it in its details and in its complexities. It is
often difficult to see the web of connections and social formations in which
gender exists. We need theories in order to help us uncover these and also to
15
Theorising Gender think about how they affect individual and collective lives. We have also seen
that our ways of thinking about gender may itself be caught up in existing power-
knowledge systems. Theories help us step back from our commonsense and
examine our automatic and natural understanding of gender. One might well
ask—but why do we need so many theories? Since various theories focus on
different aspects of our complex and sometimes contradictory social
arrangements, a multiplicity of theories help us better to understand the nuances,
intricacies and dynamics of societies.

Before we conclude this unit it would also be useful to problematise the idea of
theory itself.

To “do theory” is often understood as doing a difficult, esoteric activity. In feminist

discourse “theory” is a much contested term. Are there some understandings that
are non-theoretical, or naively-theoretical? Is theory different from politics?
Questions such as these continue to be posed and addressed. As one makes these
distinctions one must keep in mind the power-relations that underpin these
understandings. As you move on to the next unit you must continue to be alert to
how the theories that feed into and draw from feminist politics conceptualise
gender.

References
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York: Routledge.

Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and

the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1990. Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women

and Men. New York: Basic Books.

Freud, Sigmund. 1968. “Femininity.” The Standard Edition of the Complete

Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XXII ed. and trans. James Strachey.
London: The Hogarth Press.

Irigaray, Luce. 1985. “The Blind Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry.” Speculum
of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press. p 47.

Millett, Kate. 1970. Sexual Politics. New York: Doubleday.

Rubin, Gayle. 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’
of Sex.” Toward an Anthropology of Women. ed. Rayna Rapp Reiter. New York:
Monthly Review Press.

Suggested Reading

Beasley, Chris. 2005. Gender & Sexuality: Critical Theories, Critical Thinkers.
London: Sage.

Geetha, V. 2002. Gender. Calcutta: Stree.

16
Lorber, Judith. 1994. Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven and London: Yale Theoretical Notions of
Gender
University Press.

Rachel Alsop, Annette Fitzsimmons, Kathleen Lennon (eds). 2002. Theorizing

Gender. Oxford UK: Polity Press.

Sample Questions
1) Why do we need to theorise gender? How is its relation to sex and to biology
understood?
2) Examine how each of these theories locate gender—the individual, intimate,
institutional, interpersonal or a combination of these?
3) Is theory different from power? Discuss.

17
Theorising Gender
UNIT 2 FEMINIST THEORIES AND
FEMINIST POLITICS

Contents
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Liberal Feminism
2.3 Radical Feminism
2.4 Socialist/Marxist Feminism
2.5 Multicultural Feminism
2.6 Gender Resistance Feminism
2.7 Social Construction Feminism
2.8 Postmodern Feminism
2.9 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 understand the historic importance of merging the discipline of anthropology
with feminism;

 dismantle long standing suspicion between these two domains and probe
the importance and possibility of embedding them together; and

 comprehend that this is done by knowing different school of feminist thought

and how and where they can be neatly collaborated with the discipline of
anthropology.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The relationship between anthropology and feminism is somewhat uncertain
and problematic. This is because of the andocentric bias that exists within the
discipline of anthropology. However, famous feminist anthropologist like
Henrietta Moore (1994) argued that the problem with anthropology is not its
bias towards women, but with its interpretation, placing them in the whole research
and understanding them. It explains that the unease that exists between feminism
and this particular discipline can be solved by placing women at the centre of
research. This understanding has led to the formulation of several feminist
anthropological researches from 1970s onwards. It is in this context that it is
important to understand different feminist theories and its broad politics. However,
it is important for an anthropologist student to remember at least a few broad
predicaments that come up while studying feminist theory:

18
1) Anthropology postulates that gender oppression is not universal. This is Feminist Theories and
Feminist Politics
because
2) The concept of ‘woman’ is also not universal and hardly stands any
generalisations.
3) Anthropology basically focuses its research on non-western traditions,
whereas most of the mainstream feminist theories emanate from western
societies. Thus, there is always a potential risk of Eurocentric existing in
both the disciplines. The risk comes from the colonial legacy of anthropology
which was, after all a historical offshoot of colonial expansion. It also exists
in feminist theory due to their origin in the west.

Feminist anthropologists do claim that they aim at removing this systemic and
epistemological gap that exists between these two schools. But, the feasibility
and practicability of grafting western specific feminist assumptions on the body
of the local anthropological cultures is also severely contested. It is therefore,
important to understand the historical development of feminist theory and its
broad politics.

2.2 LIBERAL FEMINISM

This is also called first wave of feminism which basically was founded and
propagated in the west. This school of thought emphasises on ‘equal rights’ in
the realm of education, jobs, law and so on. Their ideology is basically liberal
individualism. They argue that women are capable of performing like men if
they are given equal opportunities. They resist any kind of interference either it
is from the state or society. They are also called “classical liberal feminists” or
“equity feminists”. They see law as a crucial instrument in both hampering and
improving the role of women. Therefore, they hold that feminism’s political role
is to bring an end to laws that limit women’s liberty in particular. Interestingly,
they are also against any special privileges for women.

Cultural libertarian feminists in this school of thought do recognise patriarchy as

a main source of oppression in societies like USA. But they mainly conceive of
freedom as personal autonomy. They argue that state should cooperate to enhance
conditions that allow women to exercise her autonomy. Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797), John Stuart Mill, Betty Friedan etc belong to this school of thought.
Wollstonecraft in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1833) argued
that woman should strive to have a personhood of her own because she possesses
equal intellectual and rational capacity.

This school is mainly criticised for being moderate, uncritical and shallow for it
fails to offer any comprehensive analysis of women’s oppression.

2.3 RADICAL FEMINISM

This school locates woman’s oppression in the locus of biology (sex) and gender.
Sex being the physical attributes differentiating men and women, gender is entirely
a social construct made for the benefit of patriarchy. They see woman’s oppression
as the major violence happening in the society. Since they see biology as
oppression, they discourage marriage, reproduction, heterosexuality and so on.
19
Theorising Gender Shulamith Firestone, Susan Brownmiller etc., belong to this school. Some of
them {for instance Shulamith Firestone (2003[1970])} simply paraphrase Marxist
analysis of class by replacing it with sex. Some of the early generation radical
feminists argue that sex is basically violence therefore any form of sex ranging
from intercourse to rape is perceived as a form of violence by them. They argue
that men are biologically equipped to rape and women to be violated. The other
main area that they resist in biology is the process and activity of reproduction.
They argue that a new radical reproductive technology ought to be developed so
that even men will be able to conceive and reproduce children. Until and unless
this becomes feasible, they claim that women should shun having sexual relations
with men and stick to lesbian and other non-reproductive, non-heterosexual sexual
activities.

They see patriarchy as a transhistorical phenomenon and an oldest form of

oppression. They locate the root cause of women’s oppression in patriarchal
gender relations, as opposed to legal systems (as in liberal feminism) or class
conflict (as in socialist feminism and Marxist feminism.) Therefore they seek to
abolish patriarchy. Early radical feminists posited that the root cause of all other
inequalities is the oppression of women. Later generation of radical feminists
acknowledge the simultaneous and intersecting effect of other independent
categories of oppression as well. These other categories of oppression may include
oppression based on gender identity, race, and social class and so on. However,
this school is condemned for its biological reductionism and parochialism.

2.4 SOCIALIST/MARXIST FEMINISM

This school believes that gender division of labour is the root cause for women’s
inequality. The fact that men have historically been having control over means
of production, capital, terms of market etc., is the main factor for oppression
against women. Women, on the other hand, have been historically relegated to
domestic labour like household work, reproduction, raising children etc. Domestic
labours do not have exchange value like the productive labour. This school argues
that gender oppression is always associated with class oppression. Removal of
class inequalities, correcting economic relations would automatically lead to the
emancipation of women.

They focus upon both the public and private spheres of a woman’s life and argue
that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and
cultural sources of women’s oppression. It makes use of both Marxist ideology
of class oppression and radical feminist ideology of gender oppression in their
theorisation. Further, socialist feminists see women’s liberation as a necessary
part of larger quest for social, economic and political emancipation.

Marxist feminism believes that women’s liberation is feasible only with the
replacement of capitalism with classless society. Marxist feminism’s foundation
is laid by Engels in his analysis of gender oppression in his seminal work The
Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (1972 [1884]). He argues
that women’s subordination is not a result of her biologic disposition but of the
economic mode of production that prevails in a particular society. Women’s
subordination to men is because the source and mode of production are under
the control of men historically. He hypothetically studies history from this point
of view and concludes that women’s liberation is possible only with the change
20
in economic mode of production and production relations. Unlike socialist Feminist Theories and
Feminist Politics
feminism, Marxist feminism pays less attention to social and cultural aspects of
gender oppression. Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx were some of the prominent
intellectuals in this school of thought.

There is severe criticism against both Marxist/socialist feminist schools of

thought. Gayle Rubin is one of those who reacted strongly to this school of
thought. She wrote extensively on subjects including sadomasochism,
prostitution, pornography, and lesbian literature as well as anthropological studies
and histories of sexual subcultures and so on. In her essay “The Traffic in Women:
Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex”, she coins the phrase “sex/gender
system” and criticizes Marxism for what she claims is its incomplete analysis of
sexism under capitalism, without dismissing or dismantling Marxist fundamentals
in the process.

Radical feminism, which emerged in the 1970s, also took issue with Marxist
feminism. Radical feminist theorists stated that modern society and its constructs
(law, religion, politics, art, etc.) are the product of males and therefore have a
patriarchal character. According to those who subscribe to this view, the best
solution for women’s oppression would be to treat patriarchy not as a subset of
capitalism but as a problem in its own right. Thus, elimination of women’s
oppression implies elimination of male domination in all its forms.

2.5 MULTICULTURAL FEMINISM

This school was found and promoted by non-white women like African-American,
Latina, native American, Asian women etc. They see and resist white racist
solipsism in white mainstream feminist theory and politics. They find white
feminist theories not only inadequate but prejudiced to acknowledge and address
non-white women’s issues. They argue for multiple schools of thought like
‘womanism’ etc. Bell Hooks, Elizabeth Spellman, Patricia Hill Collins are
prominent multicultural feminists.

Main emphasis of this school of feminism is to focus on the intersectionality of

oppression. Gender is not a sole cause of oppression, but only one of the causes.
Some even argue that it is not even a major cause of oppression. They put coloured
(non-white) women’s oppression in a broad context of slave trade, colonialism,
capitalist monopoly, imperialism and so on. Women’s oppression is contingent
upon the other socio-economic contexts like where she comes from, her race,
class position and so on. Thus, it is not possible to have neither a monolithic
theory nor agenda for liberation. Therefore, they strongly argue for “group-
differentiated rights”.

It has been used as an umbrella term to characterise the moral and political claims
of a wide range of disadvantaged groups, including African Americans, women,
gays and lesbians, and the disabled, immigrants and so on. This school is closely
associated with “identity politics,” “the politics of difference,” and “the politics
of recognition.” They all refer to revaluing historically disrespected identities
and changing dominant patterns of representation by giving them agency all
over the world. It also deals with economic imbalances and other social systems
apart from the entity of culture. However, they do give overt emphasis to culture.

21
Theorising Gender Due to their overemphasis on culture, they are often clubbed with postmodern
and poststructuralist feminist schools of thought as well.

Apart from the African American feminists, women from immigrant communities
do embrace this stream of thought. They emphasise on the role of language and
religion. Black feminism and multicultural feminism are distinct but related ideas:
the former highlights victimisation and resistance whereas the latter highlights
“cultural life, cultural expression, achievements, and the like. Their claims for
recognition are demands not just for recognition of aspects of a group’s actual
culture but also for the history of group subordination and its concomitant
experience. This school is challenged for giving more emphasis to culture and
neglecting other important factors like politics, economics and so on.

2.6 GENDER RESISTANCE FEMINISM

The radical, lesbian, standpoint, psychoanalytic feminists argue that gender
inequality cannot be made equal through gender balance because gender
dominance is so ingrained in the system. This school holds that formal legal
rights alone would not curb gender inequality because it is structured. They study
gender order from the feminist perspective and expose the hidden hierarchies
among institutions, daily practices that allow men to control women’s lives. They
call this domination patriarchy, and attribute all oppression against women to
this structure. Politically, they argue that it is not enough to acquire gender balance
or gender mainstreaming. Hence they developed an important theoretical insight
which is the power of gender ideology. Gender ideology is nothing but the body
of values and beliefs that constitute and support gendered social order. They
argue that gender inequality has been established and sustained by major world
religions that argue men’s dominance is nothing but a reflection of God’s will.
They argue that sciences also subscribe to it by saying that gender oppression is
a result of genetic or hormonal differences, legal system denies full citizenship
to women, mass-media, sports, pornography etc., encourages male power and
objectification of women. According to them men exploit women in all aspects.
Women’s intellectual and cultural expressions are repressed due to phallocentric
nature of society.

It focuses on how men and women are different socially, cognitively, emotionally
and so on. They explain that women should form separate woman-centered
communities, institutions and so on. Gender resistance feminisms want women’s
voices and perspectives to reshape the gendered social order. They confront the
existing gendered structure by turning it upside down. They value women and
womanly attributes over men and manly attributes, emotional sensitivity over
objectivity, nurturance over aggression, parenting over competition and so on.
Radical feminism in particular is against men’s sexuality and sexual violence.

This school tends to be confrontational in challenging the confines of male

domination. They resist by putting women first. They argue that women should
create their own spheres in politics, culture, religion, education and so on. While
the systemic violence against women demands continued political engagement
with the larger society, woman-only spaces are needed for refuge, recreation,
religious worship, cultural production and so on. They stress the importance of
countering the negative evaluations of women by valourising their characteristics,
mothering capacities, by encouraging pride in women’s bodies and by teaching
22
women how to protect themselves against sexual violence. Their focus on Feminist Theories and
Feminist Politics
standpoint is a major theoretical contribution. Standpoint is a worldview from
where one is located or situated in the society. Women’s voices and experiences
are the sources for standpoint theory, they do insist on women-centric perception
and politics as well. This school resonates, to some extent, the extremism of
radical feminism. Thus, this school is also criticised for being partial to women.

2.7 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION FEMINISM

This school of feminism argues that gender is a biological fact with social
implications. The social group ‘women’ is the creation of masculine gaze. John
Berger succinctly puts: “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being
looked at.” They are socially constructed through culture, theory, laws, media,
day-to-day routines of a given society and so on. Prominent theorist Dorothy
Smith draws heavily on social construction theory, and argues that sociological
theory as constructed by men gives a distorted picture of women’s experiences,
and that any theory which ignores the perspectives of women is necessarily
incomplete.

There is upcoming research on women and popular media. They argue that even
the way we watch media is split into two broad categories between active/male
and passive/female. Women are generally displayed as objects of pleasure and
their appearance is meant to serve strong visual and erotic male desires. The
kind of labour that women put into media is also divided according to these
sexual demarcations. This heterosexual division of labour controls the narrative
structure, making and projection of the entire media domain. Man is always the
spectator and woman always assumes the role of exhibition. In this way, it is the
male fantasy and necessity that controls the mass media. Consequently, women
always continue to watch and survey themselves constantly. She is both the
watcher and watched at. She has to watch everything she embodies and everything
she does. This way of thinking is implanted by men throughout history with the
aid of several institutions, principles and processes. Thus, every woman carries
a surveyor in herself and that surveyor is a man.

This school also argues that sexual difference is a social construction. Women
are expected to master the art of femininity and achieve feminine body. She
suffers continuously to keep herself presentable to the male eyes. In the
contemporary patriarchal world, the needs and fantasies of men do dwell in the
consciousness and commonsense of most women. Her own understanding and
her own needs and desires are constituted and configured by what men expect of
her. Thus several subtle forces of social control operate on women. Women do
respond to non-verbal cues as much as they do to verbal ones. They set the
environment in which the power relationships of the sexes are acted out and the
ordained status of each sex is reinforced. These status inequalities are
communicated in interpersonal behaviour and social relationships of day-to-day
lives. This school sees women only as victims of social construction and is totally
oblivious to women’s own contribution (directly or indirectly) to these
constructions. It is somewhat unreal to assume that all social constructions are
anti-women or that all of them are basically produced by men.

23
Theorising Gender
2.8 POSTMODERN FEMINISM
This school includes both postmodern and poststructuralist theory. Postmodernism
built by Michel Foucault, Simon de Beauvoir, Derrida, Judith Butler, Hélène
Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva can be termed as the prominent
postmodern feminists.

This school believes that sex and gender are mere constructions of language.
Judith Butler in her book Gender Trouble (1990), for instance, criticises the
distinction drawn by previous feminisms between (biological) sex and gender
(social construction) which is irrelevant to understand the realities of gender
oppression. Apart from their emphasis on language, they also believe in extreme
relativism, diversity and resist any sort of essentialism. They contest that there is
anything like truth. For them truth is absolutely relative. They, thus tend to
deconstruct the very notion of truth.

Luce Irigaray is a psychoanalyst whose primary focus is to liberate women from

men’s philosophies, including the ones of Derrida and Lacan, on which she’s
building. Irigaray takes on Freudian and Lacanian conceptions of child
development to criticise the notion of Oedipus complex. She proposes three
strategies for woman to retain her individual identity and they include: create a
gender neutral language, engage in lesbian and autoerotic practice and mimic
the caricatures men have imposed on women.

But, the modern history and epistemology always revolves around a settled notion
of truth and the very meaning of modernity and its associated structures do
emanate from this faith and foundation in this settled idea of truth. Since this
school fails to offer any single explanation or solution for women’s problems, it
is criticised for not offering any path of action and practical politics.

2.9 SUMMARY
The present unit tried to focus on the relation between anthropology and feminist
school of thought. It is basically an attempt to dismantle a dominant assumption
that anthropology is basically male and Eurocentric and thus incapable of
addressing and accommodating the reality of ‘diversity’ in it. However, this was
the assumption that was broken free with the advent of postmodern and post-
structural feminist theories which both lend and borrow from anthropology both
in terms of theory and politics. Thus, it is now time to explore more innovative
themes and ways of doing feminism in anthropology as well as in anthropological
feminism. Moreover, several ethnography-oriented studies began to propose the
primacy of understanding each and every culture (whether the study is conducted
by feminists or anthropologists) in its own terms and contexts. This in way not
only erodes ethnocentric and Eurocentric biases from both of these disciplines
but also opens up large areas and aspects for common research.

The other purpose that the unit tried to serve is to trace the historical trajectory of
different schools of feminist thought along with their limitations. This helps us
to understand how the politics and discourse of feminism has been evolving.
Such a study of evolution does ensure that feminism is not a narrow discipline
but does carry lots of potential to transform itself according to changing times
24
and histories. The same is the case with the domain of anthropology. Therefore, Feminist Theories and
Feminist Politics
it will be helpful for a student of anthropology (and feminism as well) to
understand and reflect upon the contents, developments and possible confluences
of these two disciplines.

References
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York: Routledge.
Engles, Fredrich. 1972. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the
State. New York: International Publishers Co.
Firestone, Shulamith. 2003 (1970). The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist
Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Moore, Henrietta L. 1994. A Passion for Difference. UK: Indiana University
Press.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1833. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures
on Political and Moral Subjects. New York: A.J. Matsell.

Suggested Reading
Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1988. Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in
Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press.
Tuana, Nancy. 1995. Feminism and Philosophy: Essential Readings in Theory,
Reinterpretation, and Application. Boulder: Westview Press.

Sample Questions

1) Explain the basic ideological tension between the discipline of anthropology

and feminist theory. Do you think that this gap can be filled? Justify your
argument.

2) What are the main over lapses and contradictions between different schools
of feminist thought?

3) Why is it important to merge the disciplines of feminism and anthropology?

25
Theorising Gender
UNIT 3 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF
THE STUDY OF GENDER IN
ANTHROPOLOGY

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Gender in Anthropological History
3.3 Significant Contributors
3.4 Gender in Indian History
3.5 Developments in Indian Feminism
3.6 Critical Approaches
3.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

Having gone through this unit, you should be able to:
 understand the history of gender in anthropology;
 know the important figures who have made significant contributions to this
field of study;
 have an idea of the history of gender understanding in Indian society as well
as recent developments; and
 learn about critical views and current directions.

The rights of women are sacred. See that women are maintained in the rights attributed
to them.
- Prophet Mohammad

It is through woman that order is maintained. Then why call her inferior from whom all
great ones are born.
- Guru Nanak

Well, it’s hard for a mere man to believe that woman doesn’t have equal rights.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Over the years people have begun to understand women better and found that
traditional statuses and roles do not tell the entire story about them. There has
been a need to deal with women through a variety of issues like their relationship
with sex ratios, births, deaths, illness and health, education, work as well as their
relationship with men. All of these issues have been complicated by the fact that

26
the biology, psychology and power relationships in society were incompletely Historical Development of
the Study of Gender in
understood. As studies on women grew, it began to be understood that some of Anthropology
these problems of bias in studying women could be bypassed to a certain extent
by studying them through the reflected images, as it were, of the way they were
visualised by others, like looking at the literature on women available in different
periods of historical time.

Box
Patriarchy means a system of society or government in which the father or
the eldest male of the household is the head of the family and descent is
maintained in the male line. It is also system of society or government in
which the men have power and women are largely excluded from it. Thus,
one may have a society or a community arranged in patriarchal lines. The
term seems to have originated in the mid-seventeenth century through
medieval Latin and through the Greek patriarkhia, or patriarkhes, meaning
‘ruling father’. (Oxford English Dictionary)

Much research has also clarified that sexual roles and statuses may not have
merely two polarised sexes, as much advertising would have us believe, but a
much more complex and multiplicity of relationships. The study of the interactions
between these posited and contested realities of sexual roles and relationships
then came to be known as gender studies. Today, women are not only striving for
equality, departments of gender and women’s studies are commonplace in
universities around the world. Such departments did much to begin a holistic
understanding of women in society. Also, journals in the social sciences often
had sections on recent advances in women’s studies from time to time as well as
seminars/workshops/conferences held on this issue.

However, most of these departments studying women were often situated in

Arts/Humanities. As a result, the biological aspect of the study of such issues
were often ignored or paid only lip service to. It was the development of
anthropology in the early years of the twentieth century that led to true holistic
ideas and conceptions of women and gender relations that bridged both social as
well as biological dimensions. These dimensions would be most usefully handled
for ensuring gender equality in the future.

3.2 GENDER IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL HISTORY

Younger children begin by believing that all children are equals. As they grow
up, they gradually start distinguishing biologically between male and female
and also by understanding differences between them. Today, in many societies,
there is a belief in the inherent inequality between men and women. Some people
believe this is due to the very clearly seen differences in the biology of men and
women. However, over the years, we have learnt that these differences, often
cultural, are perpetuated, maintained and reproduced within communities. The
purpose of this kind of a course is to show that a better understanding of this
process may eventually lead to a more equitable relationship between genders.
Here, we shall begin by looking at the history of this understanding between
men and women.

27
Theorising Gender In North America, it has been noted that anthropology has contributed the most
towards ideas of sex, gender and women in feminist anthropology. The historical
development of feminist ethnography may be seen in four different stages. For
Visweswaran (1997), they are characterised by the following periods:

Stage 1 began in 1880 and continued to 1920. At this point in time biology was
seen to determine social roles and gender was not seen to be any different from
sex. However, it was beginning to emerge as an object of analysis, for example,
in the works of those like Elsie Clews Parsons. It was also an era when
anthropological sensitisation to these issues was working very well. For instance,
when E.B. Tylor addressed a gathering of the Anthropological Society of
Washington in 1884, he stated that anthropologists needed to include the work
of women as part of field ethnography. Also Elsie Clews Parsons in 1906
suggested that women needed to conduct ethnography since they would be better
able to gather data from women informants. In fact, one parallel or ‘double’
movement that began during this period was not only the idea that gender/sex/
woman’s’ issues needed to be studied specifically, they were also claiming that
by this method a stage of equality would be reached where the category of ‘women’
or ‘men’ could be erased altogether.

Stage 2 began in 1920 and continued till 1960. This period marked the separation
of sex from gender since it was observed that sex did not describe gender roles
completely, for example in the works of Margaret Mead and others. Others who
worked at this point included Ruth Landes, Ruth Underhill, Gladys Reichard,
Phyllis Kaberry, Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria and Hortense Powdermaker.
All these authors grappled with the issue of understanding and unraveling issues
relating to cross-cultural understanding of sex and gender even as they themselves
lived and struggled through similar sex/gender representations in their own
societies.

Stage 3 began in 1960 and continued till 1980. Here, the distinction between sex
and gender was elaborated into more complex ideas of how the sex/gender system
operated in different societies. Biological facts were often used as a basic idea to
create particular gender roles in different societies, for example in the works of
Gayle Rubin and others like Michelle Rosaldo, Louis Lamphere, Rayna Rapp,
M. Kay Martin, Barbara Voorhies, Betty Friedan, Laura Bohannon, Elizabeth
Fernea, Eleanor Leacock, Diane Bell and Jane Goodall. In 1971, courses in gender
and anthropology were started for the first time in Stanford University. This was
also the period when Standpoint Theory first became an important method for
understanding how issues relating to sex/gender were becoming central
standpoints and bases for understanding relations of women in other societies.
Implicit within this was a critique of the authors’ own society and the gender
relations therein. It was felt that these issues were themselves showing the
political, sex/gender and other biases of the researchers themselves. Thus, this
position of the researcher itself became a problem. In later years, much analysis
was done not on ‘other’ cultures but on the understanding of certain
anthropologists of such cultures and how it reflected on their own.

Stage 4 began in 1980 and continued till 1996 at least, and showed that categories
like sex and gender themselves were a problem, since they were both social
categories and thus had biases. Thus the idea of a ‘woman’ as a biological and
universal category was seen to be a case of ‘gender essentialism’, as in the works
28
of Frankenberg and others like Michelle Rosaldo, Judith Butler, Nadia Historical Development of
the Study of Gender in
Serematakis, Dorinne Kondo, Joni Jones and Angie Chabram. It has become Anthropology
imperative to incorporate ideas relating to the incorporation of feminine voices
from the field. The location of such studies also shifted to studies of work places,
work culture, women’s culture, therapeutic culture, the participation of women
in popular culture, self-reflexive narratives of women anthropologists in the field
(like that of Margaret Trawick), accidental ethnography, recombinant family
life, communities of practice, cultural constructions of masculinity, gay and
lesbian studies, as well as issues relating to cross-cultural analysis of reproductive
rights.

It is here that an important critique emerges regarding such discourses, for some
anthropologists began to claim that feminists were also alienated from other
women in their own countries but were also totally different from women’s
experiences in other countries, especially in the Third World. Thus, feminism
needed to become involved with local forms in other countries, especially with
other local and nationalist movements. This diversity would thus generate different
histories of such feminist ethnography.

It is in this context that one must posit Stage 5 of the history of feminist
ethnography. This period would begin from 1996 and go on to the current period.
It is at this point that one may show that Indian studies on sex/gender have
developed in different trajectories. Such alternative histories for India have already
been fashioned.

For others, like Gellner and Stockett (2006), there have been three waves of
feminism. They have not been chronological but overlapping. Second wave
theories are still relevant today. In the first wave, from 1850 to 1920, there was
an attempt to incorporate the voices of women in the ethnographies that were
produced. Mostly, though, ethnographies were produced by males and the data
was collected from male informants. This included data regarding women also.

In the second wave, from 1920 to 1980, anthropological study moved into
academic spheres. Through this movement, it separated the concept of sex from
gender, which had earlier been used interchangeably. Thus, gender became a
term that was used to refer to men and women, the relationships between them
and the inherent cultural construction of these two categories. It was shown that
the definition of gender varied from culture to culture. This led feminists to shy
away from broad generalisations. They refused to accept earlier dichotomies
like male/female and work/home. Studies in this period often had a materialistic
tinge, since many researchers favoured the use of Marxist theories regarding
social relations regarding women, reproduction and production. Many focus on
the linkages between gender and class, the social relations of power and the
changes in mode of production.

In the third wave, which began in the 1980s, gender asymmetry was no longer
the only concern and there was an emphasis on studies in archaeology and physical
anthropology as well. There is an acknowledgement of differences through
categories like class, race, ethnicity, etc. Gendered studies in archaeology have
been slower but there has been a recent spate of such studies, that show feminine
usages of tool-usage, pottery, handicrafts, house-making and decoration, among
other things. Often, this period focuses on differences between women, thus
29
Theorising Gender leading to discussions on categories like age, occupation, religion, status and the
interaction between these categories. Power is seen to be very important since it
is intricately linked to identity, as well as studies on production and work,
reproduction and sexuality as well as the state and gender. This has ensured that
many different focuses have emerged and a unified approach or theoretical
perspective has been lacking during this period. In fact, the fragmented nature of
the subject of study has itself ensured this kind of shattering, which has often
been a hallmark of postmodern studies.

Feminist anthropologists had objected to the fact that anthropological discussions

regarding women had focused on studies relating to kinship, family and marriage.
This has led to an incomplete understanding of the totality of human experience.
The use of politically correct terms, instead of the ubiquitous ‘man’ also needed
to be enforced. Since this language shaped worldview, it was obvious why studies
on men took prominence. The approach of some feminists was against a
Durkheimian systemic approach, which saw dichotomies as being clearly
demarcated. Society was seen by them to be more dynamic, since some of their
approaches emerge from the Marxist idea of praxis. This kind of cultural
determinism of gender was also criticised by Mary Daly and Adrienne Rich.
They felt that this was part of an essentialist view where there was supposed to
be an essential idea of a male and a female, showing traditional statuses and
roles. Here, the passivity of women was often seen to be peacefulness,
sentimentality as the idea of nurture, and subjectiveness as self-awareness. Thus,
this form of feminism ignores the oppression under which such behaviours
proliferate.

Ethnic minorities and African-American anthropologists were also dissatisfied

by the issues raised by many of the early feminist anthropologists. They felt that
differences between women were celebrated since they were seen as creative
and led to change. However, these differences themselves caused misunderstanding
and separation. Different women thus experienced different degrees of oppression
from patriarchy, which was not shared by all. This was a very Eurocentric idea,
as were graduate and undergraduate systems of teaching and learning. Thus,
women do not share all these ideas and issues which were brought out by different
feminist anthropologists. This variety of experience itself has been a rich source
of creativity among gender studies in anthropology at present.

Thus, variety, difference and identity issues have become of paramount importance
in gender and feminist studies. As mentioned earlier, power is seen to be an
important component. This is because identity is constructed and enacted through
a set of practices and actions that are mediated by relations of power. One area
where such studies have brought brilliant results has been in queer theory, which
has been seen as a post-structuralism reaction against normalcy in the arena of
gender and sexuality. This approach challenges the fact that only heterosexual
unions and the attendant social institutions are normal (something called
heteronormativity). Thus queer theory shows that socially constructed sexual
acts and identities consist of many varied components.

30
 Historical Development of
3.3 SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTORS the Study of Gender in
Anthropology
a) Elsie Worthington Clews
Born in New York City in 1875, she was born into a wealthy family. She had
always been interested in freedom, whether social or personal. The Victorian
home she was brought up in made her aware of the problems related to
being a woman at that time. She grew up to be a strong-headed person, and
went on to conduct her B.A. in Sociology in 1896 at the Barnard College.
Later, at Columbia University, she met Franklin H. Giddings, the first full-
time professor of Sociology in the US. She completed her M.A. in Sociology
in 1897 and a Ph.D. in 1899. She married Herbert Parsons in 1900. She died
on 19 December 1941 at the age of 66.

During her lifetime, she conducted many studies on women in America, as

well as on the African-American and Pueblo Indian folklore. She gave a
series of lectures at Barnard on family and marriage patterns, which became
controversial because she used ethnological data to show how trial marriages
could be an advantage in society. Her works weaved the problems women
faced within the institutions of marriage, family, religion and social etiquette.
She also emphasised the requirement of individuals to be free and to have
choices. In fact, she hoped to remove the social terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’
and to have ‘womanhood’ as a universal term for all humanity. A variety of
her books reflected how women and their lives were ruled by constraints
and taboos, confinement and exclusion, that demarcated them from the men.
She compared her knowledge of American society with other cultures to
make her points, something that later on was used with such effectiveness
by Margaret Mead. Her shift to anthropology led her to study folklore, family
structures, diffusion and culture history. However, her data on the Southwest
tribes was made by studying only one family and a few paid informants. In
more secretive pueblos, interviews were conducted in a hotel room or nearby
Spanish villages. Parsons focused on women and practices, including offering
made by women to get pregnant, taboos relating to birth, postpartum practices
and naming ceremonies. It was here, according to Lamphere, that Elsie Clews
Parsons became more interested in ethnographic observation, informant
narration and the interrogation of natives. The earlier form of feminism had
generalised about women’s situation from ethnographic examples only.

b) Hortense Powdermaker
Hortense Powdermaker was born on 24 December 1900 in Philadelphia,
Pensylvania and died abruptly in 1970. She had no children and had never
married but had a lot of good friends who thought of her as a deeply humane
and social person. From high school, she went on to college, majoring in
history, graduating with a B.A. in 1921. She began working with
Amalgamated Clothing Workers but found the desk job irritating. She then
began to organise workers groups, thus gaining more experience in fieldwork.
However, even here the desk job irritated her and she joined the London
School of Economics and Political Science, where she took classes in social
anthropology. She became quite interested and was influenced in her
fieldwork by Malinowski, who would give guidelines on fieldwork to his
students. Powdermaker felt that these guidelines were very useful and the
31
Theorising Gender students gained a lot from them. They, in fact, became a kind of myth that
was woven around Malinowski’s detailed data gathering during fieldwork,
which Malinowski himself did not always follow. In 1928, Powdermaker
received her Ph.D. in 1928. Powdermaker had no interest in an academic
career and it was only Malinowski’s insistence that persuaded her.

Powdermaker’s most important work was Life in Lesu: The Study of a

Melanesian Society in New Ireland which she wrote in 1933. This followed
a bleak period in her life when she had a tough time getting funding for her
research, even from Malinowski. She eventually was funded by the Australian
National Research Council. It turned out to be classic fieldwork ethnography
of the period, with a large ethnographic coverage area and very vivid
descriptions. Her fieldwork style and skills reflected those of Malinowski.
One weakness of the work was that her fieldwork was not as contemporary
in including new elements and aspects that were included by her
contemporaries. However, another important work that had been conducted
by her was Hollywood: The Dream Factory, an Anthropologist Looks at the
Movie Makers in 1951. In fact, many who are not anthropologists know of
her through this seminal work which was perhaps the only anthropological
work on Hollywood. Through these works, Powdermaker showed how
women became stereotyped and became ‘objects’, and how they struggled
to improve the conditions of their existence.

c) Ruth Fulton Benedict

Ruth Benedict was born in 1887 and became a student of Franz Boas. She
completed her Ph.D. in 1923 from Columbia University. She worked on
Native Americans and other groups to help her to develop her ‘configurational
approach’, which saw emergent patterns in culture. She thus saw cultural
systems working to favour certain kinds of personality types in different
societies. She became one of the most important female anthropologists of
that period.

d) Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891. She was the first African American
woman to study African American folklore and voodoo. She studied
anthropology in the 1920s under the tutelage of Franz Boas, who had
encouraged her. The data for her work came from her years of growing up in
Eatonville, Florida, an all-black area. Her insights and observation came
from her anthropological background and she used this well to create fictional
works also. She had been the only black student from Barnard who had
graduated from there, receiving a B.A. in 1928. She wrote Mules and Men
in 1935 and Tell My Horse in 1938. She also helped to immortalize the
images of the folklore of this diasporas Black culture, but she also helped to
weave a theoretical understanding of this community as well as give various
methodological innovations. She died in 1960. Later, anthropologists have
used her work and her life to show how women were being discriminated
since she was unable to complete her Ph.D. under Boas and was thus often
never mentioned as a significant figure in anthropology because she was a
woman and also because she was black.

32
e) Phyllis Kaberry Historical Development of
the Study of Gender in
Phyllis Kaberry was born in 1910. She worked as a social anthropologist Anthropology
with Bronislaw Malinowski, for her Ph.D. Her work was involved with
women in different societies, mostly from Africa and Australia. She was
also extremely interested in understanding the religious background of the
peoples from these regions. Her claim to fame, however, came from her in-
depth understanding of the relationships between men and women. She died
in 1977.

f) Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was born in 1901. She was a very important figure in
anthropology, but she was also a figurehead for women’s movements around
the world because of a lifetime of researches on the roles of women and
their relationships with men in society. She was considered to be an important
figure that led the second wave of sex and gender studies in anthropology.
Her theoretical approaches borrowed from Gestalt psychology. Gestalt
psychology may be summed up by the statement that “the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts”. Hence, Gestalt psychology analysed personality
as an interrelated phenomenon than as a sum total or collection of small
parts. Margaret Mead’s work separated the biological factors from the cultural
factors that shaped and controlled human behavior. Her work influenced
those of Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, both of whom attempted
to build a framework for the growth of this fledgling discipline. Mead’s
work analysed the overwhelming data on sexual asymmetry that was present
in much of ethnographic writing. She died in 1978.

In 1935, she wrote Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, where
she explored the linkage between culture and behaviour. Culture was one
major factor determining male and female characteristics in society, thus
setting up norms for behaviour. The book was a template for a set of
alternative set of behaviours as seen in other cultures that could be followed
by a more aware American society. In 1949, she carried this idea further in
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. Through this
work, Mead wished to bring in a greater awareness of the differences and
similarities in human bodies that lead to our learning and understanding of
the sex of the individual, and their relationship to other sexes. She also wished
to look at our similar knowledge regarding these issues from other societies,
to develop cross-cultural parallels on locating how human beings have reacted
in similar situations and what this has resulted in. This exposure to alternative
ideas relating to the issue is likely to leave us better off in our understanding
and our behavior. Thus, this paved the way for a better understanding and
use of the talents of both men as well as women. These analyses regarding
males and females influenced much thought on the issue over the years.

g) Eleanor Leacock
Eleanor Leacock was born in 1922. She used a Marxist approach in her
ethnographic work, arguing that capitalism was responsible for the
subordination of women. She talked to English-speaking informants to learn
more about hunting practices, thus creating her own hunting pattern to show
how the informants were over-generalising. Using this data, she challenged
Julian Steward’s work on hunting and trapping. She died in 1987.
33
Theorising Gender h) Sherry Ortner
Sherry Ortner was born in 1941, becoming one of the early proponents on
feminist anthropology after her seminal work on the Sherpas. She created an
explanatory model for gender asymmetry, showing that that the subordination
of women was cross-culturally valid. Using this universal model, she took a
structuralist approach to show gender inequality in her 1974 paper titled ‘Is
Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’ in the journal Anthropological
Theory. She showed how women had always been symbolically associated
with nature, an issue which has been called ecofeminism. This was because
nature as well as women was subordinate to men. She saw women as child-
bearers being natural creators while men were cultural creators. Ortner
showed how men who did not have a high rank were excluded from things,
just like women. She also explained how this subordination of women to
men has happened historically, showing that women’s psychology and body
were shown to be identifiable with nature, while men were seen as being
linked to culture. In 1996, she wrote a book on Making Gender: The Politics
and Erotics of Culture, in which she used a lifetime of experience to rethink
the issue of culture and gender.

i) Margaret Conkey
Margaret Conkey was born in 1943 and was one of the first to introduce
feminism and gender to archeological theory, writing an important paper
titled “Archaeology and the Study of Gender” in the journal Advances in
Archaeological Method and Theory in 1984. The article criticised current
archaeologists for using modern Western ideas to understand sexual division
of labour in the past. This understanding was also skewed in the sense that
archaeological contexts and artifacts were often attributed to male activities,
since this was supported through funding, as well as research time. In fact,
the discipline of archaeology was itself constructed around masculine values
and norms. In 1991, Conkey and Joan Gero edited a book titled Engendering
Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, which brought in these issues in an
explicit and theoretically informed manner, through original archaeological
data from around the world to show the different gender systems operating
in the past.

j) Michelle Rosaldo
Michelle Rosaldo was born in 1944. She, like Ortner, created a set of
explanations at different levels to show how women had become subordinated
universally through socialisation processes, culture in general and through
the social structure itself. Women bore and raised children and this socio-
culturally defined role of mother became the basis of subordination. This
limited participation of women in various socio-cultural spheres needed to
be understood much more holistically, through an analysis of the larger
system. In 1974, Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere edited a landmark book on
Women, Culture and Society, that showcased a variety of papers on the issue
of female subordination and asymmetrical relations. Louise Lamphere, who
was born in 1940, was also an important figure in this important issue of
dealing with the anthropology of gender and women’s status. Michelle
Rosaldo died in 1981.

34
k) Nancy Scheper-Hughes Historical Development of
the Study of Gender in
Nancy Scheper-Hughes was born in 1944. Her feminist ethnographies Anthropology
questioned the idea of a universal definition for “man” and “woman”. Her
classic book on medical anthropology titled Death Without Weeping: The
Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil was critical of the concept of innate
maternal bonding, since women were forced to favour infants who would
survive in harsh living conditions.
Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account which finds that mother
love as conventionally understood is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury
for those who can reasonably expect that their infants will live.
l) Gayle Rubin
Gayle Rubin, an activist and influential theorist on sex and gender politics,
was born in 1949. She introduced the concept of the “sex/gender” system
which, like Mead, separated biology from behaviour. Her concepts were
based on the works of Marx, Engels, Levi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud.
Friedrich Engels’ work on The Origin of the Family, Private Property and
the State became a classic backbone of Marxist theory. Based on Morgan’s
idea of unilineal evolution, it became a point of study and basis for a universal
understanding of the subordination of women and the use of dichotomies in
looking at socio-cultural categories relating to men and women. Using these
concepts, Rubin wrote The Traffic of Women: Notes on the “Political
Economy of Sex”. In this work, Rubin uncovers historically the social
mechanisms through which gender and heterosexuality are produced, and
by which women are relegated to a subordinate position.
m) Lila Abu-Lughod
In her seminal work titled Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories published
in 1993, Lila Abu-Lughod demonstrated that culture was boundless in her
sharing of women’s stories. These narratives show that Bedouin women found
advantages of their own in a society where there was so much sexual
segregation. She also helped to improve the understanding of Western
feminists regarding Islam and Hinduism. Thus, feminist and anthropological
insights were used to create a critical ethnographic account, thus improving
the ability of anthropological theory to adequately understand the lives of
women and to critically comment on the way feminist theory seems to
appropriate women in the Third World.
Apart from the anthropologists mentioned above, there are also many others.
In 1975, Rayna Reiter Rapp edited a book titled Towards an Anthropology
of Women. In the 1970s, this was considered to be a ground-breaking work,
since the articles here were focused on the development of universal
explanations. In 2001, Irma McClaurin published Black Feminist
Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics, highlighting the fact
that black as well as non-Western feminist authors were rarely cited and
respected. In 2006, Pamela Geller and Miranda Stockett published Feminist
Anthropology: Past, Present and Future which went beyond current
theoretical and ethnographical concerns, attempting to find unity and meaning
in a fragmented and disputed field of study, thus creating openings for
discussions on performing various roles, pedagogic activity, allowance for
multiplicity of roles, differences in behaviours, attitudes, beliefs and practices
as well as the important issue of identity.
35
Theorising Gender
3.4 GENDER IN INDIAN HISTORY
Historical sources show that in the ancient period, between 1500-1000 BC, which
is called the Vedic or Rig-Vedic period, many liberal attitudes marked the relations
between men and women. These attitudes included the fact that women were
allowed to participate in many religious and social activities. They were also
allowed to sometimes choose their own spouse. Women were initiated into Vedic
rituals and if they did not wish to marry, could live in their parental house.
However, patriarchy was followed and the husband was considered to be of a
higher status. Husbands often married many women, a form of polygyny. A widow
was permitted to marry the husband’s younger brother, to contain her fertility
and other services within the family. This latter practice is found to be prevalent
in many other parts of the world.

Mention of certain social practices is also seen in the epics like the Mahabharata
(dated by some to about 12th century BC) and the Ramayana (dated to about the
fifth century BC). Sita, in the latter text, is often portrayed as an ideal Indian
woman since she was willing to give up everything for her husband, thus following
him into the forests for fourteen years during Lord Rama’s exile. In the former
text, Draupadi was shown to have more independence, courage and character.
Gandhari also illuminates the fact that a wife who keeps herself blind to support
her husband’s blindness was ideal.

Jainism and Buddhism became part of Indian society from about the 6th century
BC. Both were like religious rebellions against the controlling priestly social
order of the period. Jain women from different backgrounds became successful
as ascetics. Buddhist women joined the Sanghas, composing verses called
Therigatha. By 1000 to 500 BC, the status of women in India degraded further.
Women became confined to households and were further controlled by purity
and pollution taboos. They were kept away from religious and ritual ceremonies.
Patriarchal and patrilineal systems were reinforced. Sons began to be considered
as better than daughters, especially since women left for her husband’s house
after marriage. Also, the husband had control over her sexual and reproductive
rights, having the power to go in for another marriage if the wife did not bear
sons, or for other reasons. There was a lowering of the age of marriage. Women
scholars like Gargi and Maitreyi were known from this period, but they were
exceptions rather than the rule.

These issues relating to the lack of freedom for women began to be codified into
law through the Dharmasastras like the Manu Smriti and the Yagnavalka Smriti
from 500 to 200 BC. Women were not only excluded from other than some
domestic affairs, they were not allowed to be educated either. While young, they
were supposed to be dependent on their father, after marriage on the husband,
and later dependent on their sons, according to the laws of Manu. Marriage at an
early age was considered to be unavoidable at this point. Child marriages were
common and widow remarriages were rare. Sati, or sacrifice of wives of dead
husbands on the funeral pyre as well as female foeticide and infanticide became
popular.

Islam began to emerge as a major religion in India in the medieval period around
the 11th century AD. The system of wearing purdah to cover part or the entire
body was also prevalent at this point of time among the upper classes like the
36
royal families and merchants. This became more prevalent among the general Historical Development of
the Study of Gender in
public. However, this system spread to many other regions, cultures and religions Anthropology
over the years. Men could divorce their wives and the divorced women could get
no support. Many of these rules regarding rights of property and patriarchy already
existed in Indian society at the time.
By the end of the medieval period, in the 1600s, when the British came into
India, these inequalities that troubled women continued to exist. When the British
initially came, they continued to work with whatever social conditions remained
without changing them substantially, except in the economic and political spheres.
It was only later that they took some interest in social reforms and in this they
were often aided by either British citizens who took an interest in Indian culture
or Indians.
In 1829, the practice of Sati were banned. This was mostly due to Raja Rammohan
Roy, whose ideas were supported by the Governor General Lord William
Bentinck. However, they were also ideas propagated by a small but very effective
group of people led by Louis Henry Derozio. However, those widows who were
not allowed to commit sati faced a lot of problems due to a lack of education and
social acceptance. This was the issue fought for by Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar
whose efforts led to the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856. Vidyasagar also
supported women’s education.
Jyoti Ba Phule in Maharashtra continued this battle to open schools for girls in
1848 and in 1852 opened a school for Dalit girls. He created a home for protecting
the children of widows. Other educational institutions were opened in Maharashtra
by Maharshi Karve.
Other important acts included the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, which
fixed the age of marriage for girls at 14 years and for boys at 18 years. Harbildas
Sarda took up this issue and the Sarda Act came into being. In 1976 the Child
Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Act was enacted thus making the age of women
suitable for marriage to be 18, and those of men at 21. Both overtly as well as
covertly, the freedom of women was enhanced by the participation of women in
the freedom movement and their participation with Mahatma Gandhi and
renouncing the existence of dowry.

3.5 DEVELOPMENTS IN INDIAN FEMINISM

In recent years, a number of feminist movements have emerged, characterised
by theorising, acting and mobilising. These feminist movements that we have
witnessed of late are the direct outcome of industrialisation and urbanisation
and have challenged the existing system which has made women socially,
culturally, economically and even politically crippled. The women’s movement,
like the student’s movement, is essentially a middle class movement that has
been directed against male chauvinism, patriarchialism in the family and the
sexual exploitation of women. In most nations the feminist movement has an
urban bias and has been run by white collar middle class women and social
workers from middle and upper class non-working women. However, despite
this narrow mass-base and elitist control, the feminist movements worldwide
have aided (though in varying degrees) the process of women’s emancipation by
upgrading her self-image, by protesting against social evils like dowry and
prostitution and by propagating the message of the equality of the sexes.
37
Theorising Gender In India, feminist publications such as Manushi, Bayja, Mahila Andolan Patrika,
Kali For Women and Feminist Network have been spear-heading the feminist
movement. A number of NGOs and voluntary organisations have also taken up
the cause of women’s upliftment. These organisations, many of whom are being
run by women themselves, try to help those women who have been terrorised
and victimised by their husbands or in-laws. They also render financial and legal
help for the rehabilitation of such women.

The proliferation of such societies is no doubt a healthy development for it will

help the women emancipate themselves from social and cultural bondage and
turn the man-woman relationship to one of parity. Needless to say, such
developments are and will in the future affect the family structure, particularly
in terms of the distribution power.

Feminism is to be understood as an idea and as a movement and therefore as a

matter of practice. As an idea, it argues for a modification of the existing unequal
gender relations in society. It refers to an awareness of such unequal gender
relations and a commitment to bring about change. Feminism, as it is understood
in the Western sense, is a modern phenomenon, and it has to be understood in
the changing context of society, individual and urbanisation.

There are several kinds of feminist movements as discussed in the last lesson.
The three important types which we describe briefly here are:

Moderate Feminism
Believes in bringing about the desired changes in the sex roles by altering certain
relations of society and it believes that the roots of oppression lie in certain
social spheres. It never challenged the total system or the social framework;
changes were to be ushered in the existing framework. They believe that the task
of social reconstruction lies with both men and women. It emphasises on making
both men and women aware.

Socialist Feminism
Argues that the roots of gender inequality lie in property relations. They say that
there are traditional mechanisms even in simple societies which do not give
women any access to property. They also say that the notion of patriarchy, with
its male bias, is also responsible for unequal property relationships. They have
viewed patriarchy in a broader sense and have viewed it as an instrument of
oppression. The role of existing social and ritual mechanisms has also created
unequal gender relations. Dev Nathan and Kelkar in 1991 studied the Jharkhand
tribes and found out that institutions of patriarchy have perpetuated gender
inequality in property relations. They say that “land rights have always been
male rights.” They showed how ritual order and beliefs have helped to maintain
the patriarchal system. Among the Oraon, ancestor worship exists where, after
harvest, the worship is performed and women are excluded from the worship.
They believe that the land which they cultivate belong to their ancestors. They
believe that the permission of the ancestors is required before bringing the harvest
home. The right to use land is bestowed only upon men, as they believe. Many
cases in court are beginning to contest such customary laws of the tribes in
Jharkhand. The socialist feminists thus believe that property relations have to be
modified and hence the structure needs to be changed. They believe that both
38 men and women have equal tasks in reconstruction or allocation.
Radical Feminism Historical Development of
the Study of Gender in
Traces the roots of oppression to the woman’s body. Woman is closer to nature Anthropology
and because of the inherent biological differences; one sex has been able to
dominate the other. Thus, they seek a biological perspective. They say that most
cultures have been a perpetual threat to the women’s body and this can be
perceived in the constant anxiety in the minds of women like rape, pregnancy,
etc. The radical feminists say that a redressal of the problem can be had by using
modern technological methods. The women should have greater control over
their bodies. Such brands of feminists say that they do not need men for remedying
the situation and they have ignored the role of men. Cultural symbols associated
with femininity are denounced; some even denounce heterosexual relations which
have led to the rise of lesbianism. Women’s intrusion in the extra-domestic domain
is also advocated.

There are two ways of looking at the family:

a) The traditional way where family as a group enforces solidarity (e.g.
Murdock);
b) The second perspective is derived from the feminist ideas where the family
is regarded as an instrument of oppression.
In the mid-1960s, certain writings appeared where scholars like Betty Freidan
and Germaine Greer viewed society as oppressive. They identified the plight of
women (in this progressive writing) in the family structure. Family was viewed
as a patriarchal unit where women cater only to the men’s sexual, reproductive
and domestic needs. Within the family setup, women were regarded as incapable
and passive and occupied a subordinate position.
Other writings analysed the changing perspective of the family with regard to
the impact of feminist movements, which is an offshoot of individualisation and
urbanisation. Due to individualisation and education more women are entering
the work force from the middle class. These women are breaking down the citadel
of the “all-men realm” of the work force. It has given them economic
independence, for which they are enjoying the relative freedom in family life.
The impact of this can also be seen in the fact that women’s issues are discussed
more vigorously nowadays, which is making the public conscious about women’s
issues. This has also led to the reduction of the stigma associated with the
discussion of women’s issues. Lived-in relationship is emerging as an alternative
to marriage, and is mainly found in Western societies. This has given more
autonomy to the women and the establishment of households without marriage.
Working women are faced with role-conflict which has led to a trend where both
husband and wife have started sharing the household work. Feminism has also
led to a lowered birth rate. Crèches and child-care centers have emerged as an
alternative to the socialising role of the parents.
Women’s needs as persons are also being realised. Women are becoming career-
oriented and in this regard marriage problems surface. There has been a rising
trend where women have decided to remain single and single-person households
are on the rise. There is an increase in solitary mothers where the name of the
father is not revealed. This is also now present in India, as a book called Home
Truths by Deepti Mahendru reveals. These processes are mainly found in the
West but India has not escaped these phenomena either.
39
Theorising Gender Critics say that these trends are destabilising trends. It destabilises family in that:

a) There will be an increase in divorce which the Western societies are already
experiencing;

b) The population rate has become zero in many countries. When women get
married late or are given control of their body, the population rate is bound
to fall and is a threat to the perpetuation of the human race;

c) In the case of single parents, children do not get emotional sustenance leading
to delinquency;

d) Health problems emerge due to matrimonial disturbances. New diseases are

due to ‘unnatural’ sexual activities, which are the product of radical feminism;

e) There has been a rise in mental and psychological problems.

The critics say that the sharing of domestic work is unnatural because it violates
the very principle of “natural division of labour.” The rise of feminism is
challenging the moral fabric of the society and therefore the family will weaken
leading to the disintegration of society. There are certain critical relations on the
basis of which the whole edifice of social structure rests. However in spite of
such criticism, feminism is gaining prominence not only in academic circles but
also in the extra-domestic domain.

3.6 CRITICAL APPROACHES

Since these theoretical approaches made their appearance, a number of criticisms
have been leveled against them. For some, criticism has been a part of
postmodernism, where everything is questioned. However, feminism or gendered
anthropology cannot remain true if it is not contested. A major criticism was
made by women anthropologists belonging to ethnic minority groups, who
claimed that gender issues were mostly focused on by white, middle-class female
anthropologists, thus ignoring racism, wealth disparities, and other important
issues. This problem, once formulated, was addressed by a large participation
from minority groups in anthropological discourses on the issue as well as
sensitive portrayals by white, middle-class women anthropologists.

Feminist anthropologists have also been accused of being mirror opposites of

the people they most fought against. They began by being critical of having male
or andocentric bias, about males who were studying mostly men. However, the
opposite case of women studying mostly women also began to be true of the
feminists. Thus, the field of study attempted to move away from an ‘anthropology
of women’, and becoming more gender based rather than gender biased.

Feminist anthropology has often been linked to a broader and more politically
oriented feminist movement. This tinge of radical ideas often alienates many
from the field, as do the polemical pedagogic style attempted by many in the
field. Also, its political intent and bias tends to make it very intense, partial, and
subjective and it resulted in questioning its merit.

40
 Historical Development of
3.7 SUMMARY the Study of Gender in
Anthropology
The lesson provided us with a tour of the history of gender in anthropology. In it
we learnt about different women personalities who have written immensely on
gender as part of anthropology. The lesson also delved into the history of gender
in Indian society and the changes that are been brought about in recent times.
The lesson looks into all these analytically.

At the very least, anthropological advances in the study of gender has increased
the awareness of women within anthropology, in terms of ethnographic studies
as well as in sophistication of theoretical analysis. This has challenged beliefs,
especially regarding hunting, human origins, women’s productive and
reproductive roles in society as well as the ability of women to do many of the
roles that men do today. Such studies have become of great interest to both men
and women.

Recent studies of such issues in India indicate that gender studies should
incorporate disaggregated data on employment conditions, migration, health
access and outcomes, education, skills and training, access to food and nutrition
outcomes, use of public facilities, control over private and public assets, access
to credit, access to land, access to and impact of flagship schemes as well as
fiscal and monetary data before the impacts are going to be felt in the arena of
policy and planning (Eapen and Mehta; 2012).

References

Eapen, Mridul and Aasha Kapur Mehta. 2012. “Gendering the Twelfth Plan: A
Feminist Perspective”. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 47, No. 17, 28 April,
pp. 42-49.

Kessler, Evelyn S. 1976. Women: An Anthropological View. New York, etc.: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.

Visweswaran, Kamala. 1997. “Histories of Feminist Ethnography”. Annual

Review of Anthropology, Vol. 26, pp. 591-621.

Lamphere, Louise. 1989. “Feminist Anthropology: The Legacy of Elsie Clews

Parsons”. American Ethnologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 518-533.

Suggested Reading

Desai, Neera and Usha Thakkar. 2007. Women in Indian Society. New Delhi:
National Book Trust.

Moore, Henrietta L. 1990. Feminism and Anthropology. Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota Press.

Narayan, Deepa (ed.). 2006. Measuring Empowerment: Cross-Disciplinary

Perspectives. Washington, DC: The World Bank; New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.

41
Theorising Gender Sample Questions

1) Outline the history of gender in anthropology?

2) Discuss at least four figures that have made significant contributions to the
study of gender in anthropology?

3) Discuss the developments that have taken place in Indian feminism.

42
 MANE-004
Gender and Society
Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

3
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER
UNIT 1
Socialisation and Gender Roles 5
UNIT 2
Embodiment and Gender 21
UNIT 3
Gender and the Life Course 36
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Formerly Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Professor Rekha Pande Discipline of Anthropology
Professor of History, SOSS and IGNOU, New Delhi
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) IGNOU, New Delhi
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Studies, School of Social Sciences Assistant Professor
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur
Associate Professor Dr. P. Venkatramana
Faculty of Sociology Assistant Professor
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C.J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Academic assistance provided by Dr. N.K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate (DBT) for the Expert Committee
Meeting.

Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi

Course Coordinator: Dr. Mitoo Das, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Content Editor
Professor Subhadra Mitra Channa
Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi
Delhi
Blocks Preparation Team
Block Introduction Unit Writers
Professor Subhadra Mitra Channa Professor Kamala Ganesh (Unit 1)
Department of Anthropology Department of Sociology, Univerisity of Mumbai
University of Delhi, Delhi. Mumbai.
Ms. Jaya Phookan (Unit 2 & 3)
Research Officer, Women’s Studies Centre
Barkatullah University, Bhopal

Authors are responsible for the academic content of this course as far as the copyright issues are concerned.

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BLOCK 3 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
GENDER
Introduction
Gender is a commonly used word that becomes complex when we use it as a
theoretical tool. The word gender came to replace the term sex as a biologically
given category. Gender implies that we are dealing with a concept that is not
fixed and not naturally given like sexual organs, but something that arises because
humans live in a constructed world of meanings. We live in this world as gendered
persons, which have a social and not merely a biological relevance. Such
gendering is partly an integral aspect of our subjective constitution, mostly through
enculturation/socialisation and partly individual. It is as individuals that we may
sometime question a given gender identity or at least its stereotypical
representation.

Most of gender theory has looked upon gender as a constituted category in which
culture is seen as playing an important role and also as a performance when our
actions in real life situated in specific social situations mark our identity. We not
only learn to behave as men and women we also reestablish this identity at every
point of time by our social actions. The body is seen as playing a central role in
gender analysis as the gendered identity is embodied. Thus clothes, body language,
ornaments and all that is part of the very aesthetics of the body are significant in
how it is perceived and accepted. To negotiate a particular gendered identity,
people play around with the body and establish either a normative or an innovative
image of how they want their identity to be perceived. For example most women
politicians prefer the conventional image while artists and performers may play
around with it. How one presents one body is closely linked to how one wants to
or needs to use it?

Thus gender is both a given as well as a negotiable category. It provides people

with a given identity but its very cultural stereotyping leaves open a scope for
reenactment. For example if there were already given standards for a gendered
image there would be no necessity to establish an alternative image. Moreover
gender often breaks through the barriers of hetero-normativity or the bisexual
model. Although many societies accept the binary model but it is certainly not
universal; many have more than two gender models and even where it does not
exists, many persons may want to live outside of it, like transsexuals and
homosexuals.

Apart from its representative value, gender also provides every social actor with
a societal resource base and situates them in a power hierarchy. Just like the
bodily image, power is also a negotiable category and intersects with other social
dimensions like race, class and caste. It is also modified and is also used to
emphasise the transitions that a social person makes in the course of a life. In the
lessons inside this block you will understand some of these aspects in a more
detailed manner and most importantly understand that the social reality is not a
monolithic construction but constituted from multiple sites, of which gender is
one.
Social Construction of
Gender

4
 Socialisation and Gender
UNIT 1 SOCIALISATION AND GENDER Roles

ROLES

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Socialisation: Definition and Basic Terms and Concepts
1.2.1 Gender Socialisation
1.3 Theoretical Approaches
1.3.1 Feminist Contribution to Socialisation Theories
1.3.2 Countering Socialisation
1.4 Agents of Socialisation
1.5 Parents and Family
1.5.1 Role of Father
1.5.2 Kinship and Cultural Repertoire
1.5.3 Children’s Literature: Story Books and Text Books
1.5.4 Toys and Games
1.6 Peers
1.7 School
1.8 Media
1.8.1 New Media and Self-socialisation
1.9 Summary
References
Studies with Experimental and Original Data
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions


Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

 understand the process of socialisation in a theoretical context;
 critically evaluate the specific nature of socialisation for gender roles, i.e.,
masculine and feminine roles as defined by a given society and culture ;
 identify and describe the functions and agents of socialisation and the
mechanisms and materials deployed; and
 analyse the ways in which socialisation can be resisted and subverted.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
This unit defines and describes the process of socialisation and analyses the
specific nature of socialisation for gender roles. It then discusses various
theoretical approaches and how far they are able to explain gender socialisation.
This includes approaches that conceive of socialisation as a dynamic two- way
process in which those who are socialised may reinterpret, resist or subvert it.
5
Social Construction of Next, the agencies of socialisation, including gender socialisation are described.
Gender
The main agencies are parents and family, peer group, school and media. The
mechanisms of socialisation including learning by reward and punishment,
observation and imitation, and by being immersed in a culture are discussed.
Illustrations are given of materials that are deployed for socialisation like
children’s literature, toys and games, rituals and ceremonies and linguistic devices.

1.2 SOCIALISATION: DEFINITION AND BASIC

TERMS AND CONCEPTS
The structure and content of the gender division in society is not arbitrary or
random, but reflects a fundamental systemic feature, termed as ‘patriarchy’ in
feminist discourses. Gender socialisation is a key process in maintaining and
reproducing it efficiently.

Socialisation is the process by which members of a group or collectivity– family,

school, caste, religion , nation and so on - are taught to subscribe to the shared
beliefs, norms, values, culture and ethos of that group (collectively referred to as
‘norms’ in this lesson), translate them appropriately in their behaviour and transmit
them to others. Gender socialisation is specifically oriented towards differences,
hierarchies and identities based on gender, i.e. what it is means be masculine or
feminine in a given society and culture.

The success of socialisation leads to norms being internalised; i.e., they are not
merely learnt and reproduced consciously but are absorbed and become part of
the structure of the individual personality. The appropriate behaviour is thus
expressed automatically, as though it is part of the natural order. Agents are
those people and institutions that function as conduits of socialisation. They
influence our attitudes, preferences and world views by imparting norms which
go to build our personality and affect our behaviour. Devices and mechanisms
used in socialisation are many including touch, language, play, rituals, ceremonies,
etc.

Primary socialisation is the term used to describe the process of socialisation

during childhood. The agents of primary socialisation are mainly the family, and
also community, school, and peer group. Secondary socialisation is the term
used for the later phases of life. Religion, media, workplace are conventionally
identified as secondary agents

Childhood is considered to be the most important life phase for socialisation

since the child’s personality is relatively unformed, and amenable to moulding.
The impact in this stage goes deep and is enduring. But socialisation happens in
later phases too. The ‘life course approach’ takes cognisance of the different
phases of life - childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age - and also specific
arenas like occupation, religion, sports, etc., and examines the nature, agents,
mechanisms , devices and effects of socialisation in all of these.

1.2.1 Gender Socialisation

Gender is a fundamental category of human cognition, based seemingly on
physical-biological features to which social and cultural characteristics are
attributed. The process of categorising in terms of gender is both habitual and
6
apparently automatic and conveys a sense of being based on a natural and dual Socialisation and Gender
Roles
division. Such categorisation, which is the basis for gendered identity, is associated
with compartmentalisation of physical spaces, spheres of activity as well as
psychological, personality-related and cultural arenas, even in cultures which
relatively free of gender discrimination. Its transmission is mainly through the
process of socialisation. Within given conditions of patriarchy, gender difference
is framed hierarchically with differential powers and privileges given to men
and women that pervade virtually every aspect of life and living also transmitted
through socialisation. Thus gender socialisation encompasses both these
dimensions: difference and hierarchy. Gender socialisation begins the moment
we are born, from the simple question “is it a boy or a girl?” as Gleitman et al
(2000: 499-500) put it, while citing the classic example of the experiment done
with babies that were introduced as males to half of the study subjects and as
females to the other half. The participants behaved differently according to the
sex they had been told, offering a rattle or hammer to the ‘boys’ and doll to the
‘girls’.

Before we elaborate on the agencies, we will briefly discuss theoretical approaches

to socialisation in general as well specifically to gender socialisation.

1.3 THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Socialisation as a field of inquiry is interdisciplinary, drawing on the disciplines
of psychology, anthropology and sociology. Pedagogical science or Education
has also engaged intensively with the topic. Questions pertaining to socialisation
also arise in the ‘nature v/s nurture’ dialogue between natural and social sciences.
Broadly, one can say that the social sciences have taken an interactionist approach
stressing on ‘nurture’ in contrast to evolutionary biologists who espouse the
‘nature’ approach to development of human personality.

Dominant approaches in psychology have been characterised by a conflation of

ideas from both the ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ camps. Psychoanalytical theories as
well as cognitive developmental theories do stress on early childhood experiences
as crucial for personality formation, thus acknowledging the significance of
socialisation. But the former emphasises on instinctual drives and the latter on
the innate unfolding and maturation of human reasoning through the different
stages of childhood and thus both these approaches within psychology tend to
universalise early human personality formation rather than see it as contingent
on social context.

Social/cultural anthropologists and sociologists do not subscribe to biological

determinism. Nor do they accept that all future actions are determined by early
socialisation and are more attentive to various other social factors that can
influence a person’s actions in later life. Social learning theory – best exemplified
by Albert Bandura’s landmark book of the same name- goes into actual
mechanisms of transmission. It has been the dominant socialisation paradigm in
sociology/social anthropology as well as non-Freudian psychology , but in contrast
to the latter, the former stresses on macro forces that affect the content and form
of socialisation: such as ecological, economic, political and moral structures.

Elaborating further on the implications of the above theoretical positions, in the

Freudian view, identification with the same sex parent is the psychological
7
Social Construction of mechanism by which children incorporate their parents’ gender role behaviours
Gender
into their own identity system. Over the last seven decades, this basic Freudian
postulate has undergone some modifications, primarily on the precise
psychodynamic processes that motivate identification.

In contrast, social learning theorists question the need for a global construct like
identification and argue that role appropriate behaviours are learnt by
reinforcements like reward and punishment, praise and blame. In addition, early
reinforcements also include messages that lead children to modify behaviour in
anticipation of reward and punishment. Observation and modelling one’s
behaviour on a person are also important ways of learning. But individuals do
not imitate all the behaviours that they observe, rather they are likely to imitate
another person of the same sex.

Social cognitive developmentalists argue that children are not passive observers
but play an active role in their own socialisation. Specifically with reference to
gender, a child’s knowledge of his or her own gender and its implications is
termed as ‘gender identity’; As they observe the world, children look for structure
and are driven by an internal need to fit into this structure. They start organising
available information according to gender as a social category, create a model of
what it is to be a good girl or good boy in that society and strive to reach that
ideal — not just in anticipation of rewards and fear of punishment but because
they want to become ‘good’ members of society. Developmentalists further argue
that the rigidity of gendered identity is greater in young children, until they develop
the cognitive capacity to imagine a different schema and opportunity to observe
gender role transcendence. Once again in early adolescence, physical changes
and social norms force children to move from sex-segregated to heterosexual
worlds with a pressure to conform and it is only after crossing that stage can
individuals resist socialisation based on stereotypical gender models.

Anthropology’s emphasis on cultural transmissions between parent and child

and between culture and the individual has been an important contribution to
our understanding of socialisation. Anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and
Margaret Mead demonstrated the influence of the whole culture on the individual
personality through their ethnographies. Studies of child rearing are a popular
genre in anthropology, and Peggy Froerer’s article gives a good overview of the
rich documentation of the learnt and acquired nature of the human personality in
its formative stage.

Early questions in sociology and anthropology were: how is the self made by
internalising the impressions of others? How are social roles acquired? Early
scholars C.H.Cooley and G.H. Mead have made fundamental contributions to
this question. Cooley famously gave the analogy of the ‘looking glass’ self i.e.
the self developed through social interaction. Mead’s proposition was that the
individual self is a social creation. There are two parts to the self: ‘I’ and ‘me’.
The former is the primordial part, dominant in children, initially unaffected by
socialisation. The latter emerges through social interaction, and internalises and
assumes the attitudes of others.

Functionalism was for many decades the dominant theoretical paradigm in both
sociology and social/cultural anthropology and the Parsonian framework is its
best representative. It has been centrally preoccupied with the problem of social
8
order for survival and stability of social systems with shared norms as the basis. Socialisation and Gender
Roles
These are maintained through the process of socialisation by internalisation by
the individual and transmission from one generation to another. The emphasis is
on the faithful reproduction of norms without deviation. Functionalism did not
engage with individual interpretation and choices. Unlike Freudians, who
conceived of society as imposing its will against the instinctual drive, for
functionalists, there is no struggle between the individual’s desires and the
requirements of the social order. This position has been critiqued, and subsequent
approaches have included the reception of socialisation - interpretation, resistance,
subversion as part of the problematique.

The proponents of theories of identification, social learning and cognitive

development, even when discussing gender socialisation, make no specific
reference to the patriarchal structures of society that provide both context and
content of socialisation. While sociology and social anthropology are sensitive
to external factors in moulding personality, they too were largely silent about
structural patriarchy until feminist theorisation raised it.

1.3.1 Feminist Contribution to Socialisation Theories

Feminist engagement with the distinction between sex and gender was the first
step towards understanding the specificity and pervasiveness of gender
socialisation. After all, gender socialisation aims not only at transmitting gender
differences but also at making gender hierarchy accepted as natural and normal
by both men and women. The elaboration of this principle into concrete practices
of discrimination towards women is part of its project. In contrast to other
approaches, feminism starts with the assumption of virtually universal patriarchy,
documents its varied expressions and proceeds to take a social constructionist
view of gendered socialisation.

In common sense thinking, sex and gender were and to some extent, continue to
be coextensive. Until the 1960s, ‘gender’ was used solely to refer to masculine
and feminine words. However, in order to explain why some people felt that
they were ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’, the psychologist Robert Stoller in his
book Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity began
using the terms ‘sex’ to pick out biological traits and ‘gender’ to pick out the
amount of femininity and masculinity a person exhibited. The distinction enabled
‘second wave’ feminists to argue that many differences between women and
men were socially produced and, therefore, changeable. In this approach, which
is a counter to biological determinism, sex denotes biological femaleness and
maleness; ‘gender’ denotes socially accepted roles, positions, behaviours and
identities associated with femaleness and maleness. Ann Oakley was among the
earliest feminists to present data from ethnographic, psychological and neuro-
medical fields to argue systematically for the cultural construction of gender. Of
course, much earlier, in 1935 itself, Margaret Mead had presented ethnographic
data in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies that showed that
conventional definitions of femininity and masculinity were not borne out in the
Pacific Islands. In two of the three cultures she examined, there was no sharp
polarity between masculinities and femininities, and in the third, they were. Mead
was implicitly building a case for the feminist distinction between sex and gender,
although she herself saw these cases primarily in terms of the impact of cultural
diversities on the human personality.
9
Social Construction of The sex – gender distinction, which amplifies Simone de Beauvoir’s assertion in
Gender
The Second Sex that one is not born but rather becomes a woman, immediately
suggests the role of gender socialisation: females become women through a
process in which they acquire feminine traits and learn feminine behaviour. Other
feminists have elaborated on the distinction, using the concept of patriarchy, and
its discriminations. Gayle Rubin uses the phrase ‘sex/gender system’ in order to
describe a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human
sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention, arrangements which
are the locus of the oppression of women (Rubin, 1975: 159 – 179). However,
since gender is social, it is mutable and alterable by political and social reform
that would ultimately bring an end to women’s subordination. Distinguishing
sex from gender also enables the two to come apart: in that one can be sexed
male and yet be gendered a woman, or vice versa and this has provided a fruitful
take-off point for the articulation of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender) issues. This is nowadays denoted by the phrase ‘social and cultural
construction of gender’. But which social practices construct gender, what social
construction is and what being of a certain gender amounts to are major feminist
controversies, without a consensus as yet.

Some feminists have interacted with and critiqued but also adapted Freudian
and social learning theories, which deal with the mechanisms of social
construction. For e.g., Nancy Chodorow in her 1978 work Reproducing Mothering
has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences.
Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine
personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting
practices, specifically ‘mothering’, since mothers or other prominent women
tend to be the primary caretakers of young children. Chodorow differs from the
classic Freudian approach, in that she espouses a position that both gender and
mothering are socially learnt. She sees the child’s gender identity emerging
through the process of breaking away from the mother to form a unique identity.
For a boy, the mutual perception of difference leads to a violent breakaway, and
to well defined and rigid ego boundaries. For a girl, the process is more fluid
because of the identification with the mother, leading to flexible and blurry ego
boundaries. Rather than penis envy in girls, it is masculinity experiencing loss of
the maternal bond that is the key to differential personality development in males
and females. Childhood gender socialisation further reinforces these
unconsciously developed ego boundaries finally producing feminine and
masculine persons.

1.3.2 Countering Socialisation

A critique of conventional approaches from feminists as well as cognitive
developmentalists is the formers’ inability to accommodate resistance to and
subversion of gender socialisation. The traditional social learning theories for
example emphasise childhood processes and micro level factors making the
messages received appear uncontested; further, they do not take cognizance of
the complex relationship among micro, meso and macro variables. Gender
socialisation should be defined in a more complex way to refer to “ongoing,
multi level processes of social expectations, control, and struggle that sustain
and subvert gender systems” (Ferree & Hall, 1996: 935). In this conceptualisation,
gender is not a characteristic of individuals but of societies. Multiple institutions
impact on gender formation. As renowned social scientists like Pierre Bourdieu
10
and Anthony Giddens have repeatedly averred, institutions simultaneously shape Socialisation and Gender
Roles
and are shaped by individual agency. Thus, the process is both dynamic and
subject to change. Socialisation is not a unidirectional process whereby the
socialisation agents are all-powerful in moulding and shaping the individual as a
passive recipient. It is instead a dialectical process in which agents transmit
dominant information in the ongoing process of defining our social identities,
and we, as members of society, conform to or resist the process and the agents,
as we engage in critical analyses of the messages.

The content of socialisation can change with larger changes in society. Sue
Sharpe’s work in 1976 on a group of mainly working class girls in London found
that concerns of girls like ‘love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs, and careers
in that order, were unlikely to encourage them to attach great importance to
education. Almost three decades later Sharpe’s repeat research found that girls’
priorities had changed, due to the women’s movement, equal opportunities
programmes and improved job market.

1.4 AGENTS OF SOCIALISATION

Socialisation is a lifelong process and agents for socialisation in general are also
agents for gendered socialisation. Early childhood socialisation or primary
socialisation, including moral socialisation, is mainly by parents who transmit
the basic norms of the culture, religion, as also class, gender, racial and ethnic
identities. Sociologist Andre Beteille has noted that in contemporary India, where
caste as a system is on the wane, family plays a role in socialising children to
reproduce caste values. Socialisation literature in the west holds that community
and neighbourhood are particularly prominent as agents among poorer inner city
groups. In kinship and community oriented societies like India, the role of
extended family, caste, ethnic and religious groups is also strong, drawing from
a ritual, linguistic and cultural repertoire. Early childhood socialisation is largely
anticipatory socialisation: preparing the child for future gendered roles. When
the child is older, the role of peers, teachers, and the school environment itself
become significant. The role of the peer group is especially important for
adolescents, influencing behaviour – both conforming and deviant - in a wide
variety of arenas including life style, educational and career path, performance
at school, sexual behaviour. Schools are formal agents of primary socialisation.
Emile Durkheim, saw the school as the main transmitter of social norms, a task
that he thought was too overwhelming for the family unity. The variety,
pervasiveness and power of media and its nexus with the market in contemporary
society render it into a significant agent of socialisation in all the life phases.

Gendered adolescent socialisation and adult socialisation are also noteworthy as

during these phases the individual has to actually enact specific gendered roles
that she/he has only learnt in theory. All agents do not inevitably or necessarily
reinforce each other, as experiments show that there is room for ‘differential
socialisation’, which allows the individual some choice of selection and
interpretation. Materials like clothing, picture books, text books, toys and games,
films, etc. aid the process. Mechanisms refer to specific micro processes that get
deployed consciously or unconsciously by agents and include social learning
through reward and punishment, observation, imitation of role models, absorbing
a culture’s gender stereotypes by being immersed in its everyday ethos and so
11
Social Construction of on. ‘Agents’ i.e., those with agency to act, draw on these materials and mechanisms
Gender
for socialisation. Thus even though films are ‘materials’ they are also part of the
institution of media which in its totality is an ‘agent’. What follows in this section
is a discussion of agents of socialisation along with the materials and mechanisms
they deploy, citing studies and experimental data. Also included is a discussion
of studies that suggest that socialisation is not a rigid and fixed process. Its content
may change over time due to larger societal changes. Gender stereotyping may
also be resisted or overcome through conscious action.

1.5 PARENTS AND FAMILY

Parents have an overriding influence beginning with how they interact with sons
versus daughters. When parents have been asked to describe their 24-hour old
infants, they have done so using gender-stereotypic language: boys are described
as strong, alert and coordinated and girls as tiny, soft and delicate. Parents’
treatment of their infants further reflects these descriptions whether they are
aware of this or not. Some socialisation is more overt: children are often dressed
in gender stereotypical clothes and colours. For instance, in the West boys are
dressed in blue, girls in pink. Parents tend to buy their children gender stereotypical
toys. They also, intentionally or otherwise, tend to reinforce certain ‘appropriate’
behaviours. While the precise form of gender socialisation has changed since
the onset of second-wave feminism, even today girls are discouraged from playing
sports like football or from playing ‘rough and tumble’ games. Division of
household work between male and female adults are both a powerful model and
when sex-specific tasks are allotted to children, it becomes socialisation through
action.

Ann Oakley in her 1972 book Sex, Gender and Society identifies four central
mechanisms in early gender socialisation: manipulation, canalisation, verbal
appellation and activity exposure. Through manipulation of the child’s body,
parents encourage sex-specific behaviour in their children. For example, mothers
fuss over the hair and skin of baby girls much more and spend energy on dressing
them elaborately in feminine clothes. Canalisation or directing the child’s
attention and interests towards appropriate games and toys is another non-verbal
method. For girls, dolls, soft toys, miniature domestic appliances are popular
and for boys, bricks, guns and trains. Verbal appellation refers to the use of
language to label children in a way that reinforces appropriate gender
identification. For example, pet names like ‘Guddi’ or ‘Dolly’ for girls do not
seem to have male equivalents. Another example is how certain adjectives are
applied differentially ‘my brave little boy’ versus ‘my beautiful princess’
highlighting qualities desirable in boys and girls. Different activity exposure
happens as children grow a little older and can help out in the house. Girls are
often allotted domestic chores like serving or looking after the younger sibling,
and boys are encouraged to participate in outdoor activities like running errands
to the shop.

1.5.1 Role of Father

The role of mother (or a woman who plays mother-surrogate) in early childhood
socialisation is universally recognised and been subjected to scholarly scrutiny.
But several theories of sex-role development emphasise the importance of fathers
as well. For example, social learning theorists assert that one primary component
12
of sex-role socialisation is reward for children’s sex-appropriate behaviour and Socialisation and Gender
Roles
punishment for sex-inappropriate behaviour. A study by McCandless et al (1976)
demonstrates that the patterns of differential treatment among fathers, mothers,
and peers suggest that socialisation pressure for sex-typed behaviours may come
most consistently and effectively from fathers. Further, it suggests that a finely
tuned system of socialisation exists in which fathers, mothers, and peers each
make unique yet complementary contributions. The interactive nature of the
socialisation process may mean that a single social agent’s impact may vary as a
function of the presence and influence of other social agents, and thus the impact
of differential socialisation on children’s subsequent sex-typed behaviours needs
to be recognised.

1.5.2 Kinship and Cultural Repertoire

Even in highly advanced industrial societies, the historical legacy of patrilineal
kinship and patriarchal ideology persists as an undercurrent, surfacing now and
then in the form of folk wisdom about male and female nature. In many societies
including India, the link with history and tradition is more active and live, and
the deep seated patriarchal structures of society find contemporary expression in
a host of ways – through beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, customs, proverbs, as also
through kinship practices, creating a pervasive ambience that socialises children,
adolescents and adults for gender roles at a sub liminal level.

Writing on the linguistic metaphor of seed and earth to represent human

reproduction, Leela Dube documents vividly how in virtually all regions, castes
and communities in India, ethno-reproductive beliefs compare mother’s role in
reproduction with the soil or earth or land and that of the father with the seed.
Just as the crop carries the identity of the seed, and belongs to the owner of the
seed, so too children belong to the father’s line, and the mother’s role is that of
the patient, nurturant earth, not transmitting her own identity to her children and
not claiming any rights over them. This message negating a woman’s rights and
claims on her children has deep seated acceptance among people as reflecting
the natural order.

In another article “Socialisation of Hindu Girls in Patrilineal India”, Leela Dube

chronicles in detail, proverbs and sayings, rituals and ceremonies that highlight
son-preference, devaluation of daughters, the temporary nature of a girl’s residence
in her natal home, her eventual and inevitable destiny of marrying and moving
into another household, and the need for her to know how to be flexible and how
to please. In particular, many wedding ceremonies including the highly emotional
‘Bidai’ ceremony as the bride leaves for her marital home, emphasise her
disconnecting from natal responsibilities and assumption of new role in another
household. With their colour, grandeur and emotion, they are also performing
anticipatory socialisation of the young unmarried girls who attend the wedding
and re-socialising adult married women into accepting their destiny.

Kamala Ganesh’s article on “Patrilineal Structure and Agency of Women: Issue

in Gendered Socialisation” also highlights the other side of gendered socialisation,
which involves training not to be just a victim, but to use the patrilineal structure
to one’s own advantage, and make a space for oneself within it by ‘adjusting’,
playing the right cards, and stooping to conquer (248 – 49).

13
Social Construction of Highlighting the role of kinship systems in creating gendered personalities is a
Gender
comparative study of competitiveness among women of two communities - the
patrilineal Maasai of Tanzania and matrilineal Khasi of Northeast India - by a
group of economists (Gneezy et.al 2009). The study uses an experimental task to
explore whether there are gender differences in competitiveness across these
societies. The innovatively and rigorously designed experiment consisted of a
simple, gender neutral activity (throwing a tennis ball 10 times into a bucket set
three metres away) with a first option of monetary incentive for success in the
task and a second option of a higher monetary incentive for outperforming an
anonymous partner in the same task. Competitiveness was evaluated on the basis
of which of the two options was exercised.

The Maasai represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society whereas the

Khasi are matrilineal. In the experiment, Maasai men opted to compete at roughly
twice the rate as Maasai women. This result was reversed amongst the Khasi,
where women chose the competitive option considerably more often than Khasi
men, and were slightly more competitive than Maasai men too. The interpretation
is that competitiveness as a quality is socially inculcated rather than innate, and
that matrilineal societies socialise women to be more competitive than men. The
conventional attribution of weak competitive personality to women comes from
their being socialised in patrilineal societies, which encourage submissiveness
in women, as the case of the Maasai demonstrates.

1.5.3 Children’s Literature: Story Books and Text Books

Children’s literature has a role in inculcating gender identity and self esteem.
Story books are especially powerful materials for gender socialisation, since the
messages are transmitted through a highly enjoyable activity. Children’s stories
and fairy tales are replete with use of sexist violence and imagery of female
subordination. Illustrated books, in particular, tend to significantly affect gender
development at a very early age. The development of preschoolers’ sexual
identities often occurs concurrently with their desire to repeatedly view their
favourite picture books. Picture books also encourage young children to learn
about the lives of those who may be quite different from themselves. The message
in these primers is rather clear: Boys live exciting and independent lives, whereas
girls are primarily auxiliaries to boys. Glenys Lobban (1974) has analysed the
content of stories for children and found that girls and women as heroines are
less in no. than heroes, and that they are almost exclusively portrayed in domestic
roles, and that joint activities are portrayed with males taking the lead, she says:
this reinforces the already learnt lesson of male superiority and dominance and
damages girls’ self-esteem. This has not changed substantially over the decades,
with a few exceptions. Text books prescribed by the school curriculum also have
a role in reinforcing gender stereotypes. For example, John Abraham’s research
into maths text books in 1986 demonstrated that they were extremely male
dominated. Moreover male and female agency was extremely stereotyped. There
were many more males represented in active roles. Women tended to be shopping
for food or buying washing machines, whilst men tended to be running businesses
or investing” (1995: 113).

While content studies cumulatively do indicate the gender bias in children’s

literature, they do not tell us what effects to such books have on children. As

14
several analysts have noted, children are not simply passive recipients but are Socialisation and Gender
Roles
actively involved in shaping their own conceptions of what it is to be masculine
or feminine.

One way to address gender stereotyping in children’s books has been to portray
females in independent roles and males as non-aggressive and nurturing (Renzetti
and Curran 1992: 35). Some publishers have attempted an alternative approach
by making their characters, for instance, gender-neutral animals or genderless
imaginary creatures. However, parents often undermine the publishers’ efforts
by reading them to their children in ways that depict the characters as either
feminine or masculine. Fairy tale fracturing is also an approach used to alleviate
those biased images. Set in contemporary text, this often involves changing the
gender of characters in well-known fairy tales.

1.5.4 Toys and Games

Toys and games are important materials for gender socialisation, in which the
cumulative perceptions and ideas of parents, other adults, schools and market
collaborate. As Renzetti and Curran (1992: 66) point out, “Toys not only entertain
children, but they also teach them particular skills and encourage them to explore
through play a variety of roles they may one day occupy as adults” The example
of dolls and miniature kitchen sets as gifts for little girls and trains sets and
mechano and other building oriented toys for little boys have been discussed
extensively in the literature on gendered socialisation. Not only do dolls encourage
little girls to express nurturing qualities and see a future for themselves exclusively
as mothers, but dolls like ‘Barbie’ also present models of how to be attractively
feminine, resulting in sexualising girl children precociously and setting impossible
standards of body proportions. Several researches, for example by Dittmar et al
(2006) have noted that Barbie’s impact on little girls include damaging their
body image and causing eating disorders and weight cycling. Research into relative
performance of girls and boys at school finds that conditioning and sex
stereotyping begin before school, through games and toys. Different sets of
aptitudes and attitudes can be developed. The kind of toys girls are gifted could
result in their coming to attach less value to education than boys.

Not only toys, but games – both indoor and outdoor, including board games help
transmit race, class and gender identities, argue Glasbergand and others but these
can also be reinterpreted and resisted by children. They conducted an experiment
by asking sociology students to actually play board games, and that process itself
helped the students to identify certain biases on race, class and gender. “We
found it useful to conclude the exercise by reminding students that toys, games,
and recreational activities do not so much cause or result in our unquestioning
internalisation of conventional gender, race, class, and political identities. Rather,
toys and games are one of several agents that together reinforce conventional or
dominant norms and values concerning those social identities…..we are not
passive recipients of such information in the socialisation process, such that we
become transformed into clones of one another. Instead, how we interpret the
rules of the games, and how well we notice the dominant images in the
construction of the game pieces facilitates resistance and reinterpretation of our
social identities.”(1998: 138)

15
Social Construction of
Gender 1.6 PEERS
Peer groups are an important socialisation agent throughout the life course because
people in the same generational cohort see each other as benchmarks or reference
points for their own social standing , professional achievement, personal qualities,
etc. From consumer taste to political and ideological orientations to socialisation
into old age, they function as guides and influencers. Peer groups are especially
important for adolescents, as, in this age group the influence of family and parents
starts decreasing. Vigilant and Williamson enumerate the common features of
the peer group including (1) similar age cohort or social position (2) members
with different levels of power and influence within the peer group and (3) social
concerns that are unique to its members. They exercise power by techniques of
inclusion and exclusion. Exclusion can be through out-group subjugation by
bullying and harassing outsiders, and in-group subjugation by picking harassing
lower ranked members; by compliance or not challenging the behaviour of more
powerful group members; stigmatising through labels and derisive comments;
and by expulsion from the group. Peer group influence among adolescents can
cause deviance from or resistance to the norms acquired through family or school;
and control theorists see such deviance as resulting only if the latter’s’ social
control weakens. On the whole, the connection with deviance is still not
established unequivocally, also because the relative influence of peer socialisation
is hard to gauge.

For girls and women, the female only peer group exerts tremendous pressure on
markers of conventional femininity such as dress, romantic and sexual behaviour,
skills in home-making, hospitality and entertainment, choice of career, etc. The
mixed sex peer group exerts pressure too, where male ideas of what being an
attractive girl/woman is, plays a role in socialising for gender roles and vice
versa.

The concept of sisterhood used extensively in second wave feminism was, in

effect, a peer group creation. The technique of sharing personal experiences and
political ideas in intimate sessions (termed conscientisation) played an important
role in creating a feminist consciousness and building resistance to traditional
notions of femininity.

1.7 SCHOOL
Gender studies and gender sensitive policy have focussed considerably on the
arena of education, including primary education, in terms of gender disparities
in literacy levels, admissions, dropout rates, choice of subjects, academic
performance, etc. Even though these trends have to do substantially with factors
outside of the school itself, some prior to entry into school, do suggest that schools
have yet to become major engines of gender transformation. This has led to
some re-thinking on schools themselves as agencies of gender socialisation.
Research focused on the micro social processes that take place daily in classrooms
and schools, dynamics commonly understood to be in the realm of socialisation
suggest that the school is a major agent in teaching and reinforcing cultural
expectations for males and females. A multi country study by Nelly Stromquist
for UNESCO identifies five dimensions of the gender socialisation process in
schools: (1) Teachers’ attitudes and expectations and their interactions with
16
students in the classroom exhibit different patterns toward boys and girls, generally Socialisation and Gender
Roles
to the disadvantage of girls. (2) Within the formal curriculum, sex education
continues to miss important aspects of sexuality affecting adolescent students,
despite changes in social mores and thus perpetuates some gender stereotypes
on sexuality. (3) The school environment contains aspects of gendered violence
that contribute to polarised conceptions of femininity and masculinity. Single-
sex education is found to play a positive role if designed with explicit gender
transformational objectives. (4) Peer influences play a significant but not easily
visible gate-keeping role in reproducing gender ideologies. (5) Teachers—key
actors in the everyday life of schools—do not have access to training in gender
issues and, consequently, tend not to foster gender equity in their classrooms.

Yet, despite its role in reinforcing gender stereotypes, school is also seen as a site
with considerable degrees of autonomy to produce new and progressive identities.
How pupils interpret the socialisation is another question. Abraham’s ethnographic
study of a mixed sex comprehensive school Divide and School shows that despite
teachers communicating gender stereotypes, pupils were actively creating their
own subcultures that did not always conform to expected notions of masculinity
and femininity.

1.8 MEDIA
Although media is conventionally considered to be a secondary agent by theorists
of socialisation, in contemporary times its variety, technological sophistication,
global spread and reach and its connection to the market, renders it a significant
agency that supports and reinforces gender stereotypes and sometimes creates
new ones. Even young children have access to media. Upwardly mobile middle
class homes with disposable incomes possess many innovative gadgets for
accessing media. Public space is also saturated with media products. Further the
socialising agents: parents, community members, teachers and so on are
themselves highly influenced by media images and stereotypes which are passed
on to children. Sometimes children are directly impacted upon, without adult
supervision.

The range of media - television, movies, video games, music, magazines,

hoardings and posters, internet, comic strips, books and so on - are especially
important to adolescents as parental influence begins to diminish.

There is considerable research on the gender role stereotypes and violence against
women that are perpetrated in the mass media , more intensive and concerted
now than ever before - a result of what some feminist scholars have called
‘feminist backlash’. From internet games, to commercials for alcohol, cars, and
other products used largely by male consumers, to feature films and magazines ,
women are portrayed in one of two contrasting and stereotypical roles: self-
sacrificing wives, mothers and home-makers or as sex-objects.

But whether there is a unidirectional link between violence and sexism in the
media and actual behaviour is still a contested issue .There are studies that indicate
that people are not only affected by the media but also actively select and affect
the media they encounter. Research on media socialisation therefore has to observe
both sides, the mediated messages as well as how they are perceived and acquired
by the user, a position that is also favoured by British cultural studies.
17
Social Construction of 1.8.1 New Media and Self-socialisation
Gender
New media which are internet based are highly interactive, allowing the viewer/
reader flexibility in using, giving feedback and reshaping information and images
received. In some ways, these media also allow for self-socialisation. Johannes
Fromme’s writing on this topic are prescient. Our present socio-cultural world is
characterised by plurality. Media have contributed to this pluralisation, and the
world of media itself has become immense. Fromme argues that so-called new
media have not substituted the old ones, but have been added to the existing
media collection. Its size exceeds the processing abilities of any individual. This
forces the user to make choices and this in turn renders the concept of socialisation
too narrow to adequately capture the phenomenon of learning outside educational
settings (2006). This is why there is so much interest currently in so-called
informal and self-directed learning, which in a way can be placed between the
spheres of socialisation and education. Therefore, the growing up of children
today may no longer be described as a predominantly original process of
socialisation. Especially in the leisure domain, children are not only allowed,
but also expected to make their own choices. A different approach is necessary
in addition to socialisation research concentrating on the more casual and
involuntary aspects of acquiring social norms and values with and through media.
Such research should also study processes of informal and self-directed learning
with and through media. The existence of gender stereotypes as well as ways
and means to combat them is both part of the socialisation process, be it through
media or other agencies.

1.9 SUMMARY
Socialisation for gender roles is the process by which the biological distinction
between male and female is converted into social and cultural constructions of
masculinity and femininity and internalised and enacted by men and women
who treat it as part of the natural order. Identification theories inspired by Freud
and social learning theories are used by socialisation theorists , the former by
psychologists and the latter by both psychologists and sociologists/social and
cultural anthropologists. In addition, anthropology, which is antithetical to
biological determinism, emphasises the fundamental role of culture – through
language, rituals and ceremonies and ethos – in moulding the individual’s
personality. Feminist interventions bring in structural patriarchy as the macro
framework within which various socialising agents and mechanisms operate.
They along with cognitive developmentalists and others question the notion that
gender socialisation is always successful in its intentions, and argue instead for a
more dialectical understanding of the process whereby those who are being
socialised find ways of reinterpreting or resisting.

The agencies of socialisation in general are also involved in socialising for gender
roles. In general they create and reinforce sexual and gender stereotypes. Parents
and family are primary agents, as also peer group and school. Media although
classified as a secondary agent, is powerful and pervasive today, affecting all age
groups. Here too, the receiver is not passive and plays a role in shaping the
received information and messages. In particular, the new media, i.e., internet
based media are inherently interactive and hold tremendous possibilities for the
individual to make informed choices and thus indulge in self-socialisation.
18
References Socialisation and Gender
Roles
Ferree, M. & Hall, E. 1996. ‘Rethinking Stratification from a Feminist Perspective:
Gender, Race, and Class in Mainstream Textbooks’. American Sociological
Review, 61(6): 929-950.
Froerer, Peggy. 2009. ‘Ethnographies of Childhood and Childrearing’. Reviews
in Anthropology. 38(1):3-27.
Fromme, Johannes. 2006. Socialisation in the Age of New Media.
www.medienpaed.com/05-1/fromme05-1.pdf. Accessed on 10.1.2012
Ganesh, Kamala. 1999. ‘Patrilineal Structure and Agency of Women: Issues in
Gendered Socialisation’. T. S. Saraswathi (ed.). Culture, Socialisation and Human
Development. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A. J. &Reisberg, D. 2000. Basic Psychology. New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Renzetti, Claire M. and Daniel J. Curran. 1992. Women, Men, and Society. Boston,
MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Rubin, G. 1975. ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex’
in R. Reiter (ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review
Press.
Stromquist, Nelly P. 2007. The Gender Socialisation Process in Schools: A Cross-
National Comparison. Background paper prepared for the Education for All
Global Monitoring Report, 2008 ‘Education for All by 2015: will we make
it?’UNESCO.
Studies with Experimental and Original Data
Glasberg, DavitaSilfen , Barbara Nangle, Florence Maatita, Tracy Schauer
(eds.).1998. ‘Games Children Play: An Exercise Illustrating Agents of
Socialisation’. Teaching Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 2.130-139.
Dittmar, Helga, Emma Halliwell and Suzanne Ive. 2006. ‘Does Barbie Make
Girls Want to Be Thin? The Effect of Experimental Exposure to Images of Dolls
on the Body Image of 5- to 8-Year-Old Girls’. Developmental Psychology , Vol.
42, No. 2, 283–292.
Dube, Leela. 2001. ‘On the Construction of Gender: Socialisation of Hindu Girls
in Patrilineal India’ and ‘Seed and Earth: The Symbolism of Biological
Reproduction and Sexual Relations of Production’. Leela Dube (ed),
Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields. New Delhi:Sage
Publications, 87 – 118 and 119 – 153.
Glenys, Lobban. 1974. ‘Presentation of Sex Roles in British Reading Schemes’.
Forum Magazine. Vol 16, Number 2.
Gneezy, Uri, Kenneth Leonard and Johan List. 2009. ‘Gender Differences in
Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society’.
Econometrica. Vol. 77 no. 5.
McCandless, B. R., Busch, C. and Carden, A. I. 1976. ‘Reinforcing Contingencies
for Sex Role Behaviors in Preschool Children’. Contemporary Educational
Psychology. 1, 241-246.
Sharpe, S. 1976. Just Like a Girl: How Girls Learn to Be Women. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
19
Social Construction of Suggested Reading
Gender
Haralambos and Holborn. 2000. Sociology: Themes and Perspectives. London:
Harper Collins.

Kazdin, Alan. (ed.) 2000. Encyclopedia of Psychology. Vol. III. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Vigilant, Lee Garth and John Williamson 2007. ‘The Sociology of Socialisation’
in Clifton D. Bryant and Dennis L. Peck (ed.) 21st Century Sociology: A Reference
Handbook. Vol.1. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Oakley, Ann. 1972. Sex, Gender and Society. London: Temple Smith.

Sample Questions
1) What are the main agents for socialisation? Analyse the new media in terms
of its role in gender socialisation.
2) How is gender stereotypes transmitted in early childhood?
3) What are the main features of the anthropological approach to socialisation?

20
 Socialisation and Gender
UNIT 2 EMBODIMENT AND GENDER Roles

Contents
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Gender and Embodiment
2.3 Embodiment and Feminist Theory
2.4 Living the Female Body
2.4.1 Creating Gendered Bodies in Childhood
2.4.2 Emergence of Sexual Bodies in Adolescence
2.4.3 Sexuality and Beautifying the Body
2.4.4 Bodies after Menopause
2.5 Disabled Bodies
2.6 Transsexual Bodies
2.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through the unit, you will be able to:
 comprehend about the concept of gender and embodiment;
 explain feminist approach to embodiment; and
 understand about living the female body through different stages of life.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
This unit deals with the discourse relating to gender and embodiment and
examines how bodies bear the imprint of gender inequalities and efforts to control
or contain bodies to reflect gender politics. In trying to explore these themes in
this lesson, a wide range of substantive topics have been covered including
gendering of bodies in childbirth, menarche, menstruation and menopause,
disabled bodies, notion of beautifying the bodies, transsexual bodies etc.

Once the province of medical science and certain schools of philosophy, “the
body” emerged in the late 1970s as a central site from which scholars across the
humanities and social sciences questioned the ontological and epistemological
basis of almost all form of inquiry. In anthropology, “the body” became such a
central concept and significant object of study that by mid- 1980s, the study of
“the body” blossomed into a fully formed subfield: “the anthropology of the
body”. For many anthropologists at the time, it was clear that the question of
power and oppression that were on the agendas of many scholars could not be
addressed without first challenging ideologies that naturalised sex, gender and
racial difference through discourses and representations of the body. At the same
time, medical anthropologists, revealed how conceptions of the body were central
to understanding both epidemiology and other health related issues and the body
21
Social Construction of was not a given but a constructed reality. Anthropological works have shown
Gender
that there is something like ethno-physiology in which different cultures have
different perceptions of the body. The body could be used as a metaphor or a
symbol. The works of Mary Douglas has shown that the body forms the most
basic of all symbolic systems; Right, left, up and down are all symbols drawn
from the body as are also enclosures and openings.

The body has proved a fertile site from which anthropologists have mounted
their criticism of abstract, universalising models and ideologies and instead
discussed the various ways in which power has been inscribed into the body and
how various marginalised groups have questioned and contested the stigma placed
upon their bodies like impurity, primitiveness and colour. Bodies cannot be
divorced from their lived experiences, requiring a focus on embodiment that can
be defined as a way of inhabiting the world as well as being the source of
personhood, self and subjectivity, and laying down the preconditions of
intersubjectivity (Mascia-Lees , 2011) .

Ortner (1974) talked of universal subordination of women’s body in “Is Female

to Male as Nature is to Culture” where she argues that a woman’s body and its
functions keep her closer to nature more than a man’s physiology, allowing him
more freedom to work in culture. The purpose of culture, in one sense, is to rise
above nature; therefore, if women are more aligned with nature then they fall
socially below cultural men. Ultimately, both a woman’s body and her social
position create a different psychic structure for her. She takes a structuralist
approach to the question of gender inequality taking the relative positions occupied
by men and women understood as a dialectical opposition.

She was one of the early proponents of feminist anthropology who constructed
an explanatory model for gender asymmetry based on the premise that the
subordination of women is a universal, that is, a cross-cultural phenomenon.
Her notion reflected Levi-Strauss’ influence on her work. The binary opposition
of nature and culture originated with Levi-Strauss, and Ortner borrowed them in
her structural analysis of male dominance. In the late 1970s many feminist
anthropologists were beginning to question the concept of universal female
subordination and the usefulness of models based on dichotomies. Some
anthropologists argued that there existed societies where males and females held
roles that were complementary.

To understand how patriarchy is naturalised and perpetuated through various

institutions, there is a need to understand the basic construct of a person’s being:
her sexuality as it is laid down in creation of gender. This brings in the concept
of masculinity and femininity. While masculinity is always deemed as a powerful,
demanding, aggressive and assertive, femininity is constructed as functionally
complimentary to it and submissive, yielding and compliant.

2.2 GENDER AND EMBODIMENT

Embodiment in its most simple understanding means the lived experience of
human beings, an experience which bridges” the natural” and “the cultural”. By
the close of the twentieth century the body had become a key site of political,
social, cultural and economic intervention in relation, for example, to medicine,
disability, work, consumption, old age and ethics. The body has emerged in recent
22
years as a key challenge in the social sciences, for example, new social movements Embodiment and Gender
struggle for citizenship and emancipation in the name of excluded bodies
(Nicholson and Seidman, 1995). These particular developments, which spell
out the presence of the body in social, moral and political life, have had a profound
impact on sociology and social theory.

Embodiment may be defined as the ways in which cultural ideals of gender in a

given society create expectations for and influence the form of our bodies. There
is a bidirectional relationship between biology and culture; by embodying
societally determined gender roles we reinforce cultural ideals and simultaneously
shape, both temporarily and permanently, our bodies, which then perpetuates
the cultural ideal (Connel, 2002). While there is actually more variation in body
type within the male and female sexes than there is between the two sexes,
embodiment exaggerates the perceived bodily differences between gender
categories (Kimmel, 2011). Social embodiment, for both men and women, is
variable across cultures and over time. Examples of women embodying gender
norms across cultures include foot binding practices in Chinese culture, neck
rings in African and Asian cultures, and corsets in Western cultures. Another
interesting phenomenon has been the practice of wearing high heels, which shifted
from a masculine fashion to a feminine fashion over time.

In the United States, the ideal body image and dimensions have changed for
both women and men, with the body ideal female body shape becoming
progressively slimmer and the body ideal for men becoming progressively larger
(Bordo, 1999).These differences are epitomised in the example of children’s
toys; G.I. Joe dolls depict the physical ideals for boys and Barbie dolls embody
the ideals for girls. Beauty myth, as discussed in Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty
Myth: How Images of Beauty are used Against Women, refers to the unattainable
standard of beauty for women, which sustains consumer culture. In contrast,
men’s bodies are also “dictated” by cultural ideals of gender, as is evident in
consumer culture—especially beer commercials—in which men are portrayed
as outdoorsy, tough, strong, and “manly” (Buysse, 2004)

Bodies may be our friends or enemies, a source of pain or pleasure, a place of

liberation or domination, but they are also the material with which we experience
and create gender. During the past decades, feminist sociologists and
anthropologists have increasingly explored the relation between bodies, culture,
and subjectivity (Dellinger and Williams 1997; Gagné and McGaughey 2002;
Lorber and Martin 1998; McCaughey 1998). Scholars appear to be coming to
terms with how people “embody gender,” which refers not only to how people
use or mould the body to signify gender but also to how such bodywork is
intertwined with subjectivity (i.e., cognition and feelings).

Every society has different ‘scripts’ for male and female members to follow.
Thus members learn to carry out their feminine or masculine role, much in the
way as every society has its own language. From the time of infancy till old age
one learns about and practices the particular ways of being masculine and feminine
that the family and society prescribes. However, these roles can change and do
change over time, place, region, class, caste and geographical location. Our gender
defines us and pre-exists us, we are born into it just as we are born into our
families, and it operates at a level beyond our individual intentions. What kind
of men and women we are required to be are already prescribed in the culture
23
Social Construction of into which we are born. For this we experience our gender roles as true, natural
Gender
and good (Mosse, 1995).

People are born male or female, but learn to be boys and girls who grow into
men and women. They are taught what the appropriate behaviour and attitudes,
roles and activities are for them and how they relate to other people. Their learned
behaviour is what makes up gender identity, and determines gender roles.

2.3 EMBODIMENT AND FEMINIST THEORY

Body has always figured in one way or another in the field of feminist theory;
from discussions of motherhood, pregnancy and abortion, of pleasure and sex,
of eating disorders, masculinity and femininity, and the incorporation of
disciplinary regimes to theoretical discussions of embodiment and individuation
of bodies, feminist thinkers have played a key role in forming different ideas and
understanding of the body in a multidimensional manner.

Feminist theorists have focused on the female body as the site where
representations of difference and identity are inscribed. Conboy, Medina, Stanbury,
(1997) explored the tensions between women’s lived bodily experiences and the
cultural meanings inscribed on the female body which included rape, pornography,
eroticism, anorexia, body building, menstruation and maternity.

Feminism has been critical in forcing social sciences to engage with the body as
a social and cultural reality. Since the late 1980s, the dominant voices in the
feminist theorisation of the body have been post-structuralist. Such theorists
(e.g, Butler, 1993; Bordo, 1987) seek to understand how gender as a discursive
and also as a performative reality shapes the actual political and social implications
of being gendered.

Theorists of embodiment’ such as Elizabeth Grosz, Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed,

Margrit Shildrick, Raia Prokhovnik, Moira Gatens and Rosi Braidotti employ
diverse theoretical approaches. However, they may be linked by the view that
bodies are not simply ‘pre-given’ in biology, nature, or culture but are continually
produced and differentiated through complex historical, social and political
relations of power. Interrogating the sex/gender distinction has been of particular
theoretical importance to many of these thinkers, who have perceived it to be
intimately intertwined with a host of other oppressive dualisms (i.e. mind/body,
nature/culture, male/female and heterosexual/homosexual).

In underscoring an overarching patriarchal, hetero-normative system, the sex/

gender distinction obscures recognition of how bodies (as opposed to being purely
a product of nature) are constituted dichotomously as ‘sexed’ and/or gendered’
through power-imbued grids of intelligibility (Prokhovnik, 2002; Gatens, 1996;
Butler, 1999/1990, 1993). Rejecting the notion of a pre-given biologically ‘sexed’
body upon which gender is deterministically inscribed, they have emphasised
the impossibility of ever having ‘direct, unmediated access to some “pure”
corporeal state’ (Shildrick, 1997:14). As Moira Gatens (1996) asserts, one of the
key questions feminists need to be asking is ‘how does culture construct the
body so that it is understood as a biological given?’ Sex/gender is of course not
the only paradigm through which relations of power function to produce particular
forms of embodiment. Critical feminist theorists of embodiment are also
24
concerned with how bodies are constituted differentially through the heterosexual Embodiment and Gender
matrix of power (Butler, 1999/1990, 1993, 2004a) and through processes of racial
and cultural `othering’ (Butler, 1993; Ahmed, 2000, 2004a).

While Butler rejects theory grounded in ontology of the body, she still finds
something fundamental about bodies: bodies, for Butler, are vulnerable. A body
is both dependent upon others and subject to violation by another. Through our
bodies we always remain exposed to others and our very vulnerability ties us to
others (Chambers, 2006).

2.4 LIVING THE FEMALE BODY

With the publication of The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir, feminist
theorising about the relation between the body and the self took center stage.
Along with other phenomenologists, particularly Merleau-Ponty, and, of course
Sartre, Beauvoir recognises that “to be present in the world implies strictly that
there exists a body which is at once a material thing in the world and a point of
view towards the world” (Beauvoir, 1953). What was central to her account was
that such bodily existence and the point of view was lived differently for men
and women. Beauvoir’s attitude to embodiment has been the subject of much
controversy for later feminists. She seemingly asserts the lack of significance of
biological facts and rehearses such ‘facts’ in a problematic way. She also presents
an account of the phenomenology of female embodiment which has shocked
later writers by its almost unmitigated negativity. Nonetheless her account still
provides the starting point for contemporary work on the relation between bodies
and selves. Here she is explicitly offering her narrative as an account of lived
experience, the body in situation, and not as part of the data of biology.

Contemporary theory and research on embodying gender echo Beauvoir’s (1961)

classic notion that the body is a situation. Beauvoir’s position is that subjectivity
is always embodied, the body is always part of one’s lived experience, and personal
experience is shaped not only by biographical, historical, cultural, and interactional
contexts but also by how one uses his or her freedom or agency. Writing before
the invention of the sex/gender distinction, Beauvoir critiqued both biological
determinism and the scientistic view of the body as detached from subjectivity.
Moi (1999) argued that Beauvoir’s view of gender as embodied avoids problems
that arise from conceptualising gender as distinct from sex as well as
postmodernist attempts to collapse the sex/gender distinction.

2.4.1 Creating Gendered Bodies in Childhood

In childhood the young girl’s body is experienced in a different way from that of
the young boy. He is encouraged to climb trees and play rough games. She is
encouraged to treat her whole person as a doll, “a passive object… an inert given
object” (Beauvoir, 1953), and learns the need to please others. Here is the
beginning of her account of the way in which women live their bodies as objects
for another’s gaze, something which has its origin not in anatomy but in “education
and surroundings” (ibid). The consequence of living a body as an object of
another’s gaze is an inhibited intentionality, her spontaneous movements inhibited,
“the exuberance of life… restrained”, “lack of physical power” leading to a
“general timidity” (ibid). Beauvoir’s descriptions of the way in which women
live their bodies in such an objectified way, internalising the gaze of the other
25
Social Construction of and producing their bodies as objects for others, has been one of her most
Gender
important contributions to a phenomenology of female embodiment, and
anticipated the work of later feminists such as Bartky and Marion Young. Sha
has also described the following phases of life including puberty, sexual initiation,
marriage and motherhood.

2.4.2 Emergence of Sexual Bodies in Adolescence

Puberty
Anthropological literature documents the social significance of menarche as a
girl’s social transition into emergent womanhood and sexual majority (Ram 1992;
Dhuruvarajan 1989; Kapadia 1996). This is a time when gender roles seem to be
strongly emphasised as physical changes occur dramatically on the bodies of
girls and boys. These physical changes are used to emphasise what society is
going to expect in the sexual behaviour and practices between young women
and young men.

As the girl enters puberty Beauvoir describes the way in which her body becomes
to her a source of horror and shame. “This new growth in her armpits transforms
her into a kind of animal or algae” (333), her menstrual blood a source of disgust.
These negative descriptions are continued in her account of sexual initiation,
marriage, and motherhood. Her description of the maternal body has been
especially controversial. “ensnared by nature the pregnant women is plant and
animal … an incubator, a conscious and free individual who has become life’s
passive instrument … not so much mothers… as fertile organisms, like fowls
with high egg production”. These descriptions have been a source of criticism,
particularly when later feminists sought to celebrate the female body as a source
of pleasure, fertility, and empowerment (see below) as well as the fact that it
represents only one point of view not necessarily endorsed in every culture. .
However it is important to recognise that what she was offering was a descriptive
phenomenology of female bodies as lived in specific situations namely of Europe
in the twentieth century. It is these situations which her writings hoped to highlight
and change; in other words she faught her own social battle. In complete contrast
to what Beauvior says, Margaret Mead in Coming of Age in Samoa (1973 {1928}),
exhibits that girls who have attained puberty in Samoa are free from mental
stress (unlike their American counterparts) in the absence of conflicting values,
expectations and shameful taboos. Attainment of puberty is represented by many
rituals however life after that is not filled with much stress due to sex and marriage
being down played. The view towards premarital sex in Samoa is more acceptable
which reduces societal pressures after one attains puberty.

Menstruation
According to Kapadia (1996) based on her work on an untouchable community
in South Inida, the perception from the point of view of the Pallars, an untouchable
caste group in South India, is that a girl who does not menstruate does not reach
“full” womanhood but continues to be perceived as “unfinished” and ungendered
whereas the gendering of men as well as their sexual potency is considered
automatic. Moreover, a girl’s first menstruation marks the beginnings of a state
of openness and, thus, her readiness for marriage, sexual relations, and childbirth
(Lamb 2000). It illustrates the female generative power, feminine energy, i.e.,
sakti which is both sacred and dangerous and should be therefore controlled
26 (Kapadia 1996). Some cultures view women as unclean and shameful during
their periods. Accordingly, women are restricted from entering the temple, going Embodiment and Gender
to the religious place, performing religious rites or entering the kitchen. In addition
to the secrecy this imposes, it frequently means that it is difficult for women to
express their need for rest or treatment when experiencing premenstrual tension
or during a difficult period. In some communities certain ceremonies take place
when girls have menstruation like in Assam and many parts of the South of
India. In south Indian communities girls begin tying half saree. The puberty
ceremony is a prevalent custom in South India. Usually it includes seclusion for
seven days, feeding special food by kinswomen, a ritual bath after the seclusion
and finally a function where a girl is dressed in jewellery and in an expensive
sari for the first time and given special gifts by kins (Ram 1991). According to
Ram’s (1992) study on Mukkuvar women in Tamil Nadu, puberty ceremony is
highly auspicious and celebratory: maturation in a woman – her enhanced status
and her potential availability in marriage – is a pleasurable and important event.
However, it also marks the containment of female body which is replayed over
and over in metaphors and social practices of cooling, binding and secluding
female body (ibid). After the puberty ceremony, the adult woman binds her hair
in tightly coiled cone-shaped knot and transits her free containment of girlhood
to the binding garment of womanhood, a sari – stress on binding hair and covering
sexual parts of body can be interpreted as key points of transition to womanhood
(Ram 1992). The sari signifies the girl’s new identity of a sexually mature woman
(Kapadia 1996). It is also a way of controlling symbolically her sexuality.

There are taboos related to menstruation as in tribal communities too. The Kharia
women, cannot touch a plough nor can they participate in roofing of a house.
The Oraon women are also prevented from touching a plough. The Todas of
Nilgiri Hills do not touch a menstruating women for fear of destruction of harvest.
In certain tribes only the males can participate in ancestor worship (Satyanarayana
and Behera, 1986). The Toda and Kota women in southern India cannot cross
the threshold of a temple. The Santal women cannot attend communal worship.

Marriage and Child birth

Gendered transformation of wifehood results from marriage. The women’s
‘fluidity’ and ‘permeable’ quality (Busby 1997a; Daniel 1984; Fruzzetti et al.
1992; Trawick 1990, 133; Säävälä 2001, 105) facilitate the transformation of
their personhood which is necessary in order to incorporate them into their
husband’s families and to become full personalities of first, auspicious wives
and later, blessed mothers (Fruzzetti 1982, 31). Moreover, it is also a step towards
adulthood – a necessary requirement of the mature adult status of both a woman
and a man (Osellas 2000, 81) but it is even more urgent and absolutely essential
for a woman, in order to achieve her social identity as a “full woman” (Kapadia
1996, 17). The female body has been the site of contest since the very beginning
as the social and moral norms never allowed her any freedom or agency to
experience her sexuality purely as a human body. Her body has been further
negated and put under strict vigilance under the institution of marriage. Marriage
still is the vital juncture of a women’s life. In most cultures the status of the
woman’s body transforms after marriage. Among Hindus a wife is seen as
ardhangini, half her husband’s body and among the Christians the wife’s body
and husband’s body are seen as merged, they “become one”. Thus a symbolic
transformation of the body as now’ belonging to someone else’ takes place. For
this she is kept under constant watch lest she should explore her sexuality and
realise her own body. 27
Social Construction of Among Hindus the woman’s regenerative power sakti is seen as powerful and
Gender
dangerous and marriage is the only way to keep it in check, through regular
sexual intercourse (Kapadia: 105). Thus a young widow has a large amount of
taboos heaped on her as she no longer has a husband to tame in her energies. The
very recognition of the power of the feminine is one of the reasons that Hindus
both married girls early and also regarded widows as dangerous especially if
they were in the reproductive age.
In most societies across the world marriage is seen as the means towards
reproducing the society with legitimately produced children who then fill in the
various roles vacated by older people as they die. Thus marriage is not simply
the union of two persons but a means towards an end, namely social reproduction.
A married woman’s body becomes a vehicle for producing the progeny that will
replenish her group. Thus pregnancy and childbirth are seen natural processes
that should transform the married woman’s body. The theories that specify the
birth of children also determine or are predetermined by the gender inequalities.
Kapadia points to the differences in this respect between North India and South
India. In South India, it is the mother’s blood that is seen as the primary component
of a child’s body and the link between it and its mother’s brother is viewed as
stronger than that between it and its paternal side. This strong matrilateral bias is
less in North India where the paternal influence on the child is stronger. Yet even
in North India a lot of emphasis is placed on the ‘mother’s milk’ and all, who
have drank the milk of the same woman are seen as closely tied to each other.
Also the transfer of masculinity through the mother’s milk is strongly emphasised
in this culture.
Yet patriarchy often denies the women the right over their own reproductive
power. It is only among relatively egalitarian societies like that of hunters and
food gatherers that women can decide upon their own offspring.

2.4.3 Sexuality and Beautifying the Body

Gender is not about women alone, but about women and men and their
relationship in society. We usually think that sexuality is only “natural” or
“normal” in which we cope with our biological needs. In fact, sexuality really
tells us what our society regards as normal rather than biologically normal.
Sexuality involves the way in which the mind and body interact. In the case of
women, many ideas about sexuality teach them that their bodies are objects to
please or satisfy. A lot more pressure is put on women especially in urban areas
to spend a great deal of time and money making their bodies and faces acceptable
and attractive.
Research on how women embody gender focuses on how they experience
changing demeanour, fashioning appearance, or modifying the physical body.
McCaughey (1998) showed how women who learn to subvert feminine
demeanour in self-defense classes redefine womanhood and feel more assertive
and confident in their everyday lives. Dellinger and Williams (1997) showed
that makeup provides women opportunities for bonding and that women can
experience makeup as both empowering and constraining. Gagné and McGaughey
(2002) showed how women who undergo cosmetic surgery view themselves
through the male gaze and feel more confident and liberated as their bodies
become more palatable to the patriarchal imagination.
28
2.4.4 Bodies after Menopause Embodiment and Gender

In most societies, menopause marks major disruption. Research has shown that
menopause is subject to a wide degree of interpretation on the part of women
who experience it. For example, Kaufert (1988) interviewed Canadian women
and found that they tended to define themselves as menopausal if there had been
a change in their accustomed pattern of menstruation. For these women,
menopause was not an event but a process based on perception and interpretation.
Some of these women even went as far as calling themselves menopausal,
regardless of the status of their cycle.

A group of women living in a small village in South Wales believes that

menopause is a threat to their feminine identity and is seen as a disadvantage
because they are aging and losing control over their bodily processes (Skultan,
1970). Kaulagekar (2010) conducted a study to explore the experiences of
postmenopausal women with specific reference to perceived effect of menopause
on femininity and subjective description of feeling about attaining menopause.
This was a cross-sectional study based on in depth interviews of the purposively
selected 52 postmenopausal urban women from four different sites from the city
of Pune, Maharashtra, India. Average age of the women at menopause was 47.6
years. Findings revealed that majority of them had a traumatic menopausal phase
hence final relief was appreciated positively. Sixteen respondents thought their
femininity was affected because of menopause. Opinions expressed about loss
of femininity were all part of individual’s perceptions, changing notions about
social role and own circumstances but majority urban women viewed menopausal
transition from socio-cultural perspective and dissociate reproduction from
femininity.

In a study in rural North India, 558 women aged 35-55 were enlisted for research
on menopause. Of the women in the study, 27 percent had attained menopause,
7 percent were in the transition phase, and 4 percent had a hysterectomy (Singh
& Arora, 2005). The study showed that the majority of the women welcomed the
attainment of menopause and considered it a rite of passage into a new found
stage of womanhood. They considered themselves “cleaner” after menopause,
as they felt themselves relieved of the “filth” associated with menstruation.
Importantly, among many Indian women who embrace menopause; most of them
considered menopause socially advantageous because they had highly structured
rules of conduct and rituals associated with it (Singh & Arora, 2005).

2.5 DISABLED BODIES

Addlakha (2007) highlighted that historically in India as elsewhere in the world,
there has been a deep-rooted cultural antipathy to persons with disabilities.
Sexuality at core is about acceptance of self and acceptance by others. Disabled
persons are expected to reject their bodies as asexual. Throughout the ages the
disabled have been looked down upon with disdain, almost as if they were sub-
human. They have been portrayed as medical anomalies, helpless victims and a
lifelong burden for family and society. While today there is a general recognition
of the need to enhance educational and employment opportunities for persons
with disabilities in order to promote economic self-reliance and independent
living, their sexual needs, dreams and aspirations are more or less rendered
invisible.
29
Social Construction of Sexual and reproductive rights are considered irrelevant for persons with
Gender
disabilities in India. Gender emerges as a key analytical category in perceptions
of sexuality among young men and women with visual and locomotor disabilities.
While able-bodied persons may legitimately claim aspirations for the body
beautiful and an exhilarating sex life, too many people think that disability
automatically excludes those so afflicted from any hope of love and sex. The
social construction of the disabled identity is more often than not that of an
asexual being precariously perched on the margins of society. Indeed, many
disabled persons and their parents are convinced that sexual experience does not
lie in their destiny. The situation is more complicated in societies like India where
sex is a highly tabooed subject. Even under normal circumstances, sexuality is
considered socially threatening more in need of control than encouragement and
enhancement.

While both men and women with disabilities are disqualified from performance
of conventional adult roles, there is reinforcement between traditional notions
of disability and womanhood as both are characterised by innocence, vulnerability,
powerlessness and sexual passivity (Fine and Asch 1988). So while dependency
needs in males are extremely stigmatising, the same tendencies may to some
extent be endearing in a female. This disjunction between traditional notions of
what it means to be a man- aggressive, strong, self-reliant and providing financial
security and social status to the family - and being a man with a disability in need
of assistance - has led some researchers to opine that the fate of men with
disabilities is worse than that of women with disabilities (Shakespeare 1999 and
Tepper 1999a and 1999b).

A woman with a disability is considered incapable of fulfilling the normative

feminine roles of homemaker, wife and mother. Then, she also does not fit the
stereotype of the normal woman in terms of physical appearance. Since women
embody family honour in the Indian context, disabled girls are more often than
not kept hidden at home by families and denied basic rights to mobility, education
and employment. Parents become more protective and restrictive, especially after
the adolescent girl reaches puberty Being nurturing and caring are core
components of normative constructions of femininity, but women with disabilities
are themselves in need of care. This inversion reduces them to the status of being
lesser than women (Addlakha, 2007). Absence of a sense self-assurance and
confidence in the functioning and attractiveness of the body is one of the major
stumbling blocks in the lives of persons with disabilities. Disabled bodies do not
fit the cultural ideal of the healthy, strong, independent and beautiful body. The
disabled body is not valued as a source of pleasure or value (it cannot work,
reproduce or be attractive).

Body image not only influences overall self assessment of a person but is definitive
in determining a person’s sexual self-esteem. Sexual self-esteem is an individual’s
sense of self as a sexual being and may be rated as appealing and unappealing,
competent and incompetent. It describes a person’s sexual identity and perception
of sexual acceptability. When persons have a positive body image, they are likely
to have high levels of sexual self-esteem as well. But factors like abuse and
disability are injurious to sexual self- esteem. When sexual self-esteem is
damaged, it can lead to mental ill health; since it results in a damaged view of
oneself, diminished satisfaction with life and capacity to experience pleasure,
willingness to interact with others and develop intimate relationships. As social
30
attitudes towards physical differences are largely negative, body image and Embodiment and Gender
associated sexual self-esteem are a problem area for persons with disabilities.
(ibid).

2.6 TRANSSEXUAL BODIES

When we talk of gender and embodiment, it is important to discuss it in the
context of transsexuals. Since most of society is based on a dual or
heteronormative model of gender anybody that straddles the divide causes cultural
dissonance and faces rejection. Schrock et al (2005) after having in-depth
interviews with nine white, middle-classes, male-to-female transsexuals examined
how they produce and experience bodily transformation. Interviewees’ bodywork
entailed retraining, redecorating, and reshaping the physical body, which shaped
their feelings, role-taking, and self-monitoring. The authors conclude by exploring
how viewing gender as embodied could influence medical discourse on
transsexualism and have personal and political consequences for transsexuals.

Studies have focused on various dimensions of transsexuality, looking upon how

the body is viewed and also reconstructed to fit in with a redefined view of
gender construction.

Recent research by Rubin (2003) and Namaste (2000) moves transgender

scholarship toward understanding the link between bodies and subjectivities.
Namaste analysed how transsexuals cope with violations of and threats to their
bodies from police and discriminatory health care providers. Rubin examined
female-to-male transsexuals’ experiences of feeling betrayed by their birthed
bodies and growing into their desired bodies. For example, Rubin’s interviewees
said that using hormone therapy and mastectomies to masculinise their bodies
affirmed their identities as men, which evoked feelings of authenticity. Schrock
et al (2005)shows how transsexuals’ bodywork shapes feelings of authenticity,
but our interviewees expressed more contradictory feelings and also indicated
that their bodywork shaped role-taking, self-monitoring, and practical
consciousness (which refers to be taken for granted knowledge about how to do
things; Giddens 1984, 41-45).

Transsexuals are accepted in some societies that stretch the model of gender
construction to include more than two models of gender. The classic
anthropological work on the Comanche have shown how the berdache is an
accepted gender category among these warring tribes that describes a man who
does not want to be masculine but dresses up in women’s clothes and performs
women’s tasks. Such a man is not treated as a social outcaste but has a perfectly
socially acceptable position as a transsexual. Thus in many societies the stigma
of ‘not being born into the right kind of body’ is taken care of culturally.

2.7 SUMMARY
Embodiment in its most simple understanding means the lived experience of
human beings, an experience which bridges “the natural” and “the cultural”.
Embodiment may be defined as the ways in which cultural ideals of gender in a
given society create expectations for and influence the form of our bodies. It
shows how bodies bear the imprint of gender inequalities. In the present unit,
wide range of substantive topics that span the life course were covered , including 31
Social Construction of gendered bodies in childbirth, menarche , menstruation, menopause, notion of
Gender
beautifying the bodies, disabled bodies etc. During the past decades, feminist
socio-cultural anthropologists and sociologists have increasingly explored the
relation between bodies, culture, and subjectivity. They appear to be coming to
terms with how people “embody gender,” which refers not only to how people
use or mould the body to signify gender but also to how such bodywork is
intertwined with subjectivity (i.e., cognition and feelings). Feminist theorists
have focused on the female body as the site where representations of difference
and identity are inscribed. Conboy, Medina, Stanbury, (1997) explored the tensions
between women’s lived bodily experiences and the cultural meanings inscribed
on the female body which included rape , pornography, eroticism, anorexia, body
building, menstruation and maternity.

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Suggested Reading Embodiment and Gender

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Sample Questions
1) What do you understand by the term embodiment?
2) Describe embodiment and gender.
3) “Living the female body”-explain this with examples.

35
Social Construction of
Gender UNIT 3 GENDER AND THE LIFE COURSE

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Life Course Approach
3.2.1 Life Course and Life Cycle
3.3 Gender and the Life Course
3.4 Different Life Courses and their Implications
3.4.1 Girl Child
3.4.2 Menarche: Beginning of the Reproductive Life Course
3.4.3 Married Status
3.4.4 Motherhood
3.4.5 Widowed Women
3.5 Empowerment and Life Course
3.6 Changing Scenario Affecting Life Courses
3.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 comprehend about the life course approach;
 understand gender and the life course perspective;
 know about the different life courses and its implications from gender
perspective; and
 learn about the changing scenario affecting life courses.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
The unit discusses the gender and life course perspective. Clarity of the concept
of gender is very important to understand the life course in a gendered perspective.
Gender is often defined as the socio-cultural meanings attributed to the physical
and biological differences between the sexes, and how those meanings are
manifested both symbolically and materially in societies (Mascia-Lees and Black,
2000). Gender is a relational concept that anthropologists have found to be useful
for elucidating the dynamics of socio-cultural systems that invest meanings, role
expectations, and positionalities in female and male as well as alternatively
gendered persons. Gender as a concept refers to differences, hierarchies, rankings,
etc., which exist between two sexes. It explains cultural constructions of
femininity and masculinity that inform various roles that are played by women
and men in the society. Gender constructs have significant influence on physical,
social and psychological growth and development. As individuals grow from
infancy to childhood and then to adulthood their gender and age along with a
36
host of other factors influence their personality and behaviour. From the moment Gender and the Life Course
of birth a child is conditioned by the cultural constructs that inform the manner
in which it is handled by early care givers, and later grows up learning its gender
specific mannerisms and fulfills gender specific role play. In most instances the
systematic, unfavorable denial of opportunities, rights and resources is based on
gender although these vary from one society to another. These may also change
over time, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. Throughout the world men
and women live in different worlds in terms of the ways in which they experience
various life situations during the journey from womb to old age.

3.2 LIFE COURSE APPROACH

The concept of life course was first developed in sociology in the 1960s. Glen
Elder Jr., a sociologist, was one of the early authors to write about a life course
perspective, and he continues to be one of the driving forces behind its
development. Elder Jr., defined life course as “a multilevel phenomenon changing,
ranging from structural pathways through social institutions and organisations
to the social trajectories of individuals and their developmental pathways”. The
life course perspective is a theoretical model that has been emerging over the
last five decades, across several disciplines. Sociologists, anthropologists, social
historians, demographers, and psychologists—working independently and, more
recently, collaboratively—have all helped to give it shape. The ‘life course’ has
made it possible to analyse the way in which personal life interacts with social
institutions such as education, family, marriage, and labour market and also the
other way around. Van Gennep (2004[1909]) delineated a structure for
transformative ritual practices he considered universal and common to all cultures.
Although they vary greatly in intensity, specific form, and social meaning, rites
of passage are ceremonial devices used by societies to mark the passage or
transition of an individual or a group from one social status or situation to another.
Rites of passage resolve life-crises; they provide a mechanism to deal with the
tension experienced by both individuals and social groups during ambiguous
occasions including, but not limited to, birth, puberty, marriage, and death. By
adopting a comparative approach to develop his taxonomy of social rites, Van
Gennep noted that these social customs are used to mark specific moments of
the life course. Many societies use these ceremonies to articulate events that
hold significance not only for individuals and families but the larger society as
well. Associated with each life stage is a specific social status and a definitive
set of obligations and responsibilities that the incumbent is expected to fulfill as
the individual advances the normative, sequential stages of the life course—
generally from infant, adolescent, spouse, parent, elder, to deceased—taking on
a new social role at each phase. Rites of passage function to accomplish status
transitions; they provide a mechanism for individuals and their societies to
recognise those who negotiate the rites as intrinsically different beings.
Life course perspective looks at how chronological age, relationships, common
life transitions, and social change that shape people’s lives from birth to death.
Of course, time is only one dimension of human behaviour; characteristics of
the person and the environment in which the person lives also play a part.
The life course approach focuses on the relationship between the ‘self’ and
‘society’ and acknowledges the temporal framework of the changes and
movements which have and will continue to shape the context of particular
37
Social Construction of cultures and historical periods (Hockey and James, 2003; Dewilde, 2003). For
Gender
instance, ageing as a social phenomenon can only be comprehended through
contextualising physiological ageing within cultural and historical contexts
(Pilcher, 1995). It is multifaceted, composed of interdependent biological,
psychological and social processes.

The life course paradigm set out by Giele and Elder (1998) provides an appropriate
explanatory framework within which to locate the analysis. Giele and Elder
(1998:10) define three key elements: location in time and place, that includes
the cultural background experienced by individuals; linked lives, referring to
family norms and cultural expectations, for example with respect to women’s
roles concerning employment and child-care; and individual agency - the decisions
that an individual makes and the priority that they give to different aspects of the
lives, for example decisions concerning education, employment and family
formation. All these are intimately linked. Social science scholars who apply the
life course perspective in their work rely on a handful of staple concepts: cohorts,
transitions, trajectories, life events, and turning points.
Cohort: Group of persons who were born at the same historical time and who
experience particular social changes within a given culture in the same sequence
and at the same age.
Transition: Change in roles and statuses that represent a distinct departure from
prior roles and statuses.
Trajectory: Long-term pattern of stability and change, which usually involves
multiple transitions.
Life Event: Significant occurrence involving a relatively abrupt change that
may produce serious and long-lasting effects.
Turning Point: Life event that produces a lasting shift in the life course trajectory.

3.2.1 Life Course and Life Cycle

The concept of life course has also been used in relation to different stages in
human life. However, the concept of ‘ life course’ has gained popularity over
‘life cycle’ since the concept of ‘life cycle’ is perceived to imply multiple turns
and a relatively fixed or inevitable series of biological stages and ages( Hapke
and Ayyankeril, 2004).

Rather than viewing any stage of life, such as childhood, youth and older age, or
any group in isolation the life course is concerned with an understanding of the
place of that stage in an entire life continuum (Riley, 1983). An individual’s
social, economic and political situation is both the outcome of previous actions
and the contingent result of a historical process.

The life course approach provides a framework for analysing individuals’

experiences, at particular stages of their lives. Unlike the term life cycle, which
implies fixed categories in the individual and assumes a stable system it
emphasises the inter-linkage between phases of the life course rather than seeing
each phase in isolation (Katz and Monk, 1993; Hockey and James,1993). It
permits a more dynamic approach to relations between the individual, the family,
work and others (Featherstone and Hepworth, 1989).The life course approach
provides an alternative framework for analysing the various influences, which
38
contribute to the life experience of individuals at particular stages of their lives. Gender and the Life Course
It indicates more flexible biographical patterns within a continually changing
social system (Arber and Evandrou, 1993; Katz and Monk, 1993).

In many studies life course approach is used as a framework for analysing the
life experience of individuals at particular stages of their lives. The perspective
has theoretical relevance also for the structure –agency- debate since tracking
multiple dimensions of life course development over an extended period of time
makes it “very clear that structure and personal action determine the life course”
(Kruger and Baldus, 1999, 356-359).

The early studies of life course were life cycle models that concentrated on single
role sequence. For example, the life cycle of individuals was portrayed as ‘children
mature, marry and have children who then grow up and start a family as the
cycle continues into another generation’ (Elder et al. 2003: 7). In recent times
life course studies concentrate on bridging the gap between social dispositions
and individual preferences for a particular behaviour (Settersten 2003, Giele
2004). Moen (1992) and Hakim (2000, 2003, 2004) study the link between
multiple roles of women – family and work – in relation to marriage and family
formation in the individual life course. This reflects the changing role of women
in the society from that of a traditional homemaker to that of a contributor to the
household income. It is also an indication of changes in individual behaviour in
order to cope with these changes.

3.3 GENDER AND THE LIFE COURSE

Here the gender and life course perspective has been explained from both
anthropological and development perspectives to understand the complex
phenomenon of differential allocation of tasks and resources based on sex and
its relation with and impact on the life course of men and women like marriage,
motherhood/fatherhood, work, power and ageing across societies.

The circumstances during the entire life course influence the situation of
individuals as they advance in age. ‘Gender relations cannot be assumed to be
static over the life course, since life transitions, age-based norms and physiological
changes all impact on the way gender roles are constructed and gender identity
experienced’ (Arber and Ginn, 1996:13). Therefore, a life course perspective
has the potential to direct attention to the situation of women and men at various
times in their lives.

In the context of India, a life course perspective has been adopted, for example
in studies of women’s health and reproduction (Das Gupta 1996). Anthropologists
like Susan C. Seymour (1999) have focused on the lives of women in detail. Her
work on “Women, Family and Child Care in India: A World in Transition” is an
in-depth study of twenty four Hindu families of different caste and class groups
in an urbanised part of Orissa. She focused on socialisation of girls and
significance of women’s role through the life cycle in a society where the patrifocal
extended family is predominant. The longitudinal study also examines the impact
of recent urbanisation and modernisation on groups of contemporary Indian
women. Most studies exploring life courses in India focus exclusively, or mostly,
on girls and women. Alice S. Rossi explored the people’s lives especially women

39
Social Construction of as they move from youth to age in her edited book Gender and the Life Course
Gender
(1985) and Sexuality across the Life Course (1994).

Despite the gradually increasing interest in men as gendered subjects and in

men’s lives in South Asia within gender studies, the range has so far been limited
to topics such as male sexuality and violence. Compared to the multiplicities of
femininities in South Asian Studies, men appear in fewer studies and often in
two- dimensional range, either as house-holders (patrons) or as landless labourers
(clients). One of the significant works on masculinity is by Joseph Alter.

While acknowledging the regional and other diversities in the lives of men and
women across South Asia, some features emerge in most studies on the life
cycle of women, encapsulated by Mines and Lamb (2002, 81) as follows: In
general, a woman can expect to progress over her life from being a daughter in
her natal home, to a wife and daughter-in-law in her husband’s and in-law’s
home, to a mother of young children, to a mother-in-law, and finally to an older
woman and frequently, widow.

In spite of girls’ structurally weaker position compared to boys (Das Gupta, 1996,
217), girls enjoy more personal freedom and autonomy in their natal homes than
they do after getting married (Mines and Lamb, 2002, 81). While a daughter- in-
law is at the bottom of the household hierarchy and controlled by both women
and men in the groom’s house, a young married woman is still cherished as a
potential child- bearer (Mines and Lamb 2002; Saavala 2004, 151).

Women gain freedom upon getting older, the mother-in-law generation has more
freedom in life, is less dominated by males, and has more authority than in earlier
life phases (Das Gupta 1996, 217; Saavala 2006, 149; Lamb,2002).

It has been argued that men, by contrast, do not experience as many marked
transformation in their lives as women, although they too are expected to marry,
to have children, to be economically productive, and finally, as the senior male
in a household, to assume the role of central authority. Thus the argument that
men experience fewer transformations may reflect the lack of research on male
life courses rather than the actual situation. Since there is a tendency to approach
different phases of life in the Indian context as static, it is important to take into
account the notion that division based on the position in the life cycle are subject
to change and transformation (Saavala 2006, 149). The age categories, meanings
and relations are always shaped both institutionally and through everyday
interactions. For example, the transition from ‘child’ to ‘teen’ is negotiated through
both institutions and everyday interactions (Thorne 2004, 404 ).

Different phases and institutions of life such as marriage or parenthood have a

central influence on other aspects of life like working life. Among the few who
combined analyses of work and life course, Hapke and Ayyankeril (2004) explored
the gendered livelihood strategies of fishermen and women in South India through
their lives. They introduced the concept of ‘work life course’ which they define
as “patterns of engagement of men and women in remunerative work throughout
their life course”. In another contribution to the discussion on work and life
course, the life cycle approach is central, namely Arjan de Haan’s (2003) analysis
of gendered experiences of male and female labour migrants in Kolkata. He
showed how young men have a relatively long period when they can move around
40
without (adult) supervision (ghumma) and try out jobs here and there. But no Gender and the Life Course
such option exist for young women, whose experience are confined to the
household. (Mattila, 2011).

Kapadia (1998) examined the two subordinated groups—“untouchables” and

women—in a village in Tamilnadu, South India. The lives and work of
“untouchable” women in the village provided a unique analytical focus that
clarifies the ways in which three axes of identity—gender, caste, and class—are
constructed in South India. The author proves that the non-Brahmin custom of
close kin marriages gives women greater protection and independence. The
involvement of maternal relatives in every important stage of women’s life and
the general distance maintained from paternal kin has been observed by her while
describing the puberty ritual in great detail. This is quite distant from the partilineal
preferences of Brahmins, who encouraged pre-puberty marriage and accorded a
far lower status to women. With urbanisations, however, these protections are
being withdrawn and the rights and obligations of matrilineal kin eroded. Non-
Brahmin households are moving away from the traditional system of pledging
girls the male members of the maternal uncle’s family and substituting the
traditional bride price with the pernicious practice of dowry. There is a tendency
for upwardly mobile non-brahmins to adopt the patriarchal practices of Brahmins
for class mobility. The adoption of urban systems and ideas does not necessary
improve the lot of women; instead it reduces the importance of women’s labour,
withdraws them from economically remunerative occupations and dissolves the
community within which woman’s role was respected and conceded.

3.4 DIFFERENT LIFE COURSES AND THEIR

IMPLICATIONS
According to Banerji, “The life of a woman according to the Dharmasastras,
has three stages, that of an unmarried girl, a married girl, and as a widow” (quoted
in Puri, 1999, p. 6). Interestingly, all three stages of a woman’s life are defined in
relation to her status to men, that is, pre-married, married, and post-married.
Different life course have been discussed here which have a influence and
implication on this other aspect of life especially in the context of women. The
phase of girl child discusses the processes of a girl growing into a woman in the
patrilineal and patriarchal societies like India. It will reflect on the issue of
constraints that a girl faces in the process of socialising herself as a female
followed by other life courses.

3.4.1 Girl Child

Evidence of the preference for and dominance of males in Indian society is found
early in the life cycle. From conception, female children are regarded and treated
differently than male children. For instance, if through amniocentesis the gender
of the foetus is determined to be female, she may be aborted because of the
preference for male children In contrast, male children are highly valued. Males
do not require dowry, they will be able to support their parents in their old age,
and they are the only ones who can perform the death rituals. Males are also
favoured and viewed as an investment because they receive dowry from the
bride’s family. The female child receives less or poorer quality food and may
experience unequal access to health care (Van Willigen &Channa, 1991).
Discrimination at the early age with the girl child also affects various other aspects 41
Social Construction of of her life like education, marriage etc. As female children are not as highly
Gender
valued as male children, they are often viewed as economic and social burdens
which is reflected in the declining sex ratio in India and increased cases of female
foeticide in many parts of India. The popular image and perception of the tribal
women is that of being better off than their non-tribal counterparts. A higher
social status of women was reported by Furer - Haimendorf (1943), Hutton (1921),
Hunter (1973) and Firth (1946) among Tharus of Uttar Pradesh and Nagas and
Garos of the North East. Rivers (1973), Dalton (1872) and Grigson (1938)
however have reported low status of women among Todas, Kharies and Mariya
Gonds with reference to certain taboos during certain periods and ceremonies.
Majumdar (1973) has reported a higher status of tribal women on some indicators
while lower on others, while Shashi (1978) has concluded that the status of
tribal women varies from tribe to tribe. They are considered as an asset due to
roles played by them in the society. The practice of bride price during marriages
is quite common among them. In recent years as the capitalist economy is setting
in, tribal women are being deprived of their traditional roles, due to which their
economic value is decreasing and the practice of ‘bride-price’ is giving way to
the system of dowry as generally witnessed in non-tribal society.

A study by Sutapa Agarwal (2005) highlights the discrimination as an active and

passive elimination of girl child in different socio-economic conditions as a life
course approach by exploring data from 329 ever married women in a community-
based survey conducted in five villages of Haryana, India in 2003. The broad
objective of the study is to investigate into the inter linkages between the different
aspects of women’s life course with sex selective discrimination. Active
elimination of girl child has been seen in terms of abortion according to sex of
the surviving children, pregnancy order, mother’s childhood experience,
autonomy status and marital instability. The finding suggests that autonomy,
education and exposure to mass media have negative impact whereas co-residence
with in-laws and no male child has significant positive impact for active
elimination. In-laws play an important role in abortion under the umbrella of son
preference. This present study examined the sex selective discrimination by active
elimination of female foetus and passive elimination of female child leading to
their death and the role of different background characteristics like women’s
childhood experience, autonomy, married life and sex preference and family
size preference of women in it. Therefore, it can be said that there exists women’s
life course impact on the discrimination against girl child. Women who themselves
had the worst childhood experience (in terms of discrimination in all spheres
including childhood status, food, education, mobility etc.), had less autonomy in
various dimensions (such as decision-making, monetary, mobility, fertility etc),
felt high instability in her married life or perceived a sad married life, are more
responsible for the discrimination against girl child from conception through her
childhood leading to a vicious cycle of gender deprivation and gender
discrimination.

3.4.2 Menarche: Beginning of the Reproductive Life Course

The onset of the first menstrual cycle is the sign that the girl has entered puberty.
The first menstruation is known as menarche. Menarche also marks the beginning
of the fertile years in a woman’s life signifying her reproductive potential as she
becomes biologically capable of bearing children. The event is often preceded
by signs such as enlargement of the breasts and the uterus and the growth of
42
pubic hair. Hence it is related with rapid physical growth and hormonal changes Gender and the Life Course
which influence the behaviour pattern of pubescent girls. Menarche usually occurs
between ages 11 and 13 but it may begin sooner and in others it may be delayed,
but very rarely beyond 16 years of age. The onset of menarche varies with the
activity level of the girls and the nutritional status of girls.

In the cultural context of India, attainment of menarche by girls is considered a

biological indicator that the girl is ready for the commencement of sexual relations.
This is evident from the traditional practice of Gauna that was commonly followed
in the olden days. In this system, girls used to be married off at an early age but
continued staying in the parental home without the consummation of marriage.
However, when a girl attained menarche, the ceremony of Gauna would be
performed and then the girl went to live at her husband’s house where she would
begin her married life. The event of menarche is also a social indicator signifying
the eligibility of the girl for marriage and the initiation of the search for a suitable
marriage partner (Caldwell et al. 1983). Research findings by Padmadas et al.,
(1999) illustrate that the two events of menarche and marriage follow each other
very closely in the rural areas. Menarche initiates the beginning of the reproductive
life course followed by the events of marriage and birth of the first child. In
addition to this, menarche as an event has a social relevance. In many cases it is
marked by the change in role of girls in their family from girlhood to adulthood
like taking up responsibilities in the house, exhibiting matured behaviour, taking
on womanly duties like cooking, learning to do the pooja and helping the mother
in the kitchen.

3.4.3 Married Status

Because of the way in which society is organised, in most societies, parents and
family members start talking about marriage of girls from a young age. In many
cases, they do not welcome the girls from birth, mainly as they think that they
shall have to spend a fortune on their marriage and subsequent events. Girls are
seen as property of another house. Though the official age for marriage for boys
and girls is 21 and 18 years, respectively, in many traditional societies in our
country many boys and girls are married at a much younger age. For e.g., in
Rajasthan, in some tribal communities, it is considered auspicious to marry
children on Akshey Tej day and mass marriages take place on this occasion. From
a young age women think that for them marriage is natural and logical. Many
women find that they are expected to become wives and that wives are expected
to become mothers. Susan’s C. Seymour’s (1999) long term study in Orissa on
changing family organisation, child rearing practices and gender roles in India
reveals a socio-cultural system where early marriages are not only considered
normal for many women but also resulted in satisfying lives for them. In her
study she introduces to a system of family and gender that is based upon cultural
assumption and structural principles that are very different from those
characteristics of most contemporary western societies.

Raval (2009) pointed out that a substantial body of literature in psychological

anthropology has challenged the stereotypical depiction of South Asian women
as passive subordinates in patriarchial families, and has provided accounts of
these women as actors in their social world focusing specifically on situations of
inter personal conflict. She analysed the narratives of Gujarati women from two
cohorts, daughters-in-law in Gujarat, India and mothers-in-law in Gujarati
43
Social Construction of immigrant in Canada, to argue that these women actively engage in negotiating
Gender
the conflicts between their wishes and others expectations. The mode of agency
that they exercise is less egocentric and more relational. The decision making
and negotiations occur within the parameter of their familial roles rather than
rebellion against family structures, and their actions are driven by motivations
involving the welfare of their children and grand children rather than
“individualistic” desires. These narratives along with ethnographic works
exploring South Asian personhood, call for the need to broaden the
conceptualisation of agency and challenge the appropriateness of traditional
individualistic feminism in understanding the lives of women globally.

In most societies girls and boys are prepared differently for marriage. Although
the situation is changing, but in many cases it is found that boys are usually
brought up to acquire working skills to be used outside home, which will bring
in money. On the other hand women are more likely to be legally and financially
dependent on their spouses. Therefore even if women are emotionally or
physically ill-treated within marriage, they may still be better off remaining with
their husbands for financial support as the society may not treat a divorced woman
sympathetically. But in the changing scenario, it has been found that women
with jobs prefer to get married at a later age and also prefer to have few children.
The trend is fast changing especially in urban areas.

Even after marriage, women who cannot give birth to children or do not want
them due to their careers, face considerable difficulties. Women who do not
produce children may be divorced and face humiliation as well as economic
insecurity. These social pressures affect the way infertile women are treated and
add to the difficulty. This is also true for mothers who want to be professionals,
sportswomen or simply enjoy life as individuals in their own right.

Marriage is an event that often brings about a marked change in the lives of most
women. Marriage in all cases brings about a change in place of residence when
a woman leaves the parental home to begin residing with the husband and his
family. The marital status confers on women the position of a wife. Simultaneously
she takes on the roles of a daughter-in-law, sister-in-law etc. Thus marriage brings
about a new network of relationship, which is built around the woman in which
she often has to adjust and compromise the control of women and the potential
for violence are especially great when a woman leaves her natal home to become
a part of her husband’s family. On moving in, the status of the daughter-in-law is
often very low compared with the men and even with any older women in the
household. If there are dowry related problems, it is at this stage that the likelihood
of fatal violence is elevated. The abuse begins when the husband and/or his
family harass the wife for more money and more goods from her family (Van
Willigen & Channa, 1991). If the wife and her family do not comply, a staged
accident— dowry burning—may occur. . This may not be true in all cases as
Susan C. Seymour (1999) based on her study on lives of women in Orissa pointed
out that in a family system that keeps sets of related men together in
multigenerational house, known as “Joint Families”, by sending daughters away
and bringing in outside women as wives and daughters-in-law through a complex
system of arranged marriage, women are the moving pieces in an exchange system
that creates extensive webs of kinship. She raised a question in the study that is
this hardship for them? Yes, for they must leave the security of their own family
and join a different family. Do they find it oppressive? Sometimes but not
44
generally as Indian women are socialised to expect a dramatic transition at the Gender and the Life Course
time of marriage and to assume new responsibilities in their husband’s household.
It emerges from a much broader socio-cultural system in which women though
structurally disadvantaged are expected to fill critical family roles associated
with power, authority and respect. Furthermore, this is enmeshed within a cultural
system in which feminine powers are writ large: within Hindu theology and
practice females are believed to possess great power( Shakti). Male deities cannot
act without their female counterparts-their source of creative power and female
deities are widely worshipped in their own right.

The patriarchal nature of Indian society is seen quite clearly when one examines
the role of women. For the most part, women are viewed and treated as inferior
to men (Frankl, 1986; Gangrade & Chander, 1991; Narasimhan, 1994 in Johnson
and Johnson, 2001). As a result of this domination by men, women are
economically dependent on men and have fewer choices in terms of occupation,
education, and life course.

Part of the reason they are considered a burden is because of the dowry system.
Marriage is the only socially acceptable life course option. Thus, if a woman
does not marry, she and her parents will suffer socially. If a woman does marry
and finds herself in an abusive situation, she probably will not return to her
parents’ home or divorce her husband because she and her family will be ostracised
from their community. Although marriage is the only acceptable status for adult
women, this constraint does not apply to men (Puri, 1999).

The earlier concept of Stree dhan (a woman’s property) has now become distorted
as dowry and underlies much of the tensions that marriage creates in India.

3.4.4 Motherhood
The event of first birth marks the transition to ‘motherhood’, which brings about
with it a myriad of changes in a woman’s life. The event usually interrupts her
educational career, her participation in the labour market, personal and
professional aspirations for success, imposes limitations on her physical mobility
and is an invasion to the personal space of a woman. Hence the event of first
birth has significant social and cultural connotations attached to it. The social
connotation attributes to women the social role of mother while the cultural
connotation acts both as a constraining and facilitating factor leading to her status
enhancement in the society. Highly educated women have better access to
information and hence have greater control over their fertility career.

In most Indian homes, it is not just the birth of a child but the birth of a son that
bestows real motherhood upon a woman. In many parts of Northern India, people
count the ‘number of children’ as ‘number of boys’. Girl children are not even
counted as part of the family. Thus motherhood brings its own anxieties and
many women face problems in their marital home if they are unable to conceive
or fail to conceive a boy child.

In the course of life also the mother of a son has the privilege of assuming the
coveted role of a mother-in-law, when she becomes powerful within the family
and wields considerable clout over sons and daughters-in-law. Such a position
of power is never attained by parents of daughters as they remain lower in rank
to the bride receivers.
45
Social Construction of Even in old age it is taken for granted that sons will take care of their parents and
Gender
parents with grown up sons can hope to pass a comfortable old age. However in
the modern times things may not turn out quite as ideally and often educated and
earning women are capable of taking care of their parents although even today in
Northern India at least, this is looked down upon.

3.4.5 Widowed Women

Thus even as a widow a woman is better off if she is the mother of sons than of
daughters. In traditional times widows were subjected to many restrictions and
sometimes women of the upper castes were forced to commit ‘sati’ or to lead a
miserable life in places of worship like Benaras or Puri.

As a widow, a woman is no longer under the control and care of her husband and
must either reside with her sons or in-laws. Either of these living arrangements
may translate into very poor treatment, abuse, or even abandonment, as the woman
is yet again transformed into a social and financial burden (Johnson and Johnson,
2001). Furthermore, mistreatment of the woman by her husband’s family arises,
especially when the widowed woman is without male children. Once again, the
patriarchal notion of male supremacy prevails.

However menopause as such is not a stigma, rather a woman gains in status after
her periods cease as her body is now considered pure. Older women are allowed
such participation in rituals as are not normally allowed to women who still
menstruate. But as a widow a woman becomes inauspicious and is shunned at
many rituals especially those that have to do with fertility, like marriage.

The status of a widow also varies with caste. Among the lower castes there was
never any restriction on widow remarriage but among the upper castes , especially
Brahmins, even a child widow was not allowed to marry again.

3.5 EMPOWERMENT AND LIFE COURSE

Empowerment is 1) a process from a state of disempowerment to greater
empowerment and 2) women’s agency is central to the process of empowerment.
Empowerment is not static, but varies by location, time, and stage of life cycle
(Dyson and Moore 1983; Mason 1986; Gage 2000; Malhotra, Schuler et al. 2002).
For example, in South Asia, the relative disempowerment of young, recently-
married women is contrasted with the relative empowerment of mothers-in-law
in cross-sectional analyses (Mason 1986; Kabeer 2001). Selected studies indicate
empowerment varies by age, marital and employment status (Standing 1991;
Das Gupta 1996; Gage 2000; Hindin 2002). Some researchers have theorised
that women’s empowerment is responsive to demographic events, with
empowerment increasing over the life course as women bear children, and, in
many countries, male children in particular, an idea generally—but not
universally—supported by the limited research on the issue.

Women’s initial empowerment affects family formation pressures following

marriage, the strength of which may depend, in part, on the presence of co-
residing in-laws (also affected by women’s initial characteristics), with more
empowered women being more capable of resisting pressures to bear children.
Women’s initial empowerment and family formation pressures each lead to the
46
size and composition of the families women form and also their work life outside Gender and the Life Course
the home. More empowered women and women with fewer pressures are more
likely to achieve a smaller family and desired family composition while less
empowered women will more likely have a more normative family formation.

Because life course theory suggests that individual’s outcomes are influenced by
their accumulated experiences and resources, women’s later empowerment is, in
turn, influenced both by their earlier empowerment and by intermediary events
like again the size or composition of the families they form.

In nearly all societies, motherhood and domestic duties are regarded as important
feminine roles. On this account girls from a young age help mothers in household
duties and child care and are married at young age. To become a mother and bear
children is considered as an important feminine role. They may also be made to
discontinue education to get married. Men are considered as breadwinners for
the family. Their role is to be employed and to support the family.

3.6 CHANGING SCENARIO AFFECTING LIFE

COURSES
Every society in contemporary times is facing the onslaught of ongoing rapid
social and cultural transformations. The consequences of such changes are visible
in the behavioural and ideational changes of individuals in the society. Some
aspects of sweeping social change have directly affected women’s lives and what
had been considered restrictive for women is no longer perceived to be so, both
by women themselves as well as the social and the cultural context in which they
live.

Women and higher education as well as women and paid work command the
central stage in the changing lives of women through a re-structuring of their life
course. Enabling women to pursue higher education and their participation in
the labour force also illustrate the role of changing societal institutions in recent
times. Family set-up, religious and cultural prescriptions have become more
accommodative in the passage of time, which earlier spearheaded the traditional
role of women as ‘homemakers’. Educational, occupational and family careers
no longer follow the stable, continuous and predictable course. Their respective
influence on the life course is observable in the timing and sequencing of events
in women’s life. Hence the changing structuration of the life course indicates
women’s new position in today’s society.

As more and more women are acquiring educational skills they are seeking jobs
and getting employment in the market place. This changed situation is affecting
roles of both women and men and bringing change in their lives.

Times and situations are changing fast on account of forces of modernisation,

urbanisation, liberalisation and globalisation. Accordingly, the societies are
acquiring different values and under going change. In modern societies, women
and men are facing a situation of conflict and encountering conflicting situation
about their roles and expectations both within and outside the home. Today girls
are expected to receive higher education, marry, have a family, maintain a
professional career and yet attend to numerous traditional household duties and
chores. Therefore married women often experience role conflict and feel guilty
47
Social Construction of of not spending sufficient time in being good housewives and mothers. At the
Gender
same time women’s access to employment leads to higher mobility, outside the
four walls of the house and neighborhood, greater participation in decision
making, contribution to the family income, savings etc. All, this constitutes crucial
means of becoming less dependent on male members and also exercising control
and assertiveness.

3.7 SUMMARY
Discrimination and inequality faced by women on the account of sex has a
profound impact on the life course of women like marriage, motherhood, work,
old age etc across the societies. Therefore, a life course perspective has the
potential to direct attention to the situation of women at various times in their
lives. The world of men and women are different in terms of work, mobility,
status, condition, position, work, wealth, education, nutrition, marriage, relations
and practically everything. Understanding the concept of gender and life course
is essential to our understanding of how various events, activities and processes
affect lives of boys and girls, men and women, in different ways in different
societies on account of which they learn masculine and feminine behaviour. In
spite of girls’ socially weaker position compared to boys, girls enjoy more personal
freedom and autonomy in their natal homes than they do after getting married.
While a daughter- in- law is at the bottom of the household hierarchy and
controlled by both women and men in the groom’s house, a young married woman
is still valued as a potential child- bearer.

Women gain freedom upon getting older, like the mother-in law generation has
more freedom in life, is less dominated by males, and has more authority than in
earlier life phases. Menarche, marriage, motherhood are events that often brings
about a marked change in the lives of most women. Every society in contemporary
times faces the onslaught of ongoing rapid social and cultural transformations
affecting women’s lives and life courses

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Arber, S. and Ginn, J. (eds) .1996. Connecting Gender and Ageing – A
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Agrawal, Sutapa. 2005. “Discrimination against Girl Child in Rural Haryana,
India: From Conception through Childhood” Paper for the Poster Presentation
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Bosch, A .2005. “Adolescents’ Reproductive Health in Rural Bangladesh: The
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Caldwell, J.C., P.H.Reddy and P.Caldwell. 1983. “The Causes of Marriage Change
in South India”. Population Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 343-361.
Dalton, E.T. 1872. Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal. Calcutta: Govt. Printing
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48
Das Gupta, M. 1996. “Life Course Perspectives on Women’s Autonomy and Gender and the Life Course
Health Outcomes.” Health Transition Review 6 (Suppl) (213-231).
Dewilde, C. 2003. “A Life Course Perspective on Social Exclusion and Poverty”.
British Journal of Sociology, 54(1), 109-128.
Dyson, T. and M. Moore. 1983. “On Kinship Structure, Female Autonomy, and
Demographic Behavior in India”. Population and Development Review, 9: 35-
60.
Elder, G.H., Jr., M.K. Johnson, and R.Crosnoe. 2003. “The Emergence and
Development of the Life Course”. Handbook of the Life Course, by J.T.
Featherstone, M. and Hepworth, M. 1989. “Ageing and Old Age: Reflections on
the Postmodern Life Course”. Bytheway, B. et al. (eds) Rethinking The Life
Cycle. London: Sage Publications.
Firth, R. 1946. Human Types. London: Nelson.
Furer-Haimendorf, Von.C. 1943. The Chenchus: Jungle Folk of Deccan. London:
Macmillan and Company.
Gage, A. 2000. Female Empowerment and Adolescent Demographic Behaviour.
Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Processes: Moving beyond Cairo.
Oxford: Oxford UP: 186-203.
Gennep Van. 2004 [1909]. The Rites of Passage. Routledge: London.
Giele, J. and Elder, G. 1998. Methods of Life Course Research. Thousand Oaks:
Sage.
Grigson, W.V.1938. The Maria Gonds of Bastar. Oxford: Oxford University
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Hakim, C. 2000. Work-lifestyle Choices in the 21st century: Preference Theory.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hakim, C. 2003. “Preference Theory: A New Approach to Explaining Fertility
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Hakim, C. 2004. “Lifestyle Preferences vs. Patriarchal Values: Causal and Non-
causal Attitudes”. J.Z.Giele and E. Holst (eds.). Advances in Life-course Research:
Changing Life Patterns in Western Industrial Societies (Vol. 8, p. 69-91). London:
Elsevier.
Hindin, M. J. 2002. “For Better or for Worse? Women’s Autonomy and Marital
Status in Zimbabwe.” Social Science Research . 31: 151-172.
Hockey, J. and James, A. 1993. Growing Up and Growing Old: Ageing and
Dependency in the Life Course. London: Sage Publications.
Hunter, W.W. 1973. Orissa. London: Smith Elder.
Hutton, J.H. 1921. The Sema Naga. London: Macmillan.
Hutter, I. and B.M. Ramesh. 2003.”The Role of Cultural Schemas and Cultural
Meaning Systems Regarding Demographic and Reproductive Health Behavior
in South India”. Paper presented to the Population Association of America. Annual
Meeting. May 1-3. Minneapolis: USA.
49
Social Construction of Kapadia Karin. 1998. Siva and Her Sisters: Gender, Caste and Class in Rural
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South India. Boulder, San Francisco: Westview Press.
Krüger, H., & Baldus, B. 1999. “Work, Gender and the Life Course: Social
Construction and Individual Experience”. Canadian Journal of Sociology. 24(3),
355-379.
Johnson and Johnson. 2001. Violence Against Women. Vol. 7 No. 9. September
2001 1051-1068. Sage Publications.
Kabeer, N. 2001. Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the
Measurement of Women’s Empowerment. Discussing Women’s Empowerment:
Theory and Practice. Stockholm: Swedish International Development Agency.
Katz, L. and Monk, J. 1993. Full Circles – Geographies of Women over the Life
Course. London: Routledge.
Lamb, Sarah. 2002. “Love and Aging in Bengali Families”. Diane P. Mines &
Sarah Lamb (eds.). Everyday Life in South Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 56–68.
Majumdar, D.N. 1973. A Glimpse of Garo Politics in North Eastern Affairs.
London: Longman.
Malhotra, A., S. R. Schuler, et al. 2002. Measuring Women’s Empowerment as a
Variable in International Development. Washington D.C. ICRW.
Mascia-Lees, Frances E. and Nancy Johnson Black. 2000. Gender and
Anthropology. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press.
Mason, K. O. 1986. “The Status of Women: Conceptual and Methodological
Issues in Demographic Studies.” Sociological Forum 1(2): 284-300.
Mattila Paivi . 2011. Vulnerability and Gendered Life Courses in Jaipur. Helsinki:
Intercontinental Books.
Moen, P. 1994. “Women, Work and Family: A Sociological Perspective on
Changing Roles”. Riley, M. et al. (eds). Age and Structural Lag: Society’s Failure
to Provide Meaningful Opportunities in Work, Family and Leisure. Canada: John
Wiley and Sons Inc.
Padmadas, SS., F. Zavier and T.R. Dilip .1999. “Age at Menarche among Indian
Women: Observations from NFHS, 1992-93”. The Journal of Family Welfare,
45(2), pp. 71-79.
Pilcher, J. 1995. Age and Generation in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Puri, D. 1999. Gift of a Daughter: Change and Continuity in Marriage Patterns
among Two Generations of North Indians in Toronto and Delhi. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation. University of Toronto.
Raval, V. V. 2009. “Negotiating Conflict between Personal Desires and other
Expectations in Lives of Gujarati Women”. Ethos, 37 (4).
Riley, M.W. et al. 1994. Age and Structural Lag – Society’s Failure to Provide
Meaningful Opportunities in Work, Family and Leisure. Chichester: John Wiley
and Sons Inc
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Riley, A.P., M. Weinstein, J. Mormino and T. Gorrindo.2001. “Menarchal Age Gender and the Life Course
and Subsequent Patterns of Family Formation”. Social Biology. Vol.47, No.1-2.
Rivers, H.H. 1973. The Todas. London: Macmillan.
Säävälä, Minna. 2006. “Sterilized Mothers: Women’s Personhood and Family
Planning in Rural South India“. Lina Fruzzetti and Sirpa Tenhunen (eds.). Culture,
Power, and Agency. Gender in Indian Ethnography. Kolkata: Stree.
Settersten, R. A., Jr. 2003. Invitation to the Life Course: Toward New
Understandings of Later Life (ed.). Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing
Company.
Seymour, Susan C. 1999. Women, Family, and Child Care in India: A World in
Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Shashi, S.S. 1978. The Tribal Women of India. Delhi: Sandeep Prakashan
Standing, H. 1991. Dependence and Autonomy: Women’s Employment and the
Family in Calcutta. New York: Routledge.
Thorne, Barrie. 2004. “Theorizing Age and other Differences”. Childhood. Vol
11(4):403–408.
VanWilligen, J., & Channa,V. C. 1991. “Law, Custom and Crimes against Women:
The Problem of Dowry Death in India”. Human Organisation, 50, 369-377.

Suggested Reading
Arber, S. and Ginn, J. (eds). 1996. Connecting Gender and Ageing – A
Sociological Approach. Buckingham: Open University Press
Das Gupta, M. 1996. “Life Course Perspectives on Women’s Autonomy and
Health Outcomes.” Health Transition Review 6 (Suppl) (213-231).
Giele, J. and Elder, G. 1998. Methods of Life Course Research. Thousand Oaks:
Sage.
Lamb, Sarah. 2000. White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body
in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rossi. 1985. Gender and the Life Course. New York: Adline Pub. Ltd
Susan C. Seymour. 1999. Women, Family, and Child Care in India: A World in
Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Sample Questions
1) What is life course approach? Explain concepts related to life course
approach.
2) Explain gender and the life course perspective in detail.
3) What are the implications of the different life courses? Explain from gender
perspective with examples.

51
 MANE-004
Gender and Society
Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

4
GENDER RELATIONS IN SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
UNIT 1
Kinship and Gender 5
UNIT 2
Family and Gender 15
UNIT 3
Religion and Gender 30
UNIT 4
Education and Gender 48
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Formerly Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Professor Rekha Pande Discipline of Anthropology
Professor of History, SOSS and IGNOU, New Delhi
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) IGNOU, New Delhi
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Studies, School of Social Sciences Assistant Professor
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur
Associate Professor Dr. P. Venkatramana
Faculty of Sociology Assistant Professor
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C.J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Academic assistance provided by Dr. N.K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate (DBT) for the Expert Committee
Meeting.

Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi

Course Coordinator: Dr. Mitoo Das, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Content Editor
Dr. Lucy Zehol
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
North Eastern Hill University, Shillong
Blocks Preparation Team
Unit Writers Dr. Ms. Smriti Singh (Unit 4)
Dr. Rukshana Zaman (Unit 1) Assistant Professor (Adhoc)
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Anthropology Dept. of Elementary Education
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi
Dr. Shubhangi Vaidya (Unit 2) Block Introduction
Assistant Professor, SOITS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Lucy Zehol
Dr. Abhik Ghosh (Unit 3) Associate Professor
Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology Department of Anthropology
Panjab University, Chandigarh North Eastern Hill University, Shillong
Authors are responsible for the academic content of this course as far as the copyright issues are concerned.

Print Production Cover Design

Mr. Manjit Singh Dr. Mitoo Das, Asstt. Professor
Section Officer (Pub.), SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology, SOSS, IGNOU

October, 2012
© Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2012
ISBN-978-81-266-6236-4
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BLOCK 4 GENDER RELATIONS IN SOCIAL
INSTITUTIONS
Introduction
In this block we aspire to understand gender relations in social institutions such
as kinship, family, religion and education. These social institutions have been an
integral part of anthropology since its inception. The study of kinship basically
did away with the notion that kinship is simply biology but brought into focus
the fact that it is more a human creation factored by culture. In the unit on Kinship
and Gender (Unit 1), we shall discuss how the biological creation of ‘man’ and
‘woman’ have been interpreted as ‘male’ and ‘female’ in different societies. The
construction varies in relation to a patrilineal or a matrilineal society. In most of
the matrilineal societies the authority lies with the male counterpart while descent,
lineage and inheritance pass through the female line. Matriarchy as a norm is
absent in matrilineal systems. With the passage of time the focus has shifted
from the mere study of kinship relations to the study of kinship based on the
changing patterns of relationships like live-in, lesbian-gay, single parent etc.

Of all the social institutions, family is the most ubiquitous. The family is the site
for reproduction, production and consumption. It is the primary agency of
socialisation or enculturation within which the new generation learns the norms,
values and life-ways of their social group. It is also the primary agency of identity
formation within which an individual learns what roles she/he is expected to
play and positions to occupy. Symbolic interactionist theorists like Charles Horton
Cooley and George Herbert Mead have emphasised that it is within primary
groups like the family that an individual develops a sense of ‘self’, and learns
how to shape and regulate behaviour with reference to the expectations and value
judgments of the wider social group. In a nutshell, it is the family that facilitates
the development of the individual organism into a social ‘person’. These concerns
are taken up in the unit on Family and Gender (Unit 2).

The centrality of gender as a fundamental organising principle of the institution

of family cannot be underestimated. Gender shapes our personalities, structures
our opportunities and expectations and constrains and controls our behaviour.
The family operates as a site of reproduction and production and domestic labour
is gendered and the idea of ‘separate spheres’ places women and men into distinct
slots as homemakers and breadwinners. Besides the discourses of
heteronormativity, motherhood and caring has further exacerbated the gender
issue. The family system creates gendered subjects through gender socialisation
as in the case of patrilineal Hindu society. In Unit 2 we shall also look into the
change and transformation in the systems of gender and family in contemporary
Indian society.

Earlier studies on the status of women often focused on the economic component.
Researchers would adequately reflect the independence of women and show a
true reflection of their status. Studies showed that the understanding of the
economic status of women was not enough to understand women’s status as a
whole. It was that control over resources was governed by control over religious
and/or magical factors. It is because of these reasons that gender would be
incomplete if it were not linked to religion. This is why our understanding of
Gender Relations in Social gender would be difficult if not impossible, since we would not understand the
Institutions
links or importance of religion in the relationships and differences between men
and women. This is explored in the unit on Religion and Gender (Unit 3).

In the unit on Education and Gender (Unit 4), the inter-linkage between gender
and education would be looked from the historic evolution of educational concerns
for women on the world scene as well as concerns of women’s education as
understood by feminist scholars in India. We intend to highlight the socio-political
and cultural context within which gender concerns feature in educational reality
and educational experience, for women. We must understand that gender, in
educational context must not be understood as a social constraint, solely, relegating
individuals as passive recipients but as performative in its essential characteristic,
that is, it must be understood through. In essence, gender must be understood
within the discourse of ‘doing gender’. Such conceptualisation not only respects
the agency individuals may exercise towards social change but also understands
social processes as a more dynamic process evolving through participation
between society, and individuals.

Education, works towards establishing and reinforcing gendered role expectations

through various ways. It reflects the socio-cultural ideas of gendered identity for
both men and women and socialises, effectively, through various means, the
young into accepting, respecting, and conforming to these expectations. Education
is in this way fed by, and feeds into the existing gender-disparate and restrictive-
oppressive ideas of the society.

At another level, education has the potential to question and through initiating a
critical enquiry, engage with existing gender disparity. It holds the potential to
act as a trigger towards social change and inclusion through critical engagement,
economic empowerment, and socio-political representation.

Sex as biological fact and gender as cultural and social construct draws from the
works of Gayle Rubin and others furthered the argument and drew from the
works of Marcel Mauss on gift societies and Claude Levi-Strauss’s work on
incest and taboo to explain the related phenomena of devaluation of women in
societies. This devaluation comes to play a significant role in determining choices
and shaping experiences of women. This understanding of devaluation of women
would also help us understand the educational reality in Indian context and the
restricted progress we have made with respect to correcting gender imbalance in
national educational scenario.

4
 Kinship and Gender
UNIT 1 KINSHIP AND GENDER

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 Historical Sketch
1.1.2 Matriarchy versus Patriarchy
1.2 Kinship and Gender Roles
1.3 Gender in Patrilineal and Matrilineal Societies
1.3.1 Lineage, Descent and Authority
1.3.2 Marriage and Affinal Relations
1.4 Regional Difference seen in Kinship Based Gender Relations in the Whole
of South-Asia and India
1.5 Present Trends in Studying Kinship and Gender
1.6 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

This unit will help you to understand how:
 the study of gender and kinship came up;
 gender is viewed in patrilineal and matrilineal society; and
 the changing trends in gender and kinship is studied.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
This unit would focus on the anthropological studies of kinship and gender. The
attempt herein is to understand how the study of gender in kinship has been
taken up after the 1970s or as popularly known as ‘the second wave of feminism’
rather than to focus on gender itself. The unit would begin with a historical
sketch of the study of kinship related to Morgan, patriarchy versus matriarchy
and then move on to discuss how the various avenues like marriage and affinal
relations, lineage, descent and authority in patrilineal and matrilineal societies
etc. were explored after the 1970s or the classical period. Herein, the works of
Schneider, Gough, Rubin and Leela Dube would be taken up as examples to
explore the change in focus in kinship studies that gave a new perspective to the
study of kinship.

1.1.1 Historical Sketch

The study of kinship as we all know is an integral part of social anthropology
since its inception. Morgan’s two major works Systems of Consanguinity and
Affinity of the Human Family (1870) and Ancient Society (1877) established
kinship as a key area of research in anthropology. These works were based on
the ethnographic data of the Iroquois, an American Tribe studied by Morgan
5
Gender Relations in Social during his student days. The terms ‘classificatory’ and ‘descriptive’ widely used
Institutions
in kinship studies in describing systems of relationships were coined by Morgan.

During the 19th century anthropologists worldwide concentrated on the collection

of genealogies, the study of kinship relations became the thrust area of most
ethnographies. From Morgan to Schneider, Durkheim to Levis-Strauss, W.H.R.
Rivers to Malinowski and from Radcliffe-Brown to Fortes, all had taken up the
study of kinship relations. Fortes work on The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi
(1949) based on structural-functional approach takes into account kinship in
relation to social structure, which according to Fortes is the fundamental principle
of Tallensi kinship relations as they enter into the organisation of collective life.
Levis-Strauss in Elementary Structures in Kinship (1969) had made an analysis
of the systems of kinship and marriage among many aboriginal societies. His
‘alliance theory’ based on structuralism has been an outcome of these studies in
kinship and marriage.

Works of this era reflected the ongoing phase of trying to build up the web of
relations through blood ties (biological) and affinal (cultural) relationships. As
stated by Malinowski during this period the emphasis was on presenting the
‘kinship algebra’. The focus of kinship studies began to change since the late
1960s. Schneider’s American Kinship: A Cultural Account, 1968 highly
influenced the later anthropologists in analysing kinship from a different
perspective, gone were the days of genealogies. This work reflects on the symbolic
representation of culture. In many ways it is regarded as a path-breaking work.
Schneider’s symbolic approach to culture urges that sexual reproduction was a
core symbol of kinship in a system which was defined by two dominant orders,
that of nature, or substance, and that of law, or code (Carsten, 2000).

Earlier the biological category of ‘male’ and ‘female’ was used as the cue in
investigations in kinship relations and many a time the cultural construct was
left unexplored. These studies failed to explain the concept of difference between
‘man’ and ‘woman’ in terms of cultural construct. What we had were theories
postulated by the then anthropologists regarding matriarchy and patriarchy. So
first let us understand the concept of matriarchy and patriarchy for a better
perceptive of the issue of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ which we would take up later.

1.1.2 Matriarchy versus Patriarchy

The question on the evolution of society broached the still disputable debate of
matriarchy versus patriarchy or rather which came first. L.H. Morgan as early as
in 1851 and 1877 had indicated the early society to be matriarchal in nature. J.J.
Bachofen in 1861 had advocated mother right as the predecessor of father right
in his work Das Mutterrecht (Mother Right). Bachofen in his work based on
three fictitious societies had argued that in the initial stages of civilisation there
was complete anarchy or no order. A stage that was associated with free sex or
sexual promiscuity with no social taboos or concepts of family, marriage etc.,
thus, leading to the serious questions of child rearing, sexual access and social
authority. At this stage woman as the mother of the child took control and a
society based on woman rule or matriarchy (mother right) came up. This finally
gave way to a society ruled by men when the women busied herself with the
domestic jural rather than the political and economic jural. Thus, according to
Bachofen social relationships developed in response to the need for social order.
6
Whereas, in Ancient Law (1861), Sir Henry Maine had stated that patriarchy was Kinship and Gender
the first form of family. He based his work on the study of ancient legal systems
of ancient Rome, Islamic law and the Brahmanical laws as encoded by Manu.
While, McLennan’s work Primitive Marriage, (1865) which studied marriage
systems also reflected Bachofen’s view on mother right. The debate of matriarchy
versus patriarchy still continues as we come upon matrilineal societies which
are not necessarily based on matriarchy. Matriarchy means mother right whereas
matrilineal societies are more based on lineage and inheritance pattern rather
than on authority and power. Matrilineality is more often used to refer directly or
indirectly to indicate the general position of women (Fuller, 1976:6). However,
today in anthropological studies the concept of matriarchy and patriarchy is no
longer the prime focus as the shift has moved from reconstruction of the evolution
of past events to seeking explanations to their functions (Bhattacharya, 1977). In
the next section thus, we would discuss kinship based construction of gender
role to understand the social construct of ‘man’ and ‘woman’.

1.2 KINSHIP AND GENDER ROLE

Kinship defines the rules of marriage (whom to marry). Scholars in the 1970s
had accepted the fact that in a society the way kinship and sexual relations are
organised determines the way in which men and women behave. This is a social
construct and varies from culture to culture. In order to understand the shift from
‘male’ and ‘female’ to the social construction of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ let us discuss
Rubin’s work The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,
1975 which paved the way for scholars to think in a new direction. This work is
built on the premises of universal suppression of women that was doing the
rounds during the period. Further to understand this fact Rubin evaluates the
sex-gender system. She states that in order to do away with the generalisation of
universal suppression, one must understand how in a particular society gender
roles are constructed on the basis of biological sex. Margaret Mead’s work Coming
of Age in Somoa, 1935 wherein she had worked on the social personality and
social construction of gender was a step towards the study of kinship and gender,
though only later it became a full-fledged discipline.

In Rubin’s work she takes up the theories of Marxism (Karl Marx) and
Structuralism (Levis- Strauss) to advocate how gender role is constructed. Rubin
states that Levis-Strauss’ (1967) work on structuralism is an explanation in itself
about why societies divide men and women and answers the question of the
existence of sex-gender systems. Levis- Strauss and Marcel Mauss’ The Gift,
1950 based on the principles of exchange gave her the cue to find the answers
about kinship and gender roles. Mauss’ work had established that gift plays an
important role in creating relations between people and subsequently
strengthening solidarity and a feeling of obligation to offer mutual support to
each other. Levi-Strauss has taken this idea a step ahead and shown that the most
important “objects” that people share are their sisters and daughters. Working on
Freud’s incest taboo, Levi-Strauss had stated that it is one of the primary reasons
that people want to give away their daughters and sisters in order to create new
relations. Rubin detects an androcentric element in Levi-Strauss’ work wherein
his reference to people actually is perceived as ‘men’ (Uyl, 1995). Levi-Strauss
has projected women as means (of exchange) resulting in civilisation and
evolution of culture. He sees the suppression of women as a process of ‘culture’
7
Gender Relations in Social and ‘civilisation’ (Leacock 1983 et. al). Rubin argues that if women are the gifts,
Institutions
then it is men who are the exchange partners. Further the traffic of women places
the oppression of women within social systems, rather than in biology (pp 102).
We would further this discussion when we take up marriage and affinal relations
in matrilineal society.

1.3 GENDER IN PATRILINEAL AND

MATRILINEAL SOCIETIES
Patrilineal and matrilineal societies are established on the rules of lineage, descent
and inheritance. In a patrilineal society the rules of lineage, descent and inheritance
follow the male line i.e., kinship is traced through the father, while in matrilineal
society kinship is traced through the mother. We have discussed lineage, descent
and authority in our first year course, thus; herein we would concentrate on how
the later anthropologists have looked at it beyond tracing genealogies.

1.3.1 Lineage, Descent and Authority

In Matrilineal Kinship 1974, Schneider and Gough has regarded matrilineality
in some human societies as one of the ways in which kinship system is organised.
In such societies descent groups run through the lines of the women (Schneider,
1974). Kinship system determines whom to marry or to select as sexual partners
or spouses. In matrilineal descent two sisters’ children and their daughters; and
granddaughters’ children cannot have any sexual or marital relations as they
belong to the same lineage. Yet brothers’ children are eligible for sexual or marital
relations commonly known as cross cousins as they belong to different lineages.

Here, let’s take up Gough’s study of the Nayar, North Kerela, Nayar, Central
Kerela, Tiyyar, North Kerela en Mappilla: North Kerela, 1974 for a better
understanding of gender and kinship role in a matrilineal society. Gough has
stated that the Nayars, a matrilineal descent group traditionally lives in large
houses known as taravads. A taravad’s descent is traceable to a ‘primordial
mother’ who established the lineage and thus the head of the lineage is always a
woman. A taravad when it becomes too large is split into tavazhis (lineage
branching off following the female line). Yet, the taravads were represented by
the karanavans or political representative, the lineage elder. Sometimes he
represented different tavazhis as smaller lineages rarely had their own karanavan
(Gough: 327). The men of the taravads were responsible for their sisters and
their children and had to defend the honour of the taravad at all times. The most
powerful Nayar lineage which managed an entire area had a system of succession,
whereby the ruler was succeeded by his sister’s son (Uyl, 1995). Yet, sons and
daughters belong to the taravad they are born in and are entitled to the property.
Women are considered equal when it comes to inheritance yet authority lies with
the men who are responsible for the well being of the taravads in economic and
political matters.

1.3.2 Marriage and Affinal Relations

Talikettukalyanam is an important ritual that takes place in the life of a Nayar
girl before she reaches puberty. This is literally the tying of the tali marital chain
which symbolises the sign of marriage and a girl acquiring the status of an ‘adult
woman’. A girl thus, achieves the status and the right to continue the lineage.
8
Talikettukalyanam marks an important ceremony and if not performed before a Kinship and Gender
girl reaches her puberty it is believed that Bhagavati’s (ancestral deity wrath can
befall on the taravad with a failed harvest etc. According to Douglas talikettu is
a ritual that guarantees the caste position of a woman and her children. The
fiction of first marriage in a girl’s life lifts the burden of protecting the purity of
blood of the caste Douglas (1988: 145). While, Uyl 1995, states that the talikettu
ceremony accentuates the ritual shaping of the unity of the lineage by the
ceremonial announcement of the eligible females in terms of fertility who would
continue the lineage in the future.

In the matrilineal Nayar society a woman after marriage can have relations with
other men besides her husband but she has to follow the rules and norms of the
society. She cannot take a man belonging to a caste lower than hers as a lover.
Usually, a woman after marriage continues to live in her natal home and her
husband visits her. Such a residence pattern has been termed as ‘duolocal’ by
Gough (1974: 335). Fortes work on the Ashanti of Ghana also reflects a similar
nato-local residence pattern. Very rarely a woman marries and moves to her
husband’s taravad, but even so she and her children always belong to the taravad
she was born in, with which she shares economic and social ties.

A Nayar woman is free to begin a sambandham (relationship) and if she wanted

to discontinue the same she could simply ask her lover to leave and ‘close the
door’. The phrase ‘close the door’ is indication enough that the sambandham
has come to an end. A Nayar man can likewise choose to visit his mistresses/
lovers outside his taravad and stay as a visiting husband for a certain period of
time or can just stay until the following morning. As both the Nayar men and
women are allowed to have relations with more than one man or woman therefore,
whenever a Nayar man visits a woman he leaves his weapon (sword standing
upright in the earth) in the front entrance of the woman’s house signifying his
presence.

Uly, (1995) has stated that a closer look into the tradition of sambandham practiced
among the Nayars refutes the theory of exchange of women that was postulated
by Levi-Strauss. In his work The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969), Strauss
has included in his theory matrilineality as a principle that structures society.
The theory of exchange of women was based on a universally assumed idea of
dominance of men over women. The universally presumed male power has made
Levis-Strauss’ theory applicable to both patrilineal and matrilineal societies, that
in patrilineal societies men exchange daughters whereas in matrilineal societies
men exchange sisters. Fortes and Levis-Strauss in their work have brought
forward the importance of the mother’s brother in authority and inheritance in
matrilineal societies. However, Uly, (1950) in her work raises the question of
whether the authority of mother’s brother extends to the daily affairs, is he the
deciding authority as to with whom his sister can develop a sambandham or in
deciding the time for religious ceremonies? Likewise, Postel-Coster, (1985) (a),
Lemaire, (1991) has also raised and explored the questions regarding the validity
of the exchange of women in matrilineal and matrilocal societies and about such
societies being really a matter of men being exchanged.

9
Gender Relations in Social
Institutions 1.4 REGIONAL DIFFERENCE SEEN IN KINSHIP
BASED GENDER RELATIONS IN THE WHOLE
OF SOUTH-ASIA AND INDIA
Leela Dube’s Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender in South
and South-East Asia (1997), which is one of the pioneering works in this field, is
being taken up in this section. Leela Dube’s work is based on the comparative
study of Hindus, Muslims and Christians in India, high caste Parbatiya Hindus
and Newars of Nepal, Muslims of Bangladesh and Pakistan, bilateral Malaya
Muslims of Peninsular Malaysia, the bilateral Javanese and matrilineal
Minangkabau of western Sumatra and their offshoot in Negri Semblian, the
Buddhist Thai, and the lowland Christian Filipinos (1997: 2). The comparison is
between the two regions of Asia—South Asia predominantly patrilineal and
South-East Asia predominantly bilateral, with a presence of matriliny in both.
Dube’s main concern was to find out how gender roles were conceived and
enacted, how men and women are viewed and the implications thereof in the
maintenance and reproduction of a social system. The major aim was to
understand the differences in kinship systems and family structures that accounts
for the variations in gender roles in different societies.
Dube’s work takes into account the various aspects of kinship i.e., marriage,
conjugal relations, implications of residence, rights over space and children,
family structures and kin networks, work, female sexuality, and limits set by
bodily processes in a comparative study. The study depicted a striking difference
in the two regions. South-East Asian women showed extraordinary level of
independence in economic and social life and social equality between the sexes
was also seen due to the exposure of education. This contrasted majorly with the
situation in South Asia, characterised by strong patrileany, patrilocal family
structure, women lacks knowledge in terms of their rights, and concerns about
female sexuality. Catholic influences have reflected in constrains on the
womenfolk in Filipino, though in legal matters in Philipines and Thailand, women
enjoyed equal rights in terms of inheritance and other resources. The law allows
equitable division of conjugal property and in terms of custody of children; a
mother’s status is always strong.
Thus, Dube’s work portrayed critical differences in South Asia and South-East
Asia and also within each region. Dube has stated that close scrutiny makes one
realise that in both types of unilineal descent system it is necessary to underplay
the role of one parent- that of the father in matriliny and that of the mother in
patriliny. Herein, she cites examples of other works done in this regard of Postel-
Coster (1987), Prindiville (1981) who have stated that in matrilineal and patrilineal
kinship there is less flexibility in formation of groups and in the exercise of
interpersonal relationships than there is in bilateral kinship. Natural differences
between males and females are believed to affect social organisation and rights
and obligations (Women and Kinship: 154). Dube draws upon Schneider and
Gough’s work of 1961 to reflect upon the universal argument that in all societies’
males’ exercise authority, while in a patrilineal society lines of descent and
authority converge. It is basically a conflict among men to wield authority, be it
a matrilineal or patrilineal society. Yet again there are instances which states
otherwise, like in Lakshadweep island of Kalpeni it was seen that concentration
of authority was on an elderly woman of the village respected by kinship statuses
10 that have considerable influence (L. Dube 1991a, b, 1993, 1994).
 Kinship and Gender
1.5 PRESENT TRENDS IN STUDYING KINSHIP
AND GENDER
Schneider’s work (1968) gave a new lease of life to the then dying study of
kinship. As stated earlier Schneider’s work focused on the role of nature or biology
in an anthropological analysis of kinship. Though his work left many questions
unanswered like the contradictions between different ‘natures’ (Franklin, 1997),
yet it paved the way for later anthropologists to explore these avenues.

Marilyn Strathern’s After Nature, (1992) is one such work which had taken
Schneider’s work forward. After Nature explores kinship relations after the
coming of the new age reproductive technologies. This work is based on the
late-twentieth century English culture, the consumer and their choice of
procreation using new technologies. Herein, Strathern argues that the new
technologies have brought a new meaning ‘nature’ which was earlier taken for
granted. Technological developments have opened up avenues which were earlier
not available to the consumer resulting in destabilisation of earlier notion of
nature. The effects of new technologies such as sperm banks, in vitro fertilisation
(IVF) and surrogate motherhood which allow one to choose rather than nature
take its course leads to question in kinship relations. Strathern reflects upon the
new age technological developments in the reproduction system as significant
shift and states that what has been taken as natural has now become a matter of
choice, nature has been ‘enterprised-up’. The more nature is assisted by
technology, the more social recognition of parenthood circumscribed by
legislation, the more difficult it becomes to think of nature as independent of
social intervention (1992b:30).

Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship by Kath Weston (1991) is yet

another work in the field of contemporary anthropology in gender and kinship
studies. This work looks at the construction of identity in the domain of kinship
not based on blood or marriage but by choice- ties between gay men and lesbian.
Weston’s work opened up a relatively unexplored avenue for social
anthropologists to study the gay and lesbian relationships where people create
ties as families and friendships based on the idea of commitment. This work
established a standard for gay and lesbian ethnography thus, leading to a
transforming intellectual impact on the gay and lesbian studies in the 1990s as
had the feminist’s studies done in 1980s. The focus of Weston’s study was the
families that the gays and lesbians had created rather than on the families they
were born into, a choice that has become a key element in constructing kinship.
The children adopted into a gay or lesbian family are supported and surrounded
by kinship based on friendship rather than on blood ties. In times of crisis these
families also rise up to the occasion as is depicted in the last chapter of the book.
Weston’s work describes “a more subtle process of symbolic expansion, a system
whereby the meanings associated with kinship- durability, resilience, and
permanence- are transferred to gay and lesbian relationships because they display
those qualities as much as or even more than the relationships based on biological
links” (Lewin: 1993: 977).

In the present era live-in-relationships, single parent and the kinship patterns
that are coming up due to re-marriage also falls within the scope of kinship and
gender studies. The vocabulary of kinship terms has also come under the scanner
11
Gender Relations in Social as it needs to introduce terms of reference for relatives of second marriages and
Institutions
terms of address for new relations thus created between children from ex-partners
and parents of the new partner.

1.6 SUMMARY
The study of gender and kinship basically did away with the notion that kinship
is simply biology but brought into focus the fact that it is more a human creation
factored by culture. Herein, this unit we have seen how the biological creation of
‘man’ and ‘woman’ have been interpreted as ‘male’ and ‘female’ in different
societies. The construction varies in relation to a patrilineal or a matrilineal society.
In most of the matrilineal societies the authority lies with the male counterpart
while descent, lineage and inheritance pass through the female line. Matriarchy
as a norm is absent in matrilineal systems. As stated by Ortner, ‘the whole scheme
is a construct of culture rather than a fact of nature. Woman is not ‘in reality’ any
closer to (or further from) nature than man- both have consciousness, both are
mortal’ (pp 84). With the passage of time the focus has also shifted from the
mere study of kinship relations to the study of kinship based on the changing
patterns of relationships like the live-in, lesbian-gay, single parent etc.

References

Bachofen, J.J. 1968 (1961). Myth, Religion, and Mother Right: Selected Writings
of J.J. Bachofen. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Bhattacharyya, Narendra Nath. 1977. The Indian Mother Goddess. Delhi:

Manohar.

Carsten, Janet. 2000. Cultures of Relatedness: New Approach to the Study of

Kinship. Edited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Collier, Jane Fishburne and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako (ed). 1987. Gender and
Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis. Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press.

Dube, Leela. 1997. Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender

in South and South-East Asia. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications.

Douglas, Mary. 1988 (1966). Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concept of
Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Engels, Friedrich. 1884. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State. Reprinted in 2004. Australia: Resistance Books.

Fuller, C.F. 1976. The Nayars Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gayle, Rubin. 2006. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy”
of Sex”, in Ellen Lewin edited, Feminist Anthropology. Parker Shipton: Boston
University: Blackwell Publishing. 87-106.

Lewin, Ellen. 1993. “Families We Choose and Contemporary Anthropology”.

Review work in Theorizing Lesbian Experience. SIGNS Vol.18 No.4 pp. 974-
979.
12
Lewin, Ellen. 2006. Feminist Anthropology (ed). Parker Shipton: Boston Kinship and Gender
University: Blackwell Publishing.

Maine, Henry. 1931 (1861). Ancient Law, its Connection with the Early History
of Society, and its Relation to Modern Ideas. London: J.M. Dent.

McLennan, John F. 1865. Primitive Marriage: An Enquiry into the Origin of the
Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black.

Montesquieu. 1977 (1748). Spirit of Laws. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1976. Ancient Society. New York: Gordon Press.

Ortner, Sherry. 2006. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” Ellen Lewin
edited, Feminist Anthropology. Parker Shipton, Boston University: Blackwell
Publishing. 72-86

Schneider, David. and Kathleen Gough. (eds.) 1974. Matrilineal Kinship.

Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Schneider, David. 1980. American Kinship .Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Schneider, David. 1974. “Introduction: The Distinctive Features of Matrilineal

Descent Groups”. Schneider, David. and Kathleen Gough. (eds.). Matrilineal
Kinship. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Pp 1-33.

Strathern, Marilyn. 1992. After Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thurston, Edward. and K. Rangachari. 1909. Caste and Tribes of Southern

India. Vol.-I to Vol. vi. Madras: Government of Madras.

Tylor, Edward. B. 1958 (1871). Primitive Culture. Abridged edition. New York:
Harper.

Uyl, den Marion. 1995. Invisible Barriers- Gender Caste and Kinship in a
Southern Indian Village. Netherlands: International Books.

Weston, Kath. 1991. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. New York:
Columbia University Press.

Suggested Readings
Carsten, Janet. 2000. Cultures of Relatedness: New Approach to the Study of
Kinship. Edited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dube, Leela. 1997. Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender

in South and South-East Asia. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications.

Gayle, Rubin. 2006. ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy”
of Sex’, in Ellen Lewin edited, Feminist Anthropology. Parker Shipton: Boston
University: Blackwell Publishing. 87-106.

Schneider, David. and Kathleen Gough. (eds.) 1974. Matrilineal Kinship.

Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
13
Gender Relations in Social Schneider, David. 1980. American Kinship .Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Institutions
Uyl, den Marion. 1995. Invisible Barriers- Gender Caste and Kinship in a
Southern Indian Village. Netherlands: International Books.

Weston, Kath. 1991. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. New York:
Columbia University Press.

Sample Questions
1) Discuss the concept of matrilineal and patrilineal descent with emphasis on
gender.
2) Explain with suitable examples the meaning of kinship and gender roles.
3) Discuss the emerging trends in kinship and gender studies.

14
 Kinship and Gender
UNIT 2 FAMILY AND GENDER

Contents
2.1 Introduction
2.1.1 Reproduction and the Family
2.1.2 The Domestic Division of Labour
2.2 Sexuality, Heteronormativity and the Family: Control of Female Sexuality
2.2.1 Sexuality
2.2.2 Heteronormativity
2.3 Gendered Discourses on Motherhood and Caring
2.4 Becoming Gendered: The Family and Gender Socialisation
2.5 Family and Gender Relations in Transition
2.6 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 understand the family as a ‘gendered institution’ in a cross-cultural
perspective;
 discuss sexual division of labour, social construction of sexuality and
discourses of motherhood and caring;
 explain how socialisation practices construct gendered subjects; and
 understand changing dimensions of family and gender relations in Indian
society.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Of all the social institutions, family is the most ubiquitous. Sociologists and
anthropologists have devoted much time and energy towards the study of the
family across cultures. The family is the site for reproduction, production and
consumption; it is the primary agency of socialisation or enculturation within
which the new generation learns the norms, values and life-ways of their social
group; it is the primary agency of identity formation within which an individual
learns what roles she/he is expected to play and positions to occupy. Symbolic
interactionist theorists like Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead
have emphasised that it is within primary groups like the family that an individual
develops a sense of ‘self’; and learns how to shape and regulate behaviour with
reference to the expectations and value judgments of the wider social group. In a
nutshell, it is the family that facilitates the development of the unsocialised
individual organism into a social ‘person’.

15
Gender Relations in Social Gender identity, gender socialisation and enactment of gender appropriate roles
Institutions
are a critical aspect of this process. Our identification as ‘male’ or ‘female’ places
certain constraints or limitations as well as opens up certain avenues and
opportunities in our lives.

Let us begin by clarifying the important distinction made by scholars between

the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. In her famous book, ‘The Second Sex’ (1949) The
French author Simone de Beauvoir asserted that ‘one is not born a woman; one’
becomes one. One may be born as a female of the human race but it is culture,
society and civilisation which creates ‘woman’, which defines what is ‘feminine’
and prescribes how women should behave and what they should do. Sociologist
Ann Oakley made the distinction between biological sex and social gender in
her book Sex, Gender and Society, first published in 1972. She wrote that the
word ‘sex’ related to the biological differences between male and female in terms
of sex organs and reproductive capacities. Gender referred to the cultural meanings
ascribed by society and the social classification into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’.

Feminist anthropologist Gayle Rubin’s classic article “The Traffic in Women:

Notes on the Political Economy of Sex’ (1975) drew on the theories of authors
such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Claude Levi-Strauss to understand the
cross-cultural regularities in the status of women. Her theory of the “Sex/gender
system” attempted to identify a dynamic system through which the biological
features of ‘Sex” were transformed into the social features of “gender”. In the
words the Ellen Lewin (2006:44) “Societies depended upon gender as a way to
render persons eligible for particular kinds of manipulation in the social exchanges
that occurred through marriages.”

Society “needs” men and women, and hence creates them everywhere.
Despite this analytical difference, we see that everywhere the ‘natural’ or
‘biological’ differences between male and female are overlaid with layers of
cultural meanings and societal prescriptions Women are thus seen as ‘naturally’
weak, submissive, nurturing, family oriented, self-sacrificing and unsuited to
the hurly-burly of professional commitments, politics, science and technology
etc. The ‘natural’ thus becomes ‘social’ just as the social and cultural are attributed
to biological difference.

The family is the key site where biological sex transforms into social gender.
When a baby is born, the first question that is usually asked by anxious relatives
and friends is “Is it a girl or boy?” The answer to this question will determine a
great many of the life chances and future opportunities and prospects of the
infant. It may even play an important role in survival chances, as in some
communities, the girl child is viewed as an economic and social burden and may
be subjected to fatal neglect or even infanticide. Girl children may not have
access to the same quality and quantity of nutrition may be groomed to help in
domestic chores and child care while their male siblings may be sent to school or
college. Being born male or female plays a crucial role in the division of labour,
in the prestige and pay accorded to various kinds of work and in participation in
various public spheres like the economy, polity, religious and aesthetic realms of
society. Biological differences thus translate into differing cultural expectations
and opportunities and, significantly, into discrimination on the basis of this
difference. Gender is thus recognised by social scientists as one of the most
important axes of stratification and discrimination amongst human beings. Gender
16
theorists in contemporary times prefer to take an intersectional approach, by Family and Gender
studying the manner in which gender interacts and intersects with the other bases
or axes of differentiation like race, caste, class, ethnicity etc.

In the present unit, we will attempt to build upon the important arguments made
in the previous unit which dealt with gender and kinship. The terms kinship,
marriage and family are usually used together in anthropology and it is very
difficult to analytically separate them. Any discussion on kinship will necessarily
involve family and marriage and vice versa. However by devoting separate Units
to Kinship and Gender and Family and Gender it is expected that you will
obtain a deeper insight into the manner in which the most personal and intimate
experiences of human life lay the bedrock for a gendered and frequently gender-
unjust social structure. Feminists have opined that any attempt to rid society of
its gender-discriminatory ideologies and practices must begin within the matrix
of the family and intimate relations, with some radical feminists calling for the
dismantling of the heterosexual nuclear family itself. Shulamith Firestone’s
controversial and famous book The Dialectic of Sex (1979) is one such extreme
viewpoint.

It is important to bear in mind that we cannot speak of the family as a static,

unchanging social institution. Definitions of who constitute a family, family
organisation, patterns of mate-selection, residence, inheritance etc., exhibit great
historical and cross-cultural variation. The family is also embedded within and
in constant interaction with other social institutions, including the economy, the
state, the legal system, religious and educational institutions. Changes in the
institutional matrix have a corresponding impact on family structure, functions
and interrelationships. Gender is one of the core themes underpinning these
interactions. To give a simple example, sexual division of labour is observed
both within the domestic spaces of family and household as well as public spheres
like the market and workplace. Any change in one is bound to affect the other.
Indeed, as you have earlier read., Friedrich Engels theorised the interrelatedness
of capitalism and patriarchy, of class and gender and compared women to the
‘proletariat’ or oppressed working class whose labour power was ‘appropriated’
by men/capitalist class. In this unit, we will also be taking a close look at the
interrelationship between the worlds of domestic and work through a gender
lens.

2.1.1 Reproduction and the Family

One of the important functions of the family is the reproductive function. Men
and women come together through the socially sanctioned institution of marriage
in order to channelise their sexuality in socially approved relationships and to
have children thus ensuring generational continuity.

The ethnographic record does have several examples of “same sex” marriage,
eg. The ‘berdache’ system among the Cheyenne Indians of North America and
the “temporary boy-wives” of the Azande of Africa and female-to-female
marriages amongst the Nandi community in Kenya (Ember et al, 2007:360).
However, these are the exceptions, rather than the rule, and family systems across
the world rest fundamentally upon heterosexual unions between men and women.

Feminists opine that reproduction, like all human activities is not a purely
biological act but a social one. Even though the acts of conceiving and giving
17
Gender Relations in Social birth to a child involve biological processes in a fundamental way, they are
Institutions
“overlain by multiple layers of social and cultural practices.” (Bradley, 2007:117)

As mentioned earlier, Engel’s “The Origins of the Family” is regarded as a

foundational text by scholars of gender. Reproduction, according to Engels, was
of a two-fold character, involving both the production of survival needs like
food, clothing and shelter as well as the production of human beings
(reproduction) in order to carry on the species. These mutually connected activities
involve the most important gender-based activities of the family, namely, domestic
labour (housework and childcare) and maternity and motherhood.

2.1.2 The Domestic Division of Labour

In a short but influential article entitled ‘A Note on the Division of Labour by
Sex’, Judith Brown (1970) asked the question about whether there was something
universal about the kind of work done by women across societies. Surveying an
array of ethnographic materials on division of labour by sex, Brown suggested
that it was women’s responsibility for the bearing and rearing of young children
that determined the nature of division of labour by sex. If women undertook
work that was dangerous, kept them away from their children for long periods or
interrupted their childcare duties, it would threaten the survival and well-being
of their children. As Lewin (2006:42) writes; “Brown’s article thus codifies a
classic statement of the relationship between sex and gender: women’s
reproductive roles are, in this view, a biological given; the social obligations that
arise from them are cultural, but fundamentally linked to that biological foundation
that admits few variations. Sex and gender then, are imagined as theoretically
divisible, but empirically intertwined, tied together by evolutionary pressures as
much as by convention.”

Brown’s formulations set the tone for a good deal of theorising in feminist
anthropology particularly the understanding that it was woman’s reproductive
role and its attendant responsibilities, viz. motherhood, that were at the core of
gender systems across cultures. Irrespective of economic and technological
development, women across cultures are charged with a specific set of
reproductive responsibilities that determine their participation in activities outside
the domestic sphere. Sherry Ortner’s (1974) paper “Is Female to Male as Nature
is to Culture”, interrogates whether women’s close identification with the ‘natural’
realms of reproduction placed them firmly within the ambit of ‘nature’, which,
as we know is considered to be of a lower order than its binary opposite ‘culture’,
which is associated with the world of men. Esther Boserup (1970) examined
various systems of agriculture across the world and observed that less intensive
forms of food production such as gathering and early horticulture tended to be
more amenable or ‘friendly’ to women’s labour. However, when communities
adopted plough based agriculture, which required greater physical strength and
intensive labour, men assumed the major role. It can be speculated that when the
labour of women is less vital to the survival of the family then that of man, their
relative social status also declines.

The notion of ‘separate spheres’, i.e. women in charge of the private, domestic
world of housekeeping, cooking, caring and of course, giving birth to babies and
men ‘in charge’ of the pubic spheres including working, earning a livelihood and
participating in the other works of society, is in fact at the very heart of the
18 modern, industrial nuclear family.
Gender differences in the responsibility for children are an important aspect of Family and Gender
the family as a ‘gendered institution’. Tracing the historical evolution of this
pattern in American society, Amy Wharton (2005), notes that the word
“housework” was not introduced in the English language until 1841, suggesting
that in earlier times there was no clear-cut distinction between work performed
at home and work performed elsewhere. With the dawn of the industrial
revolution, the growth of the factory system and urbanisation, the domains of
‘home’ and ‘work’ came to be separated, and this was further reinforced by gender-
based division of labour.

“Among the middle class, the workplace became men’s domain, while families
were seen as populated by women and children. Because middle-class wives
cooked, cleaned, raised children, provided emotional support, entertained and
sacrificed their own ambitions for their husbands’ careers; it was as if married,
middle class men brought two people to work, rather than one.” (Wharton,
2005:85).

However, it was a different story with the working class. Many working class
women had to contribute to the household by taking up waged work. They had
to juggle the double responsibilities of ‘housework’ and ‘paid work’. The above
example illustrates the complex interplay of gender and class in shaping family
arrangements and adjustments. However, it was the middle class experience that
became the basis for cultural norms and practices at the workplace, which became
an essentially male sphere. As Cancian (1989:17) writes: “In sum, the ideology
of separate spheres reinforced the new division of labour, and portrayed a world
of independent, self-made men and dependent, loving women. The ideal family
was portrayed as a harmonious, stable, nuclear household with an economically
successful father and an angelic mother” (c.f. Wharton, 2005:86) Wharton makes
the important point that the doctrine of separate spheres was as much prescriptive
as descriptive, providing a powerful cultural justification for men to work for
pay and women to stay at home and care for the family. If, for some reason, a
man was unable to work or provide adequately for his wife and children, he was
deemed a failure, an unfit husband and father. Likewise, a woman was expected
to centre her life around the needs and well-being of her family and it was this
investment of love and emotions that also made her ‘unfit’ to be a worker. A
woman who was unwilling to be a full-time caretaker was also stigmatised and
her ‘feminity’ was held in doubt.

In the Indian context, Maitreyi Chaudhari traces the recasting of women as

creatures of domesticity to colonial capitalism and modernity. The 19th century
social reform movement was strongly influenced by Victorian values and culture,
and accordingly, Indian women were sought to be educated and moulded to fit
the ‘ideal type’ of ‘reformed’ women. This new Indian woman was to be gentle,
refined, and skilled in running a ‘home’. Reformers wanted to devise a system
of education for women that would “enable the wife to serve as a solace to her
husband in his bright and dark moments… to superintend the early instruction
of her child, and the lady of the house to provide those sweet social comforts,
idealised in the English word – Home” (Chaudhari, 2011:51) The idea of the
‘ideal woman’ as wife/mother will be taken up for discussion later on in the unit.

Continuing to the discussion on the domestic division of labour, Harriet Bradley

(2007) notes that despite the increase in labour market participation of women
19
Gender Relations in Social in the post World War II period in the West, their domestic responsibilities have
Institutions
not altered significantly. Several research studies show that even “in dual earner
families in advanced countries like Australia, Canada, the U.S.A. and Norway,
men reported doing only about 25 percent of total housework. The nature of
housework men do is also a matter of choice; they play with children, take them
out for excursions, read them stories etc. while leaving the routine maintenance
tasks like cooking, cleaning and feeding to women. The responsibility for planning
and coordinating the household routine falls largely on women; they are the
‘household managers’. Bradley sums up: “women ‘do the housework’; men
‘help’” (2007:120).The gendered nature of domestic work thus creates and
sustains gender disparities within the household and at the workplace. Women’s
contribution to the running of the household is largely seen as an extension of
their ‘feminine nature’ rather than important work in its own right. The coming
of the industrial age further sharpened the division between the ‘world of work’
and the ‘world of domesticity’ placing cultural expectations and norms on the
performance of both sets of duties and responsibilities. The ‘breadwinner-
homemaker’ dichotomy on which the industrial, nuclear household was based
has had a profound impact on gender relations within the family.

2.2 SEXUALITY, HETERONORMATIVITY AND

THE FAMILY: CONTROL OF FEMALE
SEXUALITY
2.2.1 Sexuality
Marriage is the institutional mechanism through which sexual activity and
procreation are regulated. While sexuality may seem to be a highly personal,
private matter concerning the individual, anthropologists and sociologists
maintain that sexual behaviour is socially and culturally learnt. It is also highly
variable, as the ethnographic record shows. In many pre-modern societies,
sexuality is tightly controlled and rule-bound, due to the requirements of
inheritance and the establishment of paternity. The history of wealthy and
aristocratic groups in different societies reveals the importance placed on
‘legitimate heirs’ and inheritance. While men have by and large been allowed
sexual freedom and to have multiple partners, women have been forced to be
strictly monogamous and confine sex to marriage. Bradley (2007) notes that
world religious like Christianity and Islam while in theory, uphold marital fidelity
for both spouses, in practice take a relatively lenient view of male promiscuity
while condemning and punishing non-monogamous women. In the context of
Hindu India rigid control of female sexuality is linked with the caste ideology
based upon hierarchy, the concept of purity and pollution and the notion of women
as ‘gate-keepers’ of the honour of the family, the caste and the community. Female
sexuality is viewed as potentially uncontrollable and destructive to both the
familial and social order, hence all measures are enforced to ensure that it does
not escape the tight control of the natal and subsequently conjugal family. Practices
like pre-puberty marriage, restrictions on the movements and activities of married
women, disfigurement or even murder of widows and with the advance of
technology and bio-medicine, the sinister practice of foetal sex-determination
and aborting female children are all the offshoots of the patriarchal ideology that
views females as a burden and female sexuality with suspicion and hostility.
Rigid prescriptions and proscriptions with regard to marriage rules (hypergancy,
20
jati endogamy, gotra exogamy, village exogamy etc.) also serve to police sexuality Family and Gender
and individual choice in mate selection. Recent instances of young couples being
brutally hunted down and sometimes killed by angry kin and community members
for going against the traditional rules and selecting ‘unsuitable spouses’ aptly
demonstrate the conflict between the ideology of freedom of choice in sexual or
romantic matters and the ideology of regimentation or control over sexuality in
the interests of wider social networks of kin and community.

2.2.2 Heteronormativity
When we speak about sexuality being as much a social construct as a personal
choice, it follows that there is a certain ‘normative’ kind of sexuality that society
endorses and approves, i.e. hetero-sexual relationships.

The term ‘heteronormative’ is used to describe the socially approved sexual

relationship between a woman and a man. This relationship which potentially
results in procreation is at the very foundation of marriage and family. Alternative
expressions of sexuality such as homosexuality, lesbianism, bi-sexuality and even
voluntary renunciation of sex or ‘celibacy’ are seen as antithetical or against the
institution of family. The ‘gay’ community all over the world has been at the
receiving end of society’s censure and disapproval, and in many societies,
homosexuality was an offense punishable under the law. It is only in recent years
that ‘gay rights movements’ or ‘queer liberation’ has succeeded in gaining some
legitimacy for alternative sexualities and secured them some legal rights. In India,
the decriminalisation of consensual homosexual activity by the ‘reading down’
of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in July 2009 by the Delhi High Court is
regarded as a landmark judgment.

2.3 GENDERED DISCOURSES ON MOTHERHOOD

AND CARING
There is a powerful ‘discourse of motherhood’ across cultures and through history
which places great cultural value on motherhood. In many societies including
India, becoming a mother is considered to be a key ‘act’ in a woman’s life and
the fulfillment of her womanly destiny. Becoming the mother of a son gives a
young woman a better status in the marital home, however, if she gives birth to
several daughters in succession, she is reviled. Barrenness is seen as the worst
curse that can befall a woman; in many Indian languages she is referred to as a
“barren field” (‘baanjh’ in Hindi). Motherhood is associated with the values of
selflessness, sacrifice, placing the desires of the child and family above one’s
own desires and needs and finding fulfillment in this ‘natural’ function. The
psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar has written extensively about the relationship
between mothers and children in his work “The Inner World” (1978) which has
been of great relevance to students of anthropology as well as psychology. When
a young married woman enters her husband’s home, she is virtually a stranger in
a strange land who has to often face humiliation, hostility and an unsympathetic
attitude from her new relatives. She has to face much physical, mental and
emotional anguish before she gets assimilated in the new setting.

Motherhood becomes the culturally sanctioned path to her elevation in status,

especially if she produces a male heir. Kakar writes in detail about the intense
physical, emotional and psychological bonding between mother and infant and
21
Gender Relations in Social the powerful cultural and religious imagery about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers.
Institutions
While the tight dyadic bond he describes has been challenged by other authors,
his insights on the immense cultural weight accorded to motherhood in Hindu
India are valuable. The studies of authors like Stanley Kurtz (1992) and Susan
Seymour (1999) demonstrate that within the partilineal Indian family, ‘multiple-
care giving’ is the norm, wherein the child is tended to by various other women
in the household (grandmother, sisters, unmarried aunts, cousins etc) rather than
just the mother.

Within the Western context, the emphasis on the ‘woman as homemaker’ role
discussed earlier has created a powerful discourse on the ‘maternal instinct’ as
an inborn feminine trait rather than as a socially learned and variable practice.
The concept of ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays, 1996; Cheal, 2002 c.f. Bradley,
2007) refers to the ‘work’ expected of mothers by focusing most of their time
and energy upon the child’s development, nutrition, education hobbies and play
to ensure that s/he gets the best possible start in life. This kind of intensive
‘mothering work’ places heavy demands on mothers living in nuclear households
who cannot rely upon extended kin networks to assist with childcare.

For women in paid employment, the ‘double burden’ of child care and professional
commitments is particularly problematic and leads to feelings of guilt, stress
and role conflict. Elizabeth Badinter in her important work The Myth of
Motherhood (1981 c.f. Bradley, 2007) critiques this model of ‘total motherhood’
and points out that the role of fathers was commonly ignored even though there
is no reason why they should not also be involved in child-care. We note that in
the contemporary globalised culture, the image of ‘new fatherhood’ is also
becoming salient and young men are shown to be taking interest in caring for
their babies, playing with them, demonstrating public affection to them,
accompanying them to school, helping with homework, etc. However, when it
comes to decisions regarding staying at home, refusing a job or a transfer, taking
leave to look after a sick child or putting ‘home’ before ‘career’, traditional
gendered expectations usually win the day. Many more women are working
outside the house compared to earlier times, but there are still ‘housewives’.
‘House husbands’ or men who choose to stay at home to look after their families
are still very rare and usually are the butt of ridicule and jokes. Cultural
understandings of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ thus structure relationships of
reproduction and production.

The above section has taken you through some of the important dimensions that
contribute to the ‘gendering’ of the family. We now move to a very important
area, namely gender socialisation. As you are aware, socialisation or enculturation
is the process through which individuals learn cultural norms, values and
behaviours. These include the socially approved ways of behaving, thinking and
feeling in accordance with sexual identity. Child care practices provide us with
useful entry, points into understanding the cultural values that underpin societies,
and anthropologists have contributed much in this area. Margaret Mead’s Sex
and Temperament (1935) and Male and Female (1949) were foundational texts.
Beatrice Whiting’s Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearing (1963) is regarded as
a classic cross-cultural text. In the Indian context, the studies of Susan Seymour
(1999) Margaret Trawick (1992) Alan Roland (1988), Stanley Kurtz (1992) to
name but a few are highly influential works.

22
 Family and Gender
2.4 BECOMING GENDERED: THE FAMILY AND
GENDER SOCIALISATION
Before you read this section, try this mental exercise. Try to recall the earliest
memories of your childhood and the first time you became aware of gender.
When was the first time you thought of yourself as a ‘boy’ or ‘girl’? When did
you first think of others in your environment as male or female? You will probably
realise that gender is a meaningful concept to children as young as three years of
age. They can identify themselves and others as female or male.
How do children develop this understanding and start to behave like girls or
boys are expected to in that social setting? Is it a biological or genetic response
or is it the product of culture and environment? Social scientists agree that biology
and genetics definitely play a role in personality and behaviour, however most
social scientists agree that it is culture that shapes or acts upon an individual’s
biological ‘raw material’ to form a ‘socialised person’, a member of society. The
major theories of socialisation include the theories of ‘social learning’ and
‘cognitive development’ which are general theories that are applicable to gender
socialisation as well. Another perspective –‘identification theory’ – was
specifically developed to explain gender socialisation and acquisition of a gender
identity. While the former theories focus on the way children learn appropriate
behaviours through imitation and internalisation from their parents, identification
theory draws on Freudian ideas and focuses on how psychological, unconscious
processes work in shaping gender identity. Nancy Chodorow’s 1978 classic The
Reproduction of Mothering is an extremely influential text for anthropologists
and sociologists of gender. According to Chodorow, gender identity is formed
during early childhood as children develop strong attachments to a same-sex
parent or adult, i.e. boys to the father and girls to the mother. However, in societies
like the U.S.A. (to which Chodorow belonged) women were the primary care
givers and thus children of both sexes developed their early emotional attachments
to their mothers. However, as children grow up, boys have to ‘switch’ their
identification from mother to father – an emotionally painful and difficult process
– especially because fathers are less involved than mothers in child-care. Girls,
on the other hand, continue to identify with the mother and learn what it means
to be a female from her.
These different paths to gender identification according to Chodorow are
responsible for the formation of gender-differentiated male and female
personalities. While girls tend to be more connected to others and empathise
with the feelings of others, boys are more comfortable with distance and separation
and do not develop ‘empathy’ to the same extent as girls. Moreover, girls are
more secure of their female identity whereas boys and men may need to ‘prove’
their masculinity every now and then to themselves and to others.
Even though Chodorow has been criticised for generalising on the basis of a
particular, historically specific type of family – viz., the Western, nuclear family
– her observations about the importance and centrality of the mother’s role in
early child care and nurturance are important. Also, the insight that mothering
itself is ‘reproduced’ through the formation of a ‘Feminine’ personality that values
attachment, nurturance and empathy – traits that are commonly, identified as
‘maternal’ ones – enriches our understanding about how gender is produced and
reproduced within the setting of the family.
23
Gender Relations in Social We shall now discuss how gender is ‘constructed’ through socialisation of children
Institutions
in a specific socio-cultural context, viz. patrilineal Hindu society in India. For
this purpose, we shall refer to a well-known article by Leela Dube (2001).

‘On the Construction of Gender: Socialisation of Hindu girls is Patrilineal India’

by Leela Dube systematically traces how women are ‘produced as gendered
subjects’ through the intersections of family, kinship and caste which form the
institutional matrix of Hindu society. From her very birth, the girl child is made
to feel less valuable than a male child, whose birth is welcomed with celebration
and feasting. If a baby brother follows her, she is considered auspicious and
lucky, if a line of sisters result, the family is pitied. Folk sayings and proverbs
like “Bringing up a daughter is like watering a plant in another’s courtyard”
clearly demonstrate preference for male children.

“Girls grow up with the notion of temporary membership within the natal home.”
(p. 91) Rituals and ‘pujas’ like Durga puja in Bengal and Gauri puja in Maharashtra
symbolically celebrate the return of a married daughter to her natal home for a
brief, happy period followed by her inevitable return to her marital home, as per
the wishes of her husband. A little girl grows up observing marriage ceremonies
where the bride is sent off amidst much wailing and display of emotion and
hearing proverbs and lullabies which reinforce the message that her stay at the
natal home is short-lived.

While a pre-puberty girl is regarded as pure and a manifestation of Devi or Mother

Goddess, the onset of puberty on the other hand introduces dramatic changes in
her life. She is now regarded as ‘ripe’, ‘mature’ or ‘grown-up’ and this transition
is accompanied by rituals and observances including confinement and seclusion,
eating special food, a ritual bath, particularly in Southern and Western parts of
India and wearing ‘grown up’ clothes like a sari to denote her new status.

Attaining puberty places several restrictions upon a young girl’s freedom and
activities; her dress, department, manner of speech, (what Bourdieu refers to as
‘habitus’) must conform to cultural notions of ‘modesty’ and good character so
that her marriage prospects are not compromised. Dube cites various proverbs
and metaphors from various parts of India, such as:
“Whether the thorn falls on the petal or the petal falls on the thorn , it is always
the petal that runs the risk of getting hurt and disfigured”.
“Whatever can happen to buttermilk? It is the milk that gets bad”
“A glass once cracked is cracked forever.”
Krishna Kumar the eminent educationist, writing about his experiences of
“growing up male” in a small town in Madhya Pradesh, highlights what he calls
the ‘tragic pattern of socialisation’ wherein girls would walk in a close group
from school to home without looking here or there whereas boys would use the
same street to hang around, run and play or maneuver their bikes. Krishna Kumar
writes:

“Watching these silent clusters for years eroded my basic sense of endowing
individuality to every human being. I got used to believing that girls are not
individuals.” (c.f. Dube, 2001:107)

24
This candid confession underscores how differential patterns of socialisation Family and Gender
amongst boys and girls have implications for future marital and familial
relationships wherein women’s individuality and agency are neither recognised
nor tolerated.

The reinforcement of masculine and feminine identities also takes place in terms
of training in household chores and tasks. Earlier in the unit we discussed the
gendered division of labour. Girls are trained to do tasks such as cooking, cleaning,
washing clothes, helping with childcare etc. because these are deemed to be
naturally ‘women’s work’. An important component of this is the notion of
‘service’ or ‘sewa’ which is instilled in girls through the ideas, values and practices
associated with food. Girls are often made to eat leftovers or their food intake is
controlled so that their bodies do not look too mature or well-developed and so
that they cultivate patience and restraint, learn how to cope with pain and
deprivation.

Leela Dube writes:

‘While they (girls) are being trained for present and future roles, the fact that
they will eventually be going into another family is never forgotten. That a girl
will have to leave her parental home is certain; to what kind of home she will go
is not. And it will take her years to acquire any powers of decision-making or
any autonomy in that new home. There are also many ‘ifs’ in the process.
Socialisation for an unfamiliar setting and an uncertain future imparts a degree
of tentativeness and provisionality to the process.” (p.112)

Males, on the other hand are socialised into placing the continuity of the family
at the centre of their lives; they are the inheritors as well as those responsible for
the care of the elders in later years. The sense of entitlement and belongingness
experienced by boys is in marked contrast to the insecurity and tenuousness
experienced by the girl.

We may conclude the section with a very poignant ‘bidaai’ song (song sung at
the time of departure of the bride) from the Hindi belt:
‘O father you brought my brother up to be happy,
You brought me up for shedding tears,
O father, you have brought your son up to give him your house
And you have left a cage for me.’ (p.93}

2.5 FAMILY AND GENDER RELATIONS IN

TRANSITION
We have earlier noted that family systems are not static; they respond to and
simultaneously impact other social institutions. In contemporary times, the State
has played a major role in the affairs of the family; the state mandated programme
to control population and limit family size, for example has had a distinct impact
on reproductive behaviour and choices. The enactment of legislations pertaining
to family matters like marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption, prohibition of
dowry, prevention of domestic violence etc. demonstrate that the demarcation
between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ realms is rather artificial. The women’s
movement has played an important role in sensitising in society to the crimes
25
Gender Relations in Social and discriminations being faced by girls and women within the family like dowry,
Institutions
bride-burning, domestic violence, juvenile sexual abuse, feticide and infanticide.
The land mark report “Towards Equality” (1974) highlighted the discriminations
being faced by Indian women in all spheres including the domestic, a quarter of
a century after Independence.

Spread of women’s education, urbanisation and greater female workforce

participation, globalisation, the information revolution and the growing impact
of mass media, mobile telephony and other means of communication have
virtually opened up a new world of possibilities and opportunities for the new
generation of men and women.

Alongside these trends, we also note the prevalence of sex-related crimes, marital
descriptions and breakdowns, so-called ‘honour killings’, trafficking of women
and girls and an alarming decline in the sex ratio. Tulsi Patel (2005) observes
that sociologists and anthropologists have not taken sufficient cognisance of the
crises confronting the family and have confined themselves to a rather limited
range of research questions.

Longitudinal studies provide interesting and rich data on change and continuity
in the Indian family. Susan Seymour’s ethnographic work with families in
Bhubaneshwar, Orissa spans over thirty years. Her data sheds light on the changing
perceptions about family roles, responsibilities and obligations through a gender
lens. Comparing the narratives of women across three generations, Seymour
notes the gradual shift from ‘interdependence’ towards ‘independence’ and
‘personal autonomy’.

Women have experienced conflicting signals about their roles and identity. Greater
access to education, later age at marriage have made girls more independent, at
the same time, cultural values of modesty, docility and obedience to family wishes
coexist. The continued reliance on ‘arranged marriages seem to prove this.

Seymour notes that the traditional patrifocal family is based upon age and gender
hierarchies of authority. Older members have authority over younger ones and
males have authority over females. Relationships of authority take precedence
over relationships of love or dyadic emotional bonds. Women are expected to
refrain from showing overt love and affection to their children and similarly, it is
considered improper for a married couple to display love and affection in front
of other family members.

However, Seymour’s findings indicate that the conjugal bond (between the
married couple) is growing stronger and husbands and wives particularly in middle
and upper income families had a more egalitarian relationship. Young women
are less fearful and willing to walk out of unhappy marriages.

Helen Ullrich’s (1987, 1994) longitudinal study of Brahmin families in a South

Indian Village documents how young women have succeeded in effecting change
through education and now take an active role in selecting their husbands. After
marriage, they prefer to live in nuclear households where they can be free of the
interference of in-laws and share a more intimate relationship. (c.f. Seymour,
1998).

26
Leigh Minturn’s longitudinal study of Rajput women in Khalapur village in North Family and Gender
India carried out in 1955 and 1975 also documents greater autonomy and freedom;
women could visit their natal homes more frequently, were less deferential to
their parents-in-law and cooked food for their husbands and children on separate
chulhas. Elders acknowledged that these changes were on account of improved
education and greater autonomy and control exerted by their sons in the joint
household. Elders are largely philosophical about these changes and accept these
as God’s will”. (c.f. Seymour, 1999: 289)

Susan Wadley’s (1999) study of Karimpur, a North Indian village where she had
done fieldwork in the late 1960s and to which she returned in 1983-84 also
describes significant educational change for women and the impact of television
and films on redefining gender roles. Families are growing more ‘couple oriented’
and young husbands and wives demand their private space within the joint
household, which would have been unthinkable to the older generations. Karimpur
villagers however see this change as a symptom of disorder, challenging the
once well-entrenched caste and gender hierarchies (c.f. Seymour, 1999: 289-90)

The above empirical studies demonstrate the changes in family structure and
gender roles wrought about by modernisation. Seymour (1999) raises the
following questions:

“To what extent will the patrifocal joint family be able to adjust to these kinds of
democratizing changes while retaining the general commitment of family
members to the well-being of the collective whole? Will India achieve any better
solutions to the dilemma faced in Western societies of how to balance the needs
of the family, whether extended or nuclear, with the desire to enhance gender
equity and provide women as well as men with personal autonomy?.... Will these
women be able to rely on the help of husbands, parents-in-law, and other extended
kin in caring for children and the elderly, or will the kinds of familial problems
faced by working couples in the contemporary United States simply be duplicated
in India?” (p. 291)

These are indeed very important and interesting questions and only time can
reveal the answers. There is a need for ongoing anthropological and sociological
research on these various dimensions.

2.6 SUMMARY
We have focused upon the centrality of gender as a fundamental organising
principle of the institution of family. Gender shapes our personalities, structures
our opportunities and expectations and constrains and controls our behaviour.
We examined how the family operates as a site of reproduction and production.
We noted how domestic labour is gendered and how the idea of ‘separate spheres’
places women and men into distinct slots as homemakers and breadwinners. We
examined how the discourses of heteronormativity, motherhood and caring further
exacerbated the gender issue. We examined how the family system creates
gendered subjects through gender socialisation and focused on the case of
patrilineal Hindu society. In the final section, we discussed change and
transformation in the systems of gender and family in contemporary Indian society.

27
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Mead, Margaret. 1955 (1949). Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a
Changing World. New York: William Morrow.

Oakley, Ann. 1974. Sex, Gender and Society. New York: Harper and Row.

Ortner, Sherry B. 1974. ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” in Michelle

Z. Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Eds). Women, Culture and Society. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.

Patel, Tulsi. 2005 (ed.). The Family in India: Structure and Practice. New Delhi:
Sage Publication.

Roland, Alan. 1988. In Search of Self in India and Japan: Towards a Cross-
Cultural Psychology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rubin, Gayle. 1974. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of
Sex” in Rayna R. Reiter (Ed). Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
28
Seymour, Susan C. 1999. Women, Family and Child Care in India. Cambridge: Family and Gender
Cambridge University Press.

Trawick, Margaret. 1992. Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. Berkeley: University

of California Press.

Wharton, Amy S. 2005. The Sociology of Gender. Malden, USA, Oxford, Carlton,
Australia: Blackwell Publishing.

Whiting, Beatrice B. 1963. Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearing. New York:
Wiley.

Suggested Reading

Bradley, Harriet. 2007. Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Dube, Leela. 2001. Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields.

New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage Publications.

Lewin, Ellen. 2006 (ed.). Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell

Publishing.

Patel, Tulsi. 2005 (ed.). The Family in India: Structure and Practice. New Delhi:
Sage Publication.

Seymour, Susan C. 1999. Women, Family and Child Care in India. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Wharton, Amy S. 2005. The Sociology of Gender. Malden, USA, Oxford, Carlton,
Australia: Blackwell Publishing.

Sample Questions
1) Discuss the centrality of gender as a fundamental organising principle of the
institution of family.
2) Examine how the family operates as a site of reproduction and production.
3) Examine how the discourses of heteronormativity, motherhood and caring
exacerbate the gender issue.
4) Discuss change and transformations in the systems of gender and family in
contemporary Indian society.

29
Gender Relations in Social
Institutions UNIT 3 RELIGION AND GENDER

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Building Up Belief
3.3 Building Up from the Household Level
3.4 Women, Kinship and Religion
3.5 Women, Society and the Body
3.6 Growing Up in a Supernatural World
3.7 The Mature Woman as a Repository of Culture
3.8 Social Change, Religion and Women
3.9 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

Having gone through this unit, you should be able to:
 understand the importance of religion and gender through anthropological
studies;
 the importance of social belief in shaping gender relations as well as
theoretical developments in this area of study;
 understand how gender relations begin with basic family relations and then
move on to relations between kins;
 help in understanding how women grow up learning to be within the believed
reality of the supernatural world, populated by deities, powers and sacred
areas, relations with which are mediated by rituals;
 see how the mature woman in society is thus knowledgeable about religion
and this is the basis of transmission of culture from generation to generation,
as well as ideas relating to the environment; and
 understand and relate to recent changes in all these issues to show in what
areas women are on their way to achieving equality and in what others they
are not.

Religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion.

- Paul Tillich

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Earlier studies on the status of women often focused on the economic component.
Researchers felt that this would adequately reflect the independence of women
and be a true reflection of their status. In 1973, Peggy R. Sanday’s studies showed
30
that the understanding of the economic status of women was not enough to Religion and Gender
understand women’s status as a whole. It was her finding that control over
resources was governed by control over religious and/or magical factors.
Thus for Sanday (1973: 1698), “A belief system emphasizing maternity and
fertility as a sacred function can also be seen as the legitimisation of sex status
which develops because of ecological and economic factors. Furthermore, there
is ample evidence in the ethnographic material… that a change in female status
is associated with a change in the productive system. Where this has occurred, as
with the Ibo, it is interesting to note that sex antagonism develops or increases.
Perhaps sex antagonism develops in the absence of a belief system which
legitimises and sanctions the power of women. Sex antagonism might be reduced
in such societies when a belief system develops in which female power is
attributed to the natural functions of women.”
It is because of these reasons that gender would be incomplete if it were not
linked to religion. This is why our understanding of gender would be difficult if
not impossible, since we would not understand the links or importance of religion
in the relationships and differences between men and women.
It seems that anthropologists have taken up two basic approaches with regard to
sex roles in society. One group strongly believes that such sex roles are based on
biological differences between men and women, including the way their minds
develop and are structured. The other group, sometimes called the
‘environmentalists’, strongly believes that though biological differences exist
but social and economic differences account for these differences in roles. Cross-
cultural studies actually show that in societies like those in Southeast Asia, where
physical development between genders is not markedly different, women fill
many different roles in society which were traditionally relegated to men. Thus,
the ‘environmentalists’ seem to have the better of the argument.

3.2 BUILDING UP BELIEF

Belief has always been an important cement or bond that links up the people that
make up society. It provides a philosophy, a rationale or logic for undertaking
tasks in economy, religion, kinship, politics, or any other aspect of society. They
may also form the underlying legitimacy for tribes and religious statehoods. Many
societies discriminate against women, thus inhibiting their activities in various
arenas of the public sphere, an area which involves decisions affecting the
community as a whole.

Initial studies of the relationship between anthropological studies of the relations

of men and women, leading to differences in their participation in religious beliefs
was based on a number of assumptions. These assumptions need to be uncovered
before we can proceed further.

People had begun to think that if women were given economic equality, their
improvement in status in other arenas of social life was automatically granted by
society. This ‘economic’ bias in the status of women was overturned when people
realised that the other arenas in life were also important in giving women a
different status. These other arenas included political power, religion as well as
kinship relations. Often, control over resources was seen to be a part of control
over religious or magical factors. It was also seen to be a matter of kinship.
31
Gender Relations in Social Sometimes, in cases where women have achieved some degree of control over
Institutions
economic resources, the ‘sex antagonism’ (a term used by Peggy Sanday in 1973)
among women increases as among the Ibo. Thus, the belief system in any society
substantiates and legitimises the power of a dominant group in society. Wherever
women have achieved economic control along with the support of the religious/
belief system, it has led to a decrease in the ‘sex antagonism’. Sometimes the
religious or magical system underlies the political system also.

Most societies in the world discriminate against women, thus limiting their
participation in public life. Thus, community relations and decisions that affect
the community are more often taken by men rather than women. Often, it has
been stated that in private life, women take the major decisions, but this has also
not been universally true. In many tribal societies, every institution of society
(like social behaviour related to kinship, marriage, family, economy, politics,
religion and law) is interlinked. As a result, the belief system permeates into
every sphere of activity. If women are left out of the belief system, then they are
thus overlooked in other spheres of life also.

Sherry Ortner in 1974 was thus able design a set of propositions for understanding
the factors through which the position of women in society could be measured.
They include:
• Statements of cultural ideology which explicitly devalue women, their
products, and their roles.
• Symbolic devices, such as the concept of defilement, associated with women.
• The exclusion of women from participation in the area believed to be most
powerful in the particular society, whether religious or secular.

In East Africa, the Jie tribe has an age-grade system (after studies conducted by
Gibbs in 1965). This system ensures that people who have been born within a
short span of time are put into one group. Often, this has relevance to males.
People of one age-grade system are given one kind of training and achieve a
similar status in society. As they learn about different institutions within society
and attain maturity, they are initiated into the religious and ritual practices also.
Thus, the eldest of the hierarchy in an age-grade system have the most ritual as
well as political power, from which the women are excluded. Thus the Jie did
not have any chiefs, political functionaries or centralised political institutions.

However, such social institutions are so complex that it is sometimes impossible

to know in which direction social change will occur. Often, if the only organising
principle of society is seen to be religion, then women’s role in the public sphere
related to religion will be limited. When such a society’s public sphere becomes
more complex, discriminatory practices towards women are likely to be a part of
the earlier heritage. Thus, critics of Peggy Sanday claim that the emphasis on
maternity and fertility as a sacred function may be not because of the legitimisation
of sex status developed out of ecological and economic factors but as something
that may be seen as an effect of past events.

32
 Religion and Gender
3.3 BUILDING UP FROM THE HOUSEHOLD
LEVEL
Many of the early anthropologists working on the status of women focused on
the household. This was a necessary part, according to them, of the initial
enculturation and socialisation processes that engrained behaviours among
individuals. They believed that the relations within the family (or household)
were a microcosm of such behaviours found in society at large. Hence,
understanding familial behaviour was an important clue towards understanding
social behaviour. For social activists, if this family behaviour could be changed,
then one could change or better the status of women in society.

It was with this in mind that theorisation has advanced in this area of research.
For many feminist anthropologists, the subordination of women was a universal
phenomenon observed cross-culturally. Feminist anthropology contrived to focus
on the role, status and contributions of women to their societies. A variety of
theories were propounded by them to explain this phenomenon. In the 1970s,
the field was just formed and only a few or more unified approaches dealing
with the universal subjugation of women was relevant. Today, this has spread
into a very large number of approaches.

In the 1970s, Marxist theory became popular among them because some of them
felt that the idea of class oppression could explain many of the problems
encountered by women. Using Marxist models, they could show how capitalist
society exploited women as a mode of ‘reproduction of labour’, thus using their
reproductive powers. Engels used the theories of the classical evolutionist Morgan
to write The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, where he
showed that the oppression of women was linked to changes in the mode of
production during the shift of human beings to agriculture (the Neolithic
Revolution). Once men started owning property, whether in terms of land or in
terms of domesticated animals, they wanted to give it to their sons rather than
daughters. They could only do this by overthrowing the earlier matrilineal
inheritance patterns, thus globally defeating women. Of course, our present state
of knowledge shows us that a true matriarchy never existed, though a few societies
still practice matrilineal or double descent systems. This theoretical picture
brought in through Morgan showed why the earlier evolutionists were often
criticised as being “armchair anthropologists”.

Structuralist models also became quite popular at this point of time. The roles of
men and women were seen here as being culturally constructed. Due to women’s
biological function, their arena of activity was restricted to a lower-status role
centered round the household thus keeping them relatively safer. On the other
hand, the same set of reasons led to the association of men with less safe areas.
Even when such environmental conditions no longer existed, these activities
became learned behavioural traits for human beings. However, limiting just this
idea to structuralist approaches would be to belittle and very large body of ideas
that contributed much to the understanding of men and women in different socio-
cultural contexts.

Structuralist and Marxist modes of analysis do not see the subjugation of women
as a biological fact but as a socio-cultural/behavioural tendency caused by
33
Gender Relations in Social historical developments in society. Though sexual dimorphism is a fact among
Institutions
human beings, it only allows such discrimination through social norms. It is thus
not ‘programmed’ behaviour. Mead’s researches as well primate behaviour studies
both indicated that such behaviour varied widely.

Rosaldo (public/domestic), Edholm (production/reproduction) and Ortner (nature/

culture) used dichotomies to theorise female subordination. Ortner’s division of
nature/culture is based on Lévi-Strauss, who had argued that women were closer
to the nature end of the dichotomy because of their role in reproduction. By the
1970s the very basis of the idea of such dichotomies and the idea that women
were subjugated everywhere was being questioned. Some anthropologists like
Margaret Mead had already put forth the idea that there were societies where
males and females enacted roles which were more equal, though they may be
doing different things in society. To support this, A. Schlegel and J. Briggs
conducted studies among hunting-gathering societies. K. Sachs used a Marxian
mode of production study to show how, in such societies, sisters, brothers,
husbands and wives had an equal relationship to resources as well as the means.

E. Friedl and Louise Lamphere believe that even under subordination, women
had some degree of personal power. These anthropologists claimed that in the
domestic sphere women often had some degree of power. Though this power
was used individually in negotiating personal relations, they also affected male
interactions in the public sphere.

The use of the term gender has thus tended to separate feminist anthropology
from simplistic models, like dichotomies. The term gender started to replace the
term women in such studies. Thus, inequality was differentiated from purely
biological distinctions. Translating culturally fine-tuned gender distinctions
seemed to be a problem, and it seemed as if such gender diversity was a universal
phenomenon. There was a distinct relationship between the way culture guided
thoughts and the resultant individual action, but there also seemed to be a variety
and range of individual actions that needed much more fine-tuned approaches
that reached deeper into culturally-guided behaviour to understand it. There was
also a relationship between the material conditions within which cultures existed
and the ideologies that were a part of such material conditions of existence. All-
in-all gender opened out a much larger range of human activities to understanding
and for research than had ever been possible before, when biologically created
sex roles was the only theoretical model that was used.

After this period, then, the issue of identity became a very important point of
contact for a variety of feminist anthropologies. Social categories like age,
occupation, religion, occupation, status, among others, became important
variables. Power continued to play an important role in the analysis. This was
because the construction of identity and its enactment by the actors was mediated
through discourses and actions that were structured through the environment
(whether social or otherwise) of power.

Queer theory also became an important reaction after the 1980s and the post-
structuralist reactions against what was considered to be normal. Queer theory
challenged the apparent ‘normalcy’ of heterosexuality (a process which is
sometimes called heteronormativity). So, queer theory takes an idea to its logical
conclusion by not accepting gender as being a personally constructed identity
34
but seeing it as something created through a variety of social acts, identities, Religion and Gender
thoughts and components.

This tour through the theories, approaches and methodologies was important
since each theory or approach is like a worldview. Each worldview has its own
set of assumptions which methodologically ignores some information while
giving precedence to others. By understanding this we will begin to understand
how the understanding of women’s roles in ritual and religion are shaped. These
approaches also show how the household has been seen as a mode of theory and
of action in the so-called ‘battle between the sexes’. In fact, most people believe
now that initial enculturation and socialisation processes within the family are
crucial towards the formation of a gender identity and thus a set of behaviours.

3.4 WOMEN, KINSHIP AND RELIGION

Belief forms part of the ideological sub-system. It is one of the most important
arenas of the relations between men and women. A belief system in a culture
operates by linking up with other sub-systems in culture, like family, kinship,
politics, economy, and so on. Women are often crucial to the management of a
belief system, though they may be kept out of many aspects of it. This kind of
behaviour is also reproduced over generations.

For instance, in Jind district of Haryana, one perception among the people is that
religious rituals are maintained by the women of the household. Only household
gods are prayed to by the men. Also, genealogies are maintained and remembered
by some of the men who become the knowledge-repositories for one or more
lineages. Such genealogies are remembered as poetry and may extend from 800
to over 1200 years. However, such genealogies consciously ignored the women
who married into the lineage as well as the women who were born within it.
Thus, in an everyday sense, men did not usually pray and most houses did not
even keep areas where images of gods were kept or prayed to regularly. It was
the women who would go to local temples and pray, not only on a daily basis but
also whenever they passed the area where images of gods and goddesses had
been installed.

One of the most crucial areas which have been targeted by different societies has
been women’s menstruation periods. There have been a range of taboos associated
with women’s menstruation that include no contact with men during the period,
or with food, and especially with religious rituals. Among the Oraon tribe of
Jharkhand, men are not allowed to be with women or even their wives before a
hunt or before important rituals because the woman might be menstruating. A
hunting expedition often requires the sanction of the gods for its success and the
success of the hunt may be forfeited if any of the men come in contact with a
menstruating woman or if they have sexual relations with any woman.

In many traditional Bengali societies, women are often the primary carriers of
religious ritual from generation to generation. However, women are not allowed
to do their daily prayers after a bath when they are menstruating. Usually, at this
time, children or other women of the household who are not menstruating continue
the rituals. This becomes problematic when there is a nuclear family and there is
no one to continue this daily ritual during menstruation. In some cases, the men
conduct the prayers.
35
Gender Relations in Social Access to household gods becomes very special in the case of the Maithili
Institutions
Brahmins of Mithila district in northern Bihar, where rural household gods are
often installed in a locked crypt, with the keys being kept only by the eldest son
of the household (or the father, or eldest male), and the prayers are kept secret
from all the women as well as from others outside the household.

Blood, especially menstrual blood, seems to be carrying with it a host of unpleasant

feelings in society. Blood is symbolic of death, murder, live-giving force or
kinship. In many societies women are not allowed to go into the kitchen while
menstruating, since their hands would ‘pollute’ the food served to all others.

In Assam, at the famous religious temple called Kamakhya in Guwahati in June,

is the famous Ambubachi mela or festival. This religious festival celebrates the
fertility of the Kamakhya goddess, by having a three day ritual because at this
time the goddess has her annual menstrual cycle. Here the word Ambu means
‘mother’ and bachi means ‘seed’. Many mendicants, especially those of the occult
or Tantric side, visit the temple and conduct rituals. During these three days the
doors of the main temple are closed.

Among the Dogon tribe of Mali in West Africa, a recent study showed that
menstrual taboos were strictly followed. The women, belonging to Christian,
Islam and a monotheistic indigenous religion were sequestered in menstrual huts.
The community had been studied at one time by the famous anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss. Using this method, women are enjoined to be truthful about the
status of their fertility to their husband’s families. This reduces the risk of illicit
sexual behaviour among women. After the birth of a child, vigilance by family
members increases till the resumption of sexual behaviour after menstruation by
the husband. Y DNA studies showed mismatches in only about 1.8 per cent of
the cases. This refutes the idea that such traditional populations have high rates
of cuckoldry. Thus, religious control of sexual behaviour has been very successful
in evolution. Thus, sexual behaviour is controlled through social control in the
public sphere and the fear of divine or supernatural punishment.

Similar conditions are imposed among the Wogeo in New Guinea, where the
woman who is menstruating is given a bowl of curry by the mother and told to
lie near the fire. To make her condition known to others she has to wear black or
dark brown skirts. She avoids physical contact though she can converse freely.
Other people, looking at the colour of her skirt, avoid physical contact with her.
She will avoid touching objects in the house and will go and come through a
hole in the wall rather than the doorway. She will only visit her own gardens and
will cook her own food. She eats with a fork, drinks water with a straw and uses
a scratcher to itch.

Thus, the body of the women becomes a site which becomes proscribed and
controlled during natural biological events. They are advertised through the
woman’s body and this body has to endure many rituals, purifications and
mortifications during these periods of proscription. The following of these
proscriptions become important not only for her immediate family but also for
her kin group, lineage, clan or even the whole village. Thus, a whole ideological
and mythical background is often overlaid over these controlling practices in
order to enforce them as sanctions on women.

36
Among the Mae Enga of New Guinea, the women live in a separate house beside Religion and Gender
their husbands with their unmarried daughters and infant sons. The men live in a
large house near the women’s houses and there is a strong hostility between the
sexes. The men believe that every ejaculation decreases their vitality, and thus
intercourse was only conducted to beget children and that, too, after magical
ceremonies are performed to prevent the men from weakening. After such
intercourse, men do not enter their horticultural gardens in case the contact with
women harms the crops. Women are then secluded during menstruation. Crops
like sweet potato, setaria or crucifer are gendered as being female and these are
harvested by the women at night during this period as food. It is believed that
eating male foods like taro, ginger or sugarcane would kill her. On the other
hand, wives have fewer prohibitions than unmarried women. This could be said
to be a protection, since the wives and mothers come from clans which are
traditional enemies and thus need to be protected from.

3.5 WOMEN, SOCIETY AND THE BODY

As has already been mentioned in the previous section, women’s bodies become
the site of a variety of social issues. One of the most important, if not the most
visible, signs of this kind is the fact of child-bearing and child-birth among women,
which are often taken as marks of legitimacy or otherwise within the society.
The Aztecs honoured this idea by reserving one of their heavens for women who
died in child-birth or for soldiers who died in battle.

The fact of the impregnation of the woman and her fertility are considered to be
of great importance. For the Arapesh, in the Pacific Islands, sexual activity may
be directed towards play or it could be a creative act towards the formation of a
child. Thus, the father’s role is recognised in such societies. After the mother’s
breasts show discolouration and swelling caused by pregnancy, all sexual activity
stops. The mother is then not permitted to eat frogs, bandicoots or coconuts and
sago from a holy place. During the birth, the father is usually not present. The
blood associated with child-birth is usually considered to be impure so birthing
is done outside the village, with the help of other women. After they return to the
village, both parents lie with the child, but both are needed to fast, with having
water or even a smoke. Small rituals are carried out with the help of the father’s
brother’s wives through the day to aid them in caring for the baby. The father in
Arapesh society is endangered by the birth of the first child. Hence, he remains
separated for five days, eating food with a spoon, using a stick for scratching
himself and keeping away from tobacco. A leaf hut is built near a pool, decorated
with red flowers and herbs, and the father lives here. After cleaning his mouth on
a white ring given by his sponsor, he goes on to place it at the bottom of the pool.
After bathing, he retrieves this ring and returns it to his sponsor. This marks his
rite of passage to fatherhood.

These rituals are society’s way of giving importance to natural processes and to
incorporate religious elements and importance to everyday events. Thus religion
mediates the everyday activities of human beings with others as well as with the
rest of the natural world. This mediation brings into focus the existing social
structure and its attendant differences in the way it treats gender relations. Thus,
studying each event in the life cycle underlines an aspect of social relations.

37
Gender Relations in Social However, not all societies give this kind of importance to the males when it
Institutions
comes to begetting a child. Among the Aborigines of Western Australia, a spirit-
child enters the woman to make her pregnant. For the man, the birth of a child is
only a social paternity. Food taboos are maintained for the woman since it is
believed that what she eats will affect the child. The mother spends no time in
confinement at all. Songs are chanted to ease the birth, usually outside the village.
The mother and child pair stays away from the father for five days. Further food
taboos are observed for a year after birth. The child thus becomes a part of the
father’s lineage even though there is no strong belief in the father having any
role in the birth of the child.

So strong is this difference observed cross-culturally, that anthropologists have

devised two different terms to understand the phenomenon. A genitor is the actual
or genetic father of the child. Such a father may or may not be acknowledged
and recognised. In case the actual father is not recognised, a social father may be
appointed which the society recognises as the father (even though the person
may not be the genitor). This social father is termed as the pater. In some tribal
societies in Sikkim, such a pater may not even live with his wife, and might even
have his own family where he is the genitor. Often, in this society, a pater is a
respected member of the society, like a school-teacher.

There seems to be enough societies where there is conflict and doubt regarding
the paternity of a child. For many this doubt is only clarified through religion.
When Azande women become pregnant, their husbands consult oracles to find
out the true paternity of the child. Among the Mundugamur, the oracle is consulted
to find a suitable midwife for delivery and also to decide where the birth should
take place.

Still others believe that children are the reincarnation of the ancestors. This is
why the spirits are called upon to preside over the naming of the child among the
Oraons of Jharkhand. Two rice grains are placed on water in a bowl. One has the
name of an ancestor while the other that of the child. If the two names go well
together, it is believed, they will stick together and play with each other on the
surface tension of the water. If they do not match, they will be indifferent to each
other. If this happens, another ancestral name is selected until the names match.
The naming of a child also ensures protection of the ancestor and the qualities of
the ancestor also become part of the child. Among the Bemba, the midwife names
the ancestor who has returned as the child.

So conflict-ridden is the idea of paternity that different societies have ensured in

different ways to get rid of such issues through elaborate sets of rituals. In South
America, among some of the Amazonian tribes, there is the concept of the
couvade. The father sometimes behaves as if he is also pregnant with the child,
sometimes even simulating belly aches. He lies in his hammock and undergoes
food taboos, refraining from hunting and smoking. The cultural logic claims that
the mother provides the child with the body while the father provides the soul.
This providing of the soul by the father weakens him as much as pregnancy
weakens the mother. If the father does not perform the rituals well, it can affect
the further development of the child, it is believed.

38
 Religion and Gender

CHILD BIRTH

SAFEGUARD INCORPORATE THE

CHILD AS A
DELIVERY AND LEGITIMATE MEMBER
HEALTH OF SOCIETY

CULTURAL BELIEF THAT BELIEF THAT

PRACTICEES THAT RITUAL FATHER IS FATHER IS NOT
LEAD TO HEALTH PRACTICES IMPORTANT IN IMPORTANT IN
AND NUTRITION CHILD BIRTH CHILD BIRTH

RITUALS TO
INCORPORATE THE
FATHER AS AN
IMPORTANT PART OF
THE CHILD

Fig. 3.1: Child Birth and Its Cultural Logic

3.6 GROWING UP IN A SUPERNATURAL WORLD

Supernatural assurance that everything is right in one’s behaviour has been a
very important component of culture. This has been assured to people through a
variety and range of religious specialists. In Bengal, Durga Puja has been an
important deity who is prayed to, in order to ensure that women get a good
husband. A similar case is seen with the Gauri Puja among the people of
Karnataka. In both cases, it is ensured that if the rituals are followed correctly,
these wishes would be granted.
The adult woman in culture is definitely supposed to be savvy about everyday
religious rituals that need to be performed. This can only be so if the enculturation
process has been painstaking and without flaws. One way of clearly highlighting
the division of labour in society between the genders is to have a separate house
for the men. Among the Oraons of Jharkhand it was called a dhumkuria. Among
the tribes of Madhya Pradesh in India, many of the villages had a bachelors’
dormitory.
Having this kind of a separate structure for the two genders, it was easy to train
each gender separately in religious matters also, and keep such matters separate.
At such houses, the men met and discussed many things. They were often taught
by the elders about rituals, household gods, hunting, and other male activities.
They were also trained in sexual matters. Folklore and cultural matters were also
picked up through this method of cultural transmission from generation to
generation. In Jharkhand, for some years, the Ramakrishna Mission society used
the dhumkuria to impart cultural knowledge, literacy and training to the youth.
The admission to such a house was a matter of honour and prestige. Women
were strictly not allowed in such houses. The transgression within or out of such
houses was offset by the use of certain religious or supernatural sanctions. Among
the Latmul, men would sleep in the men’s houses before a hunt in order to separate
themselves from contact with women. 39
Gender Relations in Social The women in societies like that of Manipur, in North-East India, consider their
Institutions
kitchen area to be as private as that of the men’s houses. Women meet here in
privacy, away from the eyes of men, and gossip, discuss or talk about a variety of
affairs. In early households in Manipur, the shared deities in the household were
kept in common areas of the house, while others were kept in zones used mostly
by one or the other gender. Thus, spatial areas are also demarcated separately for
men and for women, with some common areas.

Among the tribals of Jharkhand, like the Oraons and the Mundas, these rules are
followed for 15 days to a month of daily fasting by the men of a household
during the manda festival. The women follow strict rules of purity within the
household and while menstruating may not perform their duties during this period.
The men eat food which is boiled or roasted before dawn. They then remain
hungry through the day. The women, wearing clean clothes after a bath, serve
them and then go away to separate quarters. Throughout the event the women
serve their men folk (brothers, sons or husbands). On the appointed day, after
many privations the men undergo a series of rituals and walk over a bed of coals
while their appointed women bathe repeatedly, carry water on their heads to the
place of worship where they pour it over an image of Lord Shiva, the presiding
deity. After this trial by ordeal, the men and women bathe and eat. They can go
on to live normally till the next year. The arena then fills up with the Purulia
Chhau dancers for a night of folklore and entertainment. Of course, today, there
are many more communities who participate in the manda. Many of the features
of the manda are similar to the jitia festivals in the hardcore Oraon tribal areas,
which was eventually banned by the British because of the wounds seen in hook-
swinging. In West Bengal, this same festival becomes the Charak. Some of these
festivals were also played out in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

What is clear today is that these festivals are part of a bhakti movement or
revivalist backdrop in the region which perhaps began after about 1000 AD.
These trials by ordeal were imposed to show the purity of the acolytes and their
belief in these ancient gods. However, the gods here are anti-establishmentarian.
On this day, the official priests or Brahmins may not be called and other people
may pray directly to the gods without an intermediary. The gods are also supposed
to enter into the people, giving them extraordinary powers to bear pain and speed
up healing. These healing powers may also be useful to others who stay in contact
with them.

Some researchers have found that early prehistoric human societies, which are
presumed to have been based on hunting-gathering kind of economy, had female
goddesses. Women were supposed to be the centre of the ritual and religious
arena of life at that point of time. As society moved on to pastoralist economies
involving the husbandry of captive animals for fuel, food and fodder and on to a
more Neolithic and agricultural economy, the society shifted to a more strongly
patriarchal one. As a result, the emphasis shifted from female deities to male
ones. Archaeological sites in the Deccan region seem to show this shift. It has
been argued that men needed to clear plots for cultivation and this brought them
into closer proximity with their neighbours with whom they often fought. Since
only the men fought therefore it made sense to give men such jobs, since they
were more expendable as compared to the women who were more important for
giving birth to and rearing children. The factors are so complex that merely
looking at subsistence issues does not give us the right information regarding
40
the status of women. Many other factors leading from their position in other Religion and Gender
subsystems like politics, health and economy are necessary. It seems clear that
women’s status in a society may be higher when she not only contributes to
subsistence but also retains control over the wealth and its produce.

The education and enculturation of a woman in society, as compared to a man, is

not only quantitatively different but also qualitatively different. Puberty rituals
for men as well as women differ across cultures. Sometimes both are present.
Some cultures only have rituals for men while others have them for women.
These rituals follow Van Gennep’s idea that rites of passage from one stage of
life to another have three stages – isolation, education and re-entry into society.

So, people are first isolated from others while they are being readied. They may
face ordeals during this period. After this, they are educated so that they are able
to enter into the next phase of their lives. There is a feeling of limbo during this
transitional period, when the people have been removed from one stage but have
not yet been able to enter the next stage. Victor Turner calls it a liminal period.
Education regarding the next phase of life as well as the education of the persons
close to the person is key towards re-incorporation into the society. These issues
are markedly seen during childbirth, puberty, marriage and death rituals. After
this period is over, the person is then reincorporated back into society with a new
status and its corresponding role-sets.

Among the Wogeo of New Guinea, described by Ian Hogbin in 1970, initiation
and puberty rites occur over a period of years. At the age of four or five year’s
men enter the room where the young boy is hiding with his mother and he is
grabbed and taken outside. His eyes are blindfolded and loud sounds are made.
He is told that monsters are attacking him. The child then has the lobe and the
top of the ears pierced with a bone. They return to the mothers and the other men
light a fire to cook and eat the offerings. At the age of ten years, parents apply red
ochre on their bodies and they are then taken to the clubhouse. The sponsor
descends the stairs, removes the mother and slaps the boy’s shoulders to remove
the influence of the mother. He is taken in and sleeps there with the men. Some
of the men paint their bodies and make grotesque sounds that send the boys into
a state of fear. The boys are dragged to the beach, to see and hear the flutes
played. The sponsor takes the boy into the sea for a scrubbing. Ankles and wrists
of the boys are pulled while relatives twist spear blades into the hair to make the
boys grow tall. After coming back to the clubhouse, the boys are told that all the
sounds they had heard were made by men, not by monsters and this and other
mysteries taught to them should not be revealed to the women. Once the boy is
ready for sexual intercourse, the third stage begins with the tongue being scarified
to help him to play the flutes. This is symbolically likened to the boy’s first
menstruation, from which Hogbin calls his book, The Island of Menstruating
Men. The tongue is the part where the mother’s influence is most apparent –
through nursing and eating food prepared by her. The tongue is scraped with
rough leaves till it bleeds. Before marriage, the man is bathed in the sea, pulled
to the shore by a spear in his hair and then this hair is confined in a wicker cone.
This cone is replaced with bigger ones till the hair is about ten inches long at
which time it is trimmed to fit the cone. From this time on, the person is considered
fit to be an adult.

41
Gender Relations in Social In some societies, people from a closely similar age group are put together into
Institutions
an age-set or an age-grade (as mentioned earlier). Each age-set group works
together to learn what is required in order to be qualified for the next stage. Each
stage is usually occupied by its own rites of passage rituals. After the eldest age-
group is constituted, the group of elders then becomes the most knowledgeable
with regard to religious and ritual knowledge.

One set of theories about puberty rituals claims that there is no critical biological
marker for the transition of men from childhood to adulthood as exists among
women. This is why men rather than women have more puberty rituals. Also,
men separate rituals, knowledge and religious matters from the women using
this set of behaviour. It has also been noted that female puberty rituals occur in
areas where women do not leave home after marriage, as in matrilocal societies,
or in areas where women have control over economic resources. Thus such rituals
are necessary in areas where the person has been born and is likely to spend all
her life, thus necessitating clear ways to show a change in status.

Most anthropologists have been male and thus such rituals pertaining to women
have been rare. One of these accounts has been by Audrey Richards among the
Bemba of Africa who described the Chisungu rite in 1956. The ritual is performed
for a group and the bridegroom may pay the mistress of ceremonies since without
this performance the marriage cannot take place. Girls learn the tricks of being
an adult like carrying sticks and learning dance forms, making models of hoes
and pots, learning about conduct like not mentioning the husband’s adulterous
liaisons, about taking care of babies, not to gossip, not to be lazy, and so on. On
the seventh day the women are trained to serve a basket of seeds to the older
women. On the tenth day the tree of fertility festooned with white beads is the
centre of activity. The beads are bitten off and given to the mistress of ceremonies.
Clay models made and decorated by the girls are presented to her. After seventeen
days, the bridegroom enters the house. The bridegroom shoots an arrow above
the head of the girl, and then she is presented with a bundle of firewood, meat,
beads and red dye. The latter two are used to dress up the girl as she sits beside
the bridegroom and then she receives gifts of coins and bracelets from their kin.
On the eighteenth day, she kills, plucks and cooks a chicken porridge for a
communal feast.

The dramatic nature of such rituals is important when the solidarity of the group
members is high. There is thus much cooperation between the members. Using
such ritual methods, the boy can be quickly and systematically incorporated into
the group of men. In corporate kin societies, women learn through this ritual to
incorporate their activities with a tightly organised group. This prepares her for
the time when they will move on to another household after marriage. It trains
her to maintain her own autonomy while keeping track of the cooperative group.
Thus, men’s ceremonies prepare them for the public sphere while women’s
ceremonies prepare them for the private sphere. Men’s ceremonies often regularly
exclude women, while women’s ceremonies keep implicit the idea that men are
a part of their world.

42
 Religion and Gender
3.7 THE MATURE WOMAN AS THE REPOSITORY
OF CULTURE
Thus, the woman goes through a series of stages of learning all through her life
that prepares her to become knowledgeable about the religious and ritual aspects
of life. In some societies women can access some degree of control over her
circumstances. This may be true to a large extent in matrilineal societies, like
among the Garos, Jaintias and the Khasis, where the women do a large amount
of economic activities for the household as well as retaining control over much
of it. In polygamous societies, like the Tiv studied by Paul Bohannon, women
may control the bride price to get successive wives or daughters-in-law. In other
matrifocal societies women may improve their status by manipulating kin
relations. In modern urban societies, women can improve their status by choosing
their own mates and affines. Also, ritual and religious rules govern sexuality, so
if the beliefs of the society do not give her a higher status then the other subsystems
of society will also contribute to this effect. The reverse is also true, if the woman’s
work is seen to be insignificant, she will also be given a lower status by the
belief system.

Older women are often more easily allowed to vent their opinions and be present
in the public sphere than their younger counterparts. Such women are often
consulted by others, including men, on a variety of issues.

Religion may also be used as a method for venting out anger, frustration and
other feelings of angst against specific people or the society at large. This may be
done through being in a state of trance caused by extreme excitement and fervor
at a religious event. I.M. Lewis studied such phenomena from around the world
to show that whenever a particular social group was oppressed and had no voice
within the society, such events were likely to be present. Thus, men and women
were particularly prone to such trances. However, his data showed that only a
few cases existed where men were involved whereas a large number of cases
involved women, showing that women were one of the most oppressed groups
in society. Trances involved the woman beginning by shaking her head violently
from side to side and then making sounds or cries, which may be followed by
long tirades or comments on people or society. People often listen carefully to
understand her and see if her words foretell anything since it is believed that
spirits or gods enter the body at this time. The woman may faint after this. At
most religious shrines with a high degree of excitement, such events are common.

This is an important event for the woman since she is given much importance by
society and her family during this period. She is also not censured for her
behaviour during this time since she seems to have no memory of the event later
and the gods seem to have caused this event. Overall, due to this event she becomes
an important person of some standing in society if she has these fits and can
control them sufficiently to use them intelligently. Further, she may do or say
things that people would listen to as being the voice of the gods and their will.
These instructions may then be followed by others, thus creating a better
environment for the woman to live within.

In many households, some older people have also taken the lead in advising
their children about the need for equality, especially with respect to religion. In
43
Gender Relations in Social many areas, change of religion has often been brought about through the action
Institutions
of wives and daughters rather than by the men of the household.

Anthropologists feel that society in the South Asian region has been patrilineal,
matrilineal or bilateral. Each has its own ideas which have led to differing statuses
of women within them. Among the Thais, the spirits of the domestic sphere are
prayed to and cared for by the women. Overall, it may be seen that though people
may follow a major religion or even animism, they still adhere to the customary
laws of the community related to their relations with divinity and with regard to
kin relations, though bilateral relations seem to be more egalitarian than others.

3.8 SOCIAL CHANGE, RELIGION AND WOMEN

Having seen the variety of experiences of a woman with respect to religion over
the life cycle, it will be understood that such religious behaviour permeates into
the rest of society quickly, quietly and without much fanfare. Women-headed
changes of such kind are likely to be quicker and painless than other kinds of
change. However, media thinking regarding the role of women as religious
specialists is yet to change – something which many cult groups understood a
long time ago.
In many cases women have been known to refuse to change, since affecting such
a large amount of change physically as well as psychologically are beyond the
scope of many. In patrilineal societies, the insecurity caused by translocation to
the husband’s house has led women to become singularly wary of creating
permanency in their jobs, living areas, politics, ideologies and sometimes even
belief systems.
Many of the accepted areas of operation for women were in conflict during the
World Wars when women had to take on jobs usually for men because there was
a shortage of men. This has also been true of women-headed households. Many
of the families understand that due to current-day economic pressures, the men
would need to go off to work. This would leave the women, especially in India,
whether married or not, to look after their ageing parents. Such parents are often
also seeing their single girl children as being the only suitable person for imparting
religious or ritual information that used to be traditionally only imparted to the
sons. This practicality has changed the outlook of many people, especially in
urban areas. It has also changed the ideas of some in rural areas. However, in
rural areas, the attendant subsystems of the society do not support such changes
as yet. This can be seen in the violent reaction against any change in early systems
by the traditional political system (for example, the khaps in Haryana).
Changes in the global arena have also necessitated changes in this kind of thinking.
Among the travelled urban population, the switching of male and female roles
has become commonplace. This has also reflected on the practices within the
religious institutions and the religious practitioners. Earlier, shamans and exorcists
in communities were usually male and witchcraft was considered to be evil as
among the Badaga, Kurumba, Oraon and Munda tribes. Today, female priests
are being tentatively accepted. In many households women are managing and
praying to household gods while their men are away. Women in England practice
witchcraft openly, using a variety of rituals and religious paraphernalia. They
have their own closed societies, some of which are very well known. India also
44 has its share of such witches as in the case of Ipsita Roy.
In urban areas as well as in rural ones, a variety of gender roles are now being Religion and Gender
experimented with. Such behaviours are being identified with local names. Some
members of the families are beginning to accept these behaviours as being normal
also. The media has been playing an eventful role by highlighting these issues
and thus sensitising the public to such issues. Though much remains to be done,
the sexual mores and behaviours of this gradually increasing set of genders
(sometimes called LGBT – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite) have been given
a platform through programmes that attempted to deal with the issue of HIV/
AIDS in many areas.

In urban areas the idea of the metrosexual man, among other things, brought in
the element of males having a feminine side to their lives also. This has not been
unusual even in traditional societies. In early American communities, the concept
of the berdache was well-known. In such societies men had a strong patrilineal
and patriarchal ideology, with men going off for hunting while the women stitched
clothes, cooked, sewed and looked after the children. Some men who would
prefer to follow the home-making way of life were called berdache. They were
respected members of society and could remain home, look after the children,
sew and cook without feeling any disrespect.

At present more and more women are entering the public sphere. They are also
entering into the issues that were earlier covered by men. From becoming the
priests of some temple gods to ordained priests at a church, they are now beginning
to take control of the religious sphere. For many years now, women have been
using marginal cults to sustain the memory of the minor female deities in homes
and through networks. Now these deities are coming into their own, gaining
supporters and temples from being just merely sideshows. Perhaps all these show
the background being created to ensure that women have a better status in current
society.

Even as women control their biology to delay childbirth and use new reproductive
technologies, they also become a large majority who take on devoutness and
religiosity through pilgrimages and religious work at a later age, when work
pressures or family commitments are less. While the strong patriarchal areas are
still putting up a fight, there are many who find such changing systems to be
better for them and much less stressful in society. Education and new forms of
cohabitation, compromise and understanding are ensuring that the track to future
changes are being laid in the present for stronger-willed women who have
controlling interests in all of the areas earlier occupied by men. Using traditional
family structures for support in these changes is also another way of gaining
access to egalitarianism. These new areas will require more stresses from the
genders and more demands on their time. While universities are becoming more
flexible to such time limits, jobs are also trying to find ways to adjust by using
methods like flexi-time, where the person uses the time schedules most suited to
them. By cohabiting with a large workforce of women over time, by harnessing
their conjoint minds to the problem, by sharing in their efforts and by empathising
with them, society is likely to find new ways of dealing with these changes and
new challenges to combat together.

However, before all things seem too rosy, it must be understood that the same
attendant dangers that were seen among men are likely to be seen among women
when it comes to control over religious matters. This is the issue of religious
45
Gender Relations in Social intolerance and fundamentalism, for which new modes of rethinking and new
Institutions
ideas are required for coexistence and cohabitation between people with radical
and changing belief systems.

3.9 SUMMARY
To summarise, this unit attempts to view gender roles observed in religion through
anthropological documentation. This is supported by various anthropological
theories, approaches and methods. This presents a comprehensive world view
which helps us to know about women’s behaviour and connection with rituals
and religiosity and how they are shaped. The basic factors for such roles and
norms assigned to women are formed from the household, enculturation and
socialisation processes. These roles, in this case religious activities, originate
within the family, and then are extended to the kins and finally to the entire
society. The unit shows through examples, how women grow up creating and
placing themselves in a fantastical reality made up of the supernatural world
which includes deities, sacred bodies, images and places. Rituals of course play
a big part in all these. The unit further exhibits that elderly women have important
roles to play in the religiousness of a society and their knowledge of the
supernatural, spiritual, mystical and rituals. They are the ones who carry this
forward from one generation to the next. The unit ends with changes occurring
in society and how in it women are also working towards gaining better options,
in terms of religion or otherwise.

References

Desai, Neera and Usha Thakkar. 2007. Women in Indian Society. New Delhi:
National Book Trust.

Dube, Leela. 2001. Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields.

New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage Publications.

Kessler, Evelyn S. 1976. Women: An Anthropological View. New York, etc.: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.

Sanday, Peggy R. 1973. Theory of the Status of Women in American

Anthropologist, Vol. 75, pp. 1682-1700.

Srinivas, M. N. 1977. The Changing Position of Indian Women in Man, New

Series, Vol. 12, No. 2, Aug., pp. 221-238.

Suggested Reading

Friedl, Ernestine. 1975. Women and Men: An Anthropologist’s View. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Hogbin, Ian. 1970. The Island of Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New
Guinea. Scranton, Pa.: Chandler Publishing Co.
La Fontaine, J.S. (ed.). 1978. Sex and Age as Principles of Social Differentiation.
ASA Monograph 17. London, New York, San Francisco: Academic Press.
Menon, Ritu (ed.). 2012. Making a Difference: Memoirs from the Women’s
Movement in India. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.
46
Purkayastha, Bandana, Mangala Subramaniam, Manisha Desai and Sunita Bose. Religion and Gender
2003. The Study of Gender in India: A Partial Review in Gender and Society,
Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 503-524.

Richards, Audrey I. 1956. Chisungu. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd.

Sample Questions

1) Discuss the importance of religion in shaping gender relations.

2) Trace the theoretical development in this area (gender and religion) of study.

3) Discuss the positive and the negative role religion play in women’s lives.

47
Gender Relations in Social
Institutions UNIT 4 EDUCATION AND GENDER

Contents
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Historical Background
4.2.1 World, at a Glance
4.2.2 Women’s Education in the Subcontinent
4.3 Education and Gender
4.3.1 Gender-Education Connect
4.3.2 Women, Gift and Incest
4.4 Gender Gap in Educational Access: Reasons and Implications
4.4.1 The Existing Gap in Educational Access and Attainment
4.4.2 Out-of-school Reasons for the Gap
4.5 Gendered Education: Schools as Sites of Gender Socialisation
4.5.1 Gendered Environment at School
4.5.2 Gendered Attitudes
4.5.3 Gendered Educational Experience
4.5.5 Gendered Choices
4.5.6 Implications
4.6 Way Ahead: Re-evaluation and Re-examination
4.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 understand historical, social context of women’s education;
 comprehend the inter-linkages between gender and education;
 identify the educational reality resulting from the restrictions produced
through these inter-linkages; and
 critically evaluate how these inter-linkages operate towards discrimination
and exclusion of women.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
This unit deals with the inter-linkage between gender and education. It looks at
the historic evolution of educational concerns for women on the world scene as
well as concerns of women’s education as understood by the feminist scholars in
India. The unit intends to highlight the socio-political and cultural context within
which gender concerns feature in educational reality and educational experience,
for women. Before we move ahead, we must understand that gender, in
educational context must not be understood as a social constraint, solely, relegating
48
individuals as passive recipients but as performative in its essential characteristic, Education and Gender
that is, it must be understood through. In essence, gender must be understood
within the discourse of ‘doing gender’, such conceptualisation not only respects
the agency individuals may exercise towards social change but also understands
social processes as a more dynamic process evolving through participation
between society, and individuals.

Before proceeding, we must understand, through conceptual engagement, how

gender and education link-up.

Conceptually when we talk about doing gender what we mean, in effect, is how
we actively construct and positively reinforce gendered expectations, consciously
or unconsciously. As children we quickly learn the differentiation between sex
categories (women and men) and actively engage with these existing set of
symbols and meanings as a matter of developing a sense of self and belongingness.
‘Doing gender’ is intimately linked to power dynamics within the specific socio-
cultures contexts. It would be wrong to assume that within this framework of
power, women are oppressed and exploited. The operation of power dynamics
has to be understood a little more broadly in two aspects. One, that the system
reinforces and rewards conformity to gendered codes by giving power, that is,
women by conforming to gendered expectations find themselves rewarded with
access (even though unequal) to resources and other perks that it denies if women
refuse or fail to conform to expectations, sometimes very violently. Second, the
system is still an oppressive system because it restricts socio-political, economic,
aesthetic choices that we may want, for instance, even if a boy wants to choose
to be a home-maker, instead of earning a living the system is most contriving for
making a desired choice, which may flout gendered-role expectations.

Education, works towards establishing and reinforcing gendered role expectations

through various ways. It reflects the socio-cultural ideas of gendered identity for
both men and women and socialises, effectively, through various means, the
young into accepting, respecting, and conforming to these expectations. Education
is in this way fed by, and feeds into the existing gender-disparate and restrictive-
oppressive ideas of the society.

At another level, education has the potential to question and through initiating a
critical enquiry, engage with existing gender disparity. It holds the potential to
act as a trigger towards social change and inclusion through critical engagement,
economic empowerment, and socio-political representation.

In Indian context gender inequality is related to patriarchy as an oppressive socio-

cultural and historical system. Patriarchy is understood through systematic
assignment of power to men over women, a systematic and cultural de-valuation
of women (holding women as inferior, assigning them secondary status and lesser
value than men). The system is seen as defining and enforcing different roles
and behavioural codes as well as expectations from men and women. Although
the roles underestimate women’s potentials, limits their choices and restricts the
possibilities of life; it is simultaneously seen as oppressive for men, through its
unreasonable ambitious demands and strict expectations of behavioural conduct.
For instance, earning livelihood is seen as an essential part of being a man, through
association of earning livelihood to the roles of bread earner/provider and thus
‘master’. It becomes a matter of agony, self doubt and a feeling of inferiority,
49
Gender Relations in Social rage and frustration when men may not find themselves fulfilling the criteria. At
Institutions
the same point of time, it becomes a matter of shame and social backlash for
men who may want to choose the role of a home-maker. Thus, in essence strict
gender roles and behavioural expectations are restrictive and oppressive for both
men as well as women.

The sex as biological fact and gender as cultural and social construct draws from
the works of Gayle Rubin and others who furthered the argument and drew
from the works of Marcel Mauss on gift societies and Claude Levi-Strauss’s
work on incest and taboo to explain the related phenomena of devaluation of
women in these societies.

In the following sections you will see how this devaluation comes to play a
significant role in determining choices and shaping experiences of women. This
understanding of devaluation of women would also help us understand the
educational reality in Indian context and the restricted progress we have made
with respect to correcting gender imbalance in national educational scenario.

4.2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

4.2.1 World at a Glance
Critique of gendered inaccessibility; and nature of education for women as a
gender category has a matter of quest towards educational and social justice. It
has been one of the important concerns in the struggle waged by the feminist
scholarship and women’s movement on the world scene and in India respectively.

However, owing to differences in specific contexts, the demand for educational

access and equity rose in very different ways in western civilisations as opposed
to its rise in Indian contexts. When we talk about western contexts it must be
understood that initial feminist scholarship demanding educational access and
equity, comprised of predominantly white women, from middle class, and it
must be borne clear that this scholarship could not be seen as representative of
the whole western context, given that specific representation of groups of women
led to subsequent evolution of constitutional provisions and socio-cultural
preconditions and support for different groups of women as per their emergence
and assertion for a specific differential consideration by them. These included
groups like women of African-American descent, indigenous tribal women, and
immigrant women and so on and so forth.

Ancient mentions of a university open to women for learning, in Islamic historical

accounts goes as long back as 1859. There have been references to women’s
education and leadership in educational institutions and ventures, in Islamic
historical accounts dating as long back as 1859. 12th and 13th century (Ayyubid
Dynasty predominantly in regions that form present-day Arabic nations) records
have noted women’s participation in public education, funded by women,
sometimes. However, women’s education was not absolutely accepted and
approved of. Just as historical as the accounts of women’s education, is the
accounts of its disapproval. Women’s education faced stern resistance, but
continued to exist nonetheless.

50
The present day European region, historical accounts of Roman empire noted Education and Gender
women’s education, although restricted to upper class women of a centurion
(professional officer in Roman army in 107 BC). Wall painting of Pompii (present
day Italy) also picture present women in literary gear.

Through 13th, 14th and 15th century have mentions of women’s education for only
the most advantaged sections of the society, and even these remain rather patchy.
Concerns about women’s learning were expressed dominantly and restriction
had begun being levied, in the light of increasing control being slowly but steadily
shifting in the hands of the religious authorities, along with consolidation of
states and formulation and re-formulation of laws for civil society.

Education for women was rare and isolated, with increasing participation of;
and control by a compact nexus of state, law and religion dominated by religious
authorities, Education of women kept being strictly withheld from expanding
from its atomistic existence. Later part of 18th century saw concerns for women’s
education being raised by Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) rising in the wake
of The Enlightenment, and yet education for larger populations of women,
education remained far from reach and imagination. In 19th century, women in
higher education were ghostly, which can be understood through the very fact
that Marie S. Curie (1867-1934) attained education from flying universities in
Poland (lacking any established institutional space and constantly on-the-move
to avoid being attacked or busted and arrested by authorities).

The outreach (as seen above) of education, in every historical account has always
been debatable, since most accounts refer to women from advantaged social
groups being initiated into education. The accounts refer to glorious but isolated,
sporadic and contained phenomena of women’s education, weather Islamic,
ancient Europe, or ancient India, which makes it evident that education was
luxury that only a selected population enjoyed access to.

The mass-reach of education to women wouldn’t feature in western world up

until mid-19th century, when a number of single-sex colleges began to offer
education to women. Access ensured the struggle began to take account of other
kinds of marginalisation and gender stereotyping of women and their educational
experiences.

4.2.2 Women’s Education in the Subcontinent

In Indian context, women’s education exhibited the characteristic features of the
scene of women’s education on the world as a whole. The literary knowledge of
women, in vedic ages celebrated through evoking highly isolated instances of
celebrated priestesses and/or scholars were not representative of the larger social
scenario. Interesting in all of these accounts however, is the clear expression of
the kind of resistance, opposition and marginalisation women faced on account
of being learned.(In a heated philosophical debate and deliberation, faced with a
lack of appropriate answers to her questions Yajnavalkya threatens Gargi, against
her speaking further, with dire consequences, Romsha, Lopamudra, Maitreyee
etc are other featured as scholars in vedic texts). Another interesting point to be
noted is that from amongst about 1000 hyms composed in rig veda alone, only
about 27 are authored and credited to women scholars. These women form distinct
examples that were not representative of women at large.
51
Gender Relations in Social Stronghold of caste system ensured education of any kind was restricted to the
Institutions
reach, predominantly, of men of a certain caste group. The distinction being so
stark that even the languages of communication differed for masses as against
the literary caste group(s) enjoying access to written texts. Although, parallel
traditions of education operated, they remained largely marginalised. literature,
history and other knowledge systems, relevant to dominated caste groups were
preserved through alternative ways. How the educational access and experience
of women belonging to specific caste groups differed, is a curious field of study.
Although women remained marginalised by virtue of their caste group identity,
it is often argued that the restrictions, faced by women on mobility and sexuality
and life choices, were relatively lower in comparison to women from more
advantaged caste groups. However, the social prejudices and social attitudes
translated this freedom into exploitation of these women for labour and sexuality.
Social position in the caste hierarchy continued to marginalise Dalit women,
strictly against accessing education, since they were situated at the lowest matrix
of gender and caste.

On a whole, the society, in sub-continent nonetheless, treated women as inferior,

secondary subjects and thus men found themselves almost predominantly in a
more advantageous position when it came to accessing any kind of knowledge.

The coming of imperial control and the consolidation of India, Pakistan,

Bangladesh (of today) into one colony, led to some significant changes with the
challenging change initiated by the new discourse on women’s education and
status in the colony.

Access to public institutions of education emerged as a need in the backdrop of

Imperialism against nationalist discourses. The development is best understood
as disjointed, and faintly related. The specific contexts of different and starkly
diverse regions within the administrative unit unified in the name of India were
too distinct to be read in a continuum.

The stark differences can be understood through a quick skimming at the specifics
of eastern regions of the subcontinent. This is geared towards highlighting that
there existed specific and distinct manifestation yet a rather cohesive trend in
women’s education in the sub-continent.

Bengal (undivided) had witnessed the advent of Buddhism much later than the
other parts of the subcontinent. By the time, Buddhism had entered Bengal in
16th century, much later than its 12th 13th century onwards culmination in the rest
of the sub-continent. Thus, the social texture of the society was still experiencing
a questioning of social hierarchies and power relations, while the rest of the sub-
continent experienced reinstating of old hierarchical structures. Buddhism had
done the necessary tilling, towards women’s education, in Bengal something
that helped towards women’s accessing education faster, and more enthusiastically
than any other part of the sub-continent. Southard notes in her paper that women’s
education in Bengal before the advent of 20th century was led by men, owing to
negligible number of educated women in the society.

It is important to note, that the enthusiasm of men towards educating women

was embedded within a discourse of nationalism. Women’s education and social
position and status became the bone of contention being the social status of
52 women. Missionary/academic/administrative accounts at this point were arguing
in favour of the colonial regime as initiation of civilisation into an uncivilised Education and Gender
region. The accounts pointed to the ‘barbaric’ social condition of women. In
reaction, it caused the rise of reactionaries and revivalists. While revivalists
celebrated the golden age and sought to go back to the historical legacy, arguing
women were respected in a culturally specific way that westerners wouldn’t be
able to understand. The Reformists, mostly western educated, advocated education
for women, along the idea proposed western education. A group within reformists
suggested education of women must be at par with men. However, there was not
unanimous agreement with respect to the nature of education that must be
provided to women. Reformists, started schools, and colleges for women and
encouraged their own women and other interested women to study.

There, however was disunity within reformists with regard to the nature of
education that must be made available. This marked the larger trend seen across
the subcontinent. Although, the western regions rose much later to the educational
developments for women made by their eastern counterparts, the foundational
contention was experienced by the entire subcontinent.

Since women’s education rose embedded in a nationalistic discourse, it is highly

unlikely that for a considerable part of the history of educational developments
for women, women’s welfare or education for its own sake was the actual
intention.

The colonial administration remained largely un-interested in funding women’s

education. Female education depended much on non-governmental funding
sources in the early years.

Historians noted that surpassing initial hic-cups of women’s accessing education

were difficult, and even when women began accessing education what they studied
became a political issue.

Most initially, while it became fashionable for elite women to get educated, the
only purpose of education was to make them eligible as smart and intelligent
companions to their progressive husbands. The education was tailored to
appreciate their roles as wives without challenging the dominant gender roles
expectations. Fashionable, as it was for the women belonging to elite sections of
society, given the restriction of purdah, only women from less-advantaged sections
of society accessed reformist interventions in public education, first. And yet,
however, the higher education was usually off limits, irrespective of the social
standing.

The matter of education was another contentious issue, with most nationalist
leaders convinced that education of women should and must not be allowed to
interfere with their gendered roles as wives and daughters, in fact, it was argued
that education of women must be geared towards helping them in performing
their expected roles as house-keepers and mothers and wives with greater
efficiency. Thus, education even though allowed for women remained rather
unchallenging of the social status quo and the gendered hierarchy.

Sardar Dayal Singh, speaking on behalf of the Indian Association of Punjab,

stated “the object of female education in this country is not to make sound scholars
but to make better mothers, sisters and wives’’.
53
Gender Relations in Social Girls should be taught suitable subjects and “not be made to swallow history and
Institutions
geography indiscriminately’’, opined Lahore Arya Samaj.

Up until 1920, the participation of Indian Christians and Parsis was much higher
than that of Hindus, and it was the lowest among Muslims, It still remains
somewhat skewed.

4.3 EDUCATION AND GENDER

The key to understanding the access to education and subsequent educational
experience of women in India, is to understand the cultural-religious view of
women, the culturally specific gender role expectations communicated through
Biological Differences, Structural Constraints, Social Interaction, Socio-cultural
Reproduction or Gender Socialisation and Gender Schemas. All the various
theories parallel existed, gained and lost significance owing to numerous factors.

It is important to understand that no theory can be claimed to have vanished or

completely rejected as obsolete. The tenets of these theories surface and re-surface
in various aspects of educational praxis, however their legitimacy at explaining
the relationship must be subjected to critical evaluation and analysis. A plethora
of studies and researches (primarily gaining importance and popular support)
attributed differential educational representation in educational representation
and educational choices on the basis of natural-sexual differences. Biological
differences gained respect and legitimacy from traditional religious-cultural
thoughts that influenced studies, which in turn drew from scientific evidences
motivated by the same religious-cultural assumptions about women and men’s
differential abilities as an attribute of their biological differences. Erik Erickson’s
work (1970-80) is significant in arguing biological basis as determinant of
differential developmental projectiles and abilities.

Meanwhile, early liberal Feminist thought, arguing against any significant

biological differences beyond those of procreation, actively sought through studies
to either discount gender specific differences in educational talents and abilities
(Nihilen, 1975), or, made an overzealous attempt to prove the supremacy of one
sex over the other (Draper,1975) . The studies and findings within this stream of
thought came under scrutiny on the basis of biological essentialism and rejection
of the role of environmental constraints.

Box 4.2
Gender Schema Theory: Gender schemas refer to the system of symbols
that are imbibed and assimilated by an individual to develop an understanding
of what it means to be a boy or a girl. Schemata or network of information
pertaining to gendered identity are established and reinforced by the society.
The cognition of an individual interacts with these schemas and constructs the
knowledge about this system of information to attempt and acquire the essential
schemata

With the increased fervor of Socialist and Radical Feminist thought, studies and
researches shifted focus to structural constraints as explanatory of differences in
educational attainment and choices. This stream of thought focused on the role
of environment as constraining the educational ability, expression and educational
54 representation. This stream asserted ways in which gender roles interact with
social institutions, structures, and processes and how human groups use gender Education and Gender
to organise roles, statuses, norms, and values. It examined the ways in which
institutions of family, schools socialise gender appropriate behaviour and role-
expectations. Goetz and Grant (1988) observe,

“Shalinsky’s (1980) examination of the acquisition of gender identities in

Afghanistan, for example, focuses on how family structure perpetuates gender
roles across generations. Because girls’ education resides in the family, especially
with the mother, Shalinsky suggests that the strength of the mother-daughter
bond assures social replication across generations. This continues the earlier
focus on social structures as the locus of traditional roles and expectations.
Dobbert (1975), for example, had ob-served that in school boys are assigned
manipulative jobs while girls are given nurturant tasks. This complementary
division is reinforced by boys’ being encouraged to lead and act, whereas girls
are encouraged to follow and watch.”
Structural constraints assert unadulterated perpetuation of gender roles through
socialisation. However, socialisation is not absolute, complete and unadulterated.
Socialisation does not reproduce exact gender dynamics, however, the
socialisation theories fail to account or respect human agency. Gender socialisation
theory assumed a certain amount of passivity among women and men in their
identity formation. It examined and illuminated the various ways through which
a culture of gender identity precedes an individual’s existence and determines
roles and behaviour for the individual. Socialisation theories suggest, sex-typing
or assigning meaning to a person by virtue of their sexual identity begins very
early on, in and through family. School becomes the second greatest locale of
influence. Education thus consolidates the individual experiences of young
children and ascribes meaning to it, towards formation of the sex-category identity.
The next significant development that happened was the coming of Gender
Schema Theory that included human agency as well as structural stimuli towards
shaping of experiences. Social interactions gained importance. Gender Schema
Theory draws from the constructivist paradigm of psychology and asserts that
sex typing derives in part, from gender based schematic processing, much in line
with the general information processing that human mind entails as a part of
growing up. The theory suggests that sex typing is resultant of the fact that self-
concept itself gets assimilated to the gender schema. It draws heavily from
constructivist idea of information processing done by an individual through active
engagement with the stimuli provided by the environment.
The elements of all the above threads of feminist thought get reflected in part or
whole in various aspects of educational praxis and policy in Indian context, which
we shall see, in forthcoming sections.

4.3.1 Gender-Education Connect

Education connects with gender prejudices prevalent in a society through various
ways. It usually performs a number of functions to establishment and
reinforcement of the existing sex-typing and gender socialisation (Box 1.). This
work inter-connectively and in a mutual manner as follows:

1) Education becomes a tool for perpetuation through implicit or explicit gender

socialisation through textbooks. For example, a number of studies have
revealed that school textbooks, in many cases, project women characters as 55
Gender Relations in Social passive, docile, emotionally vulnerable, fickle minded, and incapable of
Institutions
leadership, while observing that women are usually assigned roles that are
nurturing, caring, and motherly.

2) Educational experiences, given largely gender-uncritical nature of school

teachers, who carry with themselves to school, the larger socio-cultural
perception of girls, boys, their talents and abilities, which shapes their
perceptions and attitudes towards students respectively. This then influences
their expectations, the efforts they put in and also the self concept among
both boys and girls.

3) The lack of role models, support and reinforcements for women make it
challenging for women, to perform at par, or even sustain themselves in a
system that does not support or reinforce women’s participation.

4) The gender-role attitudes and expectations that women face in their lives
outside educational institutions impose restrictions on educational goal-
aspirations, attainments, performance, in effect influencing women’s
educational experiences.

5) The Socio-cultural and religious meaning assigned to being a member of

sex-category of women, also imposes restrictions on the educational
resources (investment of time, money, mentoring, help, care and effort),
choices and possibilities made available to women.

Thus systemic constraints impose restrictions that women actively engage with
and constantly negotiate with in order to advance educationally.

4.3.2 Women, Gift and Incest

To understand the other forms of manifestation one must begin the analysis with
the understanding of socio-cultural devaluation of women in the Indian society,
broadly. The analysis that helps in this regard is the analysis of two major theorists
of anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss and Marcel Mauss.

Combining their works on incest taboo and gift society respectively we can
understand the kind of anxiousness society has about women’s unsupervised
mobility and freedom. Education can easily be seen as a tool for freedom of
expression and thinking, and thus, it may come to challenge or inspire a critical
reflection of women of their own lives. Together, they constitute the rationale of
women’s devaluation. Elaborate incest taboo (rules governing possible networks
of socially permissible sexual relationships) viewed women as a valued gift that
is promised and exchanged between men of specific social groups, as a mark of
the mutual relationship between specific groups. Exchange happens against the
backdrop of a greater feeling of solidarity between various groups and clans and
as a symbol representing their utmost regard and respect for this solidarity and
as a token to covey allegiance towards their own group. The grandeur marking
marriages are a way of celebrating the upholding of this solidarity and its public
declaration and reinforcement.

In larger parts of India, fathers give away their daughters, although, as you may
have read there are alternate kinship patters assigning this power to different
men of the family, for instance, it could be maternal uncle or brother.
56
Thus, there is anxiety and strictness surrounding women’s mobility and sexuality, Education and Gender
especially. Since the incest taboo is very elaborate and works through complex
networks there is a stronger sense of restrictions on women. Further, as in most
cases, in larger Indian social scenario, with marginal variation, there is a hierarchy
between wife-givers and wife-takers, with the reigning belief that wife givers
are socially inferior to the wife takers. This rule translates into giving of dowry,
the anxiety against having a girl child, as a matter of loss of social power, and
thus, leading to sex-selective termination of pregnancy and infanticide.

The woman since is seen as a valuable gift, she’s perceived as owned by her
husband and since women serve a specific purpose in family setup and society at
large, through their exchangeability in marriage, as an adhesive to hold social
bonds together, marriages gain superimposing consideration in the bringing up
and socialisation of a girl child. Women are barely appreciated as an independent
individual by herself or even allowed to develop herself into an individual,
individuated and independent. Women are initiated into values of relations and
associations, socialised towards developing a sense of embedded selves (in
relation to everyone, and keeping herself last). Passivity, nurturance, obedience,
meekness are thus the values seen as coherent with the larger understanding of
women’s role in society and thus they’re aptly socialised. The choices, investments
and attitudes pertaining to women, reflect the view of consideration of their
eventual marriage and their successful exchange.

It is important, however, to remember that education must be envisioned as a

longitudinal social project that must be geared towards addressing the historical
wrong done on various historically disadvantaged groups, women being one
such group. Education must be seen as an empowerment project that works in
view of long term benefits instead of only short term returns. Thus, when we
discuss how education must make not just re-evaluation to redress the prejudices
carried forth, historically but also re-adjust itself to ensure that women, as a
group be judged against the backdrop of a long history of exclusion,
discrimination, subjugation and oppression; and be given special consideration
for inclusion in the reaping of returns from education.

4.4 GENDER GAP IN EDUCATIONAL ACCESS:

REASONS AND IMPLICATIONS
4.4.1 The Existing Gap in Educational Access and Attainment
There has been an overall increase in literacy rate of the country from 18.33% in
1951 to 65.38% in 2001. Female literacy during this period has shown an
optimistic growth of 14.87% as opposed to the 11.72% growth in male literacy,
in the period of 1991-2001, a comparative high of 3.15%. However, this must be
seen in relation to the overall rise in population in the country.

India however, has the worst female literacy rate, with only about half its entire
female population, up to the age of 7 years, literate, a total of 53.67%. The
differences in female literacy rates among the states are also extreme with Kerala
having the highest female literacy rate of 87.72%, followed by Mizoram (86.75%).
A contrast emerges from the picture provided by other states that have female
literacy rates as low as 33.12% in Bihar and 38.87% in Jharkhand.
57
Gender Relations in Social An interesting picture is presented by the dropout rates of the girl students at
Institutions
various levels. In 2005-2006, drop rate at primary level of boys was 28.53 % as
against 21.54% of girls. At the secondary level, it amounted to 60.04% for boys
and 63.56% for girls. The spatial variation in dropout rates for girls was stark. In
Bihar and Rajasthan, as many as 45.25% and 45.94% of the girls dropped out at
primary level and 85.64% and 81.80% girls dropped out respectively, before
they could complete secondary education. In Kerala, on the other hand, dropout
rates at primary level were 0 %, for both boys and girls and the dropout rate for
boys was higher (7.44%) than that of girls (2.42%) at the secondary level.

Girls’ enrollment in education has, although, seen a broad trend increase over
time at all levels of education, it continues to lag behind that of boys. In 2001-
02, girls’ enrolment remained below 50 per cent of total enrolment at the primary
school level. This percentage of girls’ enrolment goes down to 18.7% as one
goes higher up at the secondary level, which indicates that more than 30% girls
drop out before reaching secondary education.

The number of girls per 100 boys in primary and secondary education clears the
picture on gender disparity; there were 87 girls at the primary level, which
decreased to 81 and 72 at the secondary and higher secondary levels respectively
in 2005-2006. Inter-state disparity was glaring in this respect as Table 4.1 reflects:

Table 4.1: No. of Girls/100 Boys (2005-2006)

States Primary Middle Secondary and
Higher Secondary
Bihar 70 68 47
Uttar Pradesh 85 70 58
Rajasthan 85 61 46
Kerala 90 92 100
Mizoram 94 97 98
India 87 81 72

Source: Abstracts, Selected Educational Statistics (2005-2006), Government of India, Ministry

of Human Resource Development, Department of Higher Education.

One must read and understand these figures as indicative of access to education,
representative yet not descriptive of the subjective educational experience of
women or the structural constraints experienced by women in life outside school
that restrict their participation in education.

4.4.2 Out-of-school Reasons for the Gap

Since social stratification works as a matrix of cross sections of various forms of
stratification like caste, class, gender, ethnicity, region, religion. It must be read
in its true cross-sectional nature of existence, that is, various levels of stratification
interact to produce a distinct experience of social stratification. Say while, a
prosperous, propertied Brahmin Hindu man, would reap the benefits by virtue of
his caste, class as well as gender, amplifying his powers as well as choices and
resources, a poor, dalit girl would stand at the base of the matrix of social
stratification with her oppression being amplified by virtue of her class, caste
58 and gender.
Women in their lives outside school experience constraints imposed by factors Education and Gender
that operate in mutually appreciative and interactive manner. The socio-cultural
devaluation, seeks sanctions from religion (largely dominated by men). Women
in Indian society are viewed as liability, in their native homes. As explained
earlier women have social equivalence to valuable gifts tying various social groups
in bonds of affinity. Women are viewed as not of any significance by themselves
but in relation to the men they are exchanged between, as a result, women in
broad Indian context are viewed as secondary to their male counterparts. Resource
allocation and entitlement reflects this foundational belief that women of the
family are ‘Paraya Dhan’ (a valuable that is to be given away, in marriage) thus,

1) Educational expenses that are incurred for a girl child’s education are seen
as expenditure as opposed to the view that son’s education is investment, as
a result comparatively, women access sub-standard options in education
with the view of restricting expenditure.

2) The view that women have no individual significance feeds into an

expectation of certain amicable, devotional submission from women. This
gets reflected not only in the choices women make of leading a life that is in
appreciation to that of their respective men but in daily matters of behaviour,
that have indirect but significant effects on educational experiences of
women. For instance, eating habits in north Indian households habituate
women of the family to eat last, in situation where food may be scarce or
men of the family eat more than usual, the food share of women would
suffer, as a result of which the nutritional intake of women is noted to be
much worse than that of men.

3) The expectation of women to be appreciative of a man’s life, clan and choices

coupled with clear demarcation of home domain as that of women and
extension of responsibility of care and nurturance in view of women’s
reproductive roles works together towards producing a very specific kind
of restriction. Women are expected to compensate for themselves, in lieu of
whatever little (in comparison to the sons of the same family) is done for
them, in material and immaterial ways. Through services made to the
household, women symbolically justify their inclusion into what is
dominantly believed to be a man’s. Thus, as Malvika Karlekar (2003)
observes women remain outsiders in their conjugal homes and work in ways
to reinstate their allegiance to the family, and justify their inclusion. Thus
the anxiety of successful inclusion of daughters into their conjugal homes
dominate the concerns of the natal families as well in effect, causing what
can be called training/socialisation towards better and sooner successful
inclusion of women in conjugal homes. Thus, a considerable load of
managing household chores falls upon women, in addition women are
expected to assume and successfully master the maternal roles, acting
effectively as surrogate mothers in absence of mothers (in poor households
where they may be earning to gather resources), or as supplementing
efforts.

4) Sexuality is a significant concern with respect to women, partly the reason

behind curtailment and surveillance of women’s mobility. The anxiety with
respect to women’s sexuality and sexual independence can be understood
in two ways. First way links it to the classical conception of women as ‘gift’
59
Gender Relations in Social where a woman’s sexuality is passed from its patron, that is, the father and/
Institutions
or brother or maternal uncle, to the owner, that is the husband, symbolised
through various rituals in marriages. Thus a woman’s sexuality, virginity
and chastity are held as symbols of allegiance between social groups, leaving
her individual choice irrelevant and unnecessary. Read as the honour (izzat)
of the family and clan, in view of ensuring a successful marital exchange, a
woman’s sexuality becomes a reason for imposing restrictions on her life,
mobility and choices. As a result enormous emphasis comes to rest upon
her mobility stemming from the anxiety surrounding sexual freedom and
choice. This is crucial to understanding the higher rate of drop out of girls
when the distance between school and homes increase or at the onset of
puberty. Another interesting explanation is offered by Mary E. John who
argues that the idea of purity in many cultures (predominantly Hinduism)
expresses deep set anxiety and concern with respect to the orifices of the
body. Drawing from her analysis, female genitalia is a passage inside, while
the same doesn’t hold true for male genitalia, which is more intrusive/
penetrating, thus the conception that a woman’s body can be violated and
made ‘impure’.

As a result women face a greater struggle to reach school and to continue till
graduating. The out-of-school pressures impact, not just women’s performance
and efficiency but their very retention in education till school-graduation.

4.5 GENDERED EDUCATION: SCHOOLS AS SITES

OF GENDER SOCIALISATION
Education is never neutral and knowledge is always value-laden and can either
maintain or challenge the hegemonic order, sometimes simultaneously (Freire,
1972; Apple, 2000; Giroux, 2002). Educational institutions represent and establish
social codes, teachers and heads of the institutions, bring along with them, to the
classroom their uncritical socialisation and social profile specific common sense.
These prove to be detrimental to the experience of women in education. Gender
stereotypes get reinforcements and get reiterated through such uncritical attitudes
in curricular texts and through teachers. Gendered assumptions govern not only
behaviour, and attitudes but directly or indirectly comes to influence goal-
expectation, gender-role expectation, available role-models for girls, systemic
efforts at sustaining and retaining girl child, girls self-conception of their own
ability and efforts.

4.5.1 Gendered Environment at School

Schools as institutions reflect social segregation on the basis of gender, and caste.
A number of studies point out how schools are insensitive to the experiences of
a girl child outside the schools. In this section we focus on how lack of structural
supports due to lack of appreciation of the structural constraints on women outside
schools, is likely to affect education of girl children. The lack of sanitation facilities
or commuting facility is more likely to affect the retention of girls in the school,
especially post-puberty. Similarly, given the anxiety surrounding unrelated men
dominated spaces as a threat to ‘izzat’ girls are far more likely to drop out of
school due to lack of female teachers at school. The lack of female teachers at
school is also likely to impact the girl child, since it would mean the absence of
60 any concrete, role models to reinforce performance, effort and retention.
4.5.2 Gendered Attitudes Education and Gender

Although presence of female teachers at schools is likely to boost enrolment it is

not a guarantee of retention and an empowering experience of education for the
girl child. Female teachers may carry with them uncritical perpetuation of gender
stereotypes prevalent in the larger society to the classroom. So, in essence teacher’s
uncritical gender ideas may reflect in various ways like:
1) Teachers assign non-curricular tasks based on gendered understanding of
female and male bodies. Say, tasks that require physical strength like shifting
of furniture would be given to male students, while tasks requiring
monotonous repetition or nimble fingers would inevitably go to female
students, like decorating the classroom etc.
2) The gendered perception of teachers also influence the verbal praising and/
or reinforcement they would give to students of a gender category performing
tasks traditionally considered to be in the domain of the other gender category.
While teachers would reinforce gender appropriate tasks performance they
are more likely to discourage a crossing over. Girls would be encouraged,
on an average, more than boys for doing well at, say, sewing lessons, while
boys would be encouraged more and pushed more for physical training
lessons.
3) Such gendered perceptions may also reflect in the curricular opportunity
and offers teachers may extend to their students. For instance, giving
opportunities to write on the chalkboard in certain subjects reinforcing
gendered perception of subjects.
4) Teachers often in their interactions but verbal and physical pay great respect
to the gendered perception of children. For instance, rowdy and rough
behaviour may be tolerated more and expected more from boys while on
the other hand girls maybe punished less severely for an equivalent offense.
5) Teachers/authorities at school may engage in explicit gender socialisation
through negative reinforcement of behaviour considered by them (through
their uncritical internalisation of their own gender socialisation), gender-
inappropriate. Aspects such as walking, talking, laughing, and/or sitting
inappropriately may come to provoke explicit gender socialisation through
invocation of gender norms, unstated but agreed upon by a society.

4.5.3 Gendered Educational Experience

Students as well as teachers carry with themselves to school, cultural mores,
values and norms dominant in the society at large, reinforcing gender inequality
and prejudices.

Teachers, in previous as well as next section have been analysed for the way they
participate in perpetuation of gender inequality and prejudices through non-
curricular non-pedagogic interaction with children, or explicit intentional
socialisation. Teachers also, are interpreters of a curricular text; hence their role
in perpetuation of gender injustice manifests itself by means of their pedagogies,
through their gendered translations of the text, in cases where the texts are gender
just. In cases where the curriculum maybe itself, perpetuating gender injustice,
as explained below, a teacher’s uncritical attitude is more than enough to do the
damage.
61
Gender Relations in Social Peers are important and significant contributors to perpetuation of gender injustice.
Institutions
Peers actively scrutinise, supervise and check gender inappropriate behaviour.
Peers act through internalised socialisation they receive to check and socialise
their other peers, especially younger peers.

Curriculum is highly significant in the perpetuation and promotion of gender

socialisation. Nirantar(2009) makes an elaborate analysis of the ways in which
gender socialisation comes to manifest itself and perpetuate gender injustice
through textbooks. Textbooks are often loaded with the subtexts that work in
implicit ways to pay respect to gendered prejudices, prevalent in larger society.
For instance, stories in literature had a strongly skewed ratio of stories with
women as protagonists. Almost no stories depicted women in roles that may be
aggressive, roles of leadership, explorers, or any other roles seen as masculine
traits. Women were shown as nurturing, caring, empathetic weak, submissive,
and passive roles.

Curriculum is a crucial to learning, as children may pick not only role models
but they learn to relate to their own lives as well through texts. Gender prejudiced
texts are likely to, if not single handedly, influence a girl’s education negatively.

4.5.5 Gendered Choices

Various studies have noted that gender differences are institutionalised through
repeated reinforcement at school level. The various factors work in a dynamic
ways to restrict choices and segregate them into gendered categories. This kind
of restriction of choice pays respect to gendered understanding of abilities,
appropriate domains of activity and power equation between women and men.
Thus, subjects that are tool-use-intensive and are likely to reap greater economic-
social rewards, thereby ensuring greater power in gender relations are seen as
male domain. These subjects witness unusually high concentration of boys opting
for these subjects and also qualifying for them. It is interesting to note that these
subjects also are popular. The popularity-socio-economic returns-engendering
must be read as a phenomena occurring through a dynamic interaction between
the three and not in linearity. Subjects that are more popular, have better job
prospects and are likely to yield greater social prestige and/or has leadership
potential and/or is associated with higher pay-back, get dominated by males. In
return, in a somewhat circular logic, the higher concentration of men becomes
an implicit rationale behind all of the above said becoming associated with the
job. The same circular logic works in the case of women, that is, because it is
done by women, it is paid less, and because it is paid less, women finds them
doing it.

This kind of phenomena is usually read as lack of necessary qualification and

merit in girls can be understood better through the way the choices come to
manifest themselves as largely a male or female domain. Through differential
expectations from girls and boys with regard to their performance in say,
mathematics, through greater positive reinforcement of a better performance,
through explicit mentoring of students into choosing subjects that are gender-
expectation appropriate, through gender-differential intellectual and economic
effort invested in a student’s learning process, not just by the school authorities,
teachers but also by parents, this kind of gender difference is reproduced.

62
4.5.6 Implications Education and Gender

Women face unequal life situations that inhibit their potential of accessing
education as well as experiencing it and reaping returns of educational
qualifications. In out of school life women face an unnatural curbing of their
natural child like agility, are cultured into being submissive and passive. Their
life situations become restricting to their educational prospects.

Not only does this mean that half of our population could not be developed as a
human resource, but also that women in particular have not been able to actualise
their potential. Since female literacy has a lot do with levels of fertility and
mortality, nutritional status, earning capacity and her own independence within
and outside home, it would take more than just isolated efforts to sustain women
into education long enough for it to empower them economically, and personally.

4.6 WAY AHEAD: RE-EVALUATION AND

RE-EXAMINATION
Gender, like all other concepts, is neither fixed nor static. The understanding of
what gender is, has been changing, with and through; political, social and cultural
movements providing the necessary impetus towards its re-definition. The re-
defining, then calls upon a re-examination of how gender comes to reflect in
socio-cultural processes as restricting or discriminating principle. Gender
discourse in Indian context needs such a re-evaluation to evolve out of its neat
bipolar conceptualisation of the world into two sex categories (Zimmermann),
and re-examine how this conception has been at the foundation of newer forms
of exclusion and discrimination of the populations on this basis.

It is important here to understand that defining a concept, and its subsequent

usage and inclusion into socio-cultural discourses in a fixed manner lays the
foundation of exclusion and discrimination. For instance, the initial conception
of what constituted ‘Rape’ could not account for marital rape, since non-consented
sex could not be understood in an obligatory sexual relationship, that stood at
the foundational understanding of marriages in more than one cultural and social
contexts.

Through the first three waves of feminist movement, the understanding of gender
remained largely concentrated around two foundational beliefs , first being, the
bipolar (divided into two neat halves), something Foucault(1979; 1980) called
Dimorphic or two-sex model conceptualisation of gender, that is gender concerns
being reflecting an engagement with the world as constitutive of men and women
only. Related is the second foundational belief which Adrienne Rich (1980;
published in her book in 1986) termed Compulsory Heterosexuality. She argued
that, the feminist scholarship in its earlier conceptualisations reflected an
unsettling agreement about the ‘natural’ affinity between the two sexes. The two
very interrelated points came to challenge, the conceptualisation of male
domination, put into place by the works of Gayle Rubin(1975), and Kate
Millet(1977).

Indian context largely reflects this understanding in its institutional setups and
in educational, political, social, cultural, religious and to a large extent even the
legal discourse, with little or no contestation. Gender concerns in Indian context
63
Gender Relations in Social took the form of women’s movement making a clear departure from feminist
Institutions
thought, standing itself apart from western scholarship. The argument presented
stressed the distinct nature of society and emphasised as well as evolved from
social activism as opposed to theoretical engagement as in western
context.(Chaudhuri, 2004). However, the male domination and socio-cultural
devaluation stands at the basis of all arguments raised by women’s movement in
India. It is interesting to note that the very conceptualisation, although drawing
from urgent need for social activism, is a Women’s movement not Gender Rights
movement. The point of emphasis being that the origin and conceptualisation
reflected the idea developed by Rubin, to explain historical devaluation and
oppression of women in societies. It drew from Rubin’s analysis of
anthropological works of Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss (explained in
introduction). The conceptualisation came to be challenged in the wake of the
arguments contesting against the two-sex theory and compulsory affinity between
them.

This kind of conceptualisation had paid little or no attention to a systemic

oppression the idea of masculinity imposed on men, and the immense exclusion,
marginalisation experienced by homosexual, queer, transgender and inter-sexed
people. However, this re-definition caused a re-evaluation of gender as a system
that is oppressive to sexual identities and sexualities. The changed understanding
came to reflect in re-evaluations of the kind of discrimination such defining had
led to, in various socio-cultural, institutional and systemic setups. Educational
context, content, praxis and educational experiences thus saw a renewed zeal to
re-examine imposition of role expectations to fit into dimorphic sex-categories,
causing marginalisation of sexual identity and sexualities.

Such a re-examination is impending in Indian context, the primacy of social

activism has resulted in a rather restricted but significant expression and
representation of rights and demands by the multiple sexual identities and
sexualities. However, translating a successful politico-social and legal representation
into the necessary impetus towards critical re-evaluation and restructuring of
educational context and experience would take significant time and effort.

4.7 SUMMARY
Education has been defined and guarded by the advantaged sections of the society.
At any point in the course of human history, education, as defined by the socially
dominating groups has been assigned social prestige and cultural-economic-
political rewards. Education is seen as a matter of heritage that is kept in exclusive
custody of the dominant sections. As a result, women globally have found
themselves struggling to attain their rightful access to education. Women have
continued to oppose exclusion from accessing and manipulating/evaluating and
evolving education to be more inclusive and representative of women’s reality.

Indian context has carried forth its legacy of cultural devaluation of women.
Women, being assigned a status of gift exchanged between men, assignes them
little significance of their own. As a result culturally, women face greater pressure
to be ‘useful to men’. Such a preoccupation as a precondition to constrained
access to resources, limits women’s life choices and lifestyles. The daily routines
as an appreciation of the life of associated men leaves women with very unfair
conditions to battle against in order to access and perform in educational spaces.
64
At the same point of time, women’s educational experiences are is anything, Education and Gender
reproductive of the unfair social order increasing the social handicap that women
face.

Conceptualisation of gender dynamics is crucial to understanding women’s

situation in socio-political and thus educational contexts. With increased
contestations to the conceptualisation of gender dynamics, globally, we face the
need to re-evaluate women’s position in the greater matrix of sexualities and
their inter-relating dynamics.

References
Bem, Sandra L. 1981. “Gender Schema Theory: A Cognitive Account of Sex
Typing”. Psychological Review, 88(4), 354-364.

Bhattacharya S. et al (Ed). The Development of Women’s Education in India —

1850-1920; Kanishka Publishers Distributors: New Delhi.

Borooah, Vani K and Iyer, Sriya. 2005. “Religion, Literacy, and the Female-to-
male Ratio”. Economic and Political Weekly. 40(5); 29. p. 419-427.

Chaudhury K., Roy S. 2006. “Do Parents Spread Educational Expenditure Evenly
across the Two Genders?”. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 41, No. 51.

Draper, Patricia. 1975. “Sex Differences in Cognitive Styles: Socialisation and

Constitutional Variables”. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 6(3):3-6.

Dipta Bhog. 2002. “Gender and Curriculum”. Economic and Political Weekly
37(17), pp. 1638-1642.

Dube Leela. 1988. “On the Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls in Patrilineal
India”. Karuna Chanana (ed.), Socialisation, Education and Women: Explorations
in Gender Identity. New Delhi: Orient Longman, pp. 166-192.

Dube Leela. 2001. Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields.

New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Ghosh Malini. 2002. “Literacy, Power and Feminism.” Economic and Political
Weekly. Vol 37, No.17, pp-1615-20.

Goetz, J. P., & Grant, L. 1988. “Conceptual Approaches to Studying Gender in

Education”. Anthropology & Education Quarterly. 182-196.

Karlekar Malavika. 2000. “Girls’ Access to Schooling: An Assessment”. Rekha

Wazir (ed.) The Gender Gap in Basic Education: NGOs as Change Agents. New
Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 80-114

Karlekar, Malavika. 2003. ‘”Domestic Violence.” Veena Das (ed.) The Oxford
India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology. pp. 1127–1157.

Kaufman Gloria, Juan Luis. 1978. “Vives on the Education of Women, Signs”,
Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Elizabeth H. Hageman and Margaret Mikesell (eds)
The Instruction of a Christian Woman. Vol. 3, No. 4. pp. 891-896.

65
Gender Relations in Social Kelly, A. 1985. “The Construction of Masculine Science”. British Journal of
Institutions
Sociology of Education. 6: 133-154.

King, U. 1987. “World Religions, Women and Education”. Comparative

Education. 31. pp. 35–50.

Kumar, Krishna and Gupta, Latika. 2008. “What is Missing in. Girl’s
Empowerment ?”. Economic and Political Weekly. XLIII. (26&27. pp. 19-24.

Lévi-Strauss Claude. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship (revised edition)

translated from the French by James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer.
Boston: Beacon Press.

Lindsay, James E. 2005. Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World. Westport:
Greenwood Publishing Group.

Malinowski Bronislaw. 1929. The Sexual Life of Savages in North-West

Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage and Family Life
Among the Natives of the Trobriand Highlands, British New Guinea. Boston:
Beacon Press.

Nambissan, Geetha B. 2005. “Integrating Gender Concerns.” Changing English:

Studies in Culture and Education, vol 12. Issue 2. pp 191 - 199.

Nihlen, Ann Sigrid. 1975. “Assumptions about Female Learning Styles and Some
Implications for Teaching”. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 6(3):6-8.

Roger, A and Duffield, J. 2000. “Factors Underlying Persistent Gendered Option

Choices in School Science and Technology in Scotland.” Gender and Education,
12 (3): 367-383.

Sreedhar, M. V. 1999. “Reaching the Unreached: Enabling Dalit Girls to Get

Schooling”. Manushi 111.

Wu, K. B., Goldschmidt, P., Boscardin, C. K. and Azam, M. 2007. “Girls in

India: Poverty, Location, and Social Disparities.” Lewis, M. and Lockheed, M.
(eds), Exclusion, Gender and Education: Case Studies from the Developing World.
Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, pp. 119–143.

Other Sources

Abstracts, Selected Educational Statistics. 2005-2006. Government of India,

Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Higher Education.

The educational legacy of medieval and renaissance period: “The Education of

Medieval Women” from http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ls201/medieval3.html

Suggested Readings

Dube Leela. 2001. Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields.

New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Nirantar. 2009. Textbook Regimes: A Feminist Critique of Nation and Identity.

New Delhi: Nirantar.
66
Sample Questions Education and Gender

1) How are gender inequalities created and reproduced within and around
contemporary schools, and in wider society?

2) In what ways does the culture and society inhibit the educational access to
women?

3) Analyse the influence of marriage-concerns on a girl’s education.

4) Contrast the out-of-school experiences for girls and boys, and its impact on
their educational possibilities.

67
 MANE-004
Gender and Society
Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

5
GENDER AND WORK
UNIT 1
Gender and Work Participation 5
UNIT 2
Domestic Labour and Gender 15
UNIT 3
Gender and Politics in the Workplace 24
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Formerly Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Professor Rekha Pande Discipline of Anthropology
Professor of History, SOSS and IGNOU, New Delhi
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) IGNOU, New Delhi
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Studies, School of Social Sciences Assistant Professor
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur
Associate Professor Dr. P. Venkatramana
Faculty of Sociology Assistant Professor
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C. J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Academic assistance provided by Dr. N.K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate (DBT) for the Expert Committee
Meeting.

Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi

Course Coordinator: Dr. Mitoo Das, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Content Editor
Prof. Debal K. Singharoy
Faculty of Sociology, School of Social Sciences
IGNOU, New Delhi
Blocks Preparation Team
Unit Writers Block Introduction
Dr. Vavsha Ayyar (Unit 1,2 & 3)
Dr. Mitoo Das
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor
Centre for Labour Studies
Department of Anthropology
School of Management and Labour Studies
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Mumbai

Authors are responsible for the academic content of this course as far as the copyright issues are concerned.

Print Production Cover Design

Mr. Manjit Singh Dr. Mitoo Das, Asstt. Professor
Section Officer (Pub.), SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology, SOSS, IGNOU

November, 2012
© Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2012
ISBN-978-81-266-
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other
means, without permission in writing from the Indira Gandhi National Open University.
Further information on Indira Gandhi National Open University courses may be obtained from the
University's office at Maidan Garhi. New Delhi-110 068.
Printed and published on behalf of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi by the
Director, School of Social Sciences.
Laser Typeset by : Tessa Media & Computers, C-206, A.F.E.-II, Okhla, New Delhi
Printed at :
BLOCK 5 GENDER AND WORK
Introduction
This block on Gender and Work tries to tackle the economic aspect of people’s
lives which are socially linked due to the existence of gender roles. In anthropology
we have always given the economic system in a society immense credibility as it
forms a major part of how a society works and survives. The varied equations
created in the lives of men and women is extended to this sphere and how so.
The division of men and women into gendered roles is seriously seen in the
economic sphere both at home and outside. Men and women have defined duties
in different societies and mostly the women are placed in a disparaging position.
We have divided the block into three units. The first unit is called Gender and
Work Participation. In this unit we try to provide a general outline of what work
is and how work is distributed among men and women both in the domestic and
public spaces. As gendered meanings and outcomes are always real it is interesting
to note the portrayal of men and women’s distinction in work. The first units
looks into the deate between paid/unpaid work, sexual division of labour,
segmented/dual labour markets, gender roles, gender stereotypes and impact that
these factors have on women and their work. Under the practice of the patriarchal
system the discrimination faced by women in terms of work is absolute. Women
also face biases in work also due to the presence of caste and capitalism. Women
have been culturally defined as being the giver, nurturer, care taker etc. and these
have created distinct work rules which do not let them be equal to men. Such
situations result in exploitation and women do not get the chances to do better in
life for themselves. Sadly enough at most times women are not even aware about
the subordination that they face. The unit explores these areas and points out that
the established roles in family, economy, state and the like need to be relooked
and they should work on themselves to remove gender discrepancies.

Unit 2 is called Domestic Labour and Gender. This unit discusses sexual division
of labour, women’s work, gender stereotype, and how gender roles impact women
and their lives while working in the domestic sphere. Since historical times
women’s work has not received any credit in the domestic sphere. It still remains
in the margins. Moreover they are intertwined with areas of caste, race, gender,
ethnicity, nationality etc. Women’s movements in various forms have tried to
bring forth the idea where they have contested sexist forms, i.e. women as
caretakers at home and men as breadwinners. Such notions have been countered
by feminist movements who have tried to make the world undertand and
re-examine the domestic labour that women perform. These movements also
suggested that these labour within the private spheres be observed in linkage to
women’s oppression, domination, subjugation, and exploitation. All these aspects
mentioned above have been taken up in this unit.

The last unit, Unit 3 is called Gender and Politics in the Work Space. This unit
looks into the fact that women workers tend to be defenseless in the unequal
power relations observed between the sexes in the work space. The unit shows
that this vulnerability is present all over the world in almost all work places.
Moreover the areas of caste, class, ethnicity, region, tribe etc. make it more
complex. The complexities are seen in wage differences, unequal opportunity to
progress, job segregation like jobs which are specifically assigned to women or
Gender and Work to men, harassment in the work place etc. The lesson tries to point out that there
is still a long way for women even with their commitments to their workplace to
get the respect, dignity and honour that men receive by the virtue of being a man.

It is hoped that after reading these blocks the learners will be able to understand
critically how an everyday factor like work also has strong influence in the creation
of unequal gendered differences socially.

4
 Gender and Work
UNIT 1 GENDER AND WORK Participation

PARTICIPATION

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Revisiting the Debate of Unpaid Labour
1.3 Understanding Housework
1.4 Her-story of Work Participation
1.5 Exceptions of Gender Roles
1.6 Situating Women Workers in India
1.7 Segmented Labour Markets
1.8 Work and Gender Roles, Gender Stereotype and Gender Implications
1.9 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 discuss and understand the concept of unpaid work and paid work;
 review historical view of work participation from the perspective of gender;
and
 examine gender roles and intersections with socio-political categories such
as class, caste, rural-urban and its impact on women and work.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Lourdes Beneria (1999) a feminist economist in her classic paper on ‘unpaid
labour’ have underlined the role of “conceptual and theoretical norms of statistical
biases” that have resulted in devaluing, dismissing, and excluding women’s
contribution (Beneria, 1999, p.287). An illustration to her point is the below
definition of unpaid work by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), which says: “work that produces good and services but
is unremunerated. It includes domestic labour, subsistence production and the
unpaid production of items for market” (OECD, 2000).

By the logic and articulation of the above definition and using Beneria’s point of
view, it is implied that women’s sexual reproduction particularly associated with
child rearing, and cultural stereotyping, besides her work where she is responsible
for cooking, cleaning will be deemed as “unpaid” because it is unremunerated
and performed for domestic purposes. In addition, this definition not only implies
“sexist biasness” but assumes and deems women’s unpaid work as natural,
inferior, unreal and unworthy.
5
Gender and Work In contrast to these definitions, according to United Nations Development Fund
for Women (UNIFEM), ‘unpaid work of women is the foundation of human
experience’ (UNIFEM, 2010) yet women’s work that is carried out in private
domain, inside her household, both in production and sexual reproduction for
the family and society is consistently devalued, unacknowledged and
marginalised.

The above assessment of unpaid work done by women themselves establishes a

fact that women in spite of being prime contributors to society through their
sexual reproduction and household work, women’s work were regarded as
chronically insignificant because of the presumption that “work” essentially means
something that is undertaken outside the private domain, it has worthiness because
it is done outside the house, it is not for pleasure but drudgery, there are fixed
wages for the work and there are specific timings when work is undertaken,
therefore “work” is understood narrowly.

These biased assumptions that largely shaped such exclusive conceptualisations

were challenged by feminists who demanded and made several efforts to get the
governments understand not only women’s work but all work that is performed
by women, children, and even men should be accounted in “unpaid work”.
It is through the efforts of these feminist economists and activists that such
conceptualisation of understanding unpaid work became to be broader and
sensitive. Surprisingly, these operational definitions of work continue to devalue
and sideline women’s contribution not only in third world countries but across
all parts of the world. In fact in all modern societies the idea of work was mainly
understood as spatially divorced from the family/ residence. That is why even
sociologists assume that “workplace” and “residence” become spaces that are
“spatially segregated” (Silver, 1993). Therefore the powerful imagery associated
with work and idea of breadwinner is always masculine and men’s work
essentially means ideas of income/work that is carried outside the private domain
is ‘real’ work.
Very peculiar to the above biasness is the definition of employment, which is
again narrowly defined as “activity distinguished from unpaid work” by the
Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (2009). To determine what constitutes an
employment, applying “third person criterion” is used. This essentially means
that any activity that can be done by a third person without diminishing its utility
would determine the distinction between unpaid/paid labour. With the above
framework, activities undertaken for leisure such as gardening, cleaning, or for
domestic consumption, or voluntary work undertaken for charity or community
service (usually unpaid) are classified as activities or forms of unpaid work.
The above frameworks continue to interpret women’s work inside the house
such as cooking, cleaning and caring as unpaid. Besides, since the work is
performed for domestic consumption and is without remuneration, the work is
unaccounted in records and statistics. Ironically, the same work when done by
the third person becomes a “paid work”. This implies contributions of housewives
who remain inside the house and carry domestic chores such as cooking, cleaning,
and caring or engaging in reproductive work such as bearing children or looking
after the old and sick can be deemed as “unpaid”. As pointed out rightly by
Selma James (2012: 219), this adds insult to injury, the woman anywhere who
doesn’t secure a wage may enter statistics as “economically inactive.”
6
 Gender and Work
1.2 REVISITING THE DEBATE OF UNPAID Participation

LABOUR
The debate of unpaid labour is not new but a historical one. In fact, the due
recognition to women’s work may be regarded as an ongoing struggle of feminists,
women’s movement and progressives to include women’s (both production and
sexual reproduction) in statistics/labour records besides valuing women’s work,
which so far has been systematically excluded and deemed insignificant. This
demonstration of undervaluing women’s work in labour records, statistics,
government records, etc is symbolic of undervaluation and dismissal of women’s
work and contributions therefore, it is extremely important to underscore this as
an “enduring debate of human history” that is argued by Beneria Lourdes (1999)
who traces this genealogy in her remarkable article on unpaid labour.

In this thread of history, contributions of feminists need to be taken into account.

It is important to revisit the classical work of Margaret Reid (1934, as Cited in
Lourdes, 1999) who radically articulated about the systematic exclusion of
domestic production (from national income accounts. She also developed an
alternative by designing a method to estimate the value of home-based work.
Interestingly, there have been viewpoints that were sympathetic to women’s work
and viewed women’s work from “time-allocation” to “market goods” besides
activities undertaken by women which fell under subsistence sector (see Lourdes
Beneria) “market values” but they essentially eliminated the visibility to women’s
unpaid work unlike the way it was articulated in Reid’s assessment. Therefore, it
is important to note that accounting women’s unpaid work is symbolic of a long
struggle that women have been engaged in.

1.3 UNDERSTANDING HOUSEWORK

Mackie and Pattulo (1977) point out that historically there is very less data about
women’s housework with few exceptions of upper class women and their lives
which came to be documented through biographies and autobiographies. Lesser
privileged women and their lives were poorly documented. However, what is
known is women were given certain prescriptions and in a matrimony pamphlet
in 1543, it mentioned that ideal wife duties were to ‘serve him (husband) in
subjection, be modest in speech and apparel, to have charge of the house and its
management’ (Mackie and Pattulo, 1977: 9).

The Victorian traditions in Great Britain propagated the ideas that “home” was
the ideal place for women and it also valued virtues such as “domesticity” and
“soberness” as favourable in order to be good, homely and domestic wives.
Interestingly, these Victorian values spread in almost all colonies and were used
to influence colonised women (Jane Haggis, 2000, p. 108-126). This is not to
suggest there was no prevalence of sexual division of labour within the household
in India and other third world countries, in fact there were stricter codes of conduct
for women on caste lines due to concepts of retaining caste purity. However,
external colonisation must have reinforced strict caste-patriarchal codes in context
of upper caste Indian women and their lives. The idea of women’s biological and
sexual role therefore becomes important. The ideal woman therefore creates roles,
responsibilities and functions for women, and any transgression is proscribed
and deemed deviant.
7
Gender and Work The unit of family is the basic and the most important to allocate roles to women,
children and men. It is a role within family that impacts women’s life chances
and work participation rate in the labour market and at a household level.
According to radical feminist view, family is represented as the micro unit of
class and relations within the family are unequal and exploitative based on sex.
Women are almost like dispossessed workers and members of proletariat class,
property-less without resources, and they engage in labour that is used for domestic
consumption and reproduction under compulsions. Their labour is therefore
undervalued. In this analysis, husband in this sense is analogous and member of
the exploitative class exploiting, oppressing and expropriating his wife’s labour.
Thus women (housewives) are proletariats and men (husbands) are capitalists.
In this analogy, the exploitative relations are grounded and women’s labour is
clearly devalued, unremunerated, and unrecognised (Dex, 1985).

It is no surprise that historically women’s work both housework and ability to

sexually reproduce has been blatantly dismissed, and incessantly devalued. A
renowned feminist Simone de Beauvoir rightly called women as ‘second sex’;
connoting women were always of inferior status in patriarchal societies.

Before we begin to unravel complexities of intersections such as class, race,

caste, rural-urban divide as factors complicating the monolithic and universal
views on understanding women and their work, we begin by examining some of
the historical views on women and work participation.

1.4 HER-STORY OF WORK PARTICIPATION

The sexual division of labour has been one of the most important themes in the
feminist scholarships. Significant to this is the dominant views of looking at
women as closer to the nature, sensitive and nurturer. Also, biological role of
reproduction was considered as something that made women powerful. In the
metaphysical sense this ability was regarded as magical yet their labour besides
sexual reproduction was considered as innate to their lives, their responsibility.
It is not surprising that some of these constructions were used to justify women’s
domestic work and care they had to incessantly offer to their children, husband,
and elderly. Furthermore, prevalence of sexual division of labour was known
amongst all known societies and because this has being a prehistoric phenomenon,
this division of labour was deviously regarded as ‘natural’ (DN& GK, 1989).

Although women’s work history ideally and predominantly should have been
understood from the reproductive role she undertook, besides that of nurturing
children, old, sick in the family; yet we do not see the role and labour of women
being sensitively addressed.

Before the advent of industrial societies of the west, women were destined to be
at home and carry out domestic chores in addition to the social production carried
out at a family level. Records suggest in the barter system, family as the unit was
self sufficient and autonomous. The local and small economies or exchange
essentially was based on family. Family was not only the basic social institution
but also a site of first unit of home production. Women, children and men in the
family participated in labour. Women carried the traditional gender roles in
supplement to the labour she contributed at family level. This has been documented
in the family and shop account registers in North Eastern states of USA.
8
This simple, agrarian, barter economy when entered into a phase of more complex Gender and Work
Participation
industrial and urban economy it greatly altered not only the economic structures
and work but also the very fabric of everyday socio-cultural life. In this stage,
“home” was a site of private sphere, disconnected from the modern workplaces.
Nonetheless women who entered the workforce had to share the “dual labour”
of home workers and workers. It was also assumed that the domestic sphere was
a spatial space disconnected from the public and the daily chores were unpaid,
unremunerated because they were domestically carried out, innate and intrinsic
to women’s life. Conversely, the site of factory or an industry was the site of
employment, paid work.

Bridget Hill (1989) gives a historical mapping of women’s work history in 18th
century England. She draws from the Industrial revolution in western countries
which had radically altered women and their work life. Transportation, technology
and modes of communication facilitated and enabled men and women to migrate
in search of jobs to industrial cities. Records of young women moving to cities
such as Manchester, Massachusetts came to be extensively documented. The
dependency on family labour declined thereby making working woman as an
independent and autonomous woman.

Ironically the sexual divisions of labour remained intact even in impersonal and
complex industries of capitalist economies as women were stuck in stereotype
roles and worked predominantly in the areas of housekeeping, food industry
exceptions being in opportunities available textile industry. Besides the factory
labour, women worked in ‘other’ industries such as confectionaries, candy
manufacturing, rope making, and carpet weaving and so on (Hill, 1989).

Contradicting aspect of these developments were that in spite of these

opportunities, women were treated as unequal, they were paid low wages in
comparison to men and their work was considered as replaceable. Also, “the
capitalist and industrialist also outsourced work by distributing materials to be
processed to be in the homes of women. This way there was always surplus
labour available. In fact, this aspect of distributing work outside the factory was
a notable phenomenon and women participated in this labour informally. This
form of work was where factory owners mostly notably in shoe and textile
industries distributed the materials to be processed in the homes and women
themselves sought such kind of work. This was known as ‘outwork’. Women
toiled and worked hard and these incomes were regarded as supplementary income
to support the family” (Women, Enterprise, and Society, 2012).

In countries and contexts such as India, myths and ideal women role models
were reinforced through religious texts. Stereotypes and defined boundaries for
women were prescribed. For instance in ancient and mythical accounts of mythical
women in Hindu literature women were predominantly portrayed as loyal, faithful,
subservient, obedient, religious housewives. Central to their identity was the
celebrated role of motherhood. These ancient texts broadly indicate status
conferred on women and clearly place women in the role of housewives, mothers
and sisters, and under the control of patriarch. Their life was almost defined and
biological reproduction was an important and integral aspect of their lives. In
addition, women provided their labour to raise the family and were relegated
inside the four walls of the house.

9
Gender and Work
1.5 EXCEPTIONS OF GENDER ROLES
There are some exceptions to these above discussed constructions where women
subverted the prescribed “gender roles.”Archeological evidences suggest women
and men lived in families, led a communal life and there was clear division of
labour yet it did not mean that women were not involved in doing other activities
that men carried out. In fact, studies on tribes suggest that women carried out
activities such as hunting and food gathering.

Here it is important to note that women were regarded as magical and powerful
due to her abilities to conceive and she came to be respected for her role in this
biological reproduction or as long as she contributed through sexual reproduction.
But even this adulation of women declined over a period of time and history
suggests that this celebration and adulation of women did not continue for long.

Nonetheless, in the primary pastoral stages of life, the main task for women and
men was to obtain food. It has been widely debated what role women played in
this society and were they restricted inside their homes. It appears although the
role of men was that of the hunter, women too participated in hunting.

Several studies on tribes such as Oraon, Munda, Santhal, and Ho show a ritual
known as “janishikhar” associated with women who participated in hunting
(DN and GK, 1989). This illustrates women participated in activities such as
hunting that were not only outside the house but were mainly carried out by
men. In addition, the authors cite studies on Agata tribe from Philippines where
women have often cited how they participated in hunting and reproduction and
were not detrimental in any way. The above exceptions from the tribes suggest
that in the tribal way of life there were no strict boundaries of sexual division of
labour and perhaps women’s status was that of equal with men if not inferior.

However, this sexual division of labour was more widespread than few
exceptional instances as found in tribal society. This is brilliantly illustrated by
Nancy Osterud (1977), who reflects on the hosiery industry which was divided
between mechanised and workshops in England. She points out that men were
predominantly engaged in mechanised jobs whereas women did intensive “out-
work” inside their home/household –based sector.

This continuous and consistent sexual division of labour had most profound
effects on domestic economy of working class families- where women found
themselves stuck inside their homes working for wages and this sexual division
of labour was now visible even at a factory level, where men dominated
mechanised and well-paid jobs (Osterud, 1977: 242)

It is also important to note historically women have been considered as ‘cheap

labour’ in the industrial times and this has resulted from the social and sexual
division of labour (Raphael Samuel, 1977, p. 243). It is also not a surprising
when it is said that “women’s work is never done: it is never or hardly ever, done
by men’ (Kate Osborne, 1991: 3). Therefore, we see a pattern of women being
pushed into jobs that are ‘gendered’ and women end up in professions such as
domestic/food related industries, teaching, caring etc. In addition, her work which
is done at home, housework and mothering remain unpaid work, a non-work.
These circumstances clearly places women at several disadvantages and
10
perennially women are deemed as expendables both by the patriarchs inside the Gender and Work
Participation
family and by the employers/capitalists.

1.6 SITUATING WOMEN WORKERS IN INDIA

Often voluminous of literature on women and work has emerged from the
industrially advanced countries. The implications to this are often the essence,
dynamics and differences that are present in countries, and contexts are not
enunciated. Furthermore, the concepts, theories and explanations that are not
native have their own limitations. These patterns are evidenced in social sciences
and feminist writings. Understanding women in Indian society, her role, work,
status, caste are some of the important features that play a significant role in
shaping her work and social life. Karin Kapadia (1992) calls our attention towards
‘social blindness’ where she points out that often social scientists and feminists
overlook ‘Asia’ over Africa. She reminds us that Asia as a continent also has a
large proportion of women in the informal sector where they are in major in key
economic activities and yet they are invisible, therefore it is important to situate
and articulate women and work in these contexts.

Kapadia (1992) through her fieldwork on Pallar, ex-untouchable women in Tamil

Nadu, explains that sexual division among the agricultural workers like the sexual
division of work is a cultural construction. It is therefore cautiously and
consistently designed and constructed in that way. In her field study on Pallar
from Aruloor of Tamil Nadu, she notes that ‘sexual division of agricultural work
here is successful because it has been assumed that this division of work is natural
and god given, besides being ordained by the human biology’ (Kapadia, 1992:
228).

Sexual division of labour in India across the castes, class and language groups
are blindly accepted both by men and women as something that is inherent and
natural. Women are expected to perform activities of cooking, cleaning, caring,
mothering etc. as they are innate to her nature. Besides, women also undermine
their own labour and contribution because they think it is intrinsic to their
biological roles.

Besides, the sexual division of work, ‘dual burden’ is equally an important site
to understand women’s exploitation. Culturally, women are expected to be “good
women” by taking care of her family members, cooking, cleaning, and looking
after kinship and community relations. This is in addition to other active economic
life where she toils and labours for wages. This dual responsibility of performing
and balancing paid and unpaid labour classically captures the essence of double
burden that women have to bear in a culturally constructed society where gender
roles dictate every aspect of life.

1.7 SEGMENTED LABOUR MARKETS

Segmented labour markets are also known as dual labour markets, which consist
of various sub groups that are divided into water tight compartments. In this
viewpoint, labour markets are divided into two sectors, primary and secondary.
The primary sector is male dominated, and enjoys high income, safe and secure
working conditions, robust social security system and better terms of work and
11
Gender and Work employment relations and ensured mobility to grow. On the contrary, secondary
sector is low skilled sector, with irregular, ambivalent employer-employee
relations, marked by exploitative and poor working conditions and ill paid wages.
This sector is often dominated by women. This simplistic view of segmented
labour market pinpoint on how women are relegated inferior and low-skill and
low-paid jobs. Men often are winners who find themselves working in primary
sector. Although this conceptualisation is important it is extremely important to
note that there are further asymmetries that move beyond the binary of male/
female, or gender lens in a complex society like India, where caste is one of the
central features of social stratification.

Therefore, besides the gender roles and sexual division of work, caste, tribe,
class, region, ethnicity and geography are some of the essential features that
produce complex segmented labour markets as such evidenced in Indian labour
market. National Commission For Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector
(NCEUS, 2009) also known as Arjun Sengupta Report point out that majority of
the Indians are poor and about 77 per cent of Indians are stuck in life where
expenditure on average is Rs 20 per day, per capita and categorised as poor and
vulnerable. The remaining 23 per cent of them were middle class and higher
income group who reaped the benefits of globalisation, liberalisation and
privatisation. Within the 77 per cent of poor and vulnerable, the characteristics
of social aspects were stark and highlighted by the commission. It points out
almost 88 per cent of SC/ST, 80 per cent of OBCs, and 85 per cent of Muslims in
this country were extremely poor and vulnerable. Most of them were further
without education, malnourished and socially discriminated (NCEUS, 2009:
3).Therefore it is extremely important to foreground and understand that Indian
labour markets are not segmented along gender lines alone but along caste, tribe,
and religion.

1.8 WORK AND GENDER ROLES, GENDER

STEREOTYPE AND GENDER IMPLICATIONS
It is now already noted that women have double burden of work, paid and unpaid.
In addition, the cultural and sociological stereotyping of women’s role translates
into job market segregation and thereby limiting women’s opportunities to grow
and excel. There are several sociological and anthropological studies undertaken
in India which have pointed out there are several discriminations at play that
impact women adversely and hinder overall progress of human society. There is
sexual division of labour almost in all sectors of employment. Karin Kapadia
(1992) in her same excellent study on Pallar women of Tamil Nadu points out
that the agricultural labour is centrally divided between masculine and feminine.
Ploughing, sowing, etc. were considered as “male/men’s activities” whereas,
women’s activities included weeding. Women’s activities were considered as
inferior or lighter and men’s activities considered as tough and important
(Kapadia, 1992, p.228). Another interesting anthropological explanation that
Kapadia offers is the attribution and meanings of men’s vs. women’s work in
agricultural related activities. It was considered that men’s work that is breaking
of the soil (in local language, mumbti) was associated with imagery of sexual
intercourse, where the male sperm, or seed was seen as invasive, a tough act,
hyper masculine that enters into the womb of women (referred as field). These
acts, sexual intercourse and “sowing of seed” in agriculture are seen as
12
“quintessentially male activity” (ibid, p. 229). Furthermore, women are the passive Gender and Work
Participation
ones, who will nurture the seed and care for it besides doing female tasks of
looking after both the crop/child and raise them. This analogy is interesting and
significant considering similar patterns and imageries are observed in construction
industry, mining, office work, education sector and so on. These role sets and
constructions deeply impact the opportunities and jobs that women are assigned.
Several studies conducted by Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) have
pointed out this in construction industry where women are often barred from
seeking skill based activities. They simply are the “carriers” of the materials, as
pointed out by Kapadia earlier. Women are often the ones to pick and carry the
material on the heads, and separating the fine sand with the coarse, as they would
do in the kitchen related work. These segregated spaces that women are relegated
create and reproduce gender stereotyping which impact their economic outcomes
greatly.

1.9 SUMMARY
Gender although may be a construction, its outcomes are real. In this unit we
have discussed the classic debate between paid/unpaid work, sexual division of
labour, segmented/dual labour markets, gender roles, gender stereotypes and
impact that these factors have on women and their work. It is clear that women
are the victims of discrimination under the system of patriarchy, caste and
capitalism. The cultural construction and notions of women being sensitive,
nurturer, and homemaker have been the means through which women’s labour
has been expropriated. Women have been exploited systematically and deprived
of opportunities to excel and grow. These societal inequalities have created and
reinforced gender inequalities. Therefore, it is extremely important to reconsider
the role of social institutions such as family, economy, and state and its role in
promoting and reinforcing these gender inequalities.

References
Dex, Shirley. 1985. The Sexual Division of Work: Conceptual Revolutions in
Social Sciences. Sussex: Wheatsheaf.

DN and GK. 1989. “Sexual Division of Labour”. Economic and Political Weekly.
Vol 24 (34), p. 1949-1950.

James, Selma. 2012. “Women’s Unwaged Work: The Heart of the Informal
Sector [1991]”. Selma James (Ed). Sex, Race and Class-The Perspective of
Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011. Oakland: PM Press

Haggis, Jane. 2000. “Ironies of Emancipation: Changing Configurations of

‘Womens Work’ in ‘Mission of Sisterhood’ to Indian Women”. Feminist Review.
Vol. (65), p. 108-126

Hill, Bridget. 1989. Women, Work and Sexual Politics in the Eighteenth Eentury
England. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kapadia, Karin. 1992. “Every Blade of Green: Landless Women Labourers,

Production, and Reproduction in South India”. A. Sharma, & S.Singh (Ed.) Women
and Work: Changing Scenario in India. pp. 219-238. Delhi: Indian Society of
Labour Economics and B.R. Publishing Corporations
13
Gender and Work Lourdes, Beneria. 1999. “The Enduring Debate over Unpaid Labour”.
International Labour Review. Vol. 138 (3), p. 287-309.

Mackie, L. and Pattullo. 1997. Women at Work. London: Tavistock.

Osborne, Kate. 1991. “Women’s Work... is Never Done”. J. Firth-cozens, &

West Miachel (Ed.) Women at Work: Psychological and Organizational
Perspectives. pp. 3-12. Philadelphia: Milton Keynes.

Osterud, Nancy. 1977. “The Sexual Division of Labour”. History Workshop

Journal. Vol. 4(1) 242-243

Raphael, Samuel. 1977. “Reply to Nancy Oserud”. History Workshop Journal.

Vol. 4(1), pp. 242-243

Self Employed Women’s Association. 2000. Labouring Brick by Brick: A Study

of Construction Workers. Ahmedabad: SEWA Academy.

Silver, H. 1993. “Homework and Domestic Work”. Sociological Forum.Vol.

8(2), pp. 181-204.

Scott and Marshall. 2009. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd edition, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Website Links
National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS). 2007.
Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganized
Sector. retrieved from http://nceus.gov.in/conditions_of_workers_sept_2007.pdf.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development –OECD (2000).Work

on gender by area. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/site/elsgender/

United Nations Development Fund for Women-UNIFEM. 2010. Women and

Unpaid Work. Retrieved from http://unifem.org/attachments/products/
UNIFEM_Work_grb_overview.pdf

Women, Enterprises and Society (2012) Retrieved from http://www.unpac.ca/

economy/unpaidwork.html

Suggested Reading
Dex, Shirley. 1985. The Sexual Division of Work: Conceptual Revolutions in
Social Sciences. Sussex: Wheatsheaf.

DN and GK. 1989. “Sexual Division of Labour”. Economic and Political Weekly.
Vol 24 (34), p. 1949-1950.

Sample Questions
1) What is the difference between paid and unpaid work?
2) What is gender role and gender stereotyping?
3) Are women inherently sensitive, nurturers and caretakers and more suited
in jobs of nursing and care taking?

14
 Gender and Work
UNIT 2 DOMESTIC LABOUR AND GENDER Participation

Contents
2.1 Introduction
2.2 What is Gender?
2.3 Re-imagining Women’s Work
2.4 Revisiting Unwaged Domestic Labour
2.5 Gender Stereotype
2.6 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit you will be able to:
 discuss broader themes related to gender and domestic labour;
 examine embedded concepts such as what is the difference between sex and
gender, sexual division of labour, gender stereotypes and its impact on
women; and
 discuss and contextualise some of the concepts associated with domestic
labour from gender perspective.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology defines work as “supply of physical, mental,
and emotional efforts undertaken in order to produce goods and services for
either own consumption or for consumption of others” (Oxford Dictionary of
Sociology, 2009). In spite of this comprehensive definition of work, women’s
work has been historically unvalued and neglected. Women’s work remains
unaccounted in the official statistics of the governments, is statically rendered
invisibility and their work unwaged and unregistered. This implies critical
dimensions associated with work are contextual and gendered. Clearly, women
and their work are not only rendered invisibility but they remain systematically
discounted of their valuation, recognition and contribution. It is intrinsic to this
discussion to understand sexual division of labour, nature of women’s work and
their circumstances and the multiple meanings associated with work such as
paid/unpaid work, however this aspect remain under-emphasised. Therefore
deliberation of “subjective meanings” associated with work become central in
order to understand the historical, sociological and specific context of work
besides understanding the overarching structural conditions under which women
continue to undertake both paid and unpaid work.

Evidently, the idea of work is contested and has several meanings. From a feminist
perspective, the concept of work needs to be revisited both conceptually and
15
Gender and Work historically. This can begin by asking central questions such as, what is so unique
about women’s work? What comprises women’s work and how different is it
from that of men’s work? What is the politics of housework? Is child rearing,
cooking and caring for spouse, sick in the family and kin, looking after elderly is
form of work? Is sexual reproduction an unwaged work?

Before we begin to answer the above questions it is imperative to understand

that work in broader and in general sense is mainly understood and divided into
three divisions such as work performed as an economic activity, work done as
unpaid domestic leisure and activity, and work done for community service.

Feminist movement has consistently challenged these narrower definitions of

work, pointing to the linkages between domestic labour, reproduction and paid
work. Explicit to this is the understanding that housework is unaccounted, unpaid
(household labour) and “reproduction” is taken for granted and a matter of destiny,
predetermined biologically. In the sense, questions such as work done by women
is it of any value and worth, if yes, how do we measure this work and acknowledge
their contributions? These have been already discussed in the earlier unit using
Berneria Lourdes’s classic essay on this debate.

Besides these critical questions, are other subset of radical and imperative
questions to know if reproductive/domestic labour are choices available to women
in order to engage/disengage in the unpaid domestic labour or they performed
under coercive, forced conditions and compulsions? The ideal women be in under
the Victorian Era or under caste system as envisaged by Manu, does reaffirm that
the ideal woman has to engage in this labour of sexual reproduction and serve
men/patriarchs. The idea to question some of the basic assumptions will help us
navigate through some of the significant and critical themes that have emerged
in the area of feminist and gender studies.

It is not surprising that all over the world history of women’s work remains
poorly documented. It was only in the 1960s there was an interest generated to
understand women and the work they performed. Erstwhile, women and their
economic life were considered unimportant. Women were assumed homemakers
fulfilling natural duties of women, housekeeping, child rearing; they remained
inside the houses were idle, unproductive who contributed less to the economy.

Although this circumstance changed during the Second World War as pointed
out by many scholars, a large number of women entered into the labour market
and women carried out “dual work”, inside the household and outside the house.
It was not difficult to assess and understand how sexual inequalities seen in
everyday life at household level transmitted even in modern workplaces such as
factories, hospitals, universities and corporations. Subsequently, studies
undertaken by feminists raised questions about the nature of work women did,
patterns of employment, discrimination faced by women, work conditions, and
changing structural economic conditions and its impact on women. Women
although have contributed immensely to humanity yet most of it has remained
on the fringe. It is only through these efforts undertaken by women’s movements
and Marxist-feminist economists, activists, scholars we see how these articulations
forced governments and scholars to examine the underlying assumptions of
understanding nature of work itself and its consequences to women and society.

16
According to several feminist scholars, women’s work is radically different from Domestic Labour and
Gender
the work performed by men. Feminist scholars point out, all over the world
women’s work is often less valued, women workers are paid less than men,
women are often stuck in occupations and at low levels typically associated with
their gender roles as that of caretakers or as nurturers. In addition, women often
engage in part-time work, is low- skilled, they are less in powerful administrative,
managerial or professional positions bringing multiple disadvantages to women
(Mackie and Patullo, 1977). The cumulative effect is women are stuck or caught
up in cyclical poverty, end up with worst jobs that are low paid, without any
social security and they continue to face multi-thronged discrimination.

Now, before we embark on understanding the plight of women workers in the

following units we must attempt to revisit the history of women’s work, it is
imperative to acquaint ourselves with the classic debate over sexual division of
labour and the domestic labour debate. Also it is imperative to foreground the
distinction between sex and gender.

2.2 WHAT IS GENDER?

Unlike sex, gender is not a biologically determined category. Ann Oakley first
introduced the concept of gender in sociology. She explained, “sex” refers to a
biological division that we know of dividing them into female and male, whereas
gender refers to a set of social divisions, unequal, mostly, with a binary of femininity
and masculinity and other gender and a range of social meanings are associated
with it. Therefore, gender is a socially constructed category prescribing certain
expectations of performing masculinity or femininity unlike “sex” which is solely
a biological category, based on biological division between female and male.

Several basic discourses on gender analysis suggests that although the concept
of gender has potential of unfolding relations between sexes, power dynamics
amongst the sexes, constructions around femininity and masculinity, social status
and position of women in society yet the concept of gender came to be heavily
criticised on two grounds.

At the foremost, was the re-examination of the concept of understanding sex as

biological and whether it was really isolated and divorced from the social. This
approach essentially points out “body” is not a neutral concept rather it should
be understood as an “object of social analysis” , therefore, in Focualdian analysis
“body” is understood as an object that has a social meaning and “sex” is not a
neutral term or just biological, most importantly it is not divorced from
sociological analysis. Therefore body and sex are just not biological abstracts
rather they fall within the ambit of the sociological analysis (Foucault, 1980).
Judith Butler, a renowned social theorist also tried to question the body, sexuality
and even the fluidity of biological constructions.

Secondly, the essentialisation and homogenisation of the concept of masculinity

and femininity was criticised particularly by Connel and Messerschmidt (2005)
through the concept of “hegemonic masculinity” where they draw attention to
sex role frameworks, workings of patriarchal power and factors such as social
change. They also discuss implications for those who fall out of these frameworks
and its grave consequences on their lives and other outcomes.

17
Gender and Work In spite of these critical limitations, gender as a concept can be used productively
particularly to understand some of the key issues that affect women and their
lives. This framework of gender is invaluable particularly to understand women’s
lives and oppressions. Gender is a process and it is intertwined with social
structures such as race, caste, class, and ethnicity.

A remarkable introduction on understanding gender as a framework to understand

race, class and women’s work, feminist scholars Amott and Matthaei (1996)
elucidates, “Gender is rooted in societies’ beliefs that men and women as sexes
are assigned distinct and opposed social beings by nature. These beliefs are
converted and turned into self-fulfilling prophecies through sex-role socialization;
the biological sexes are assigned distinct and often unequal work and political
positions, and turned into socially distinct genders” (1996: 13).

They further elaborate that in almost all human societies women’s work was
almost defined. This is also corroborated in several studies of anthropologists
who found that most societies have tended to assign females with infant care,
raising children, whereas men looked after interfamilial activities, worked towards
earning political dominance inside and outside the family (ibid: 14). However,
there were some exceptions noted. For instance certain American Indian tribes
allowed individuals to choose among gender roles wherein a female could choose
men’s work, man’s role and even marry another female who performed out a
woman’s role (ibid:14). This suggests women throughout history have attempted
to subvert assigned roles yet each economic system has countered their
subversions and reinforced them to continue to work that are devalued
consistently.

Feminists have consistently pointed out that it was marriage and family that
served as foundations to women’s exploitation, oppression and expropriation of
women’s labour. This is reflected in modern workplaces too where one can see
shadows of home groomed inequality reproduced in the so called impersonal
modern organisations.

2.3 RE-IMAGINING WOMEN’S WORK

In almost all known societies work has been central to human beings. Work
although performed by individuals and being subjective, the predominant idea
of work is associated with it being performed “outside the realm of the house”
and it being “paid.” These two important aspects of understanding work unfolds
the classic debate on sexual division of labour and the politics of housework.

The above understanding implies work performed by women is largely domestic

as it is performed inside the house and it is subsumed to be unvalued therefore it
is unpaid. This axis of understanding housework is “sexist” as pointed out by
several feminist scholars. This understanding necessarily means women’s work
inside the house is not counted, unnoticed and her contributions are not only
ignored but also consistently devalued.

Sociologically sexual division of labour is understood as division of labour based

on sex and associated with specialised gender roles of women as mothers, wives,
nurturers and caretakers, whereas men are central authority and breadwinners.
This also foregrounds sexual roles ascribed to both women and men as nurturer
18
and breadwinner and home is essentially a site that is divorced from the traditional Domestic Labour and
Gender
and modern workplace.

2.4 REVISITING UNWAGED DOMESTIC LABOUR

For the first time, at the World Conference of the United Nations Decade for
Women in Nairobi, an NGO “Housewives in Dialogue” forced a paradigmatic
shift in understanding domestic labour of women as unwaged work. This dialogue
pushed government delegates to consider and account women’s “unwaged”,
“unaccounted”, “unpaid” and “unremunerated” work done in household activities,
reproduction, food production and agriculture to be accounted in the Gross
National Product (James, 1994, p.173). Yet this is not incorporated in most of
the countries in spite of the estimates that this unwaged work of women produce
as much as 50 per cent of the GNP, as pointed by James (ibid: 173)

This was brilliantly summarised by James, (1994: 174) who noted, “unwaged
housework is the heart of every economic sector, formal, informal, waged or
unwaged, not merely presenting commerce and industry with a new generation
of workers, but each day reproducing human mind and muscles which have
been exhausted and consumed by day’s work. Overwhelmingly, the burden of
reproductive work has been carried by the female half of humanity, consuming
our time- which happens to be our life. And yet this work is hidden from history,
politics and economic statistics.”
The above views essentially bring out attention to understand women, as half of
humanity, are engaged into housework that is unwaged, unremunerated and not
recognised. Women are involved in reproductive work, thereby continuity of
humanity is not only dependent on women but she provides food for the minds
and the muscles that end up in waged labour market. Women carry out this work,
almost spending half of their life in cooking, cleaning, caring and reproducing. It
is essentially this work of women that is not documented in history, politics and
economic statistics.
One may wonder if women ever protested, did they try to rebel and subvert
against such gender roles? Did they refuse to do the housework? Anthropological
studies have suggested that there have been several African tribes where women
have refused to work and there are reports documented about wives who refused
to do the chores, agricultural work, production of cash crops unless they were
paid for their work (James, 1994: 175). There are also evidences where women
challenged patriarchal practices that controlled women’s sexuality, forced them
to do housework and reproduction. In spite of these articulations and challenges,
women’s work continues to be devalued and is rendered invisibility. Although
women have continued to perform this work under almost all economic systems
it is only recently that women challenged to re-imagine their domestic labour
and unwaged labour from a gender perspective.
At the forefront were women’s movement and academia who are instrumental in
bringing out these views on understanding women’s unwaged labour. This
perspective essentially underscored women’s work as unwaged labour and
contributions of women in social production, reproduction remained unremunerated
or unrecognised. These aspects became foci of many Marxist-feminist analyses
that attempted to understand women’s work sociologically and from a gender
and class perspective. 19
Gender and Work The classical view of Marxist analysis on understanding women’s work begins
with emphasis on social institution i.e. emergence of family. According to Marx
and Engels family served as one of the first institutions where property relations
emerged. Engels gave more detailed analysis of the process by which women
were pulled into the wage-labour process or social production but reckoned it as
an emancipatory for women. He suggested that one way male domination can be
ended through women becoming economically independent, participating in wage
labour (Dex, 1985: 106).

In both the above views of Marx and Engels, both of them ignored the role of
family, and position of women in proletariat households. They also systematically
ignored whether domestic labour is of any value and why proletariats have
continued with a system that marginalises, and oppresses women. This view
was critiqued by Beechey (1977) and Humphries (1977). They foregrounded the
necessity of examining women’s labour in proletariat families besides as examined
under the capitalist system.

According to Beechey and Humphries (as cited in Dex, 1985) both of them
suggested the analysis of domestic labour is vital to understand and explore the
continued existence of working class family and thereby unfolding women’s
oppression in a capitalist society(ibid, p.106).

In addition, Dex (1985) revisits and opens the debate with a philosophical and
central question of examining womens domestic labour. She posits whether
women’s domestic labour is of any value at all, is it a “productive labour” at all?
(ibid: 107).

Marxian analysis of sexual division of labour have their own limitation however
it is imperative to foreground perspectives that aim to deepen our understanding
of domestic labour of women. In this line is the view of Gardiner who suggests
understanding sexism in relation between working class men and women and
women’s economic independence (Dex, 1985: 108). This view underscored
understanding the place of women’s domestic labour under capitalism and
questioned why has this work continued under the yokes of all the systems. In
addition, Coulson, et al. (1975) point out although there is necessity of recognising
nature of women’s labour under capitalism however it is also vital to understand
the fact that “women are both domestic and wage labourers” (ibid: 108).

Moving ahead in this debate was a discussion around the dichotomy of

understanding domestic labour. Dex points out the premise of understanding
domestic labour on the notion of private/public sphere; both though are
independent of each other. Women are thus considered as involved in domestic,
carrying out domesticity and thus active in a private sphere and the public is
disconnected, isolated and divorced from her private life.

The above assumption considers home, kitchen, bedroom, as sites of the private
sphere. Therefore the sexist view presumes women’s domestic labour is essentially
private and it is natural for women to engage in that labour. Domestic labour is
deemed as an activity private in nature. The public or outside the house domain
is manly, and belongs to men. The relationship between private and public
although has been examined by radical feminists it will be appropriate to bring
Sylvia Walby’s (1984) classic work on understanding patriarchy. She argues if
20
one has to understand devaluation of women and their life, it is important to Domestic Labour and
Gender
reconsider housewives and husbands as classes. She pushes us to imagine a
household not as a site of private but as a microcosm of patriarchal mode of
production at play in which women are direct producers toiling and working
whereas men are non-producers and a member of the exploiting-class (Dex, 1985:
108).

These discussions and debates open a critical examination of family as a social

institution, the role of women within the family and the nature of labour performed
by women within the so-called private sphere. It is not surprising that sexual
division of labour continues and even the so called (liberal, who do not have
Bourgeoisies concepts of shame, morality, sexism) proletariat families also
continue to divide the work and render invisibility to women’s work. Intrinsic to
this is another concept i.e., of understanding gender stereotype.

2.5 GENDER STEREOTYPE

Historically, women have faced multiple levels of discrimination and gender
stereotype is one of the examples of how women are systematically discriminated,
excluded or limited to opportunities because of gender stereotyping. Dex provides
an evidence of gender stereotyping by discussing how studies undertaken in
modern industrial capitalism showed that even researchers upheld sexist
assumptions. Feldberg and Glenn (1979, cited in Dex, 1985: 36) who came up
with “gender model” and “job model” to explain different orientations that women
and men respectively have towards their work, were the most influential in this
area of work. Elucidating variables of job model, Dex points out the job model
is premised to understand attitudes that workers have towards their work, whereas
the gender model attempts to explain workers behaviour in terms of their personal
characteristics or their family situation (ibid: 36). Men came to be analysed as
workers fitting the job model and women came to be examined using the gender
model. Dex concludes this approach as “sex segregated model” typically
corroborating the perception of men as breadwinners, cardinal to protection and
the sustenance of family and women in supportive roles as housewives.

Some of the very explicit and significant gender stereotyping has been enlisted
by Dex (1985: 37). Interestingly, these types of stereotype were reported and
upheld in the modern countries such as UK and America. Some of them reported
are as follows:
1) “women find it hard to resist that their primary role was to serve the family
and they should be servicing, whereas men should be the breadwinners,
2) women work for pin money,
3) women do not mind and at times prefer boring work,
4) women have certain purposes for working, younger women work in order
to find a husband through work, whereas older women work to finance home
improvements,
5) women do not show any initiative in their work and they are least interested
in applying for promotions or working against challenges.”

21
Gender and Work These stereotypes have affected women severely depriving them of life chances,
growth, and opportunities. Besides, women are at a disadvantage because of
their gender roles and sexist mindsets that deprive them of equal opportunities.
The cumulative effect of such factors on women’s lives and development are
immense and they need to be highlighted. Overall, the patriarchal and sexist
practice of sexual division of labour continues to devalue women and their labour
both inside and outside the house.

2.6 SUMMARY
This unit has attempted to discuss some of the most important concepts such as
the classical debate of sexual division of labour, women’s work, gender stereotype,
and how gender roles impact women and their lives. It is important to note
women’s work has historically remained on the margins. Women are yet to receive
attention in this domain. Although feminist scholars particularly of the Marxist
school of thought have attempted to reveal the modes of production and relations
of sexes within the class framework, these are not enough to understand
intersections that emerge from multiple locations such as caste, race, gender,
ethnicity, nationality and so on. Nonetheless feminist lenses and women’s
movements have contested the sexist ideas where women are deemed merely as
idle, housewives, nurturers, caretakers and men as breadwinners. Such
assumptions and notions about women and men were challenged by women’s
movements and feminists who have also insisted to revisit and re-examine
domestic labour performed by women in the private sphere and its linkages with
women’s oppression, domination, subjugation, and exploitation.

References
Amott, T. and Matthaei J. 1996. Race, Gender and Work. Boston: South End
Press.

Connel,R. and Messerschmidt, J. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking

the Concept”. Gender and Society. Vol. 19(6), p.829-859.

Coulson, et al. 1975. “The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism- A
Critique”. New Left Review. Vol. (89) 59-72.

Dex, Shirley. 1985. The Sexual Division of Work: Conceptual Revolutions in the
Social Sciences. Sussex: Harvester.

Foucault, M. 1980. “Body/Power and Truth and Power”. C. Gordon (Ed.) Michel
Foucault: Power/Knowledge. U.K.: Harvester.

James, Selma. 1994. “Women’s Unwaged Work: The Heart of Informal Sector”.
Mary Evans (Ed.) The Woman Question. London: Sage

Mackie, L. & Pattullo P. 1977. Women: Women at Work. London: Tavistock

Scott, J and Gordon Marshall. 2009. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd edition,
Oxford: Oxford University Press

Walby, Sylvia. 1984. “Patriarchal Structures: The Case of Unemployment”.

Gramarnikow, et al. (Ed.). Gender, Class and Work. London: Heinemann.
22
Suggested Reading Domestic Labour and
Gender
Dex, Shirley. 1985. The Sexual Division of Work: Conceptual Revolutions in the
Social Sciences. Sussex: Harvester

Sample Questions
1) Discuss the concept of gender stereotype with some examples.
2) Describe the difference between sex and gender and how they influence
women’s work.
3) Can domestic labour of women performed inside the premise of home/private
if accounted or remunerated, destruct the social institution of family?
4) How is family and marriage related to oppression of women from the Marxian
perspective?

23
Gender and Work
UNIT 3 GENDER AND POLITICS IN THE
WORKPLACE

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Background
3.3 Theoretical Lenses to Understand Gender and Politics of Discrimination
3.4 Situating the Indian Context
3.5 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 know about topics related to women and their marginalisation at the
workplace;

 learn about sex role theory, sexual discrimination at workplace, sexual

harassment, gender disparity and gender bias;

 learn about other several intersections of sexuality, class, caste that often
feature in complex segmented labour markets; and

 finally know how these contribute in playing a central role leading to

discrimination of women and other minorities at workplace.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
History of women’s oppression and discrimination is not new; it has been an
unassailable feature throughout human history. In other words, all over the world,
oppression faced by women under patriarchal domination has remained central
and a consistent element of society. Even in our modern times and evolved
democratic states deploying strong human rights framework, women often
continue to face discrimination and oppressions either blatantly or tacitly. While
the degree and intensity of oppression, levels of indignities and discrimination
may vary subjectively nonetheless there are universal and common forms of
oppressions, discrimination that women face as a collective.

This unit broadly examines some of the core aspects related to discrimination
faced by women in modern workplaces besides underscoring nuances of complex
discriminations faced by women of diverse social locations that work in varied
contexts such as informal sector, rural/urban setting and so on.

24
 Gender and Politics in the
3.2 BACKGROUND Workplace

India as a nation and a society has been no different to women’s collective

experiences of subordination and oppression. Though on hindsight, there are
some rare positive instances when Indian women were fairly treated, even had
superior status but these were very few exceptions. It has been said that women
relatively held high positions in pre-vedic and Buddhist times, however as the
caste system became more rigid women not only lost their equal status but also
became subordinates and thereby enslaved.
Today, women in India continue to be counted as unequal and they are
subordinated and marginalised in almost every walk of life. Besides, structural
conditions embedded in social institutions such as religion, family and economy
has been instrumental in strengthening and acceleration of persistence and
reproduction of caste and gender inequalities. Another unique aspect of Indian
society is the heinous practice of untouchability that remains a social
embarrassment for India as a nation and a blot on humanity. Ironically, in spite
of the abolition of practices of untouchability by the Constitution of India, caste
and untouchability has remained as recurring and unique elements of Indian
society. Caste continues to act as instruments of oppression, exploitation,
domination and discrimination of women, untouchables and lower castes. The
worst victims of caste are untouchable women who face triple burden of caste,
class and patriarchy. All of these aspects play a key role in creating and sustaining
structural inequalities that are translated in creation of hierarchical and segmented
labour markets (Harris-White, 2004).
Furthermore, caste hierarchy has essentially created different kind of binds for
women. These caste hierarchies have culminated into creating varied kinds of
experiences, subordinations and oppressions particularly for women of lower
castes, and untouchable communities, as they suffer “triple jeopardy” under caste,
gender and class. This unholy trinity of caste, class and patriarchy continues to
affect women of lower caste and untouchable castes in more damaging ways in
comparison to upper caste women who have relative privilege of caste and
negotiate their social status.
It will not be stupendous or a new claim to suggest that under this old patriarchal
system, caste has continued to survive and entrench due to regressive practices
of endogamy, controlled sexuality of women and restrictions on social intercourse.
Women were relegated inferior status for maintaining caste superiority and it is
women who came to be controlled through practice of endogamy with other
several restrictions such as enforced widowhood, sati (self –immolation, sacrifice
associated with widowhood) and child marriage, to name a few. All of these
factors have led to creation of strong and deep foundation of sex inequalities
where women are not only deemed but are considered as inferiors, subordinates
and expendable. The pyramid of caste inequality is based on women’s
subordination. Therefore in order to examine and understand sex discrimination
at workplace or labour market discrimination in India, whether in the formal/
informal sector, one needs to understand them from this embedded, historical
discourse point of view.
It is at this background one needs to map out several kinds of complex and
multidimensional experiences of discrimination that women workers continue
to face in India’s stratified, segmented labor markets. 25
Gender and Work At the foremost, it is worthwhile noting and evident that in spite of numerous
socio-cultural barriers, women have come a long way in terms of entering male
dominated areas of work. Also, women’s contribution to the lesser known
“informal sector” which has remained mainly as peripheral, invisible sector is
overdue.

Although it may appear there are new work opportunities made available by
globalisation, it is extremely important to examine quality and the dynamics of
such employments, challenges and vulnerabilities that women are likely to face
in the new integrated global labour markets. Therefore, it is not only important
to quantify employment of women but examine quality of women’s employment
critically. It is equally important to understand how several historical and cultural
contexts influence women and their work and shape their experience.

It may be worthwhile to consider historical periods such as women working

under colonial empire or under feudalism and how caste, class, tribe, and other
aspects has shaped and influenced women’s work history. This would be a unique
and nuanced way of tracing Indian women’s work history and experiences. By
examining these genealogies and work histories of women it would certainly
provide a perspective and help us understand and map new trends, emerging
patterns, and histories of modern workplace. However, in this unit we will restrict
our discussion to some common and universal challenges faced by Indian women
workers.

3.3 THEORETICAL LENSES TO UNDERSTAND

GENDER AND POLITICS OF
DISCRIMINATION
Inequalities are one of the most basic and common features to all known human
societies. Modern civilisations have been trying to undo some of the inequalities.
However, most of these inequalities are so pervasive and rooted that it is extremely
arduous to annihilate them. Besides, one has to understand that modern societies,
organisations, and social institutions are not immune to these fundamental
inequalities such as those based on sex, colour, race, caste, class, disability, and
so on. There are new sophisticated ways to conceal some of the most violent and
regressive practices of discrimination, which are usually hidden in the closet.
Therefore, it is furthermore difficult to weed out such horrors of discrimination.
Consequentially, most of these subtle and stark forms of sex-based discrimination
remain hidden but sporadically resurfaces in modern organisations.

Although there are state initiatives to advocate and strengthen change, protect
minorities, and encourage and foster diversity at modern workplaces, yet there
are several discrimination that are at place, which are managed by manipulation,
using indirect pressure techniques, and abuse of law to carry out discrimination.
We are here concerned about women and the specific discrimination they face at
the workplace.

Discrimination faced by women is highly known especially in terms of unequal

pay, gendered jobs, women being victims of sexual harassment and so on. Also,
women are often trapped in secondary labour markets, where they work under
exploitative working conditions and on ill paid wages, remain redundant with
26
lower skill sets and have no opportunities for growth and mobility. These are Gender and Politics in the
Workplace
some of the most common forms of discrimination that women face in labour
markets across the world.

In spite of the anti-discriminatory laws such as Affirmative Action Policies in

USA, or the Reservation Policies in India, women from these minority
backgrounds are less often recruited and even in case they are in many exceptional
cases, they continue to face several forms of discrimination. Overall, it is largely
women who remain severely underrepresented in organised/protected sector.

This is particularly seen in several industries and work sectors that women are
lagging behind men and are rarely in authoritarian positions. One of the main
reasons why women are left behind is also because women are considered
inherently as burdensome due to their biological/reproductive roles, which are
considered as “invasive” for the workplace. Women are regarded as “naturally
inferiors” due to prevailing sexist attitudes and therefore women are often blocked
from opportunities to grow and excel.

Evidently, discrimination plays a central role in keeping women behind in

comparison to male counterparts. On top of that, women are at multiple
disadvantages because of the gender roles, gendered division of labour and so
on. One of the most serious concerns are, in spite of the fact that women have
entered formal and informal workforce yet women have not made a great headway
and still remain a minority in leadership roles. Contemporary labour markets are
therefore an important site to understand and locate how women as workers are
subjected to discrimination, exploitation, and subordination.

Academically speaking, the most significant theoretical lenses to understand

politics around women, their work is discussed in different traditional theories
emerging in the traditions of neo-classical theory, labour market segmentation,
radical/feminist/gender theory, and postmodernist theories. This chapter further
discusses few important traditions.

The three lenses that are deliberated by Sharma and Singh (1993) give an overview
of how women and her participation in the labour market are understood. At the
forefront is the neo-classical theory in which the basic tenet is to balancing factors
of demand and supply. It is understood that workers are paid according to their
value of their marginal product (Sharma and Singh, 1993: 3). The tenets of this
theory also hold that women and men are rational and that all labour markets are
free from imperfection. The employer is considered as someone looking for
maximising the profits. Employees are paid according to their skills and often
they are low consequence of a competitive market. Women in this case are paid
lower wages because of their low levels of skills, education, and training.
Therefore the differences in the wages that women draw in comparison to men
are lower and justifiable because of their inadequate competency. The neo-
classical theory also assumes that women’s ability to participate in labour market
is “discontinuous because of several reasons, childrearing, and child bearing
being the most fundamental one” (Sharma & Singh, 1993: 3).

Ironically, this kind of sexist construction can be severely smashed with the help
of several anthropological studies and the noteworthy of them is the evidence
provided by Mukhopadhyaya and Higgins (1988, cited in DN and GK, 1989:
27
Gender and Work 1949) who pointed out that, a tribe, in Philippines, known as Agta tribe, biological
cycle (be it menstruation or pregnancy) or age, were not factors that were regarded
as hindrance or blockades for women to participate in hunting. This clearly
suggests that men and women in this tribe hardly every regarded biological cycle
of women as a hindrance. Furthermore, the general idea that hunting is regarded
as an activity that is associated with men and masculinity, is smashed by this
evidence which refutes the myth of hyper masculinity that only men are hunters
and women are nurturers and food gatherers. But contrary to these egalitarian
practices of tribal society, Sharma& Singh (1993) succinctly points out, what
eco-classical theory interprets and assumes women’s incompetency due to her
innate and biological nature that propels all kinds of labour market discriminations
to which the employers are not responsible(Sharma and Singh, 1992: 3-5). A
reformed version of the neo-classical approach is echoed in the theory of “labour
market segmentation”. This theory is regarded as one of the most influential and
hence a widely accepted theoretical approach. As Sharma and Singh (1992) put
it correctly, this paradigm is “essentially a refinement of neo-classical theory
which views the labour market as segmented by institutional barriers” (Sharma
and Singh, 1992: 5). The analogy used in this approach differentiates the labour
market into twofold. The first is the primary sector and the second is the secondary
sector. The primary sector offers wide array of opportunities, better pay, perks,
promotions, career advancement, exposure, good working conditions, and so on
whereas the secondary sector is ill-paid, unfair, low paying jobs, lower skills,
poor working conditions, lack of opportunities for career growth and so on. The
reason for the stagnancy in the secondary sector is due to its traditional set up
and inability to catch up with progressive and modern sectors. This segmentation
also culminates into unequal work opportunities for labour. Differently referred
as “economic dualism” or as “dual market theory” (Doeringer and Piorie, 1975)
or as the “static and progressive jobs” (Standing, 1976). These distinctions and
caveats produce and manifest inequalities and stratification of numerous kinds,
sex inequality being the prime ones.

Women workers are segmented and find themselves working in low paying jobs.
These workplaces lack basic hygienic and safe working conditions, women
workers are poorly paid, overworked, and exploited. The labour markets for
women are saturated, whereas male occupations fall under the progressive
category where jobs are better paid, competition is not so intense and good
working conditions prevail as inherent. A noteworthy aspect is the role of
institutional barriers of society, namely economic, social, institutional (political)
that shape and influence these sectors and employment patterns and discourage
women to take up employment. Huffington Post (2012) recently discussed an
important study by Sreedhari Desai in USA. This study conducted in USA revealed
that men were in “traditional marriage” which meant wives who were not working
in paid jobs, such men felt less positive about the presence of women in the
workplace, they were negative about female-dominated organisations and found
it discomforting to work under women in leadership roles. The study also
underscored that such male employees, and their type of marriage acted as a
factor that was to play a role in discriminating women colleagues (Huffington
Post, 17th May, 2012).

Evidently, sex discrimination is one of the leading discriminations that keep

women trapped in lower levels of labour market. Therefore, it is not a coincidence
to witness “feminisation of poverty”, “overcrowding of women in saturated and
28
insecure labour markets” and “overwhelming number of women in informal Gender and Politics in the
Workplace
sector”. In fact it is an indication of structural inequalities that are at work. In
spite of the powerful lens offered by segmented labour market theory, it is still
incapable of explaining why “sex is such a persistent and important dimension
of labour market segregation” (Sharma and Singh, 1993: 6).
To advance an understanding of segmented labour markets, feminists/radical/
gender theory seeks to understand discrimination of women not only as a labour
market problem but rather contests that discrimination against women is
pervasive, and family/home is the primal site of these inequalities and women’s
subjugation. It is this subordination at the level of family which is translated into
the labour markets. Some strands in this theory have determined “patriarchy” as
the primary cause of sex based inequality under which women and children are
enslaved and made private property of the patriarch (male authority in form of
father/husband/brother). Besides, the gender stereotype that man is the
breadwinner of the family and women is the care taker/ home maker have clearly
played a role therefore women end up in occupations such as domestic work,
service industry, hospitality, care work and much of the mental and technical
jobs that are close to her. Intrinsic to this theory is also interrelationship of sexual
exploitation and harassment of women at workplace. In all stratified societies be
it feudal, caste, and modern societies, women from lower classes/castes were
forced to work outside their house. Besides that they had lower social status,
which reinforced the idea that these women were of “loose character” “available”
and “sexually promiscuous.” Such pathological understanding of assuming
women who work outside the house as loose, immoral, cheap and promiscuous
are instrumental in men trying to make sexual advances against women colleagues.
This is a global and common feature in all countries and contexts. Even the
workplaces associated with jurisprudence are not immune to such instances. A
famous American case in this context is that of Anita Hill vs Clarence Thomas,
where Anita Hill alleged Clarence Thomas, an attorney of Supreme Court of the
United States of America of “sexual harassment” (Walker, 2007). Sexual
harassment at the workplace remains one of the most important sites of understanding
unequal, regimented gender relations and women’s continuous devaluation.
There are some other feminist perspectives such as post structuralism, critical
theory to understand labour processes, workplaces, and women’s experience
which maps fluidity of identity, race, class, and other intersections. The idea
here was to discuss the most predominant central perspectives that have been
used widely in this area of understanding women and discrimination at workplace.
Before we begin to discuss the widely predominant and idiosyncratic experiences
of women and discrimination it is important to set the Indian context of workplace.

3.4 SITUATING THE INDIAN CONTEXT

Indian society is one of the most stratified societies in the world. Caste, tribe,
religion, region, language, class are some of the intrinsic features that shape
socio-cultural life of Indian society. Endogamy, i.e. marriage within one’s own
caste to maintain caste purity has been one of the most paradoxical features of
modern Indian society. Besides, patriarchy rooted in archaic and backward looking
religion has successfully set the discourse of treating and equating women as
dependents, subordinates, and inferiors.
29
Gender and Work In addition, women are sexually oppressed and repressed. The concept of
“Brahamanical patriarchy” (Chakravarthy, 1995) brilliantly reveals how upper
caste women were treated and controlled by repressive regimes of kitchen-
household- cultural practices that were operated through control over women’s
sexuality. Ironically, on one hand, upper caste women were sexually repressed
whereas on the other hand, lower, and untouchable caste women were sexually
exploited and their labour was expropriated under the heinous caste system. This
was ordained in texts such as Manusmriti and mythical texts of Ramayana and
Mahabharata. It is through these inter-sectional aspects of caste, religion, tribe,
language, class, we will be able to expand our understanding the complex nature
of women’s discrimination in the labour market or at workplaces.

To begin with, we will begin with our assessment of women and labour market
discrimination in the following areas of
1) Labour market entry and workforce participation
2) Unequal pay for women (sex difference in earnings)
3) Job segregation or feminisation of occupations (sex roles theory)
4) Sexual harassment in the workplace
5) Glass ceiling- opportunities to advancement (sex differences in promotions,
authorities, glass ceiling)
6) Issues regarding maternity leave

For the sake of brevity we will only briefly touch upon the intersections of caste,
class, rural/urban labour markets and exploitation of women workers in the formal
and informal sector. The larger discussion attempts to unfold forms and types of
discrimination women face in carrying out paid work.

1) Labour market entry and workforce participation: To begin with, much of

India’s labour forces are employed in a sector that is largely identified as
“informal” or “unorganised sector”. This massive sector employs between
83 and 93 per cent of the workforce (Harris-White, 2004: 17). The character
of unorganised/informal employment workforce is lack of any protection
from the state or employer, social security provisions, employment security,
and overall deprivation of rights at workplace. In addition, this sector is
expanding which means more number of workers are being sucked into
insecure livelihoods. The skewed sex ratio is overwhelming in this sector.
According to Deshpande and Deshpande (1997) almost 96 per cent of
working women are engaged in “unorganised” and “informal economic
activities” and only 4 per cent of women work in protected organised sector
(Deshpande and Deshpande 1997: 546). Inevitably this means millions of
working women in India have no access to labour protection, social security
or income security, leave aside better opportunities to develop, progress,
and vertically move in the job ladder.

The aspect of “gender gap” at the workplace in terms of wages is almost like
a record. Women not only earn less in comparison to men, women also
work for longer hours. Some of these low-paid jobs positively recruit women.
Jayati Ghosh (2008) argues that “feminization of employment has resulted
from the so called ‘labour market flexibility’ which operates on casualization
30
 of labour, part-time/subcontracting/piece-rate contracts, and hire/fire policy” Gender and Politics in the
Workplace
(Jayati Ghosh, 2008, p.11, Standing, 1999). Existence of this area of dual
market for women exemplifies that women have disadvantage in the labour
market.

2) Unequal pay for women (sex difference in earnings): Practice of wage

discrimination against women is extensive and evidenced in almost all labour
markets of the world. This aspect of wage discrimination or sex difference
in payments/wages particularly in developing countries are understood as
emerging as “pre and post discrimination” (Ozcan, Yusuf, et al., 2003: 3)
Pre-discrimination is typically a condition where certain groups are blocked
from entering the labour markets, whereas post-discrimination occurs on
entering the labour market, where cultural aspects of society work against
the individuals against mobility and growth. It is thus predominant in
developing countries where women as a social group are often discouraged
to enter labour market and even if they do enter they face post-discrimination
forms, noticeably in terms of differences of wages. This is clearly enunciated
in several labour reports in India, where it is shown that women in rural and
urban markets are paid fewer wage in comparison to men. A famous case
seen in this context was that of Mackinnon and Mackenzie vs Audrey D’costa
[AIR 1987 SC 1281] (cited in Gothaskar, 1992: 16).

3) Job segregation or feminisation of occupations: This is one of the most

striking features where “gender roles” rule the job markets. The whole of
industrial employment is considered as the prerogative of a man. It is not
surprising that “within the industrial employment or other wage-work, there
is segregation of men and women into different types of jobs-women in
packing and assembling, whereas men were in engineering jobs” (Gothaskar,
1992:7). As discussed in other units’ patterns of feminisation of occupations
is already discussed as evidenced in Indian labour markets.

4) Sexual harassment in the workplace: This has been one of the enduring
aspects of women’s work experiences yet approached and regarded as a taboo.
Women refrain from talking about their harassment, particularly sexual
harassments because of the cultural norms, which are not in favour of working
women. Women are sexually harassed in almost all work settings and it cuts
across, industries, job profiles. Factors such as education, employment status
are not factors that hinder experiences of sexual harassment. Therefore, it is
important to note that women workers be it in corporate sector or working
on nakas or street corners are both vulnerable to sexual harassment. In
industrial west there is zero tolerance towards sexual harassment but in
developing countries, legal measures are yet to fully evolve and develop in
regards to securing women employees. Due to cultural contexts, it is very
difficult to define what exactly does sexual harassment entail and several
scholars have left it open as a matter of subjective interpretation, therefore
sexual harassment is very fluid and has been a difficult concept to be defined.
However, there are certain aspects that are defined as part of violation of
conduct and considered as sexual harassment. In 2012 Government of India
passed a bill on Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at
Workplace to implement the Article 14,15, 21 of Constitution of India and
Vishaka vs. State of Rajasthan, 1997 guidelines. The Bill defines, ‘sexual
harassment’ includes such unwelcome sexually determined behavior (whether
31
Gender and Work directly or by implication) as—(i) physical contact and advances; or(ii) a
demand or request for sexual favours; or(iii) sexually coloured remarks;
or(iv) showing pornography; or(v) any other unwelcome physical, verbal or
non-verbal conduct of sexual nature” (Loksabha, 2012: 3). This bill makes
provision for a mechanism for redressal of complaints and provides
safeguards against false or malicious charges. According to Indian Penal
Code Section 354 sexual harassment is also recognised as criminalising
behaviour that is intended to intimidate, oppress, degrade and violate women’s
rights and dignity. There have been several studies done to assess causes of
sexual harassment. Stockdale (1991) has reviewed several studies to
understand the causes of sexual harassment. She begins with her study on
understanding key motives behind sexual harassment. She attributed “sexual
desire” “power-play” and “gaining and asserting or maintaining power and
status.” (Stockdale, 1991: 55). Stockdale discusses Gutek’s three models of
understanding sexual harassment at workplace (Stockdale, 1991: 56). They
are classified as follows:

a) Natural/biological interpretation: considers sexual harassment merely

as something that is natural, inevitable and something that is harmless.
It also clearly holds that there is an element of sexual harassment but it
is merely natural, harmless and unintended, implying that it is pardonable
and not to be taken seriously.

b) Organisational/Structural institutional perspective: This approach

underlines elements of power structures, hierarchy, authoritarian and
unequal power relations as prime reasons that results in the outcomes in
forms of sexual harassment. This approach holds the structures itself as
responsible that creates vulnerabilities for women who are often the
victims and opportunities for authorities to use that against women.

c) Socio-cultural/sex role models: This approach focuses on understanding

sexual harassment as maintaining men’s domination over women. It
implies that these role plays encourage the power variances between the
sexes, reinforcing men’s dominance over women and subordination of
women in the female sex role ideals.

The above theorisation and assessment of sexual harassment explain different

aspects and complexities that are involved in instances of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment is thus one of the important sites to understand unequal
power relations among the sexes.

5) Glass ceiling: Discrimination against women in labour market is so rampant

that we see a large number of women end up in informal/secondary labour
markets. Even if women make a breakthrough by entering into primary sectors
of employment, opportunities don’t seem to come to women. Women face
discrimination in regards to their upward mobility and have lack of
opportunities to be at the top. No wonder even in USA, which boasts of
having highest percentage of women in the labour markets, wage gaps persists
and in spite of the record number of women working in the private sector,
only 3.6 per cent of women have made it on top positions and in the roles of
Chief Executive Officer, reported Huffington post. (17th May, 2012). The
article also points out that besides the classical “Glass Ceiling” there is “the
32
 Marzipan layer –a corporate hierarchy in which women find themselves stuck Gender and Politics in the
Workplace
with jobs that are just below senior management” (Huffington Post, 2012).
This clearly explains why so many women employees in so-called
competitive, private sector never reach the top.

6) Issues regarding maternity: Maternity or women’s sexual reproduction has

been regarded as a matter of hindrance in most of the work settings. Maternity
for long was considered as a burden on employers. It took several struggles
for women to get the Maternity Benefit Act in India. Maternity Benefit Act,
1961 was introduced to protect the dignity of motherhood by providing for
the health of the new mother (women employee) and her child. This act of
1961 came as a demand through a strike of 1921 in Jamshedpur which was
not accepted them (Radha Kumar,1993: 67). Thereby, in 1929, Bombay
Maternity Benefit Act was passed in 1929. However, this long struggle to
recognise and accord dignity to women workers is impaired as a large number
of working women in India are now working in the informal sector and it is
challenging to protect them under the ambit of this act. It is also important to
note that even women workers in the formal sectors struggle in spite of this
progressive legislation. Women workers are routinely taunted for their
maternity leaves and even discouraged from using their rights.

3.5 SUMMARY
This unit has attempted to discuss some of the most important aspects related to
gender and politics in the workplace. Women workers are vulnerable workers
due to unequal power relations between the sexes. Worldwide it is evidenced
that women workers in labour markets are discriminated. Furthermore,
intersections of caste, class, ethnicity, region, tribe and so on, inter-mesh and
play a role to create complex realities for women workers subjectively.
Nevertheless, women as workers face vulnerabilities in several areas that are
common and universal. This is evidenced in wage differentials, unequal
opportunity to advance, job segregation/feminisation of employment, sexual
harassment and in access to protections such as maternity benefits and so on.
Overall, it appears that in spite of women working across the globe are yet to
receive deserving attention, i.e. recognition, dignity and honour in comparison
with her male colleagues and counterparts that are inadvertently accorded great
respect and dignity. For women workers all over the world it is a long way ahead
and in spite of their enduring contributions to human society they are yet to
receive recognition.

References
Chakravarthy, Uma. 1995. “Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early
India: Gender, Caste, Class and State”. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28(
14), pp. 579-585.

Deshpande, S and Deshpande, L. 1997. “Gender Based Discrimination in the

Urban Labour Market in India”. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics. Vol
40 (3), pp. 545-62

DN and GK. 1989. “Sexual Division of Labour”. Economic and Political Weekly.
Vol 24 (34), p. 1949-1950.
33
Gender and Work Doeringer, P. B. and Piorie, M.J. 1975. “Unemployment and the Dual Labour
Market”. The Public Interest. Vol 38. pp. 65-75

Ghosh, Jayati. 2008. Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women’s Work in Globalizing
India. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.

Gothaskar, Sujata. 1992. “Introduction”. Gothaskar (Ed) Struggles of Women at

Work. Vikas Publishing House: New Delhi.

Harris-White, Barbara. 2004. India Working: Essays on Society and Economy.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huffington Post. 17th May, 2012. Discrimination in the Workplace against Women
may Depend on Men’s Marital Structure (STUDY). Retrieved from http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/discrimination-in-the-workplace-women-
gender-revolution-marital-structure-men_n_1525863.html

Kumar, Radha. 1993. The History of Doing : An Illustrated Account of Movements

for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India 1800-1990. New Delhi: Zubaan.

Lok Sabha. 2012. The Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at the
Work Place Bill, 2010. Bill No. 144 of 2010. Lokasabha, Government of India
http://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/Sexual%20Harassment/sexual%20
harassment%20bill.pdf

Ozcan, Yusuf, et al. 2003. “Wage Differences by Gender, Wage and Self
Employment in Urban Turkey”. Journal of Economic Cooperation. Vol 24(1),
pp. 1-24.

Sharma, Alakh and Singh, Seema. 1993. “Introduction”. Sharma, A and Singh,
Seema (Ed) Women at Work: Changing Scenario in India. PP. 3-8. Delhi: Indian
Society of Labour Economics and B.R.Publications.

Standing, Guy. 1976. “Education and Female Participation in the Labour Force”.
International Labour Review. Vol. 3 (114): 281—297.

Stockdale, Janet. 1991. “Sexual Harassment at Work”. Firth-Cozens, Jenny and

West Micheal (Ed.) Women at Work: Psychological and Organizational
Perspectives. Philadelphia: Open University Press and Milton Keynes.

Walker, Rebecca. 2007. “Becoming the Third Wave”. Freedman, Estelle (Ed)
The Essential Feminist Reader. Pp. 397-401. New York: Modern Library.

Suggested Reading

DN and GK. 1989. “Sexual Division of Labour”. Economic and Political Weekly.
Vol 24 (34), p. 1949-1950

Sharma, A and Singh, Seema (Ed.). 1993. Women at Work: Changing Scenario
in India. Delhi: Indian Society of Labour Economics and B. R. Publications.

34
Sample Questions Gender and Politics in the
Workplace
1) Are women discriminated in the emerging labour markets? If yes, support
your answer with relevant examples.

2) Discuss some theoretical lenses to understand gender discrimination in labour

markets?

3) Elucidate the dimensions of workplace discrimination faced by women

workers.

35
 MANE-004
Gender and Society
Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

6
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND GENDER
UNIT 1
Race and Gender 5
UNIT 2
Class and Gender 18
UNIT 3
Ethnicity and Gender 38
UNIT 4
Caste and Gender 50
UNIT 5
Women in Tribal Societies 57
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Formerly Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Discipline of Anthropology
Professor Rekha Pande IGNOU, New Delhi
Professor of History, SOSS and
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
IGNOU, New Delhi
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Assistant Professor
Studies, School of Social Sciences Discipline of Anthropology
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur Dr. P. Venkatramana
Associate Professor Assistant Professor
Faculty of Sociology Discipline of Anthropology
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C.J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Academic assistance provided by Dr. N.K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate (DBT) for the Expert Committee
Meeting.

Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi

Course Coordinator: Dr. Mitoo Das, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Content Editor
Dr. Lucy Zehol, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
North Easter Hill University Shillong, Meghalaya
Block Preparation Team
Block Introduction
Dr. Lucy Zehol, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology North Easter Hill University
Shillong Meghalaya
Unit Writers
Dr. Prashant Khattri, Assistant Professor (Unit 1) Prof. Shubhadra Mitra Channa (Unit 3)
Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Dept. of Anthropology, University of Delhi
Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha, Maharashtra Dr. Twinkle Pal, Assistant Professor (Unit 4)
Dr. Rosina Nasir, Assistant Professor (Unit 2) Dept. of Sociology, Hindu College, Delhi
Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Dr. C.J. Sonowal, Associate Professor (Unit 5)
Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP), School of Social Cente for Study of Social Exclusion and
Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad Inclusive Policies, TISS, Mumbai
Authors are responsible for the academic content of this course as far as the copyright issues are concerned.
Print Production Cover Design
Mr. Manjit Singh Dr. Mitoo Das, Asstt. Professor
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July, 2012
© Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2012
ISBN-978-81-266-6141-1
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other
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Further information on Indira Gandhi National Open University courses may be obtained from the
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BLOCK 6 SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND
GENDER
Introduction
This block seeks to familiarise and help us understand gender as a social construct
which can be located against the backdrop of the fundamental concept of social
stratification. Every society in the world is stratified on the basis of underlying
principles like race, ethnicity, class, gender etc. Societies, whether modern or
traditional have either some or a combination of many factors, that becomes the
basis for stratification.

Studies on race as a social category and a system of stratification developed in

the backdrop of racial discrimination of ‘black’s’ by the ‘white’s’ in the United
States of America. Race and gender together interact to produce such situations
where subjugation, oppression and subordination become key issues that need
to be addressed. Race and gender relations are not restricted to the United States
alone but examples can also be cited from India where although racial
discrimination is not at the center of affairs but examples that relate to such
discriminatory attitude do get reflected particularly in the caste system. The
concept of social justice, equality and peaceful co-existence will remain a casuality
if such kinds of inequalities, prejudices and discriminations will be alive. It should
be our collective effort to understand and work against such forces that take us
towards such kinds of discriminatory attitudes. The interaction of race and gender
is very succinct and operate in a subte manner. We try to understand the diverse
concerns related to Race and Gender in Unit 1 by the same name.

Class as a system contributes to the understanding and theorisation of social

inequality in societies. The intersection of gender with class has been a long-
running theme. Gender is intertwined with every aspect of class, both material
and non-material. Cultural turn provides a way ahead for holistic understanding
of gender exploring it from all dimensions of class. It enriches and encourages
reorienting and rethinking class inequalities in gendered ways to cover other
dimensions. These nitty grities are covered in Unit 2: Class and Gender.

The concept of ethnicity adds dynamism to the concept of race and hence opens
up a wide range of possibilities to understand gender in it. Ethnicity provides a
whole range of variables that can interact with gender and thus can be analysed
to understand the dynamics between race and gender or class and gender. This is
tackled in Unit 3: Ethnicity and Gender.

Caste is a continual institution of the Indian society. The significance of gender

in understanding the caste system and the way caste invades on women’s life
cannot be ignored. Indian caste society is highly stratified and hierarchal. Caste
and gender are highly correlated. Though women of the upper caste are entitled
to certain privileges, they are yet not free from gender discrimination. It is
important to note that even these privileges are granted to them only when they
conform to the patriarchal order of society. Women of the lower caste are the
most disadvantaged lot. They are victims of both gender discrimination and caste
inequality. Thus Unit 4: Caste and Gender, tries to look into these concerns.
Social Stratification and Traditional anthropological and sociological literatures assign higher status to
Gender
tribal women compared to women in many non- tribal societies (caste society).
However, the conventional criteria for assessing tribal women’s status have been
questioned by present day scholars. Thus, an analysis of the situation of tribal
women through the gender perspective promises a better depiction of the lives
of tribal women. There is a need to relook at and re-define social realities of
women’s world through the gender perspective. Compared to the vastness of the
tribal world in India, very little has been done on studies related to women.
Through gender perspective a well integrated and well planned study programme
can generate valuable and relevant data base which can be used for the practical
benefits of women in tribal societies in India. It is with this view that Unit 5:
Women in Tribal Societies has been designed and will generate significant
knowledge on the role of women in tribal societies.

4
 Race and Gender
UNIT 1 RACE AND GENDER

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Race and Gender as Forms of Social Stratification
1.3 Race and Gender as Social Constructs
1.4 Origin of Prejudice and Discrimination Based on Race and Gender
1.5 Towards a Unified Understanding of Race and Gender
1.5.1 ‘Black’ Feminism
1.5.2 Ethnicity
1.6 Gender and Race Relations Exemplified
1.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After having read this unit, you should be able to:
 understand race and gender as forms of social stratification;
 understand the relation between race and gender inequalities and emergence
of black feminism;
 appreciate the social construction of race and gender inequalities;
 understand the relation between race, caste and gender; and
 understand the origin of prejudice based on race and gender.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
In order to understand the linkage between race and gender, it will be relevant to
discuss how gender studies grew as a separate area of study and what
circumstances led to the inclusion of race in gender studies. This introduction
will set the stage for deeper understanding of the two related concepts of race
and gender. Establishment of gender studies as a separate area of study is not
very old. It was in the latter half of 1960s that the discipline of gender studies got
established in universities as separate area of study. This was a logical outcome
of the feminist movement that aimed at demolishing the male hegemony and
ensuring equal opportunities for women in the backdrop of male dominance.
However, the feminist movement and its academic wing throughout its history
has not been a homogeneous movement. It can be broadly divided into two time
frames- i) from 1960s to 1980s and ii) from 1980s to the present. During the first
part, where it emerged and got consolidated as an important field of study,
feminism was concerned more with the difficulties and discrimination faced by
‘white’ women in the USA and Europe at the hands of male dominated society
5
Social Stratification and of the west. It was the period when three different forms of feminist movements
Gender
took birth. These were liberal feminism, marxist feminism and radical feminism.
Liberal feminism focused more on individual rights, equal opportunities, legal
and policy changes that are required to bring about a change in the status of
women. Marxist feminism was concerned with the impact of capitalism on gender
relations. Major issues raised under this branch was of the lower wages given to
women workforce as compared to men and the issue of unpaid domestic work
that women were obliged to do as primary care taker of the family. Radical
feminism on the other hand dealt with the fundamental question of patriarchy as
the basis of male dominance and women subjugation. Feminist anthropology as
a separate discipline also emerged during mid 1970s and was largely concerned
with the issues highlighted above since it got influenced- like other disciplines-
by the feminist movement (Maynard, 2005).

However, after around 20 years of its existence, it was realised that the entire
movement is highly skewed towards the experiences of women as a homogeneous
group. Women as a social category are not homogeneous. There are different
categories within this division that are based on race, religion, region, caste,
class, etc. and this gave rise to the idea of “difference” that provided a new
direction to gender studies. It was recognised that experiences of women are not
homogeneous and different categories of women stated above have different
experiences to share. It is in this backdrop that studies started with an aim to
understand how gender is related with other social categories like race, caste,
religion, region, etc. and how these categories influence and shape gender
experiences (Maynard, 2005; Afshar and Maynard, 2003).

1.2 RACE AND GENDER AS FORMS OF SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION
Race and gender as social constructs can be located against the backdrop of a
fundamental conception of social stratification. Every society in this world is
stratified on the basis of an underlying principle like sex, race, caste, income,
etc. Societies, whether modern or traditional have either some or a combination
of many factors that become a basis for stratification. The central idea in
stratification is that, it is based on a criterion or a number of criteria that runs as
a thread over which people are ranked or differentiated. Now, a fundamental
question arises why we call it social stratification and not stratification only?
The answer to this basic question could be found in the idea of social itself.
Simply stated, social is something which is neither individual, nor physical or
psychological. The underlying meaning of this assertion suggests that social
signifies collectivity. It signifies collective mind. In every society there are largely
two domains that operate- personal domain and social domain. The personal
domain signifies individual’s thoughts and action whereas the social domain
reflects the group’s thought and actions. Any system of stratification, when
recognised at the group and community level then it takes the shape of social.
Therefore when we talk about social stratification it means that the system of
stratification gets reflected in society and has obtained some collective recognition
and practice. In other words, a system of stratification can be called social only
when it is visible in the society. The concept of visibility is the hallmark of social
stratification. This visibility can be in terms of lifestyle followed by different
groups, their language, religion, physical features and people’s perception and
6
behaviour towards each other that is shaped by these differences. To give an Race and Gender
example race and gender are both based on differences that are visible at the
level of physical features and secondary sexual characteristics and on this basis
people’s behaviour is shaped towards different racial and gender categories.
Therefore, visibility can be defined at two levels- at the level of visible differences
and at the level of people’s perception and behavior pattern based on these
differences (Gupta, 1991).

The concept of social stratification envisages two fundamental categories that

help in defining social stratification viz., hierarchy and difference. These two
concepts of hierarchy and difference are fundamental to the concept of social
stratification. As you may have noticed around you that there are stark differences
between different people, groups and communities that may be based either on
their income, lifestyle, dressing pattern, sex, color of skin etc. Especially in the
Indian context, these differences are manifested in many other domains as well
like language, religion, caste etc. These differences, when arranged in the order
of hierarchy, or ranked, take the shape of social stratification. Famous sociologist
Pitrim Sorokin defined social stratification as “the differentiation of a given
population into hierarchically super-posed classes. It is manifested in the existence
of upper and lower layers. Its basis and very essence consists in an unequal
distribution of rights and privileges….social power and influences among the
member of a society (Sorokin, 1967).” This definition points towards an important
dimension of social stratification where it is perceived as a system in which
rights and privileges are unequally distributed. The idea of inequality is found
ingrained in the idea of social stratification and this is what we have been seeing
in often coated examples of social stratification viz., caste and class, where on
the basis of social differences based on birth, purity of body and wealth
accumulation, population is ranked into layers and people falling in different
layers have different sets of opportunities, privileges and rights. One important
point should be made clear that although these differences are neither supported
nor patronised by the state which is based on the principle of equality but still in
the social realm, differentiation and unequal distribution of rights and privileges
exist. The same logic can be extended to other forms of social stratification viz-
race and gender (Gupta, 1991).

After understanding the idea of social stratification, now we move towards

delineating the concept of race and gender in the backdrop of the great debate of
whether these categories are socially constructed or have a biological basis of
differentiation.

1.3 RACE AND GENDER AS SOCIAL

CONSTRUCTS
We all must have experienced that every human being is not morphologically
similar. There are differences in our body types (phenotypes) and genetic
constitution (genotype). People inhabiting different geographical areas exhibit
differences in some basic physical characteristics. What accounts for these
differences, is the basic question one needs to ask? “Through the process of
natural selection and genetic drift, populations inhabiting different geographic
regions will come to exhibit some differences in biological traits. When
differences within a species become sufficiently noticeable, biologists may classify
7
Social Stratification and different populations into different varieties or races.” (Ember and Ember, 2002)
Gender
On the basis of this definition there are broadly three racial types in the world-
Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid. However, anthropologists have classified
different populations into many groups. Even in the Indian sub-continent, we
may find different racial groups based on their physical traits. If the term would
have only accounted for these physical differences then there would have been
no controversy whatsoever. But the concept of physical variation is also attached
with value judgments of superiority and inferiority. A concept that has provided
important insights for the theory of origin of human species and their spread
across the world (Bhasin and Bhasin, 2002) has fallen into disrepute after its
association with judging human behavior based on physical traits.
A question which arises is- whether race is a biological or a social construct?
Anthropologists contend that the idea of race and racism is social in nature.
Racism is a belief that some groups of people are genetically superior and some
are inferior in basic human capabilities. Besides this, the idea of race is filled
with prejudice and bias. Is there any biological basis for such belief ? The answer
to this question is NO. It has been demonstrated, both historically and biologically
that all human beings have the same overall human potentials and capabilities.
People all across the world, irrespective of their different morphological features
have produced rich cultures. However, people still hold this belief that
morphological features (basically skin color) and human behavior is linked. This
kind of prejudice and ethnocentric bias is the basis of racial discrimination. People
who are believed to be belonging to an inferior race are discriminated against
their so-called superior counterparts. It is due to this reason that the concept of
race has become derogatory and the word itself elicits negative connotation.
Social stratification based on racial categories has also been studied by applying
the analogy of caste to understand the racial discrimination. Most influential
work in this area is that of Lloyd Warner who studied caste and class in the
United States and asserts that the discrimination and difference between the races
and classes in United States resemble caste characters as in the case of India.
Therefore ‘black’s and ‘white’s should be regarded more as castes rather than
races or classes. The notion of superiority and inferiority as seen in the case of
caste categories is similar to those seen in racial categories. There have been
some ethnographic studies in the United States during the 1950s that clearly
shows that ‘black’ and ‘white’ racial categories do not inter-marry. The basis of
caste perpetuation rests on the rule of endogamy that is marrying within one’s
own caste. This kind of consideration, when made evident in racial relations
gives it a shape of caste. Gunnar Myrdal in 1940s has contrasted between ‘black’
and ‘white’ racial categories with that of caste categories and came to the
conclusion that these so-called racial categories are basically caste categories
because they are more socially defined than having a base in biology (Beteille,
1991).
This debate of social vs. biological determinism of social stratification holds
legitimacy in the special cases of race and gender as forms of stratification systems.
Division of society on the basis of race and gender and the subsequent
discriminatory attitude towards the categories that are placed at a lower level in
the hierarchy is determined socially, although biological differences are quite
visible. Sometimes these biological differences can be arbitrarily linked to
characters of specific groups and hence provide a basis for discrimination. One
8 of the path-breaking researches in this direction that influenced feminist research
in anthropology during the 1970s was that of David M. Schneider. Schneider’s Race and Gender
book American Kinship- A Cultural Account dealt with the question that whether
kinship relations are determined by blood (biology) or culture? He argued that
kinship is rooted less in biology and more in culture. This argument was carried
forward to its logical conclusion by feminist anthropologists when they tried to
demonstrate that like kinship categories gender is also rooted more in culture
rather than in biology. Thus, a common thread that binds both race and gender is
the contention that discriminations based on these categories of social stratification
are determined more by social and cultural specificities rather than biological
truths (Brodkin, 2006). This assertion will help us in appreciating the fact that
social ranking of population according to these categories and interrelationship
between people of different rank within these categories are a product of social
structure and cultural values that reproduces such inequalities. There is no
biological basis for such inequalities.

1.4 ORIGIN OF PREJUDICE AND

DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RACE AND
GENDER
One might wonder why at all such discriminations and prejudices exist even
when we know what the facts are. Answer to this question is rather complex in
nature. One has to understand the ideological basis which historically advocated
such biased views that later became incorporated into public consciousness and
are hard to eliminate since other factors reinforce such beliefs. The growth of
evolutionism as an ideology during the nineteenth century is at the base of racial
discrimination. Evolutionists are largely divided into two camps- monogenesist’s
and polygenesist’s. Monogenesists were of the view that all human beings have
a common origin whereas polygenesists believed that different human groups
are indeed different species and they do not have common origin and thus they
differ from each other on certain basic premises of biology and culture. Even the
monogenesists were of the view that although origin is similar but few groups
are superior to others. This ideology however was considered to be liberal at that
point of time as compared to polygenesis. European travelers, missionaries and
soldiers who were travelling to different places came across such groups that
were stateless and having simple technology. This reinforced their superiority
paradigm and formed a basis for supporting and glorifying colonialism (Barnard,
2004).

Similarly, gender discrimination is supposed to have consolidated with the concept

of settled agriculture and private ownership of property (ownership of land mainly
in the name of male members of the society). It is contended that stages of hunting
and food gathering and shifting cultivation provided equal opportunity for both
male and female members. The idea of common property resources (CPR) is in
favour of gender equality. However with the emergence of settled and ploughing
cultivation that was also labor intensive, the position of women started
deteriorating and they were confined only to the domestic domain to look after
the children and prepare food for the males. The idea of private property
(ownership of land) and its transfer to the next generation gave rise to patriarchy
which later became the single most influential factor in female subordination
and suppression. “In settled agriculture, the man, as landowner, takes most
decisions concerning production and division of work. In shifting cultivation 9
Social Stratification and (and hunting, gathering) men and women share the burden….As a result, the
Gender
division of work is more gender-friendly in shifting cultivation than in settled
agriculture.” (Fernandes, 2006: 113,114). However, some scholars have criticised
this hypothesis and instead made a point that female subordination is seen even
before the advent of settled cultivation and private ownership of property. Gerda
Lerner one of the pioneers in the study of gender relations in her book- The
Creation of Patriarchy contends that control over the female sexuality and
reproductive capacity is seen even among the hunter gatherers and tribal societies.
Women were an object of exchange during wars and conflicts and this fact entails
their subordination and suppression (Lerner, 1986). However, one thing can be
said with some amount of surety that private ownership of property and settled
cultivation has brought in new dimensions of gender inequality and discrimination
when compared to common property resources and its implications on gender
relations. But still, this will remain a conjecture and one needs to dig in deeper
for better understanding of its origin.

These early factors set the stage for prejudice and discrimination, but many other
factors also contribute towards such practices. Researchers have pointed towards
the role of conflict between scarce resources and competing groups for such
resources as the basis for generating prejudice towards certain groups. Similarly,
stereotypes play an important role in generating prejudices. Stereotypes are the
beliefs that we have about the capabilities and characters of certain groups, they
are the dominant traits that characterise a group and can be accurate or inaccurate.
For example we consider women as warm, emotional, kind, sensitive, weak,
friendly, gentle, etc. and this forms our basis for behavior towards them. These
stereotypes help in the formation of glass ceiling above which certain groups are
prohibited to expand. Besides this the role of social learning plays very important
role in maintaining the prejudice. Through the process of social learning we
learn about people’s attitude towards certain groups and behaviors that should
be portrayed at different situations and while interacting with different groups
(Baron and Branscombe, 2006).

1.5 TOWARDS A UNIFIED UNDERSTANDING OF

RACE AND GENDER
Studies on race and gender started off separately. Before studying the interaction
between the two categories, research on these issues were independent from
each other and advancement of research in one area did not influence the research
in the other. Studies on race as a social category and a system of stratification
developed in the backdrop of racial discrimination of “black’s” by the “white’s.”
Such studies focused on the kind of interaction between the two categories of
‘black’ and ‘white’. Scholars such as W.E.B. Dubois, E. Franklin Frazier, Robert
E. Park and Louis Wirth wrote extensively between 1920s to 1950s on the issue
of race relations and interactions (Maynard, 2003). In the field of anthropology,
with the advent of urban anthropology as a separate discipline, studies on
immigrants to urban settlement began and within this scholars tried to understand
race relations between the racially different immigrants. The entire process of
colonisation was based on the concept of racial superiority and ‘‘white’ man’s
burden to civilize the world.’ Historical records provide a testimony to such
racial discriminations and such historical accounts also formed a large part of
the literature on race. But all these accounts whether historical, anthropological
10
and sociological were confined largely and towards the male members of the Race and Gender
society and they grossly neglected the domestic domain or the presence of women
in the public domain, where the forces of patriarchy has traditionally oppressed
the “second sex.” Similarly, gender studies were carried out within the framework
of universalised notion of suppression of women as a homogeneous category by
the males. Sometimes, however a comparison was made between the gender
relations among the tribal societies with the gender relations among the non-
tribal societies where it was contended that with the destruction of community
ownership of property and the idea of common property resources (CPR) and
with the advent of the concept of eminent domain (private property) the egalitarian
character of gender relations was also destroyed which was once supposed to be
the hallmark of tribal societies. However the notion of race as a variable in gender
relations did not find much ground before 1980s.

The idea of understanding difference in experience across women of different

racial backgrounds had some bearing on methodological issues in conducting
research. The branch of study which is now established as a separate discipline
of gender studies had to bring a shift in its research methodology. The whole
issue of ‘difference in experiences’ called for a qualitative research method based
on collection of diverse narratives and analysing these narratives using ‘content
analysis’ and ‘grounded theory.’ The theoretical tradition that guided such research
can be found in post-modernism. This theoretical tradition emerged as a school
of thought based on the premise that there cannot be single theory to understand
diverse human experiences. Post-modernists were basically anti-foundational in
their approach and challenged the grand macro-theories like Marxism for being
very generalising and thus missing out at nuances of diverse voices. Post-
modernists emphasise at deconstructing the nature of gender oppression and
how race acts and interacts with gender to produce an identity which becomes
highly contested (Maynard, 2005).

The question of identity, its formation and persistence provides another analytical
tool to understand the nature of interaction between race and gender. The concept
of identity emanates from a simple question that ‘who am I’ or ‘who are we’.
Every one of us has a consciousness of self and being part of a social group. This
forms our self identity and social identity. Self is largely made up of one’s
personality traits which are different from other individuals, however a social
identity is formed after recognition of the fact that one belongs to a social group.
Race and gender both are social categories which reproduce social groups whose
members are aware that they are different from others or are made aware by
attitudes people portray about such groups that generate a feeling of alienation
among members of such groups that are oppressed and subordinated at various
levels and occasions. For example a ‘black’ woman and a ‘black’ man have an
identity different from that of a ‘white’ woman and a ‘white’ man. Such difference
in identities is produced as a result of different social positions that are accorded
to people belonging to different groups. Such identities are not only formed but
they persist and gets perpetuated generation after generation through the process
of socialisation. A ‘black’ girl will be socialised in an environment where she
grows up seeing attitude and behavior of people towards her mother and such
experiences are then internalised and hence transferred across generations.
Similarly, the culture of oppression also gets perpetuated by internalising
prejudices and discriminatory attitudes towards ‘black’ women and ‘black’ men
(Afshar and Maynard, 2003).
11
Social Stratification and 1.5.1 ‘Black’ Feminism
Gender
The emergence of research on perspectives relating to race and gender began
with the criticism of ‘white’ feminism at the hands of ‘black’ feminist scholars.
‘Black’ feminist scholars contended that early feminism was overburdened with
experiences of ‘white’ women which to a large extent were used in formulating
hypothesis and theories. This gave rise to an entire body of literature that largely
viewed gender through the lens of ‘white’ women. With this realisation, a new
scholarly tradition and movement began that gave rise to the study of
interrelationship between race and gender. Such studies focused on how race
relationships are gendered. However, during its formative year’s research largely
focused on how race add to the experience of subordination among women. It
was considered as if race simply adds on to the pre-existing subordinate position
of women. This argument however later got elaborated to understand the
qualitative difference in experiences of ‘black’ women and not just simple addition
of race to gender oppression.

One of the pioneers in the field of ‘black’ feminism is Patricia Hill Collins who
generated a great amount of data through research on the issue relating to race
and gender. She focused on understanding how ‘black’ women became an object
of oppression in almost every domain of public and private life. The underlining
theme that binds race and gender together is the idea of social injustice and
inequality. Research, particularly by ‘black’ feminist scholars, has pointed towards
such inequality and injustice that needs to be highlighted and resolved for peaceful
co-existence and a just world. One point needs to be understood clearly that the
oppression and discrimination based on race and gender is not a discrete
phenomenon rather such oppression and discrimination has been institutionalised.
This means that the inequality is ingrained into the social structure and gets
reflected at every stage. ‘Black’ women as a category have been a victim of
racism in everyday situations like in workplace, stores, school, housing and daily
social interactions. If understood through the vulnerability paradigm then it can
be said that being ‘black’ and being a woman makes a person even more vulnerable
against the forces of oppression and a kind of double jeopardy defines the situation.
Historically it can be understood in terms of ‘white’ supremacy and male
superiority that has been the norm and ‘black’ women have struggled to survive
in such a contradictory and conflicting situation (Collins, 2000).

1.5.2 Ethnicity
The concept of race and ethnicity are sometimes used as synonyms but they
differ when used within the academic discourse. Race can be defined in terms of
visible physiological differences like skin color and body type, whereas when
we talk of ethnicity then other cultural attributes like dress, language, lifestyle
etc takes the center stage and thus a group of people showing similarities on
these attributes is defined as an ethnic group. It is sometimes preferred to use
ethnic group instead of race because of its integrating notion, like we often talk
about multi-ethnic societies and multi-culturalism which gives importance to
pluralism and co-existence. The concept of race and gender has been understood
in terms of African ‘black’ woman and African-American woman and one will
find good amount of literature on ‘black’ feminism but racial categories are not
only understood in terms of ‘white’ and ‘black’ (that is Caucasoid and Negroid).
There are other racial categories like Mongoloids that form not only a distinct
12
racial category but a separate ethnic group as well with their own culture and
lifestyle. Likewise there can be other ethnic categories like Muslim women, Indian Race and Gender
women, etc who have distinct cultural values and mores. The concept of ethnicity
adds dynamism to the concept of race and hence opens up a wide range of
possibilities to understand gender in it. Ethnicity provides a whole range of
variables that can interact with gender like language, territory, culture etc. and
thus can be analysed to understand the dynamics between race and gender or
ethnicity and gender (Maynard, 2003).

1.6 GENDER AND RACE RELATIONS

EXEMPLIFIED
Race and gender together interact to produce such situations where subjugation,
oppression and subordination become key issues that need to be addressed. It
has been documented and studies mainly by ‘black’ feminist scholars that ‘black’
women have always been on the receiving end both at the workplace and family.
Issues related with their discrimination is highlighted when we underscore the
fact that we often find them working at low wages and doing jobs that are to
some extent not regarded as dignified and worth doing by ‘white’ females.
Particularly in the United States where much of the work on ‘black’ feminism
has taken place, ‘black’ women have always been objects of exploitation, being
exploited at the hands of ‘white’ males and females alike. Studies have been
conducted mainly at two sites that are considered to be important in understanding
race and gender relations viz., paid domestic labor and unpaid family work. It
has been found in both the cases black women are expected to work like mules
without complaining to anyone. A majority of black women are employed as
paid domestic workers, but their job profiles are looked down upon and are
exploited due to lack of organisation in such employment sectors. It has been a
central theme in understanding the relation between race and gender that at
workplace black women are being victimised as mules and this has got ingrained
into their psyche which is passed on to future generations by oral histories.
Narratives and oral histories play an important role in the construction of prejudice
and thus in the formation of a stressful situation among the victims. Such
narratives have also became part of the popular culture and are depicted time
and again through films and theatre which apart from bringing out the
discriminatory attitude, also helps to organise women groups against common
enemy and for equality and their rights. Studies among the domestic workers in
South Africa, where black women form a major chunk of such work force, has
revealed that they are also victims of worst form of violence (Collins, 2000).

Race and gender relations are not restricted to the United Sates alone but examples
can also be cited from our homeland that is India where although racial
discrimination is not at the center of affairs but examples that relate to such
discriminatory attitudes do get reflected. If one looks at the historical records
then one would find that the varna model of social stratification came with the
coming of Aryans from the northwest region of the Indian sub-continent. The
word varna itself denotes color as in ‘gaur varna’ (white color) and ‘shyama
varna’ (black color). It has been argued that the Aryans were of gaur varna and
the indigenous people of India were of shyama varna. This led Aryans to marry
within their varna and thus such an endogamy was based on color. Even, the
word caste is derived from the Portugese word Casta which means race or descent
(Kakar and Kakar, 2007). Again with the advent of British rule in India the Indian
13
Social Stratification and population came in contact with people who later became their ‘white masters.’
Gender
As far as gender relations with race is concerned, even today people place great
emphasis on their brides being fair in complexion. You can pick-up the
matrimonial column of any newspaper and you will get to know that how much
emphasis is put on the bride being fair. Even the corporate sector has exploited
this tendency and is promoting products that ensure fairness of skin color. This
is an example where gender is located against the backdrop of expected skin
color for better job opportunities and marriage and fairness can ensure an overall
positive response from the people around them. “Evidence of the pan-Indian
preference for fair skin and a denigration bordering on scorn for the dark-skinned
is all around us…Television commercials for ‘Fair and Lovely’ cream for
women…..the natural equation of light skin with nobility, beauty and high birth
in proverbs, tales and legends; matrimonial in newspaper and on internet websites
specifying ‘fair’ brides-all these are accepted as being in the natural order of
things.” (Kakar and Kakar, 2007: 36). Racism by definition is a belief that some
groups are superior and some are inferior by virtue of their birth and in India
although racism does not exist consciously (as it is in US and Europe) but
unconsciously, discrimination which is the hallmark of racism can be seen and
gender can be related with it.

Besides colour other examples from India itself exhibit where females of different
racial stock are considered to be more vulnerable. There have been incidents
where women have reported cases of sexual exploitation and eve-teasing which
is related to a mistaken perception that women of certain area, group and racial
character are morally weak and easy targets. Such behavior can be explained in
terms of in-group and out-group feeling that is generated based on physiognomic
traits and hence a perception that people of out-group possess negative traits
whereas in-group people possess positive traits. However, this particular example
comes closer to ethnicity and gender relationship.

Andre Beteille in his essay on race, caste and gender explains that how caste and
racial discriminations can be situated against gender. There have been studies
that compare caste with race which have already been mentioned earlier. However,
we must now see that how gender is located within this matrix. It has been
contended that caste is an endogamous group and inter-caste marriages are not
allowed or looked down upon (however, this situation has changed in the past
decade or so but still one can hear cases of honour killings) but there are two
forms of marriage that are documented- anuloma and pratiloma. Anuloma
marriage is a union of upper caste male with a lower caste female which to some
extent is permissible but pratiloma is a union between a lower caste male with
an upper caste female which is condemned in strongest possible way. These
examples indicate that there is a control over the female sexuality and fertility.
Purity of female sexuality is of utmost importance to the males and upper caste
males want to protect it. This argument has been extended to understand race
and gender relations. In racial terms a white male can marry a white female and
also sometimes a black female. On the other hand a black male has a restricted
choice over only to the black female. This example is quite similar to the anuloma
and pratiloma form of marriage in caste groups. However the situation is changing
and has changed considerably over the past decades but still this analysis provides
an important tool to understand the relationship between race and gender (Beteille,
1991).
14
Erica Wheeler in her study has observed and experienced that mental health Race and Gender
facilities needs to be shifted towards the black minority communities, especially
women who find it difficult to properly use these services largely provided by
‘whites’. She contends that this shift can only happen when a consciousness of a
kind will develop among the black minority community to assert their rights of
equality and dignity. This example points towards an important implication of
studies on race and gender relations that they lead to some form of activism and
political mobilisation among the victims of high-handedness of the dominant
‘white-male’ culture (Wheeler, 2003).

Activity
Create a community on your Facebook account for discussions on race and
gender in the public domain. You can also share your views, poems, films,
animations that depicts the relation between race and gender categories.

1.7 SUMMARY
In a nut-shell, it can be said that race and gender are social categories that can be
defined in the context of societies that are stratified based on race and gender.
These categories also interact and are interrelated with each other through the
idea of ‘difference’. This idea has given rise to a separate branch of study by the
name- ‘black feminism’ which deals with the experiences of racially colored
women. The concept of social justice, equality and peaceful co-existence will
remain a casualty if such kinds of inequalities, prejudices and discriminations
will be alive. It should be our collective effort to understand and work against
such forces that take us towards such kinds of discriminatory attitudes. The
following poetic expression summarises the interaction of race and gender in a
very succinct and apt manner. It brings out the suffering and pain of women
working in the unorganised domestic sector.

We are called girls. We are called maids.

It is like we are small.
It is like we are children.

We are told what to do

We are told what to say
We are told what to think
We are told what to wear.
We are women. We are mothers.

Our bodies are strong from hard work.

Our hearts are big from suffering.

We struggle against hunger.

We struggle against poverty.
We struggle against sickness.
We struggle against suffering.
We are women. We are mothers.
15
Social Stratification and Too much work can break our bodies.
Gender
Too much suffering can break our hearts.

Our problem is that we live alone.

Our problem is that we work alone.
Our problem is that we suffer alone.

But we find friendship if we meet together.

And we find answers if we talk together.
And we find strength if we work together.
And we find hope if we stand together.
(Thula Baba, Raven 1987)1
Note
1
Quoted by Bunie M.Matlanyane Sexwale in her paper on Violence against women in
South Africa bringing out the plight of black women engaged in domestic work and
being victims of violence. RAVEN PRESS (1987) Thula Baba, Johannesburg.

References
Afshar H. and Maynard M.2003. ‘The Dynamics of Race and Gender’. Halen
Afshar and Mary maynard (ed). The Dynamics of Race and Gender: Some
Feminist Interventions. London: Taylor and Francis. Pp 1-6

Barnard A. 2004. History and Theory in Anthropology. UK: Cambridge University

Press.

Baron R. A. and Branscombe N. R. 2006. Social Psychology. Delhi: Pearson.

Beteille A. 1991. Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative

Perspective. London: Athlone.

Bhasin M.K. and Bhasin V. 2002. India: An Anthropological Outline. Delhi:

Kamla-Raj.

Brodkin K. 2006. ‘Towards a Unified Theory of Class, Race and Gender’. Ellen
Lewin (ed.) Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. UK: Blackwell. Pp 129-146

Ember C.R., Ember M. and Peregrine P.N. 2002. Anthropology. Delhi: Pearson.

Fernandes W. 2006. ‘Development Induced Displacement and Tribal Women’.

Govind Chandra Rath (ed.) Tribal Development in India: The Contemporary
Debate. New Delhi: Sage. Pp 112-130

Gupta D. 1991. ‘Hierarchy and Difference: An Introduction’. Dipankar Gupta

(ed.) Social Stratification. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pp 1-22

Hill Collins P. 2000. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge.

Kakar S. and Kakar K. 2007. The Indians: Portrait of a People. New Delhi:
Penguin.

Lerner G. 1986. The Creation of Patriarchy. UK: Oxford University Press.

16
Maynard M. 2005. ‘Women’s Studies’. Philomena Essed, David Theo Goldberg Race and Gender
and Audrey Kobayashi (eds.) A Companion to Gender Studies. UK: Blackwell.
Pp 29-39

Maynard M. 2003. ‘Race, Gender and the Concept of Difference in Feminist

Thought’. Halen Afshar and Mary Maynard (ed.) The Dynamics of Race and
Gender: Some Feminist Interventions. London:Taylor and Francis. Pp 9-25

Sexwale B.M.M. 2003. ‘Violence Against Women: Experiences of South African

Domestic Workers’. Halen Afshar and Mary Maynard (ed.) The Dynamics of
Race and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions. London: Taylor and Francis. Pp
196-221.

Sorokin P. 1967. ‘Social Stratification’. T. Parsons, E. Shils, K.D. Naeghele and

J.R. Pitts (eds.) Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociology. Vol. 1.
Free Press. Glencoe

Wheeler E. 2003. ‘Doing Black Mental Health Research: Observations and

Experiences’. Halen Afshar and Mary Maynard (ed.) The Dynamics of Race and
Gender: Some Feminist Interventions. London: Taylor and Francis. Pp 41-62.

Suggested Reading
Afshar H. and Maynard M. (ed.). 2003. The Dynamics of Race and Gender:
Some Feminist Interventions. London:Taylor and Francis.

Hill Collins P. 2000. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge.

Lewin E. (ed.). 2006. Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. UK: Blackwell.

Sample Questions
1) How do race and gender inequalities interrelate with each other?
2) Discuss the origin and perpetuation of race and gender inequalities.
3) Race and gender are social constructs. Explain.
4) Explain how race, caste and gender are interrelated.
5) Race and gender are forms of social stratification. Elaborate on this statement.

17
Social Stratification and
Gender UNIT 2 CLASS AND GENDER

Contents
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Social Stratification
2.3 Class System
2.3.1 Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883)
2.3.2 Max Weber (1864-1920)
2.4 Gender
2.4.1 Emergence of Women’s Movement
2.5 Class and Gender
2.5.1 Assumption of Classical Class Analysis and Gender
2.5.1.1 Unit of Analysis to Define Class
2.5.1.2 Breadwinner Model
2.5.1.3 Women Employment and Definition of Class
2.5.1.4 Division of Labour at Household
2.6 Feminism and Perspective on Class and Gender
2.6.1 Radical Feminism
2.6.2 Material Feminism: Marxist Feminism
2.6.2.1 Domestic Labour Debates
2.6.2.1a Use-Value Verses Exchange Value
2.6.2.1b Domestic Mode of Production
2.6.2.1c Sex as Class
2.6.3 Dual-system Theory
2.7 Culture and Understanding of Class and Gender
2.8 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 understand how the two concepts, class and gender are positioned in social
inequality and are entangled with each other;

 elucidate the contribution of different feminist perspectives in comprehending

the class and gender relation;

 critically analyse Marxist feminism by highlighting its limitations and

expounding on domestic division of labour debates for exploring the
intertwining between class and gender; and

 contemplate on other dimensions, apart from economist and structuralist, of

women’s oppression in the class society.

18
 Class and Gender
2.1 INTRODUCTION
This unit deals with the notion of social stratification and how class as a system
contributes to the understanding and theorisation of social inequality in societies.
In doing so, this unit attempts to provide the analytical understanding of class
and contemplation on it by Karl Marx and Max Weber. Before describing the
converging ground in class and gender relation, attempt has been made to engage
with the word ‘gender’ as a differentiating concept, which separates it from the
word ‘sex’ by employing various debates in this context. Women’s movements
expressed opposition on varieties of oppressions acting against women in every
society however class oppression against women was understood inadequately
before 1960s. Considering the hindrances, this unit divulges the reasons for the
omission of gender from the classic class analysis and the contribution of feminism
and it perspectives in defining women’s oppression, in general and with respect
to class analysis, in particular. There are four feminist perspectives, namely, radical
feminism, material feminism (Marxist feminism), dual system theory and liberal
feminism. Out of these perspectives material feminism contributes to the class
and gender question as oppression due to capitalist mode of production. Marx’s
analysis of class repudiates class relations and the economic exploitation of the
women in the family, which Benston, Delphy and Firestone discuss at length in
the unit’s section on Domestic Division of Labour. Lastly, this unit identifies
culture as the key element in discursive approaches, which identifies the limitation
of Marxism by interpreting the economy through the lens of culture. Theoretical
development by Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘Capital’ with respect of intrusion
of culture in class and gender relation has also been discussed. Thus, this unit
represents a brief yet complete theoretical journey of the class and gender relation
traversed from Marx and Weber to Bourdieu.

2.2 SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Egalitarianism is the much-coveted concept that envisages society free from
exploitations, oppressions, hierarchies, poverty, injustices and inequalities. It
aspires to percolate this description in social reality. But it is merely a dream, as
social inequality has inherently been existing from the simplest to the most
complex societies. At the outset, it is important to define the distinction between
social inequality and social stratification. Social inequality refers to the existence
of socially created inequalities whereas, social stratification refers to a system
by which categories of people in society are ranked in a hierarchy, usually in
terms of the amount of power, prestige and wealth their members possess. Thus,
social stratification is a particular form of social inequality.

Box
Social versus Natural inequalities: Natural Inequalities refer to those
inequalities which are established by nature. For example difference in
age and sex, colour of skin, bodily strength. ‘By comparison, socially
created inequality ‘consists of the different privileges which some men
enjoy to the prejudice of others, such as that of being more rich, more
honored, more powerful’ (Bottomore, 1956)

19
Social Stratification and Talcott Parsons, an American sociologist, defined social stratification as the
Gender
“differential ranking of human individuals who compose a given social system
and their treatment as superior or inferior relative to one other in certain socially
important respect”. Four principles are identified which help explain why social
stratification exists. First, social stratification is a characteristic of society and
not merely of individuals. Second, social stratification is universal but variable.
Third, it persists over generations. And, fourth, it is supported by patterns of
belief.

Class system is a form of social stratification which is said to be based on the

degree of social mobility. Class systems are systems of social stratification based
on individual achievement. Individual ability, promoted by open social mobility,
is critical to this system. Class system is represented by industrial societies which
is associated with high levels of migration to cities, democratic principles, and
high immigration rates.

2.3 CLASS SYSTEM

It was in the seventeenth century that the word ‘class’ entered the English language
for the first time. Thomas Blount, a seventeenth-century Catholic, recorded it in
his dictionary, Glossographia (1965), where it is defined as ‘a ship, or navy, an
order or distribution of people according to several degrees. The shift from ‘order’
or ‘station’ to ‘class’ in social sciences can be understood as a dominant influence
of the success of natural sciences. In biology the word ‘class’ assumed an equality
between the different types of animals and seen as a law of nature whereas in
social description it is grafted on the existing divisions and seen as an act of
history. Another explanation for the entry of ‘class’ into the English language in
the mid-seventeenth century is that this was a decisive moment in the development
of capitalism. Along with, the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie (owners of means
of production) showed that social position was no longer dependent on birth but
effort. The word ‘class’, in other words, is linked to fundamental changes in the
economy and to their effect on social relations. In brief, the older vocabulary of
‘order’ or ‘station’ (derived from the Latin stare, to stand) projected an essentially
harmonious view of society whereas the new idiom of class was an expression
of social conflict.

2.3.1 Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883)

Marxism for the first time gave a scientific explanation of the essence of classes,
the reasons for emergence and the ways of its abolition. Marx called the class
who owned the means of production the bourgeoisie and the class who sold their
labour powers the proletariat. He associated the existence of classes with specific
historical phases of development of social production. These are Primitive
Communism, Ancient Society, Feudal Society and Capitalist Society.

Marx scientifically proved the historically transient nature of class divided

societies and showed why and when class divided society will be abolished by a
classless society. Marx convincingly proved that capitalist society is the last society
in human history with antagonistic classes. The path leading to classless society,
he maintained, lies through the proletariat’s class struggle against all forms of
oppressions to protect the interests of all working people. Marx introduced
topographical metaphor of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ in which the economic
20
foundations of a society refer to ‘base’ for determining ‘superstructure’ of a society, Class and Gender
that is, politics, laws, culture and education which correspond to definite forms
of social consciousness. Marx’s concept of class struggle was based on his analysis
of the bourgeoisie and proletariat in industrial society and therefore, one has to
be careful about applying it to earlier periods.

Society Economy
Primitive communism Hunting and gathering economy – a subsistence
(Classless Society) economy where production is to meet basic
survival needs. Every member was both
producer and owner as it is based on community
ownership. Division into masters and slaves.
(Classes emerge when productive capacity
expands beyond the level of subsistence)
Feudal Society (Class Society) Trading and mercantile economy. Emergence
of concept of private property. Division into
lords and serfs
Capitalist Society (Class Society) Industrialisation. Division into bourgeoisie and
proletariat.

Marx distinguished between a ‘class in itself’ and a ‘class for itself’. A class in
itself is simply a social group whose members share the same relationship to the
forces of production. Marx argues that a social group only fully becomes a class
when it becomes a class for itself which can only happen through class
consciousness and class solidarity as these two components assist members to
realise the strength of their collective action to overthrow the control of the ruling
class. Marx and Engels reiterated that the working class as the main social force
is capable of eliminating the capitalist system and creating a new, classless society
free of exploitation.

Box
A social group is a collection of people which interact with each other and
share similar characteristics and a sense of unity. For example, friends,
peers, neighbors, classmates, sororities, fraternities etc.
A social category is a collection of people who do not interact but who
share similar characteristics. For example, men, women, and the elderly.
A social category can become a social group when the members in the
category interact with each other and identify themselves as members of
the group.
In contrast, a social aggregate is a collection of people who are in the
same place, but who do not interact or share characteristics. For example,
a mob.

2.3.2 Max Weber (1864-1920)

The German sociologist Max Weber is responsible for one of the most important
developments in stratification theory, there are similarities and differences
between Marx and Weber’s approaches. Like Marx, Weber sees class in economic
terms. Marx saw class divisions as the most important source of social conflict.
21
Social Stratification and Weber’s analysis of class is similar to Marx’s, but he discusses class in the context
Gender
of social stratification more generally. The emphasis in Weber’s definition of
class falls not on production but on the constraints operating on a person’s ability
to earn a high income, to purchase high quality goods and to enjoy enhanced
‘personal life experiences’ (Weber, 1948 & 1993). He defines class as one
dimension of the social structure.

Weber further argues, ‘class situation is ultimately market situation’ (ibid.)

whereas status is defined in terms of honor or prestige; hence it is perfectly
possible for a person working in a low paid job but holding a high prestige
factor, like a priest, and vice versa. Weber writes that the class ‘are stratified
according to their relations to production and acquisition of goods’ whereas the
status’ are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as
represented by special style of life (ibid.). These styles of life give status groups
a strong sense of their own identity and unify them in contrast to classes where
one problem is absence of either tangible or intangible symbolic of class
consciousness, how it arises and what forms it takes. In short, the concept of
status is premised on social stability due to the existence of sense of identity
attached with common life style and consumption. Moreover, status is a more
accurate description of social division before the term ‘class’ was introduced in
the mid-seventeenth century. It does not mean that economic divisions did not
exist, but that we cannot understand them in terms of Marxist conception of
class.

2.4 GENDER
Most people agree that both the natural and the social shape us as individuals but
some suggest that the natural is more important while others argue that social
factors are most influential in making us who we are. In this context, it is important
to understand what differentiates sex from gender. Anna Oakley (1972) in the
early 1970s, defined sex as biological difference between males and females
while gender as socially produced difference between being feminine and being
masculine. She extended her ideas by engaging the concept of socialisation to
try to understand how gender is learned and how femininity and masculinity are
socially constructed. The word gender was borrowed from the social psychologist,
Robert Stoller who worked on individuals with ambiguous genital sex (Jackson,
1998). Oakley adapted the term to refer to the social classifications of ‘masculine’
and ‘feminine’ (Oakley, 1985). Oakley (1972) assumes that sex (biological
difference) is the basis of gender distinctions but disputes that biology is destiny.
It is through social institution, the message about how to be a boy and how to be
a girl is communicated.

Social environments and circumstances determine the meaning of being a woman

(or man). In locating and understanding the life of an individual (either man or
woman) on this basis, anthropologists often use cultural comparison. The classic
anthropological study of differences between women and men is Margaret Mead’s
(1962/1950) Male and Female, where she argued that whatever men do in
particular culture is always valued more than what women do. Her early work
on Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (Mead 1963/1935) argued
that there was a range of different meanings of femininity and masculinity in
different cultures. The Tchambuli tribe in New Guinea considers ‘masculine’
22
what most westerners regard as ‘feminine’. In that tribe Mead observed that it is Class and Gender
the men who adorn themselves. Tchambuli women are dominant partners and
men are emotionally dependent on them. Mead noted that the Arapesh of New
Guinea regards both the women and men as ‘inherently gentle, responsive and
co-operative’ (Mead, 1963/1935).

It is important to recognise that the very tendency to categorise femininity and

masculinity as opposite and mutually exclusive categories might be a western
way of thinking. There are indeed cultures where more than two categories of
sex/gender exist (Herdt, 1994).

2.4.1 Emergence of Women’s Movement

Women have always protested against their oppression in some way, and
individual writers and thinkers throughout the ages have often devoted their
attention to women’s plight; but it was only in the nineteenth century that women
began to organise themselves in order to fight for the emancipation of the female
sex as a whole. The ideological origins of feminism must be sought in the
eighteenth-century intellectual ‘Enlightenment’. The thinkers of the
Enlightenment rejected the view that revelation from God was the source of all
knowledge.

Many of the leading philosophers of the late eighteenth century devoted at least
some attention to the question of women, marriage and the family. The German
writer Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel provides a good example. Hippel produced
a book, entitled On the Civil Improvement of Women (1794) which besides being
regarded as the beginning of the literary debate on women’s place in society in
Germany also has a more general interest and significance. The feminists in the
French Revolution were really a marginal phenomenon. The mass of women
who participated in the great bread riots and street battles of the revolution had
no time to think of the theories of enlightenment feminism; they were too busy
simply trying to feed themselves and their families. Feminism remained a
predominantly literary phenomenon in France for many decades.

Women’s struggle to improve their position have a long history, there have been
two periods of particularly noticeable mass activity, which are referred to as the
first wave and the second wave of feminism. The first wave in the nineteenth
century was principally a liberal call for women’s inclusion within public life - a
demand for the vote and for entry to university and the professions (Rendall,
1985).

The second wave from the 1960s until the early 1980s in Paris arguably had a
more revolutionary agenda and contained the more recent debates about
representing gendered interests. Second wave feminism began to emerge in about
1968 as masses of women began struggling for ‘liberation’ from patriarchal
dominance. The feminists of second-wave questioned divisions between private
and public spheres, highlighted the political nature of relations between women
and men, experimented with new political processes and re-wrote political
agendas to attend to issues they thought central to women (Holmes, 1999).

There were variety of demands made by feminist groups with different ideas and
priorities, but there was considerable common ground. Some of these demands
could be summarised as follows: equal pay; equal education and opportunity,
23
Social Stratification and twenty-four hour childcare, free access to contraception and abortion. The
Gender
movement was an amazing collection of women of different classes, ethnic
groups, ages, sexualities and so on.

In many respects the second-wave feminist movement, as with the first wave,
was based on the idea that women shared a common, disadvantaged social
position; that as women they had similar experience of being treated as second-
class citizens. Therefore their key identity was of a woman. Political unity between
women was possible if they recognised this common identity and their shared
oppression.

Nancy Hartsock (1998) is well known for her intellectual rendering of this
common early second-wave position, albeit she posits Marxist arguments for
why women share common experiences, whereas within political activism
feminists tended to refer rather more vaguely to women’s shared oppression
under patriarchy. She believes there is a feminist standpoint, which emerges
because women share a worldview based on their common material social
position. In this extension of Marxian theory she proposes that women’s
reproductive activity, or close relation to that activity, makes them critical of
patriarchy as partial and overly abstract, and relations within patriarchy as lacking
connection. Because women are likely to be concerned with caring for others-
be it children, husbands or elders, they are aware of the limitations of patriarchy’s
emphasis on individuals and competition. However, this does assume that all
women are similarly involved in, or connected to, the reproductive activities of
caring. Even if women do share similar experiences do they necessarily share
the same ideas about how to address politically those experiences?

Ever since women have questioned their social position they have had varying
ideas about what women want and need. This does not mean that women do not
know what they want but that there are many different kinds of women, who
have differing degrees and types of privilege or disadvantage according to their
age, class, ethnicity, sexuality, region, religion and so on. A mass movement
seemed to rely on unity, but there was also a need to have respect for difference
among women.

2.5 CLASS AND GENDER

Different forms of inequality have often been separated out because it is extremely
difficult to try to think through how inequality may be simultaneously gendered,
racial, and classed. Class is the main concept used within anthropology to theorise
social inequality. Class analysis has dealt with three main issues. Firstly, the
determination of the distinction between class categories and the allocation of
people to them; secondly the understanding of mobility between classes and
thirdly the implications of class position and class mobility for political, class,
action and social consciousness.

Traditionally class analysis has ignored gender relations. In the 1960s, 1970s
and early 1980s most writers on class ignored gender relations (Beteille, 1977;
Lockwood, Goldthrope et al, 1969; Blackburn and Mann, 1979; Stewart, Prandy
and Blackburn, 1980; Goldthrope, 1980). They rarely felt it necessary to establish
the reasons for this, at best using resource constraints, in a footnote, to justify an
all-male sample (Blackburn and Mann, 1979). The first full defense of the
24
omission of gender was presented by Goldthrope in 1983. This approach had Class and Gender
faced numerous criticisms of class theory for its sexist bias (Acker, 1973; Delphy,
1984; Garnsey, 1978; Murgatroyd, 1982; Newby, 1982; West, 1978). Goldthorpe
substantiates his position on gender using data from the Oxford Mobility Survey.

2.5.1 Assumption of Classical Class Analysis and Gender

Classic class analysis had made several invalid assumptions when categorising
women (Acker, 1998/1973: 22). We discuss each in detail below in the following
four paragraphs.

2.5.1.1 Unit of Analysis to Define Class

In the classic class analysis the family as the unit for classifying people’s class is
used. But it ignores class difference between women and men that might occur
within the families. Goldthorpe’s defense for women’s omission from class
analysis is associated with classic class analysis as he argues that women can be
ignored because the family, not the individual, is the basic unit of social
stratification. He suggests that in all important respects members of a family
share the same life chances. But this stand of the classic class analysis raises
questions; for example, a bank executive (female) may marry a government
teacher (male). How then can the class of the resulting family be accurately
determined? Or a husband may lose his job soon after marriage and a wife
continues with her occupation then how the class of the resulting family can be
defined. Other types of household composition include: single –parent
households, usually headed by women; single-person households; unemployed
households in which no one has paid work. Further the proposition of traditional
households is steadily declining.

So it is needed to argue that why in most cases the husband’s class (occupational
earning) was thought to determine the class of the unit (Acher, 1998/1973). In
order to overcome these difficulties the conventionalists accepted the woman as
the head of household in the absence of man in the family and were opened to
introduce a second method of classification of women, so that women can oscillate
between having a class position in their own right determined by their employment
and having their class position determined by their husband when they have one.
This oscillation reduces the robustness of class analysis.

2.5.1.2 Breadwinner Model

Class position is derived from the occupational position of a person’s job.
According to Goldthorpe absence of mention of gender in classic class analysis
is because of the position of the women is determined by that of the man with
whom they live, either husband or father. He argues further that the position of
the family is determined by that of the breadwinner which is mostly male. He
suggests that women do not bring resources of any significance to the family so
do not need to be taken into account in determining the class status of the family
unit. This assumption is based on a male breadwinner/ female housewife model
of the family that has always been largely restricted to middle class families able
to survive on a single wage. Besides this, significant numbers of people do not
live in traditional nuclear families of the male breadwinner, wife and children
model (Acker, 1973). This model does not apply to working class families where
women have always engaged in paid work or to more financially comfortable
25
Social Stratification and families where women have wished to work. In some cases where women work,
Gender
their status may be higher than their husband’s or partner’s (McRae, 1986). Britten
and Heath (1983) argue that households derive their class position from the
employment of both husband and wife, not husband alone. Britain cross-class
families are of the commonest type where the spouses have jobs in different
class categories. For example a skilled manual worker male, who is classified as
working class, is married to female routine white-collar worker, who is classified
as middle class. This new classification of household will take more time to
grow and merge in Indian society, which is a complex amalgamation of caste
and class.

2.5.1.3 Women Employment and Definition of Class

Women’s employment is too ‘limited’, ‘intermittent’ and ‘conditioned’ by that
of their husbands, to affect the position of the family as a whole. Goldthorpe
suggests that women move in and out of employment in relation to domestic
events and their husband’s jobs. So gender inequalities are irrelevant to how
stratification systems are organised. Today women typically take one break of
five years from paid employment while having children (Martin and Roberts,
1984). Such a short break does not constitute an ‘intermittent’ work history, but
rather one of continuity. Women’s employment also brings significant, not limited,
income into the household. However, most models of class failed to note that
occupational opportunities open to women are delimited and devalued by those
gender inequalities. Jobs defined as women’s work continue to be of lower status
and the average amount of pay they receive is less than the average for men
(Armstrong et al., 2003; Charles and Grusky, 2004). Occupationally based class
categorisation originally ignored such differences between what was labeled
‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’. It also ignored evidences showing that when
women and men did work in the same jobs, gender discrimination often prevented
women from reaching the highest levels (Catalyst, 2006; Hymowitz and
Schellhardt, 1986). These gaps in the classic class analysis are liable in giving
altered or wrong presentation of women’s social position.

2.5.1.4 Division of Labour at Household

Another problem with the classic class analysis is that it fails to theorise
inequalities based upon a division of labour within the household. There are
other serious inequalities within the household which theories of social inequality
need to articulate. For instance, women spend more hours on housework than
men; have less access to household goods; have less money and time for leisure,
and so on. The link between material position and political action is the central
question for class analysis and it is unfortunate that women’s material position
through gendered political action has not been addressed by the classic class
analysis.

The assumptions associated with classic class analysis are found to be invalid
when applied to women and it incites feminists to rethink how to explain women’s
class position. It could be possible if feminists approach the issue of gender and
class by asking how the concept of class can be used to theorise gender relations
rather than grafting women into class analysis.

26
Thus, it is important to recognise that ‘women’ are a category of persons who Class and Gender
continue to share material disadvantages as a group. A shared social identity as
‘women’ is argued to continue to play a large part in understanding inequalities,
but not all women are equally disadvantaged. This unit focuses on the material
aspects of inequalities in relation to class. The term ‘material’ originally referred
to relations of production and mainly tries to deal with how gender was understood
to connect to those relations.

2.6 FEMINISM AND PERSPECTIVE ON CLASS

AND GENDER
Feminism has a tremendous impact on the analysis of the economy. Whole new
areas of activity were declared, such as work, in particular housework (Oakley
1974; Silva 2000), also conceptualised as domestic labour, a domestic mode of
production (Delphy and Leonard, 1984) and more recently as care-work
(Armstrong, 2006). Feminist ideas led to the reworking of the analysis of paid
work and its transformation (Irwin 2005; Walby 1997; Scott et al. 2010). New
forms and practices of gender inequality were analysed, including women’s
unemployment as a reserve army of labour, occupational sex segregation (Witz
1992), part-time work and issues of time flexibility, all of which had implications
for the analysis of inequality in employment more generally. The intersection of
gender with class has been a long-running theme. This section deals with different
feminist perspectives and the feminist interpretation of economical dimension.

2.6.1 Radical Feminism

Radical feminists argued that male control of women’s sexuality was a key factor
in women’s oppression. Kate Millet and Shulamith Firestone are the more visible
of the first radical feminist theorists. Millet undertook the rather daunting task
of explaining the causes of women’s oppression. Her explanation took women’s
domination by men (patriarchy) as central to their social position. This inferior
position, according to Millet, was not a product of ‘natural’ differences between
women and men. Instead she rigorously examined the socio-cultural production
of women by redefining the concept of politics. Millet provides a broad theory
of how patriarchy operates through ideology (for example, myth and religion),
institutions (for example, family, education, economy) and force (for example,
wife beating and rape). Although she recognises class and race as variables in
women’s oppression, she tends to emphasise that all women are subject to
oppression by men.

Radical feminism attempted to highlight women’s experiences by going beyond

purely economic explanations of women’s oppression to include ideology, and
literary and other representations of women. In order to overcome that oppression
radical feminists were not content to reform the present system, they envisaged
a more revolutionary overturning of present ways of thinking about and organising
the world. The typical labeling of feminism as liberal, socialist, or radical, best
describes British feminism (Holmes, 1999), although these labels do have some
relevance for feminism in other Commonwealth Nations (Beasley,1999). In
America radical feminism is sometimes also called cultural feminism (Echols,
1989). Even with Britian and America these labels do not always fit all those
who had been involved in the feminist movement from the 1960s onwards.
27
Social Stratification and 2.6.2 Material Feminism: Marxist Feminism
Gender
Hartmann argues that Marxist class categories are ‘gender-blind’: ‘Marx’s theory
of the development of capitalism is a theory of the development of “empty
places”… The categories of Marxism cannot tell us who will fill the empty
places.’(Hartmann 1981). Marxist attempts at a solution to the ‘woman question’,
she argues, have all suffered from a basic and fundamental flaw in that ultimately,
woman’s oppression has been conceptualised and understood as but a particular
aspect of class oppression (e.g. Engels, Zaretsky, Dalla Costa). Marxist asserted
that there is a link between women’s oppression and the system of exploitation
of our society or ‘the link between the forms of oppression of women and the
organisation of production in the society (Beechey and Allen 1982).

Box
Socialist and Materialist feminists draw their political theory from Marxist
materialism, which argues that ‘the determining factor in history is the
production and reproduction of immediate life’ (Engels cited in Kuhn and
Wolpe, 1978). Materialist feminism signaled the adaptation of Marx’s
methods rather than simple adoption of Marx’s ideas as in Marxist Feminism
(Hennessy and Ingraham, 1997). Socialist feminism was perhaps also an
adaptation, but it described the more politically active aspects of materialist
feminism rather than the theoretical approach (Beasley, 1999; Jackson,
1998).

Five French women dealt with economic analysis of the relation between
gender and class in French forms of materialist feminism, which were
developing alongside the Anglo-American versions. They were Monique
Wittig, Christine Delphy, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, Colette Guilliamin and
Monique Plaza. These women produced the ground-breaking journal
Questionnes F‘eministes with Simone de Beauvoir in the 1970s. Christine
Delphy’s work has been perhaps most renowned and of most utility to
sociologists. Her key approach is initially outlined in her essay on ‘The
Main Enemy’ first published in 1970.

Hartmann accepts the radical feminist account of patriarchy as constituting an

independent system of domination, yet she is reluctant to abandon class theory
altogether. In Hartmann’s account, Marxist analysis is presented not as incorrect,
but rather as incomplete. Marx did not acknowledge the role of domestic labour
within society. Apart from this, Marxist theory also does not explain why it is
women that do domestic labour and, if that is unclear, it is also unclear why
women should be the reserve army (Jackson, 1998). The main problem raised by
critics about Marxist feminism is that it is too narrowly focused on capitalism,
being unable to deal with gender inequality in pre-and post-capitalism, rather
than recognising the independence of the gender dynamic.

Noting the gender-blindness of Marxist approach as women who are not linked
with production economy are not being feminists drew on postmodernism and
psychoanalysis- especially the vision of meaning and subjectivity these
knowledges offered (Hennessy and Ingraham, 1997:7)- in order to forge new
approaches to class. This deliberation led for the emergence of the domestic
labour debates.
28
In 1865, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor have suggested that the recognition Class and Gender
of domestic labour is necessary and women should be liberated from housework.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1903) claimed that what housewives do at home should
be considered as a work, and society should accept its benefits. The early
discussions about housework continued with Margaret Reid’s pioneering study,
Economics of Household Production, which had a little influence on the
mainstream economy when it was published on 1934. Despite these efforts the
role of domestic labour within society has been largely neglected by both
mainstream and critical theories until 1960s. Due to the drastic increase in
participation of women in labour force, the debate continued under the name of
‘New Home Economics’.

Starting from 1960s, women’s unequal position within society has been discussed
mainly by feminists. In 1970s, housework and gendered division of labour at
home were included within the agenda of Marxists. Referring to Althusser’s
superstructure theory, most of Marxist analyses have concluded that the patriarchy
is an ideology, and it is subsidised by ‘economic structure’. Early feminist studies
(Delphy, 1977, Benston, 1969) and domestic labour debate try to establish a
conceptual framework, which investigates the place of patriarchy within relations
of production and reproduction.

2.6.2.1 Domestic Labour Debates

Men’s domination over women is a by-product of capital’s domination over
labour. Class relations and the economic exploitation of one class by another are
the central features of social structures, and these determine the nature of gender
relations. Often it is the family, which is seen as the basis for the need of capital
for women’s domestic labour in the home (Seccombe, 1974). The family is
considered to benefit capital in which women have been doing the work of
reproducing workers, both by giving birth to them and by feeding, clothing, and
caring for them so that they can go out to work. The unpaid labour engaged in
reproduction of paid labour has gone largely unrecognised. It is cheap because
women as housewives do this for no wage, merely receiving maintenance from
their husbands.

2.6.2.1a Use-Value Verses Exchange Value

Margaret Benston (1969) made the key argument that capitalist accumulation
relies not just on paid labour but on women’s unpaid labour in the household. In
using Marxist concepts to understand women’s oppression, she defined ‘women’
within capitalist conditions by including and making a classic Marxist distinction
between use-value and exchange –value. Every ‘product’ supposedly has a use-
value but not all ‘products’ (or commodities) have an exchange-value – they are
worth money on the market. In capitalism where the market is central, there are
some commodities that remain outside the market and have only a use-value.
The things produced within home, the meals that housewives make, the clothes
they sew and so on, are used by the family has use-value without being exchanged
on the market. Women’s work is defined as within home and of use-value. This
is viewed as their primary task and any paid labour that they perform is seen as
secondary. However, men’s primary task is producing products with exchange-
value. Thus, money determines value and unpaid women’s housework is not
valued in the capitalist system.

29
Social Stratification and To further extend this argument if one calculates the money fetches for the work
Gender
done by the women, if it is done through the market, like babysitting, professional
childcare, cleaning, house management, cooking, washing and so on or if the
man’s wage is supposed to ‘pay’ for the woman’s household work then it ‘pays’
very badly. Though women may feel that they do this out of love and do not
require payment, nevertheless the fact remains that their work at home is not
actually paid- and therefore not valued- is key in making sense of gender
inequalities.

2.6.2.1b Domestic Mode of Production

In The Main Enemy, Delphy argues that an analysis of women’s unpaid housework
is central to understanding women’s oppression. She argues that housewives
constitute one class and husbands another. They have a relation of economic
difference and of social inequality. She argues that housewives are the non-
producing class, husbands expropriating the labour of their wives. Delphy is
thus arguing that housework is as much production as any other form of work.
She adds that women perform this work under patriarchal relations of production
for the benefit of their husbands. Hence husbands are constituted as the
expropriating class and housewives the direct producers.

The definition of ‘domestic mode of production (DMP)’ is the fundamental

concept of Delphy’s theory (1977). She claims that women are exploited by men
under the marriage relationship and men control the output of women’s labour.
There are two different areas, where men are able to exploit women’s labour:
Housework and Household work. In both fields, men as household heads exploit
women’s labour. Therefore, she defines women as a class oppressed by a different
class. As an oppressor class, men are the agents and beneficiaries of the
subordination of women. Marriage is the ground for men to be able to exploit
women since it generates the relations of domination and subordination and due
to the gender segregated structure of labour force.
In her later studies, Delphy (1984, 1992) establishes another term different than
DMP, ‘family mode of production (FMP)’ and with such term, she details previous
definition of household. FMP refers to the market based production done by the
dependent family members such as women and children and as head of family
men exploit the labour of dependents in such relation. In addition to that, she
details her earlier definition of DMP by using three circles: Production, Circulation
and Consumption. She states that actors within family are differentiated by FMP
though production, circulation and consumption. Delphy (1992) also highlights
the importance of the term gender and emphasises that it is not the biology; it is
the social practice which creates gender and oppression is creating the social
practice. A physical fact is transferred into a category of thought by social practice.
There is a clear attempt to understand the different characteristic of domestic
labour and Delphy attempts to define the role of ‘love and emotion’ within
housework, in her later studies (1984, 1992). At the end of her analyses, she
enriches her earlier definition of housework by including cultural work, emotional
work, sexual work and reproductive work. In addition to the term ‘exploitation’,
she also uses a new term ‘appropriation’ to define the men’s control over women’s
labour.
Delphy has been criticised for stretching Marxist concepts of class and mode of
30 production too far from their appropriate usage (Barrett and McIntosh, 1979;
Molyneux, 1979). Her critics argue that there are too many differences between Class and Gender
women to be recognised as one class. A Marxist concept of class is based on
relations of production, not lifestyle. According to Barrett and MaIntosh (1979)
and Molyneux (1979) Delphy confuses the two distinct levels of abstractions
with each other: Mode of production and Social formation. They argue further
that Delphy use of the concept of mode of production is incorrect. According to
them, patriarchy is related with social formation and the reproduction of social
formation. They assert that within a Marxist system there can be only one mode
of production within a social formation, while Delphy’s account is based on
both patriarchal and a capitalist mode of production.

Another problem with Delphy’s account is that not all women are housewives,
so she has been critiqued for a partial theorisation of women’s position. She tries
to slide past this by suggesting that all women expect to be housewives, we can
treat all women as if they are. A theorisation of gender must deal with the fact
that some women are full-time housewives, and some are not.

2.6.2.1c Sex as Class

Firestone (1974) also attempts to develop Marxist concepts and theory to build
her analysis of women’s oppression. She uses a broader concept of class than
Delphy: all women are in one, all men in another. Sex is a class. It is not restricted
to housewives and husbands. Again the basis is a material one, although she
conceptualises this as reproduction, not production. Women are disadvantage by
their position in reproduction-pregnancy, childbirth, breast-feeding, childcare
and so on. Firestone has a theory about non-material aspects of gender relations.
She draws upon Marxist notions of the material base determining the political
and ideological superstructure.

Firestone has been criticised for biological determinism. But while there is some
truth in this it is overdrawn, since she does have a notion that struggle over the
means of production will change women’s subordination.

2.6.3 Dual-System Theory

Dual-system theory is a synthesis of Marxist and radical feminist theory. Rather
than being an exclusive focus on either capitalism or patriarchy, this perspective
argues that both systems are present and important in the structuring of
contemporary gender relations. Eisenstein (1981) considers that the two systems
are so closely interrelated and symbiotic that they have become one. Patriarchy
provides a system of control and law and order, while capitalism provides a
system of economy, in the pursuit of profit. Changes in one part of this capitalist-
patriarchal system will cause changes in another part, as when the increase in
women’s paid work, due to capitalist expansion, sets up a pressure for political
change, as a result of the increasing contradiction in the position of women who
are both housewives and wage labourers.

Mitchell (1975) discusses gender in terms of a separation between the two systems,
in which the economic level is ordered by capitalist relations, and the level of
the unconscious by the law of patriarchy. It is in order to uncover the latter that
she engages in her re-evaluations of the work of Freud where she argued for the
significance of the level of the unconscious in understanding the perpetuation of
patriarchal ideology, which would ostensibly appear to have no material basis in
contemporary societies. 31
Social Stratification and Hartmann sees patriarchal relations crucially operating at the level of the
Gender
expropriation of women’s labour by men, and not at the level of ideology and
the unconscious. Hartmann argues that both housework and wage labour are
important sites of women’s exploitation by men. These two forms of expropriation
also act to reinforce each other, since women’s disadvantaged position in paid
work makes them vulnerable in making marriage arrangements, and their position
in the family disadvantages them in paid work. Hartmann argues that patriarchy
pre-dates capitalism, and that this expropriation of women’s labour is not new
and distinctive to capitalist societies and hence cannot be reduced to it.

One of the many limitations of dual-system theory is with analyses of the three
(Mitchell, Eisenstein, Hartmann) discussed here is whether they are able to sustain
the duality of capitalism and patriarchy. According to Young (1981) it is an
inherently impossible task to establish or sustain an analytic distinction between
patriarchy and capitalism. Another problem with ‘dual-systems’ is that they do
not cover the full range of patriarchal structures. For instance, sexuality and
violence are given very little analytical space in the work of Hartmann and
Eisenstein. Most accounts suggest that either the material level (Hartmann,
Eisenstein) or the cultural (Mitchell) is the significant basis of patriarchy.
However, radical feminists have contributed primarily to the analyses of sexuality,
violence, culture and the state, socialist feminists on housework, waged work,
culture and the state.

The question arises is whether the concept of class is useful to understand gender
relations. The strength of class concept lies in identifying social inequality and
in capturing the material aspect of social inequality. Where as its weaknesses
are, firstly that it downplays the significance of non-economic aspects of women’s
subordination and, secondly, that it comes with a set of baggage that is difficult
to drop about its relations to capitalist rather than patriarchal social relations.

2.7 CULTURE AND UNDERSTANDING OF CLASS

AND GENDER
The criticisms of materialist based approaches on class have drawn its association
through culture. Culture is the key element in discursive approaches which
identifies the limitation of Marxism. Within feminist attempts to think about
women’s class position, material condition tells only part of the story. Many
feminists move beyond economistic or structuralist theories of class and have
turned to the thinking of Pierre Bourdieu.

The concept of capital sits at the centre of Bourdieu’s (1985) construction of

social space. Capital refers to the different forms of power held by social agents.
Bourdieu (1986) identifies various forms of capital (power), including economic
(e.g., prestige), linguistic (e.g., vocabulary and pronunciation), academic (e.g.,
tertiary qualifications), and corporeal (e.g., physical attractiveness). He turns
the notion of capital into a metaphor and identifies three main forms: Economic,
Cultural and Social capital. Economic capital can simply be described as monetary
wealth or assets. Cultural capital is something more abstract but can be thought
of as like wealth in the form of ways of thinking and being. Bourdieu argues that
middle class ways of thinking and being are privileged. Social capital refers to
the connections and networks with others to which people belong. Hierarchies
32
of class are organised around how much these different capitals are thought to be Class and Gender
‘worth’. Symbolic capital is another name for distinction. It is a “unique form of
motivation- a resource, a reward” (Booth & Loy, 1999) closely tied up with the
concept of status, lifestyle, commitment, abilities on challenging terrain, and
difficulty and range of maneuvers.

Pierre Bourdieu had little to say about women or gender with most of his writings
framed predominantly in class. In the article “La Domination Masculine”,
however, Bourdieu (1990) draws upon his ethnographic research into the Kabyle
of North Africa to show how “masculine domination assumes a natural, self-
evident status through its inscription in the objective structures of the social
world”, which is then embodied and reproduced in the habitus of individuals
(McNay, 2000).

Box
Habitus is the set of learned and embodied ways of doing and thinking
which are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life..
The concept of habitus has been used as early as Aristotle but in
contemporary usage was introduced by Marcel Mauss and later re-
elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu.

While symbolic, social, cultural and economic capital, are central to the structuring
of Bourdieu’s conception of social space, gender does not appear in his
fundamental structuring principles. Bourdieu (1986) briefly acknowledges that
“certain women derive occupational profit from their charm (s), and that beauty
thus acquires a value on the labour market”.

Diane Reay (1997, 1998, & 2005) has argued that in order to understand how
class and class inequalities are lived in gendered ways; it is needed to move
beyond an economistic (structualist) focus to include discourses. Beverley
Skegg’s (1997) work Formations of Class and Gender develops Bourdieu’s
analysis in order to consider the importance of class in the symbolic construction
of gender. Among the working class the notion of respectability is key aspect
associated with women, which shapes the way for the construction of class and
gender. In her ethnographic study she found that women enrolled on caring courses
with the hope to sharpen and convert their limited feminine cultural capital into
economic capital. Women are thought to have cultural capital in the form of
knowledge of how to care for others and so on. It is not necessary that all women
get the chance in caring-related jobs. Even if some do get jobs in caring industry
they are often poorly paid and insecure, and respectability is not guaranteed.
Apart from this, women are allowed to work in caring-related jobs as it
substantiates constructed attributes of femininity and the notion of ‘women task’
by associating social reward like respectability which reinforces class distinctions.

Lisa Adkins (1995) has explored the labour market as one in which continued
prejudices about gender and sexuality as markers of particular types of capabilities
help create ‘women’s jobs’ and ‘men’s jobs’. For example, masculinity is thought
to be a marker of physical strength and femininity a marker of pretty pleasantness.
She found that in a leisure park men were chosen to operate ride though pressing
of a switch though it does not require physical strength. Women were almost
employed in the catering jobs after selection on the’ right’ kind of appearance, a
33
Social Stratification and kind of feminine prettiness. Her study reveals that not only is women’s appearance
Gender
key to judgments and regulation of them as workers, but that women’s sexual
labour is also exploited by customers and by their male co-workers. On the basis
of her researches Adkins deduce that capitalism is profoundly gendered system.
She argues therefore that women are not ‘workers’ in the same way as men. She
found the significance of gender and sexuality in producing advantage to men’s
labour market.

2.8 SUMMARY
Initially feminists endeavored to see how class differences between women were
difficult to demarcate using traditional class categories based around relationship
to paid work. However, by considering gender as it emerged within both relations
of production and of reproduction within the household, materialist feminists
were able to make some headway in linking gender and class inequalities. But,
class is not just about material situation but is a discourse about what and who is
valuable and respectable in society. Gender is intertwined with every aspect of
class, both material and non-material. Culture in turn provides a way ahead for
holistic understanding of gender exploring it from all dimensions of class. It
enriches and encourages reorienting and rethinking class inequalities in gendered
ways to cover other dimensions, apart from materialistic. It is necessary to ask,
should the concept of class be expanded to cover gender inequalities across all
other areas, like anger, sexuality, emotions? Sylvia Walby opines that it should
not be used to cover non-economic forms of inequality, since to do so would be
to twist the concept too far from its heritage; however, Bourdieu’s theorisation
of forms of ‘capital’ contributes and encourages including new dimensions in
understanding of class and gender relation.

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Adkins, L. 1995. Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market.
Buckingham: Open University Press.
Armstrong, M., Cummins, A., Hastings, S. and Wood, W. 2003. Job Evaluation:
A Guide to Achieveing Equal Pay. London and Sterling, VA: Kogan Page.
Barrett, M. and McIntosh, M. 1979. ‘Toward a Materialist Feminism?’ Feminist
Review, 1.
Beasley, C. 2005. Gender and Sexuality: Critical Theories, Critical Thinkers.
London: Sage.
Beasley, C. 1999. What is Feminism? Understanding Contemporary Feminist
Thought. London: Sage.
Beechey,V. and Allen, R. 1982. The Woman Question, U221 Unit 1. Milton
Keynes: Open University Press.
Benston, M. 1969. ‘The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation’. Monthly
Review, 21 (4): 13-27.
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Beteille, A. 1977. Inequality among Men. Oxford: Blackwell. Class and Gender

Blackburn, R.M. and Mann, M. 1979. The Working Class in the Labour Market.
London: Macmillan.
Booth, D., & Loy, J. (1999) ‘Sport, Status, and Style’. Sport History Review, 30,
1-26.
Bottomore, T.B. and Rubel, M. (eds.) 1956 &1961. Karl Marx Selected Writings
in Sociology and Social Philosophy. London: Watts and Co.
Bourdieu, P. 1986. ‘The Forms of Capital’. J.G.Rischardson (ed.) Handbook of
Theory and Research Sociology of Education (pp.241-258). New York:
Greenwood Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. ‘La Domination Masculine’. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences
Sociales, 84 (Sept), 2-31.
Britten, N. and Heath, A. 1983. ‘Women, Men and Social Class’. Eva Gamarnikov,
David Morgan, June Purvis and Daphne Taylorson (eds.) Gender, Class and
Work. London: Heinemann.
Catalyst. 2006. 2006 Catalyst Census of Women Board Directors of the Fortune
1000. http://www.catalystwomen.org/index.htm
Charles, M. and Grusky, D.B. 2004. Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide
Segregation of Women and Men. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Delphy, C. 1977. ‘The Main Enemy: a Materialist Analysis of Women’s
Oppression. Explorations in Feminism. No.3.
Delphy, C. 1984. ‘Women in Stratification Studies’. In Close to Home, London:
Hutchinson.
Delphy, C. 1984. Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression.
London: Harper Collins.
Delphy, C. and Leonard, D.1992. Familiar Exploitation: A New Analysis of
Marriage in Contemporary Western Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Echols, A. 1989. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975.
University of Minneapolis: Minnesota Press.
Eisenstein, Z. 1981. The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism. New York:
Longman.
Engels, F. 1985/1884. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Harmondsworth : Penguin. .
Firestone, S. 1974. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution.
New York: Morrow.
Garnsey, E. 1978. ‘Women’s Domestic Labour’. New Left Review, 89, pp.47-58.
Goldthrope, J. 1980. Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Herdt, G. 1994. Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture
and History. New York: Zone.
Holmes, M. 1999. The Representation of Feminists as Political Actors.
Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Auckland.
Hymowitz, C. and Schellhardt, T.D. 1986. ‘The Glass Ceiling: Why Women
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Social Stratification and Can’t Break the Invisible Barrier that Blocks Them from Top Jobs’. Wall Street
Gender
Journal, March 24:1,5 D.
Irwin, S. 2005. Reshaping Social Life. London: Routledge.
Jackson, S. 1998. ‘Feminist Social Theory’. S. Jackson and J.Jones (eds.)
Contemporary Feminist Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University of Press.
Kuhn, A. and Wolpe, A.M. 1978. ‘Feminism and Materialism’. A. Kuhn and
A.M. Wolpe (eds.) Feminism and Materialism: Women and Modes of Production.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Lockwood, David, Goldthrope, Hohn, Bechofer, Frank and Platt, Jennifer. 1969.
The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Martin, J. and Roberts, C. 1984. Women and Employment: a Lifetime Perspective.
London: HMSO.
McNay, L. 2000. Gender and Agency: Reconfiguration the Subject in Feminist
and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity.
McRae, S. 1986. Cross-class Families: A Study of Wives’ Occupational
Superiority. Oxford and NewYork: Claredon Press.
Mead, M.1962/1950. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing
World. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Mead, M. 1963/1935. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New
York: William Morrow.
Mitchell, J. 1975. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Molyneux, M. 1979. ‘Beyond the Domestic Labour Debate’. New left Review,
116, pp. 3-27.
Murgatroyd,L. 1982. ‘Gender and Occupational Stratification’. Sociological
Review, 30.4.
Newby, H. 1982. The State of Research into Social Stratification. London: Social
Science Research Council.
Oakley, A .1974. The Sociology of Housework. Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Oakley, A. 1972. Sex, Gender and Society. London:Temple Smith.
Oakley, A. 1985. Sex, Gender and Society. Gower: Aldershot.
Reay, D. 1997. ‘Feminist Theory, Habitus and Social Class: Disrupting Notions
of Classlessness’. Women’s Studies International Forum, 20:225-33.
Reay, D. 1998. ‘Rethinking Social Class: Qualitative Perspectives on Class and
Gender’. Sociology, 32 (2): 259-75.
Reay, D. 2005. ‘Beyond Consciousness? The Physic Landscape of Social Class’,
Sociology, 39 (5):911-28.
Rendall, J. 1985. Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and
the United States, 1780-1860. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Scott, Jacqueline, Rosemary Crompton and Clare Lyonette (eds.) 2010. Gender
Inequalities in the 21st Century: New Barriers and Continuing Constraints.
London: Edward Elgar.

36
Seccombe, W. 1974. ‘The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism’. New Class and Gender
Left Review, 83, pp.3-24
Silva, E. 2000. ‘The Cook, the Cooker and the Gendering of the Kitchen’.
Sociological Review, 48 (4): 612-628. [doi:://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-
954X.00235]
Skegg, B. 1997. Formation of Class and Gender:Becoming Respectable. London:
Sage.
Stewart, A., Prandy, K. and Blackburn, R.M. 1980. Social Stratification and
Occupations. London: Macmillan.
Walby, S. 1997. Gender Transformations. London: Routledge.
Weber, M. 1948 & 1993. Essays in Sociology, edited with an introduction by
H.H.Gerth and C.Wright Mills, London: Routledge.
West, J. 1978. ‘Women, Sex and Calss’. Annette Kuhn and Ann Marie Wolpe
(eds.) Feminism and Materialism: Women and Modes of Production. London:
Routledge.
Witz, A. 1992. Professions and Patriarchy. London: Routledge.
Young, I. 1981. ‘Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: a Critique of Dual System
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Marxism and Feminism, London: Pluto Press.

Suggested Reading
Gray Day. 2007. Class: The New Critical Idiom. London and New York:
Routledge.
Rosemary Crompton and Michael Mann. 1986. Gender and Stratification.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Sylvia Walby. 1990. Theorising Patriarchy. . Oxford : Blackwell.

Sample Questions
1) Why has gender been omitted from the classic class analysis? Give reasons.
2) When and how women’s movement came into existence? What are the
different feminist perspectives and which perspective has contributed to the
understanding of class and gender relation?
3) Discuss the debates, which highlighted the limitation of Marx’s analysis of
class with respect to gender.
4) What is the difference between
 Sex and Gender
 Marx and Weber on the concept of class
 Material Feminism and Social Feminism
5) What contribution has culture made in exploring the class and gender relation?
Discuss in detail.

37
Social Stratification and
Gender UNIT 3 ETHNICITY AND GENDER

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Ethnicity and Gender
3.3 Stereotyping and the Intersection of Gender and Ethnicity
3.4 Experiencing Gender at the Cross Roads of Ethnicity
3.5 Ethnicity or Gender
3.6 Violence: Physical and Symbolic
3.7 Protests
3.8 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

This unit will help the students to:
 identity construction through ethnicity and gender;
 the intersection of gender and ethnicity primarily through sexuality;
 creation of stereotypes and their representations in aesthetics, art and
literature;
 actions such as violence justified through symbolic constructions of the
‘Other’ and
 contestations of identities , protests and movements.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
The human species is one in terms of its biology, especially as modern genetics
indicates that most humans share a large part of their genetic material with each
other. Yet, over the ages, various criteria have been evoked to create differences
between one class of humans and others, and also to place such differences into
a hierarchical scale. Quite often the differences are justifications for pre-existing
or motive driven hierarchies. For example during the period of slave trade the
colonies built their economic empires on the basis of indentured and slave labour
giving the justification of racial inferiority; what Stolcke (1993:178) refers to as
the ideological “naturalisation” of social inequalities.

Both gender and ethnicity are such differences that are often evoked to differentiate
between one human and the other and both are legitimised as ‘natural’ or God
given. They are what may be called ‘oppositional’ that is always evoked in contrast
to an opposed entity, like man to woman or Self to Other. They are also what
Yinger( 1997:144) calls “additive” rather than substitutive identities; that is a
gendered identity which may be superimposed on an ethnic identity and there
can be a clear intersection of both to provoke a particular kind of social response.
38
 Ethnicity and Gender
3.2 ETHNICITY AND GENDER
In the modern world, the term, “ethnicity” has emerged as a substitute or
sometimes an additional characterisation of other debatable categories like ‘race’,
‘minority’ and ‘tribe’. The validity of this term has become prominent in the
post World-War II era where a large number of distinct communities with their
specific lifestyle, culture and even somewhat marked physical features became
encompassed within larger entities of the nation-states, which had an overall
identity of a dominant majority, that had cultural, political and often numerical
superiority over these marginalised entities. The resultant tensions have sometimes
remained dormant and sometimes manifested themselves violently leading even
to the breakup of the larger geo-political entities like the erstwhile Soviet Union
and Czechoslovakia. In India we find such identity tensions pulling the nation
from all sides like that of the Bodos, the Nagas, the Bhutias, etc.

Although it is now well recognised that ethnicity , like most other social identities
is a construct rather than any reality, what is intrinsic to all considerations of
ethnicity is their tendency to be accepted and projected as some kind of ‘biological
unity’ as well as common history and culture. One of the earliest and most
prominent African American writers, W.E.B. Dubois had said about ‘race’ that it
was something that signified, “ common blood and language, always of common
history, traditions and impulses” (Yinger 1997: 17). In the Indian context much
debate has centered around whether or not to treat the caste system as equivalent
to race and therefore capable of being analysed in a similar manner as an ethnic
group or racial group. One may here refer to Berghe (1967: 11) who is of the
opinion that both race and caste to some extent depend on ascriptive characters
of physical appearance and birth and in both there is both contestation and consent
of those who form the dominated strata. Similarly Trautmann (2004) has also
discussed at length the incorporation of racial elements into caste theory, especially
during the colonial period and Channa (2005) also discusses that in actual
operationalisation there is little to distinguish between the two.
It is this fact of common ancestry, real or putative, that intersects ethnicity with
gender. In as far as an ethnic group attempts to assert its independence from
other ethnic groups, it perceives that it has to protect its own biological boundaries.
Although the biological boundary is somewhat shaky as a basis for ethnic group
definition, it is seen that throughout history, even cultural, religious and political
boundaries are maintained through endogamy, the most basic defining character
of any group formation. Thus people, who are physically and even culturally
identical, say like the Shias and Sunnis in the Middle East or the Catholics and
Protestants in Ireland, tend to keep strict demarcations in terms of marriage. In
fact the closer the groups are to each other the stricter and enforced are the rules
governing marriage , as the dangers of assimilation and consequent loss of identity
is greatest. Thus there are stricter avoidance of marriage between Shias and Sunnis
in India than between Muslims and Hindus in general. Similarly, in Europe the
violent eruption of hostility between the Serbs and the Bosnians would have left
most outsiders bewildered, to whom they would perhaps appear to be identical.
Ethnicity is also a most loosely conceived and defined concept that may
encompass a macro identity like that of a nation, for example, the French or may
involve a small entity like a subdivision of a tribe or a community; like the
Bhutias of Darjeeling, who do not want to be identified with anyone else; not the
39
Social Stratification and Nepali, not the Tibetan and nor the other groups commonly put under the generic
Gender
category of Bhotiys (Haimendorf). Even racial identities are extremely difficult
and fluid and one has to read Barrack Obama’s autobiography to really understand
how, even to find one’s so-called racial identity can be a very difficult task indeed.
The young Obama, son of a pure white mother from Kansas, USA and a pure
black father from Kenya, brought up as a white boy by white grandparents, faces
a tough task to locate his identity and has to go through much tension and
heartbreak, before finally settling for a black ethnicity and accepting his African
kin as his own.

An ethnic identity is also many layered and shifting. Thus since identities are
usually constructed in opposition to the ‘Other’; the nature of identity may change
with respect to the spatial situation of a person. For example one can be South
Asian, Indian, Bengali, a Bengali Brahmin, a Brahmin of a particular category
and so on, depending upon who one is opposed to and what meaning the particular
identity has in a particular situation. However the most painful identities are
those that are not clearly defined, where a person is left on the borders or shadows
of multiple identities to whom he or she may or may not relate. While on one
hand such a situation may increase the scope of choice that a person has, at the
same time it may also exclude him or her from a definitive claim to a particular
identity. People on borders of any identity that are well accepted in society at
large are at a disadvantage; for example people of mixed blood and ambiguous
sexual identity like homosexuals and transsexuals. The fear of mixing pervades
all societies. For example, as Gilman writes, referring to colonial Europe,
“Miscegenation was a fear (and a word) from the late nineteenth century
vocabulary of sexuality. It was a fear not merely of inter-racial sexuality but of
its results, the decline of the population”. (1985:256)

Thus ethnicity intersects gender exactly at this juncture, the fear and abhorrence
of mixing, that puts the clarity of identities in jeopardy. It is for this reason that
the “Other’ is usually constructed in a negative light, to create a culturally produced
revulsion that would prevent intermixture.

3.3 STEREOTYPING AND THE INTERSECTION

OF GENDER AND ETHNICITY
The process of what is called as stereotyping is best described by Gliman (1985:
223) who says , “ representations of individuals implies the creation of some
greater class or classes to which the individual is seen to belong. These classes in
turn are characterised by the use of a model which synthesises our perception of
the uniformity of the group into a convincingly homogenous image”. Such
homogenisation or stereotyping is always done for those groups to which one
does not belong and the nature of the image is usually negative. Since gender
itself is a construct, the construction of the masculinities and femininities of the
‘others’ is usually done so that they are culturally repugnant. The most recurring
pattern that is seen in all such constructs is to create an image of the ‘other
female’ as unaesthetic, undesirable except for the most base of sexual practices
such as rape and certainly unfit for proper marriage. While negative constructs
are created for the men also, they are of the opposite kind, where the men of the
opposing ethnic group are either seen as too ‘sexual’ and therefore dangerous to
the ‘good women’ or totally emasculated. Such were the stereotypes created by
40
the upper castes for the lower castes in India, by the white masters for the black Ethnicity and Gender
slaves in the plantations of the USA and about the Irish by the British, about the
Japanese by the Chinese and so on. But while such stereotyping prevents
production of legitimate offspring through marriage, it does not curb sexual
violence, rather encourages it.
Thus in the slave plantations, the white men jealously guarded their women
while brutally and sexually abusing the black women. Since the blacks were not
even categorised as human, the progeny of the black women were also treated as
black and ‘animal like’ even though in real terms they were often fathered by
white men.
Yet in some other situations like in Brazil and in India the progeny of white men
and local women were sometimes passed off as white and as in India, created a
new ethnic group of the Anglo-Indians. The latter were treated as inferior by
both the British and the caste Hindus, yet the British gave them some privileges.
And interestingly enough in post-colonial India this particular category has merged
itself into the Indian mainstream, as there is no longer any advantage to them to
be Anglo. However in all similar situations the white women were not really
granted the same privilege and if at all they chose to marry the non-white men,
their progeny was seen as ‘coloured’ and not white.
Although stereotyping is meant mostly to protect the privileges of the dominating
group, it is not necessarily confined to them alone; the lower strata also create its
own stereotypes, often as a form of protest. Historically in most societies, it has
been the control of the women’s womb that has been most often stringently
applied rather than any curb on the sexuality of men, especially of the upper
strata. As Stolcke (2003: 31) points out, the concept of purity of blood among
the medieval Christians of Europe was introduced to protect the Christians from
mingling with the non-Christians such as Muslims and Jews (these being in
their immediate vicinity) and the fact that it was believed that it is the mother’s
blood that feeds the child in the womb and then as milk, nurtures the child. Thus
the primary substance of a child was provided by the mother and therefore a
Christian was only one who was born of the womb of a Christian mother. Similar
rules of marriage were applicable in caste society where again mixing of blood
of any kind was not favoured but the upper caste men had legitimate access to
the bodies of lower caste women while the other way round was severely
punished.; the most lowly form of marriage giving rise to the most base of progeny
was when a Brahmin woman married a Shudra man. However within the confines
of caste society just as in racially segregated societies, most people, men and
women prefer to marry their own kind.
In an ideal pattern of constructed gender images, women of one’s own group are
represented as having the ideal qualities of being mother and wife while the
women of the ‘other’ group are always promiscuous and prostitute like. Gilman
(1985) has shown in his essay on representations of black and white bodies and
their medicalisation in nineteenth century Europe, that how science was used to
show the inferior and primitive sexual characters of the black woman and how
art and literature followed these stereotypes to create images of women, who if
portrayed as ‘sexual’ were always tinted with the dark image. He shows how the
anatomy and physiology of the Hottentot women were also projected onto that
of the prostitute and both were criminalised as well as projected as ‘primitive’
and uncivilised.
41
Social Stratification and The complicity of the medical profession in such ethnic and gendered stereotyping
Gender
has also been pointed put by Wheeler (1995) where she shows in Britain, mental
health professionals held different standards for men and women. “Healthy
women differed from healthy men by being more submissive, less independent ,
less adventurous, more excitable in minor crises, more emotional, more easily
hurt, less competitive, less aggressive, more concerned with their appearance
and less objective” (1995:44). In other words we find here that ‘healthy’
corresponds to what is constructed as ‘ideal’ model of femininity by a masculine
society. Further Wheeler mentions the work of an Asian psychiatrist, Sashidharan,
who has demonstrated that the reportedly higher incidence of mental illness among
the black population is more a bias in method than a reflection of truth. She
writes that Shashidharan, in an article written by him, ‘Schizophrenia or Just
Black’ shows how more people of ethnic minorities are labeled as mentally ill
not because they actually are, but the manner in which they are interpreted by the
white medical professionals. It goes without saying that such ‘labeling’ also has
the effect of deterring the women of the dominant ethnic group from forming
alliances with the marginalised communities. Further deliberate attempts are also
made to curtail the reproductive capacity of the women of the ethnic minorities,
sometimes by simply declaring that they are unfit to be mothers.

Under the widely practiced philosophy of Eugenics that was first introduced in
England by Francis Galton, it was believed that humanity could be improved by
‘selective breeding’. In America, the movement was led by Charles Benedict
Davenport (1866-1944). Shanklin (1975:83) writes how he persuaded the civic
authorities to allow ‘ compulsory sterilisation’ of the so-called people of ‘inferior
blood’. Also the idea spread quickly and “by World War II thirty out of forty –
eight states had compulsory sterilisation laws on the books. As of 1992, twenty-
two American states still have these laws on their books”. An examination of the
practice of eugenics indicates that not only women have been primarily targeted
for sterilisation, there is disproportionate representation of ethnic groups. “A
1973 study of New York voluntary and state hospitals revealed a disproportionate
number of Spanish speaking women being sterilised, almost three times greater
than Black women and six times as great as White women. “(Fleming 1980:19.
c.f. Shanklin 1975:89)

A Majority of Americans even today harbour the greatest prejudice towards the
immigrant Hispanic or Spanish speaking populations, even more than against
the Native Americans and the Black to whom they grudgingly accord indigenous
status.

3.4 EXPERIENCING GENDER AT THE CROSS

ROADS OF ETHNICITY
Contemporary feminists have gone beyond the concept of patriarchy that
presupposes the universal subordination of women or at least their subordination
where the structures of patriarchy exist; towards an analysis of the internal
differentiation of the category of being a woman, as women of particular
disadvantages and disabilities. Thus as already mentioned, ethnicity and gender
add up, they are not substitutes for one another. In other words women placed in
different situations experience patriarchy in different ways where their class,
ethnicity and social disabilities determine the specific nature of their experience.
42
Thus gender is not simply a character; it is also a social location that determines Ethnicity and Gender
the phenomenological experience of what it means to be not just a woman, but a
certain kind of woman. And as pointed out by Maynard (1995:9) to such
differences as race, ethnicity, class, age and sexuality, one needs to also consider
their location in historical context and geographical location. For example slavery
was practiced in many tribal societies, yet the slavery that was practiced in the
plantation economies of the colonial world was of entirely a different kind.

Moreover, the social differentiations are essentialised to an extent that experiences

of being ‘white’ may be opposed to the experience of being ‘black’ in a simplistic
manner although none of these categories are essentially homogenous. Thus the
East Europeans experience a different kind of ethnic discrimination than the
Africans, but they do experience it none the less. Also there is an essential
divergence as well as convergence between individual biography and collective
social location. Brah (1992:14) makes a distinction between “everyday of lived
experience and experience as a social relation”. Thus every person has an
individual biography and may experience life in particular way that is totally
unique to that person, yet, one’s individual experience is located within one’s
social identity. Thus it is impossible for a person of colour, say, to experience the
world as a ‘white’ person, although each person’s experiences may differ.

Kumkum Bhavnani (1995:34) writes about her mixed experience as an educated

woman of colour interviewing white young men in Britain whose class and
education positions were less than her own but who as men and as white were
superior to her. “—while interviewing young white men, the frequently
encountered imbalance of power between white men and black women was
potentially both inverted and reproduced in the interviews. My role as student
researcher, my age, my assumed class affiliation may have been taken as sources
of political domination. However my racialised and gendered ascription suggested
the opposite”.

But in one way or the other, the ethnic identity, like a gendered identity can be
negotiated and contested and even changed, but each person can experience the
world only from the vantage point of location of some kind of such an identity.
At this point it is pertinent to mention that identities need not be agreed upon
between the person concerned and those who form the larger group. In other
words there can be discrepancy between how a person views herself and how
she is viewed by others, and at the level of the collective how a group locates
itself and how it is located by others. For example in my own work among the
Bhotiyas of Uttarkashi (Channa n.d.) I found that while the community of Bhotiyas
identified themselves as similar to the people of Garhwal and also as Hindus;
most of the people who came up from the plains identified them as Tibetans, an
identity that they themselves abhorred. Similarly while members of a dominating
group may create stereotypes about the women and men of a certain dominated
group, the men and women in question may not at all agree with the manner in
which they are represented. In fact the first activity that members of any group
engage in as soon as they have the means to express themselves, is to produce
literature and representations of themselves like art and music that counters the
stereotypes created about them by others.

43
Social Stratification and
Gender 3.5 ETHNICITY OR GENDER
Another very important aspect to be considered is which of the two main identities
that people possess, the ethnic and the gendered is evoked at any particular point
of time and in a particular context. In other words when do people speak in a
voice that belongs to their ethnic/racial identity and when do they speak in a
voice that specifically refers to their gendered identity. For example when
feminists talk about ‘universal sisterhood of women’ they are cutting across all
ethnic boundaries. Yet at other points of historical time, groups and individual
men and women behave like their other social identities, like being black or
white, or Irish or French. And they may be also seen as members of an ethnic
group rather than as men or women.

Angela Davis writes in her well known book, ‘Women, Race and Class’ that the
plantation labour was hardly regarded as gendered because they were not regarded
as human at all. Gender and attributes such as motherhood was seen as valid
only for white women and not for the black women, who were simply seen as,
“‘breeders’ –animals, whose monetary value could be properly calculated in terms
of their ability to multiply themselves” (2011, reprint: 7). It was because they
were seen as merely chattel, they were not given any recognition as women or
men. “Since women, no less than men, were viewed as profitable labour units,
they might as well have been genderless as far as the slave holder was concerned”
( ibid:5). Thus while normal (meaning white women) were seen as incapable of
some kind of tasks, the black women were made to do all kinds of hard labour
and with the same intensity as the men. Even pregnant women and mothers of
small infants were shown no difference in treatment. This indicates that at some
level of ethnic discrimination gender ceases to be operative. Similarly in India
we see lower class women, often from low caste or tribal stock, doing the kind
of hard labour that elite women are never expected to do. In fact in most of
South Asia the segregation of upper class women is reflected in their withdrawal
from any kind of physical work.

Many writers have thus shown that this ‘shared oppression’ by men and women
at the lower end of social hierarchy often reverses the relations of patriarchy,
leading to a greater degree of equality within the familial situation. Very similar
accounts come from Dalit ethnographies that indicate that women who are
labourers , farm workers and engage in traditional occupations , often are not
only equal to men but also share with the men the actions directed towards
emancipation. Vasant Moon, a Dalit writer from Maharashtra, had written in his
autobiography about the key role played by women in the Dalit movement initiated
by Ambedkar. The Black feminists, have often countered the feminist movement
in the West as being too ‘white and middle class’. According to them, it is the
white women’s experiences that have taken the centre stage in defining the
women’s movement. For example rather than pressing for sexual freedom they
say that they want to be liberated from their sexualised image. Rather than being
liberated from men, they would rather have the freedom to live with their men; a
freedom often denied to them in view of the high rate of incarceration of young
black men in the USA. Davis (2011:19) raises the issue when she says that , “
women often defended their men from the slave system’s attempts to demean
them”. Thus many Third world women feel that their struggle is not against men
but against the system.
44
Similar apprehensions have been raised by Indian feminists about the women’s Ethnicity and Gender
liberation movements that began during the colonial period when most of the
women’s issues raised were not only raised by upper class/caste men, but were
also those that concerned women only of the elite group such as child marriage,
widow remarriage and ‘sati’; all of which only happened to elite women.
Also in foregrounding the ethnic issues women’s specific issues have been
sidelined as have sometimes been felt by women participating in larger social
movements, like the Dalit movement. Dalit women for example have complained
that their rights and specific issues as women have been often overlooked in the
larger movement against the upper castes. Even as pointed out by Davis, the
white women who took active part in the movement against slavery were not
sensitive to the plight of black women in general. It was a black woman Sojourner
Truth, who by raising the now famous slogan, “Ain’t I a woman?’ conflated
feminism with anti-slavery. She put forward the truth that although she was Black
and a former slave, she was still a woman and had a right to be heard as a
woman, not simply as a black. “And as a black woman, her claim to equal rights
was not less legitimate than that of white, middle class women” (Davis 2011:64).
However there is also evidence that on many occasions the gender identity
overrides that of ethnicity especially for women, who have a more critical
approach to society being always at the bottom of social hierarchy irrespective
of their ethnic position. Davis gives accounts of white women who entered the
Anti-Slavery movement and found that to do so; they also had to fight the
patriarchy inherent in their own lives. Thus white women’s struggles to free and
emancipate their black sisters and brothers were compounded with a struggle
against their own men. Thus the period around the early nineteenth century, was
when white women were faced with the possibility of forging a “powerful alliance
between the established struggle for Black liberation and the embryonic battle
for women’s rights.”

3.6 VIOLENCE: PHYSICAL AND SYMBOLIC

It is a fact that in all situations of conflict and oppression of one group by the
other, it is the body of women that becomes a site for establishing a power
hierarchy. Susan Brownmiller’s, now classic work, Against Our Will, documents
the violence that has been used against women in various historical times and
space. She specifically describes the atrocities committed on the bodies of
Vietnamese women, as a deliberate war strategy sanctioned by the US war
department. Similarly the rape of black women on the plantations and of Dalit
women in the fields of India are not a matter of sexuality, they are a way in which
men of a superior group indicate that they are superior, not to women( that is
taken for granted) but to the men of the marginal group. At all historical time
periods each war has been followed by the rape of women of the ‘Other’ group,
as violation of the bodies of women is an established practice by men to show
that they are ‘superior’. Even when there is no war, the strategy of rape to subjugate
the dominated group, is a powerful tool both physical and psychological. By
rape the men try to prevent the reproduction of the ethnic category, whether
defined by religion, race or caste, as the wombs of the women have been invaded
and it is believed that a next generation of ‘mixed’ progeny will arise. This is the
reason why after a period of colonisation or subjugation, there is a huge amount
of miscegenation.
45
Social Stratification and In the USA and elsewhere, it is always men of the minority ethnic categories
Gender
who are often made victims just like the women of the rape laws, which are
mostly enforced to protect women of the upper strata. In the USA black men
were hanged for as much as whistling at a white women and leveling of rape
charges was a sure way to eliminate any black man. Also men of the marginal
ethnic category are psychologically emasculated when they are made to feel that
they have less access to the bodies of their own women than others.

At the same time the stereotypes create a demonised vision of the ‘Other’ men as
criminals, rapists and dangerous. Even today in India such views are held about
men of religious minorities and even indigenous people. When I went to do
fieldwork in a Bhotiya village I was told by the upper caste men in the adjoining
villages that I must not stay there in the evenings as the men all get drunk and
behave like animals and that it was no place for a ‘respectable’ woman to be in.

Thus there is both a symbolic violence where negative stereotypes are created
both for men and for women and actual physical violence often in the form of
rape or sexual abuse.

Another form of symbolic violence is the denial of rights in a civil society, such
as limiting job opportunities, or de-recognition of talent, or simply blockage of
any kind of self improvement on the part of the ethnic minorities. In a small
booklet called ‘Tenure Denied: Cases of Sex Discrimination in Academia’
published by an NGO, a number of tables are given that indicate figures for
various academic benchmarks, like doctoral degrees awarded, percentage of Full
time faculty and tenured full time Faculty in US universities as differentiated on
the basis of race/ethnicity and gender, for the academic years 1980-81 and 2000-
2001. The figures show a huge bias in favour of white non-Hispanic men followed
by white non-Hispanic women where the men of this category outnumber women
by almost fifty percent; that is if 45 % of white men received Doctoral degrees,
only 24 % white women received them. The corresponding figures for blacks
and ethnic minorities is so very low, like 1.6% of African American men and 1.8
% of African American women and American Indian men and women reporting
only 0.1% of the total.

In the American universities there are myths of African American men being
only good for playing soccer and basket ball and women for casual sex. The
entire academia and professions is dominated by white men. Similarly in China
the Han dominate over every other ethnic category and in Japan the ethnic Koreans
and Chinese are treated like they were trash. In Brazil, the Afro-Brazilian children
are raised in the houses of the Euro-Brazilians as almost slaves. They are referred
to in the local language as cria which means a “young Negro born and reared in
the Big House” (Cadlwell 2009:65). Caldwell describes that such children are
often doomed to a slave existence as they are given very little opportunities for
education and self development. In ethnic discrimination men and women are
both denigrated but only in somewhat different ways.

3.7 PROTESTS
The forms that protests take place often also exhibit the tension between gender
and ethnicity. There has been a universal projection of the similarity in women’s
demands in terms of freedom from patriarchal control. But in some historical
46
instances this can be substituted by larger interests of an ethnic identity, seen Ethnicity and Gender
very specifically in the present day in the practices adapted by Muslim women,
especially those who are ethnic minorities in some countries. As Afshar ( 1995:
143) points out “ In the 1980s many a young Muslim woman found out that she
could forge a new Islamic identity, one that conferred dignity on the adoption of
some form of veil, and made them part of the great anti-imperialist Islamic
movement.” Such feelings have crystallised substantially after the Iraq war and
it is the Muslim ethnicity rather than the feminist self that guides the action of
young Muslim women in many parts of the western world today.

It is interesting to note that while the favoured majority usually for protests that
emphasise individual liberty like a break from the stereotypical hetero-normative
model of sexual behavior, the ethnic minorities often move towards greater
conformity to tradition, which may even be invented to serve the purpose. What
is important is that in each such instance the protesting group always makes it a
point to emphasise the superiority of their culture over that of the dominant
culture.

3.8 SUMMARY
To sum up all that has been said in this lesson is that both ethnicity and gender
are not clear cut concepts that make neat compartments where we can insert real
human beings. They however are powerful constructs that affect the lives of
men and women in significant ways. The citizenship rights, the resources of
society, the sexual image that one has, and many other aspects of life may be
affected by how one is perceived by society in general. Ethnic and gender
stereotyping can both justify domination and subordination and create conditions
for their further perpetuation. Situated in the margins and the bottom the persons
who suffer are also privileged with a critical insight into the conditions of their
own marginalisation. Thus to a large extent black feminist and Third World
anthropologists have contributed substantially to the political anthropological
contributions to the study and understanding of gender and ethnicity. Deeper
understanding of the mystified nature of these constructs will contribute towards
efforts to eliminate an unjust system.

References
AAUW Educational Foundation and AAUW PA Diamond Donor Fund. 2004.
Tenure Denied: Cases of Sex Discrimination in Academia, Washington D.C.
American Association of University Women Educational Foundation

Afshar, Haleh. 1995. “Muslim Women in West Yorkshire: Growing up with Real
and Imaginary Values amidst Conflicting Views of Self and Society”. The
Dynamics of ‘Race’ and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions. (ed) Haleh Afshar
and Mary Maynard London: Taylor and Francis. pp 127-147

Berghe, Pierre L Vanden. 1967. Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective.

New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Bhavnani, Kumkum. 1995. (reprint) “Feminist Research and Feminist

Objectivity”. The Dynamics of ‘Race’ and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions.
(ed) Haleh Afshar and Mary Maynard London: Taylor and Francis. pp 26-40
47
Social Stratification and Brah, Avtar. 1992. “Difference, Diversity and Differentiation”. ‘Race’ Culture
Gender
and Difference. (ed) J. Donald and A Rattensi. London: Sage.

Caldwell, Kia Lilly. 2009. “Black Women, Cultural Citizenship and the Struggle
for Social Justice in Brazil,” Gendered Citizenships: Transnational Perspectives
on Knowledge Production, Political Activism, and Culture. (ed) Kia Lilly
Caldwell et al.:Palgrave Macmillan.

Channa, Subhadra Mitra. 2005. ‘Metaphors of Race and Caste based

Discriminations Against Dalits and Dalit Women in India’. F.V. Harrison (ed)
Resisting Racism and Xenophobia, Walnut Creek: Alta Mira

Channa, Subhadra Mitra n.d. The Inner and Outer Selves: Cosmology, Gender
and Ecology in the Himalayas. New Delhi: Oxford University Press (in press).

Davis, Angela. 2011. (reprint) Women, Race and Class. New Delhi: Navayana

Fleming, Robert. 1980. “Eugenic Sterilisation: Great for What Ails the Poor”
Encore American and Worldwide News 9:17-19.

Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph von. 1981. Asian Highland Societies in

Anthropological Perspective. New Delhi: Sterling.

Gilman, Sander L. 1985. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography

of Female Sexuality in late Nineteenth- Century Art, Medicine, and Literature”.
“Race”, Writing and Difference (ed) Louis Gates, Jr. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. pp 223-262

Moon, Vasant. 2001. Growing up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography.

Tr. From Marathi by Gail Omvedt. New Delhi: Vistaar Pub.

Obama, Barrack. 1995. Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
New York: Three Rivers Press.

Shanklin, Eugenia. 1994. Anthropology and Race, California: Wadsworth Pub.Co

Stolcke, Verena. 1993. “Is Sex to Gender as Race is to Ethnicity?” Gendered

Anthropology (ed) Teresa del Valle. London: Routledge

Trautmann, Thomas. 2004. (org 1997) Aryans and the British in India. New
Delhi: Yoda Press (1997 edition by University of California press)

Wheeler, Erica. 1995. “Doing Mental Health Research: Observations and

Experiences”. The Dynamics of ‘Race’ and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions.
(ed) Haleh Afshar and Mary Maynard London: Taylor and Francis, pp 41-62

Yinger, Milton J. 1997. (reprint) Ethnicity: Source of Strength? Source of Conflict?

Jaipur; Rawat. (org State University of New York)

Suggested Reading
Cheater, Angela (ed). 1999. The Anthropology of Power. London: Routledge
Faye V Harrison (ed) Resisting Racism and Xenophobia. Walnut Creek: Altamira

48
Afshar, Haelh and Mary Maynard (eds). 1995. (reprint) The Dynamics of ‘Race’ Ethnicity and Gender
and Gender. London: Taylor and Francis
Moore, Henrietta. 1996. The Future of Anthropological Knowledge. London:
Routledge
Obama, Barrack. 1995. Dreams from my father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
New York: Three Rivers Press.
Teresa Del Valle (ed) Gendered Anthropology. London: Routledge

Sample Questions
1) Is ethnicity concrete or constructed? Discuss.
2) At what point does ethnicity connect to gender. Discuss.
3) What role does restrictions on marriage play in reproducing identities?
4) What do you understand by stereotyping? What is their role in society?
5) Describe a few gender stereotypes about any community that you have heard
about.
6) Do people have only one ethnic identity? Discuss the variability of ethnic
identities, giving examples.
7) Describe some ways in which people of marginal ethnic communities’ stage
protests.
8) What are the various forms of violence directed against ethnic minorities?
Discuss with examples.
9) What are the various ways in which humans differentiate among each other.
What are implied by ‘Self and Other’.

49
Social Stratification and
Gender UNIT 4 CASTE AND GENDER

Contents
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Anthropological Understanding of Caste and Conceptualisation of Women
in Religious Texts
4.3 Role and Identity of Women in Caste Based Society
4.4 Upper Caste Women and Purity of Caste
4.5 Subordination of Women in both Upper and Lower Caste Based Societies
4.6 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After you have read through this unit, you will be able to:

 understand the relationship between caste and gender;

 understand the role of women in caste based societies;

 elaborate how purity of women and their caste are linked; and

 understand the subordination of women in all caste based societies.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
The aim of this unit is to understand the relationship between caste and gender.
Understanding the subordination of women and the superiority enjoyed by men
in the socio-cultural and economic realms is highly significant as it explicitly
brings out how caste stratification and gender stratification mediate each other.
The suppression of women in history (as is also now though not widely) was
essential to maintenance of caste hierarchy.

Men in all communities enjoy a considerable dominance over women in all

spheres of life. Subordination of women is a marked feature of most stages of
recorded history and is widespread in large parts of the world. This subordination
is culturally constructed and maintained at material and ideological levels, each
reinforcing the other (Nakkeeran 2003). What is more important to remember
here is that though subordination of women is a universal phenomenon, the extent
and nature of subordination of women is conditioned by their social, economic
and cultural environment. Gender is, thus, not a monolithic category.

50
 Caste and Gender
4.2 ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF
CASTE AND CONCEPTUALISATION OF
WOMEN IN RELIGIOUS TEXTS
Before we discuss the relationship between gender and caste, a brief discussion
of these two categories is imperative. Caste, as we know, is an important institution
of the Indian society. The varna principle of categorisation of society into four
groups, viz., Brahman, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras existed in Vedic society.
The four varnas are listed in order of hierarchy. The varna schema were
empirically expressed through various caste groups. Srinivas defines caste as
“Caste is a hereditary, endogamous, usually localised group having traditional
association with an occupation and a particular position in the local hierarchy of
castes. Relations between castes are governed among other things by the concept
of purity and pollution and generally maximum commensality occurs within the
castes” (Srinivas 1978). Caste are groups with a well defined lifestyle of their
own, the membership is determined not by selection or merit but by birth. Caste
is, thus, an ascribed category. Each caste has its own traditional occupation.
They practice endogamy. In fact, caste cannot be reproduced without endogamy
and it is because of this that endogamy is considered to be the tool for expression
and continuation of caste and gender subordination. It is through this rule of
marriage that discrete caste categories continues and ritual purity of caste is
maintained. The safeguarding of caste structure is achieved through the highly
restricted movement of the women. Women are regarded as gateways, literally
points of entrance into the caste system. Thus, the purity of the caste can be
ensured through closely guarding women who form the pivot for the whole
structure. Caste blood is always bilateral i.e. its ritual quality is received from
both parents. Thus, ideally both parents must be of the same caste. At this juncture,
the concepts of anuloma and pratiloma are worth discussing. A union where a
boy of upper caste marries a girl of lower caste was approved and called anuloma
while marriage of woman of ritually pure group with man of lower ritual status
was strongly disapproved and called pratiloma. In fact children born out of the
latter form of marriage were considered as untouchables. The idea being
emphasised here is that woman as guardian of “purity” is not to lower herself but
she could be raised high. To reinstate, the blood purity of the lineages and also
the position of family within the wider social hierarchy was directly linked to the
purity of women. Women are considered to be repositories of family honour.

Before we go ahead with our discussion of caste and gender, let us briefly discuss
the conceptualisation of female gender in the past in the Indian context. At a
general level, the innate nature of women was represented as sinful. In Manu
Dharam Shastra, women were seen as untruthful being having an indiscriminate
love of ornaments, anger, meanness, treachery and a bad conduct. Women as a
sex were composed of wickedness and guile. They had an insatiable passion and
are innately promiscuous. All this was seen as a sufficient reason to control and
impose restrictions on women. They, thus, needed to be closely guarded day and
night. Their uncontrolled sexuality was perceived as posing a threat. Women’s’
sexuality thus had to be organised by paternal power to serve the new social and
political arrangements organised by men of the dominant classes. Many Hindu
text talk of the use of violence to punish women, particularly wives, to make
them conform to the requirements of wifely fidelity. In the contemporary times,
51
Social Stratification and women’s sexuality is still under patriarchal and caste control and still requires to
Gender
be formally transferred from father to son.

4.3 ROLE AND IDENTITY OF WOMEN IN CASTE

BASED SOCIETY
As far as unfolding the issue of identity of women in caste based society is
concerned, it cannot be discussed without bringing in the concept of patriarchy.
Patriarchy is part of all identity construction. Gender, class and caste intersect
with patriarchy. Men mostly enjoy more power. Women, on the other hand, occupy
a lower position in all identity groups and sub-groups. A large majority of women
accept and play out these inequalities that are used in identity politics. Failure to
do so angers their community, and can even destroy their relationship. Challenging
their community identity codes can lead to severe consequences, in some cases
it can lead to death too. Women are symbols and represent the honor of their
community. Their autonomy is controlled. Due to dominance and universalism
of patriarchal practices, women end up negotiating with patriarchy.

The chastity of women is strongly related to caste status. Generally, the higher
ranking the caste, the more sexual control its women are expected to exhibit.
Brahman brides should be virgin, faithful to one husband, and celibate in
widowhood. By contrast, a sweeper bride may or may not be a virgin, extramarital
affairs may be tolerated, and, if widowed or divorced, the woman is encouraged
to remarry. For the higher castes, such control of female sexuality helps ensure
purity of lineage-of crucial importance to maintenance of high status.

Women in upper caste societies live their lives largely within the familial
parameters. Their mobility is severely restricted and they are not permitted to go
out for work. Women play the key role in maintaining the sanctity and purity of
the home. The bodily purity of upper castes is believed to be linked to what is
ingested. Leela Dube, a renowned feminist anthropologist has argued that women
play an important role in maintaining caste boundaries through preparation of
food and in maintaining its purity. The job of safeguarding food, forestalling
danger and in a broad sense, attending to the rules which govern the relational
idiom of food fall upon women. Women’s practices in relation to food play a
critical role in the hierarchical ordering of castes. The place of women as active
agents and instructors in the arena of food and rituals also implies that women
who command its gamut of rules gain special respect. Thus, women who espouse
the family tradition and conform to the patriarchal order of society are honoured
and respected; else they are subjected to severe punishment. The rules the women
are expected to uphold and mostly designed to suit to the requirements of their
male folks. These rules are generally considered to be absolute and women are
expected to adhere to them blindly.

There is striking difference in the levels of purity/impurity between men and

women of high caste. Men of higher caste neither incur self-pollution of the kind
their women do nor do they have to perform polluting work for other castes.
Their women, on the contrary, are involved in pollution incurred through bodily
processes, mainly menstruation and childbirth. They are also responsible for
doing some of the polluting tasks within the family. There is a pervasive notion
that women never attain the level of purity of men of their own caste. It is well
52
known that traditionally women of twice-born castes have been equated with Caste and Gender
Shudras who could not be initiated into the learning of the Vedas.

Now, let us move to low caste women. The difference in the levels of purity /
impurity between men and women is much less among the lower castes than
among the high castes. Low class women, apart from self pollution, also deal
with other’s pollution through occupational activities such as midwifery, disposal
of dirt, the washing of dirty clothes, and many other services. But, their men too
have to undertake polluting crafts work and services for others. Among these
castes, women’s substantial contribution to the process of earning a livelihood
along with sharing of impure tasks by both men and women makes the gender
division less unequal. However, it is worth mentioning here that women’s
contribution to occupational continuity is carried out within patrilineal confines
and under the imposition and control of caste.

Thus, position of women in upper caste society is considerably different from

their counterpart in lower castes. The higher the location in the caste hierarchy,
the greater are the control on women.

4.4 UPPER CASTE WOMEN AND PURITY OF

CASTE
The purity of caste is contingent upon the purity of women. The central idea is
that purity of caste can be ensured by closely guarding women who constitute
the pivot for the entire structure. Women are repositories of family honour. The
purity of women is crucial in maintaining blood purity of the lineage and also
position of the family within the wider social hierarchy. The prestige of the family
is in the hands of its daughters is a common saying and often repeated to girls by
the parents and to married women by their in laws. The safeguarding of the caste
structure is achieved through the highly controlled movement of women or even
through female isolation. The honour of caste and men is protected and preserved
through their women.

Onset of puberty marks a highly dangerous situation. In this context in order to

guard the purity of caste, pre-pubertal marriages were recommended for the upper
caste. The need for monitoring women’s sexuality is quite evident. The lower
caste male whose sexuality is a threat to upper caste purity has to be institutionally
prevented from having sexual access to women of upper caste. Women have
therefore to be constantly guarded.

There is an association between the chastity of women and caste status. Women
of upper caste were expected to exhibit more sexual control. A lot of value was
attached to the issue of virginity and loyalty. Brahman brides should be virgin,
faithful to their husband and celibate in widowhood. Women in upper caste
households were socialised in way that they adhered completely to social norms
of society.

Food constitutes a vital element in the ritual idiom of purity and pollution. Foods
are hierarchically catagorised in terms of specific characteristic they symbolise,
inherent purity and impurity and resistance to pollution. Both the exclusiveness
of castes as bounded entities and inter-caste relationships are articulated by idiom
of food. Women have to be very cautious as far as preparation and distribution of
53
Social Stratification and food is concerned. The responsibility for who eats what, where and when rests
Gender
with women within the domestic sphere. Anthropologists have often pointed out
that women are more particular about commensal restrictions. Upper caste women
are required to observe strict rules of purity and pollution while preparing food.
They are required to abstain from food that arouses passion and desire. Thus,
women’s behaviour with respect to food has great relevance to the hierarchical
ordering of caste.

It must be noted that rules like imposition of seclusion and restrictions on the
freedom of movement of women, their withdrawal from productive activities
outside the home, severe restrictions on divorce and widow remarriage and the
concomitant expectation of a life of self denial and austerity of widows are
attempts to ensure the purity of women and thereby the purity of caste.

4.5 SUBORDINATION OF WOMEN IN BOTH

UPPER AND LOWER CASTE BASED
SOCIETIES
Women of upper caste, in relation to their men occupy a lowly position. Women
in upper caste households are strictly bound by social norms. A girl’s parents or
brothers may withhold economic or physical support to her for not complying
with their decision especially related to spouse selection. Marriage, as an event
and as an institution greatly determines and restricts women’s position in these
households.
It is important to note that while upper caste women lose in relation to their men
folk within a patriarchal situation, they derive certain benefits from the system
of which they are a part. Further, these benefits are available to them only if they
conform to the patriarchal codes of their families and communities. Compliance
brings them gain, both material and symbolic. Deviance, on the other hand, expels
them from the material resources of the family of which they can partake only on
the condition of ‘good behaviour’. At this juncture, it is worth repeating that
women are regarded as upholding the tradition by conforming to them. Men, on
the other hand, uphold traditions by enforcing them, not upon themselves but
upon women. Thus, women even in the upper caste do not enjoy any independent
status. Their rights and duties are decided by their male counterparts and they
are expected to silently execute them. M.N. Srinivas speaks of the considerable
empowerment of high caste women through their meticulous observance of purity
and pollution rules, performance of periodical rituals, etc, which are considered
necessary for the welfare of household (1978).
Upper caste women, who are made to believe in the indissolubility of marriage,
for instance, are expected to change their life style drastically after they are
widowed. When a woman from upper caste enters into a relationship or falls in
love with a man from lower caste, the couple is subjected to collective power of
the upper castes who will stop at nothing to punish the transgression. Many such
couples have been subjected to brutal killings. Women’s sexuality is under
patriarchal and caste control and still requires to be transferred from father to
husband. These killings have the explicit consent of the community, especially
to which the women belong. Thus, while the lower caste man is killed, even the
woman of upper caste household is regarded as someone who must die for her
54 sin of violating the pratilomic codes of marriage.
Researches in India have shown that bodies of lower caste women are seen as Caste and Gender
collectively mute and capable of bearing penetration and other modes of marking
by upper caste hegemony without the intervening discourse of desire because of
the over determination of this violence as a caste privilege. The upper caste men
who wields the maximum amount of power is the most privileged section of the
society. Men of the upper caste have the freedom to keep mistresses. The power
and privilege of their family can serve to cover their indiscretion. Men have
institutionalised mechanism to escape the incurrence of pollution through sexual
intercourse with a low caste woman. This often takes the form of a purificatory
bath and the ritual explanation of the offence. Orthodox Brahmins in Karnataka
and Tamil Nadu, for instance, have a purificatory bath and don a new sacred
thread after establishing sexual contact with woman of lower caste. On the other
hand, if the woman from these communities goes ‘astray’ and the matter becomes
public knowledge. The woman is banished, declared dead to the family and a
‘mock’ shraada (funeral rites) is performed for her (Dube 1978)

Women of low caste constitute the most vulnerable section of Indian society.
Lower caste women too have codes to uphold. Their marriages are too negotiated
by their male kinsmen. Women in low caste society generally go out to work and
contribute to family income. In this context it is imperative to mention that in
the upper caste manual labour is looked down upon and women are not allowed
to go out and work. Women of low caste are thus not confined to domestic
domain. They lead a less restricted life compared to the women of upper caste
society. It is important to remember that the very idea women of low caste go out
for work does not hint to their better status but it is an economic necessity.

Lower caste women are victims of both caste discrimination and gender
discrimination. Lower caste women are sexually exploited by powerful upper
caste men owning land. It is not only difficult for low caste men to protect their
women against the lust and desire of their upper caste masters and superordinates
in the agrarian hierarchy, but there is also a tacit acceptance of upper caste ‘seed’.
In Uttar Pradesh, for instance , it is said that just as a she goat may be milked at
any time at one’s will, so can a chamaar woman be enjoyed anytime at one’s
discretion (Dube 1978).

4.6 SUMMARY
Caste is one of the basic institutions of Hindu society. The significance of gender
in understanding the caste system and the way caste invades on women’s life
cannot be ignored. Indian society is strongly patriarchal. Women’s compliance
to structure of caste and class is not merely passive but can extend to incitement
of their menfolk to hold on to unchallenged social power that they have wielded
into contemporary times. Women in India are treated as inferior and lowly by
their male counterparts. Women are treated as subordinates and their sexuality is
controlled by men. In India caste system is an important institution. This feature
makes the Indian society highly stratified and hierarchical. Caste and gender are
highly correlated. Though women of upper caste face gender discrimination at
every step of their life and it is their men who control their destiny. Yet women
of upper caste are entitled to certain privileges. It is important to note that these
privileges are granted to them only when they conform to the patriarchal order
of society. Women of the lower caste are the most disadvantaged lot. They are
victim of both gender discrimination and caste inequality. 55
Social Stratification and References
Gender
Dube, Leela. 1978. ‘Caste and Women’ in M. N. Srinivas, The Changing Position
of Indian Women. Bombay: Oxford University Press.
Nakkerran, N. 2003. ‘Women’s Work, Status and Fertility. Land, Caste and Gender
in a South India Village’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 38 (7). Pp.3931-
3939
Srinivas, M. N. 1978.Caste in Modern India and Other Essays. Bombay: Oxford
University Press.

Suggested Reading
Chakravati, Uma. 2003. Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens. Stree.
Calcutta.

Sample Questions
1) Discuss the relation between caste and gender.
2) Critically examine the role of women in caste based society.
3) Discuss the association between the chastity of women and caste status.

56
 Caste and Gender
UNIT 5 WOMEN IN TRIBAL SOCIEITIES

Contents
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Gender Perspective in the Study of Women
5.3 Anthropology and Tribal Study
5.4 Differentiating Sex and Gender
5.5 Gender Terminologies Defined
5.6 Gender as a System
5.7 Status of Tribal Women: An Overview
5.7.1 Work-role Performance of Tribal Women
5.7.2 Tribal Women’s Reproductive Role and its Social Significance
5.7.3 The Primary Traits that Differentiate Tribal Men and Women
5.7.4 Determinants of Tribal Women’s Status in Traditional and Transitional Societies
5.8 Tribal Women in Changing Situations
5.9 A General Overview of Tribal Women in India
5.9.1 Instances from Some Indian Tribal Groups
5.10 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to understand:
 how women and the concept of gender is interrelated;
 the nature and extent of women’s control over valued resources and their
labour and production;
 the work-role attachment of tribal women at various levels;
 the underlying factors influencing tribal women’s status in society;
 the impact of changing social and physical environment on tribal women;
and
 how to look into the reality of the world of tribal women.

5.1 INTRODUCTION
Anthropology and tribal history is intimately related to each other. The nineteenth
century anthropologists mostly took the pain of exploring tribal world across the
globe primarily fulfilling the interest of the colonial rulers. It has quite often
been asserted that in conventional anthropological literature women remains
invisible though ethnographic accounts have encompassed women through
extensive studies on marriage and kinship system of tribal groups. Therefore,
57
Social Stratification and problem lies in the process of representing women, not essentially in availability
Gender
of data. In traditional anthropological fieldwork and their interpretation, three
inherent phenomena have surfaced influencing representation of women through
gender perspective.
• The anthropologists happened to be outsiders hailing from non-traditional
societies, came to the field with a preoccupied notion that the men of the
studied society were more accessible, control significant information base
and attached to almost all socio-cultural aspects.
• The men of the studied society considered women as subordinate entity and
the same notion was transmitted to the anthropologists.
• Anthropologists hailing from western and non-traditional culture perceived
gender system of studied societies similar to the asymmetrical gender system
existing in their own society. Thus, they merely failed to understand and
interpret the egalitarian or at least differential gender relations present in
other traditional societies (Moore, 1988).

The women centric view points emerged in anthropological interpretation by the

year 1970. In India the Committee on the Status of Women (CSWI) was set up in
1971 and a new era of investigating women’s issues in gender perspective emerged
in the country. Thus there emerged a trend to break the paradigm of “male
reporting” and seeing women in “men’s perspectives”. Interpreting socio-cultural
relations and actions through female points of views necessitates the reworking
and redefining anthropological thoughts on women and their relation to men,
work and production and reproduction etc. This reading material will introduce
the students to various aspects of tribal women’s relation to interpersonal
interaction, social relations, behaviour pattern, work-role expectation, relation
of women to the means of production and resources, the power relation in social,
economic and political spheres of different levels.

5.2 GENDER PERSPECTIVE IN THE STUDY OF

WOMEN
It has been asserted that in any human society the dominant group generates and
controls the model of expression of social reality in their own terms. Human
history shows that man dominates the world of expression to outsiders at different
levels of interactions. The females, being a dominated group are expected to
express their life experiences in a male defined model. But the women’s life
experiences cannot be expressed through such male dominated model. So the
women do not get any medium to express their views and they get muted (Ardener,
1975). Thus, there emerged new trends in analysis of social realities through
female’s perspectives re-looking at anthropological and ethnographic data
collected through different space and time.

5.3 ANTHROPOLOGY AND TRIBAL STUDY

Anthropologists are the pioneers in classifying and defining the indigenous and
tribal groups as social categories across the world. There are different views on
the definition and classification of tribes among the scholars. For instance, Elman
Service (1962) and Marshall Sahlin (1968) defined tribe as a phase of social
58
formation in an evolutionary framework of human society, acquiring a non-state Women in Tribal Societies
character closer to other two social forms, bands and chiefdoms. Social scientists
are critical in accepting the evolutionary scheme to define tribes. In general,
anthropologists have forwarded several criteria like territoriality, legendary origin,
language, distinct culture, incipient technology, self-sufficiency etc to define a
tribe. But such criteria have been ever changing and in contemporary social scene
it is a matter of question whether there is any genuine demarcation to identify a
tribe as such. Therefore, while analysing tribal groups it has to be remembered
that these societies are in different stages of transition and they are not
homogeneous groups.

The Constitution of India does not define Scheduled Tribes as such. Article
366(25) refers to scheduled tribes as those communities who are scheduled in
accordance with Article 342 of the Constitution. According to Article 342 of the
Constitution, the Scheduled Tribes are the tribes or tribal communities or part of
or groups within these tribes and tribal communities which have been declared
as such by the President through a public notification.

5.4 DIFFERENTIATING SEX AND GENDER

While delineating about women, an immediate requirement arises i.e. the
clarification about sex and gender identities and concepts related to them. Sex
identity is an ascribed status of a person attached with the chromosomal, hormonal,
anatomical and physiological structure. On the contrary, gender is an achieved
status which refers to psychological, social and cultural components of a person.
People learn what behaviour, role and attitude they should have according to
their label – male and female. The universal sex difference is interpreted and
experienced through culturally defined symbolism and gender identity in all
human societies. Thus identity of men and women is culturally recognised through
gender relations in various aspects of life. Any discourse on women thus attracts
the need to venture in to gender system of a given society.

5.5 GENDER TERMINOLOGIES DEFINED

a) Engenderment and Gender Differentiation: Through social learning,
inculcation and internalisation, men and women learn differential gender
roles and gender specific behaviour defined by the society, a process called
engenderment leading to gender differentiation.
b) Gender Division of Labour: Across the globe men and women do different
works on a categorical average. This is because the notion of gender is
intimately related to certain work-role expectation from a specific gender.
This differential work-role performance is termed as gender division of
labour.
c) Gender Stratification: Men and women in every society are not always equal
in having access to scarce and valued resources. The extent of access to such
resources among the genders can be termed as gender stratification. A higher
level of gender stratification signifies the greater inequalities between men
and women in various spheres of life. Empirically, gender stratification is
always attached with some degree of female disadvantages and superior
power for males.
59
Social Stratification and d) Gender Ideology: In every human society there are belief systems that explain
Gender
how and why men and women should differ from one another. On the basis
of such beliefs in every society attempts are made to explain different rights,
responsibilities, restrictions and rewards given to each gender and to justify
negative reaction to nonconformists. Such belief system related to gender
identity is called gender ideology.
e) Authority: Gender ideology mostly helps legitimise men’s superior power
over resources including women. Such legitimised power is called authority.
f) Gender Stereotype: In a society, when gender differences are perceived as
the real differences, such belief system constitutes gender stereotype when
they are shared by collectives.

5.6 GENDER AS A SYSTEM

Gender is not a simple notion in a cultural context. It is a system in every human
society. Division of labour, work-role performance, production and reproduction,
distribution and re-distribution of goods and services and many other social,
economic, cultural and religious aspects are intertwined with gender. Thus it
forms a complex web of social action and relation forming a system in it. Now
that we have talked about some of the basic areas of tribes and gender, we now
proceed to delve into an elaborate discussion on the intricacies of stratification
observed in women inhabiting tribal societies.

5.7 STATUS OF TRIBAL WOMEN: AN OVERVIEW

Traditional anthropological and sociological literatures assign higher status to
tribal women compared to women in many non-tribal societies. The general
view forwarded for this perception includes tribal women’s greater involvement
in subsistence and market economy, their ability to possess some landed resources
for economic activities, existence of the system of bride-price (or bride-wealth),
ability to chose one’s own life partner and relatively free venture in male
dominated domains.
These conventional criteria for assessing tribal women’s status have been
questioned by present day anthropologists and social scientists while they find
that under the umbrella concept of “higher status”, the tribal women’s life is not
so pleasant. They are dominated by men’s dominant paradigm of gender system
in various social, economic and political fronts. Women are deprived of the right
to inherit valuable resources, if at all they are official heirs; in practice the men
control those resources. Despite their greater involvement in work-role performance,
the tribal women mostly lack power to control the benefits of their labour,
production and reproduction. In terms of health, education, decision making and
political participation etc the tribal women are mostly found to be lagging behind
their men counterparts. Thus an analysis of the situation of tribal women through
gender perspective promises a better and unbiased depiction of life of tribal
women.

5.7.1 Work-role Performance of Tribal Women

It is worth mentioning that the tribal societies across the world are in different
stages of transition – from their egalitarian nature to their involvement with the
60
complex capitalist and urbanised non-traditional societies. Thus we find lots of Women in Tribal Societies
variation among the tribal women regarding their work-role, their nature and
extent of involvement in work spheres — domestic, extra-domestic and public
domain, their relation to resources and their control over production and
reproduction etc.

The general perception about women’s work reveals that women are primarily
involved in works related to household and family responsibility, child care,
family food security, caring cattle and supplementing family’s subsistence
economy. Land and forest, remain primary resources on which the tribal women
depend for fulfilling most of such responsibilities. But instances drawn from
across the world show that these are not exclusive work of women. The role of
women may venture into the domain which is usually perceived as men’s domain.

Instances showed that in many tribal societies having a traditional setting; women
could do a lot of activities having social and economic importance in their society.
Pre-colonial and pre-capitalist Lovedu women of Zambia could become socially
a father of child and husband of a girl. She could assume both masculine and
feminine kin roles. Iroquois women used to control the food supply and even
could decide the nature and extent of men’s involvement in warfare. Women
among the !Kung Bushmen of Kalahari Desert were engaged in hunting activities.
The association of all wives of lineage men in every Igbo village in south eastern
Nigeria used to perform the role of setting prices for markets and protected the
interests of the in-marrying women. They could even punish husband’s
interference in women’s domain of control (Poewe 1980; Brown, 1975; Leacock
1977; Van Allen 1972). In contemporary world also the Mbuti people of Zaire
conduct hunting where willing women can take part. Agta women of Philippines
often hunt, using knives or bows and arrows. In the Tongan Islands women arrange
the marriage of their brother’s children. Among the Walpiri of Australia, the
initiatives and arrangement of marriage are in the hands of the prospective mother-
in-law (Turnbull 1978; Bell 1980). All these work-roles are otherwise perceived
as males’ job in general.

5.7.2 Tribal Women’s Reproductive Role and its Social

Significance
Importance of women’s contribution in pregnancy and subsequent child birth is
not equally valued by different tribal societies across the world. Instances drawn
from among the !Kung bushmen of Kalahari, the Murngin Aborigines of Australia,
the Ilongots of the Philippines show that the theme of motherhood and sexual
reproduction are not central to those people’s conception of women. Men, in
such societies, also assume an important role. Social fatherhood and social
motherhood subsumes biological mother and fathers in many societies. Contrarily,
Guajiro (a tribe from Columbia and Venezuela) ideology gives women a central
place in the creation of life. Women create life from a drop of her menstrual
blood. Though the father put his semen as a part of reproduction, his contribution
diminishes in the child’s body as it grows and replaced by mother’s substance
like flesh and blood and become truly a ‘mother’s child’ (Collier and Rosaldo
1981; Maria-Barbara 1985). These socio-culturally defined roles of women in
reproduction have certain impact in acquiring their position in the society.

61
Social Stratification and 5.7.3 The Primary Traits that Differentiate Tribal Men and
Gender
Women
Irrespective of work-role performance, men and women have separate domains
in each society. They are separated from each other through a complex web of
deep rooted social, cultural and religious beliefs and practices. Excretes during
menstruation and child birth remains the major factor to separate men’s world
from women’s in most of the traditional societies. The concept of pollution and
danger attached to it plays a major role to see women as a separate entity and to
determine social and interpersonal interaction between the two genders. Plenty
of examples are available in the ethnographic accounts.

Kaulong culture of New Britain considers women polluting, dangerously polluting

during menstruation and child birth. A polluting woman is dangerous to adult
men. Sexual intercourse is perceived as equal to marriage among the Kaulong
and is thought to be a polluting act. They perform marriage or intercourse to
reproduce. The danger of pollution debars a Kaulong man to be dominant in
courtship with woman. It is the girl who takes dominant part in this respect.
Male’s initiative towards a woman is considered as a rape. Such dominant cultural
definition helps controlling resources and the product of their labour. Among the
Gimi of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, women are considered polluting.
While the forests seem as a male realm, men wish to identify with the non-
human world and be revitalised by its limitless, masculine powers. The instances
of Hua society show that all children are born partially female. Adult males give
masculine substance to male children through ceremonies. In this process they
loose their maleness and thus old males become female-like, lose their status
and work in the field with younger women. Women lose their femaleness through
menstruation and child birth and thus adult females become male-like and get
higher social status. Therefore, adult males are very much cautious about getting
polluted by female substances and try to distance themselves from female world
(Goodale 1980; Gillison 1980; Meigs 1976). Majority of gender related work-
roles, beliefs and practices center round such differentiations which puts a cultural
aspect to such physiological happenings.

5.7.4 Determinants of Tribal Women’s Status in Traditional and

Transitional Societies
It was conceived, in general, that in pre-colonial or pre-classed societies, where
notion of private ownership was relatively lacking, women and men were
autonomous individuals who held equal positions or equal value and prestige
through their work-role performance. Contemporary tribal societies where
community mode of production is prevalent, men and women have same
relationship to the means of production and hence they stand to each other as
equal members of a community of “owners”. In a kin-corporate mode of
production, kin groups collectively control the means of production, and women’s
status varies according to whether they are primarily defined as sisters or wives,
where sisters have more power and control over resources compared to wives
(Sacks 1979).

Among the Australian aborigines women’s position is directly related to the

importance of and their control over their economic contribution, their
participation in women’s rituals valued by both men and women. Men’s and
62
women’s worlds are substantially independent of each other in economic and Women in Tribal Societies
ritual terms, have equal power base, not necessarily implying inferiority or
subordination (Leacock 1978; Phyllis Kaberry 1930; Diane Bell 1983). It has
also been stressed by scholars that mere involvement in crucial work force of
production and reproduction and the resource owned by community do not assure
women’s higher position in their society. Among the Mbowamb of central New
Guinea, contrary to their intense involvement in work-role, the women have no
de facto control over the land due to residence rule and they have de jure control
over their children due to the descent rule. A mother is socially separated from
her children only because she belongs to a different descent group. Their
cosmology also says that men created life out of shoots. Women have no part in
creation. Contrary to such situation the Guajiro women as stated in the foregoing
part of this writing, has almost absolute social control and possession of their
offspring because women’s contribution in reproduction is highly acknowledged
and the role of the father is unclear.

Gender ideology plays a crucial role in defining women’s social status. For
example, the conventional male version about Mbowmb women is that women
are like slave to males who serve. The women are also like a road and by marrying
a woman the road to extend a male’s status and position in society gets opened
up. They are seen as physically strong but mentally weak enough to hold control
over land and other important resources and make social contract etc. All these
notions show that the male is the model and measure of perfect human being.
Their mythology depicted women as the servant of the creator of life and later on
were given to the created Mbowmbs as wives. Women are seen as dangerous
because they take the power they possess with them at the time of marriage to
strengthen another group, and the group who receives the new life is afraid of
her since she carries power which is derived from another, potentially dangerous
group.

The value attached to certain works and control over the skill to do those works
possesses crucial importance to determine women’s status. For example, the
Guajiro women are sole producers of several items highly prised in this society,
like weaving, hammocks, bags, belts, daily used items etc. The skill required for
these works are absolutely controlled by women only defining their equal or
higher status in society.

Descent rule prevalent among the people also help define women’s position and
control over resources. Being matrilocal society the Guajiro women have access
to land even after their marriage. Women possess rights over their cattle; can
exchange them for goods and services. The property of husband and wives is
separate and one cannot have command over other’s property (Maria-Barbara
1985). Contrary to such norms, in many African tribal societies women cannot
inherit landed property. Bride-wealth transfers from groom’s family to male kin
of bride. They believe that such transfer of bride-wealth does not confer status to
the women. Instead it is perceived as compensation to the loss to bride’s family
for her work and husband’s authority on the woman’s production and reproduction
(Esther Boserup 1970; Goody 1976)

Tribal women’s legal control over and access to landed resources may not be
translated into their actual economic independence. For example in Ethiopia
though women have access to and control over landed property, they are lacking
63
Social Stratification and of required technology and equipment to produce crops effectively. Women
Gender
heavily depend on men’s labour ‘ye equl’, who demand equal share of produce
from the land. Men with oxen are able to demand more benefits form women
land owners. In southern Mexico it is found that the de jure land rights are not
the primary mechanism at work for women’s gender empowerment. Because,
women’s formal land rights are not only limited by local land tenure pattern and
opportunities, but they also do not always get translated into effective land control
or actual land-based decision making (Claudia R. 2005). Evidence from across
the world shows that income in the hands of tribal women is used to contribute
more to household food security and child nutrition compared to their male
counterpart due to the fact that women are directly responsible for feeding,
clothing and housing their children. Women’s attachment towards their children,
their limited extra-domestic work-role opportunity compelled them to involve
mostly in subsistence food production in informal economy resulting women’s
low productivity compared to that of men. In Eastern African Malawi seventy
percent girls and women work in farming, but they have no access to the resources
that men have. Women are handicapped by not having improved tools and
equipments for farming and other productive works; they are devoid of required
skill formation training and lack of agricultural extension services. Women are
restricted from formal economy mostly. Cambodian situation shows that women’s
low status can be understood in terms of their undervalued agrarian labour in a
rigidly patriarchal society.

5.8 TRIBAL WOMEN IN CHANGING SITUATIONS

Transition of traditional societies to capitalist ambit has introduced lots of changes
in terms of status of women. Social scientists are not conversant on what makes
such changes. It is argued that women’s status is dependent on whether or not
they control (i) access to resources, (ii) the condition of their work, and (iii) the
distribution of the products of their labour.

Consistent war or internal conflict in a region may affect women’s socio-political

status. For example in Burundi, the long lasting internal conflict have left behind
many household to be headed by women only having little or no access to land
and forest. This has increased the burden of women in home and economic front
more than double (Shalini Gidoomal 2010). Unfavourable governmental policies
that privatise or reallocate pastoral land, the ban on certain traditional methods
of farming, an increased reliance on largely unfavourable market system for
meeting basic dietary and household needs are some of the challenges the tribal
women among the Barana pastoral communities in Ethiopia have been facing.
Women’s capacity to supplement household economy has decreased because of
their increased workload in day to day activities and due to the decrease in grass
quality affected breeding of herds. As women and girls are responsible for
household food security, decreased ability in this sphere definitely affect the
socio-economic status of women, curtails their control over resources, market
and earning etc. Following the governmental industrial policy tribal women in
Uganda are unable to get access to forest resources. Loss of their traditional
habitat forced them to discontinue their traditional income sources like piggery,
raring cattle and goat due to lack of grazing land and availability of water. Different
craft including mat making, weaving etc declined due to non accessibility to raw
materials. But women’s responsibility to household feeding and care did not
64
cease at all. As a result of depleted natural resources and devaluation of traditional Women in Tribal Societies
goods and services added with influence of monetary economy males among
Husa society of Niger have to migrate to urban places in search of jobs leaving
behind women to head the family. The women of such families have to come out
to public domain for subsistence ignoring their religious code called kulben
(seclusion) through which the women are allowed to enter public places only
after dark escorted by the husband or close relatives. Thus poor, widow and
divorced women come out to public place round the year reflecting their lower
social status in the society (Marianne Haahr 2010).

5.9 A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF TRIBAL

WOMEN IN INDIA
Indian tribal population have been undergoing through rapid transition since
colonial period. The transition has been accelerated after independence due to
certain factors which include coercive development approaches by government,
forest and land policies, imposition of non-customary laws and rules affecting
traditional socio-political authority of the tribal people, intrusion of non-tribal
population in tribal domain and exposure of tribal population to the non-tribal
domain and monetary economy. All these factors have different nature and extent
of impact on tribal people across the country.

Based on nation wide NSS data Nilabja Ghosh (2008) shows utter dependence
of Indian tribal women on forest based resources, she finds that the nature of
forest based economy where the tribal women involved in is mostly informal. It
can help them meet food security of the family to a great extent, but it can hardly
satisfy the economic requirement of the tribal people who are entering into the
non-traditional economic and socio-political domain.

Nation wide, more than 25 percent tribal women belong to completely illiterate
household and nearly 50 percent in households in which no female is literate
showing greater illiteracy problem of tribal women. It is found that 78 percent of
tribal women above the age of 15 years are illiterate, and 13 percent have
rudimentary education. NSS data show that tribal women are far more
participative in economic life than other women. Contrary to such high work
participation as high as 43 percent of tribal women belong to low expenditure
class and lower the expenditure capability lower the economic empowerment of
women compared to men. Nearly 18.6 percent tribal women are engaged in
household production having potential of marketability. Tribal women are largely
engaged in agricultural works and 50 percent of them are casual workers in this
sector. Another 40 percent work in family enterprises with no formal payment
and only 9 percent women are entrepreneurs leaving 2.6 percent tribal women as
salaried job holders.

In forest related subsistence economy, women are mostly engaged in collection

and extraction. To some extent tribal women also manufacture using certain
forest based raw materials. In forest based economy gender neutrality is quite
evident and skewed towards women for higher work-role participation.

The health indicators of tribal women reveal that they are the victim of traditional
bias and superstitions towards health care and health seeking behaviour which
65
Social Stratification and ultimately affect maternal and child health, nutritional status, over burden of
Gender
pregnancy and child birth etc. Traditional beliefs and practices inhibit their drive
for seeking modern and proper treatment.

5.9.1 Instances from Some Indian Tribal Groups

Bhils are the third largest Scheduled Tribes living in semi-arid tribal districts in
Fifth Scheduled areas of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. During colonial
period the Bhils have lost control over their forest and land affecting availability
of fodders for their cattle. Community grazing lands or gauchars have either
been degraded or encroached or have been closed for open grazing. Men have to
migrate to distant places for earning. In this situation tribal women have to look
after their family – do household chores and also collect fuel and fodder from
distant forest. Depleted forest and ecology has made it harder for women to
collect forest produce which constitutes a part of their subsistence economy. In
Jharkhand, the Kolarian tribes including the Santhals, Mundas and Hos are
undergoing continuous changes in social, economic and political front. Women
among these tribes, where agriculture is not intensive, do a major part of the
labour — at home, in the field and in forest too. During colonial rule land became
private property and got attached to males only. Women’s right and control over
valuable resources have been curtailed to a great extent affecting their authority
and decision making power. Male dominance is found increased as one moves
from food gatherers to fully settled agriculturist tribes.

In those regions where productive resources are owned by the community, women
exercise central role in family economy and production. Tribes living in hilly
areas of North East region of India exhibit such characteristics. In matrilineal
tribes both descent and inheritance are drawn through women. Distribution of
land for cultivation among the families is decided by village council formed and
headed by male members alone. Women take charge of cultivation and organise
work in the field only after the family head allots land to each woman. Thus
from a gender perspective; the division of work between men and women is
more equitable than in settled agriculture.

Effect of emergence of individual ownership of productive resources has lots of

impact on traditional tribal women’s status and authority in their society. The 5th
Schedule in the Constitution of India advocates individual ownership in contrast
to most of the tribal ethos of communal ownership emerging clash of values and
norms. It has been revealed that more than 48 percent of tribal lands are in the
hands of non-tribals in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh (Laya 1999,
Pradhan and Stanley 1999, Mander 1998). In Sixth scheduled areas in N.E. India,
community ownership is recognised by law. But the state system favours
individual male ownership and class formation. In traditional Garo society of
Meghalaya, a matrilineal society (Marak 1997) shows how male relatives acquire
more economic and political power compared to the past when maternal uncles
had an important role to play in management of land and property of a woman.
Contrary to the portrayal of women as official heiress of land, their husbands
manage the issue of inheritance.

Tribal habitats have been affected greatly by mining activities across the globe
and India is no exception. Mining has great impact towards impoverishment of
women’s life among the traditional societies. Citing example from Orissa, Taliher,
66
K. Bhanumathi (2011) highlights that women displaced by mining have lost the Women in Tribal Societies
right to cultivate their traditional crops and unable to collect forest produces for
consumption or sale. Stopping of cash flow from forest produce and breeding
livestock, women have been forced to walk miles away from their villages leaving
behind their children, either to collect forest produce or find wage labour. The
compensation given, if any, was directed only to the men folk of the family as
women never own land in their names. In mining activities tribal women are
hardly given jobs by large scale companies due to their lack of skill. The living
conditions of women displaced by mining activities have been seriously affected
along with their other private and cultural space, infrastructure facilities, protection
from social custom etc.

In Uttarakhand hilly areas the trees used by the tribal women for their day to day
requirements have been cut down and replaced by exotic ornamental forest to
attract tourists. Restriction has been imposed in collection and exploitation of
forest resources for the local tribal people which in turn forced the men members
of tribal families to migrate to urban places. Forest dependent tribal women
have to look after household works, food security of the family members, the
livestock and marketing etc. Women have to venture a long distance to collect
fodder, the leaves and branches of baaz tree and fire wood on their heads. They
have to leave behind the infants and younger children back at home. In case
there is no person to look after, the small children have to be tied with ropes to a
pole or put them in bamboo made big baskets. Easy availability of liquor as an
impact of tourism development have made the men folk addicted to it creating a
lot of familial problems among the tribal people of the area (Sonowal 2009).

Among the plains tribes of Assam, for example the Sonowal Kacharis, agro-
products and cattle herding and silk worm rearing had significant importance
economically and women’s involvement was indispensable in such activities till
thirty years back. Women’s better position in society was well recognised. But
inflow of monetary economy, relative devaluation of agro-products made women’s
work less productive in terms of earning money. Social and physical environment
did not encourage tribal women to by-pass their traditional domain to do extra-
domestic earning jobs. Such situation had profound impact on formation of new
gender ideology and defining women’s relation with labour and production etc.
This was also reflected in gender selectivity in educating children, providing
scarce resources, health care and world view of women folk. However, in recent
years, improved road communication, increased social interaction of younger
generation of different communities, government incentives etc have influenced
the tribal people a lot and tribal women are coming out of their traditional domain
physically and mentally reducing the gap of gender division of labour, work role
expectation and also social status (Sonowal 2010)

Customary law has something to do with defining the status and position of
tribal women in their society. In Arunachal Pradesh customary laws indicate
patrilineal property inheritance favouring male children in the family. Most of
the tribal people are attached with the custom of Community Property Resource
based jhum cultivation. Thus women have some control over her sustenance.
Daughters get some gift in marriage from parents depending on the amount of
bride price received from the groom. Movable properties including livestock
can be inherited by a daughter in marriage. But many tribes allow daughters
some rights over immovable property till they get married. They also produce
67
Social Stratification and marketable items through their craftsmanship like weaving, bag and basket
Gender
making etc, but their works are devalued because disposal of articles are usually
done by men in the distant market. The custom of bride price many a time has
placed the women in difficult situation in the event of any dispute with husband
and his family because she cannot come back to her parental house without
repaying the amount of bride wealth and fine imposed for such activity.

In Assam, Rabha tribes are partly matrilineal. Youngest daughter inherits the
lion’s share, while other daughters share the remaining. But managerial control
over land are in the hands of men. Same is the case among the Lalung (Tiwa)
tribe of Assam. Here the elder daughter inherits the parental house while other
daughters get share in land. Among the Mising tribe, in case of parents having
no son, daughters can inherit landed property. Bodos have least gender difference
following their almost equal share of work-role in day to day life.

Naga women are rather free in mixing with their men folk, have the independence
to choose their own life partners etc. Many social scientists see women’s better
position among the Nagas observing these characters. But in terms of gender
relations in the domains of religious and socio- political domains the Naga women
are not in a better position when compared to women of non-tribal society (Zehol
1998). Nipa Banerjee (1996) also highlight that in Nagaland tribal women,
especially in rural areas, do not have the right to inherit landed property. Among
some tribes like Angami, women can be given a certain share of parental property,
but an adulterous will lose the inherited landed property. Gift of land (asouzu)
can be given by parents to daughters in certain Naga tribes. In traditional political
and religious sphere women play very little role. The council of elders in every
Naga village is devoid of women and decision taken regarding land and agriculture
hardly considers women’s role. Thus when women play a critical role in
agricultural activities, men’s decision affects women’s interest sometimes
negatively. The rule of reservation of 25 percent of seats for women fund allocation
etc is hardly followed. Lack of rights on resources denies women’s participation
in many other political-economic decision making spheres.

There is no denying the fact that Naga women despite the present apolitical role
have come out in an organised manner as pressure groups or social organisations
and are playing significant and effective roles in fighting against substance abuses,
army excesses etc and have been able to put effective check to a great extent on
a variety of social abuses against themselves, men and children (Zehol 1998).
At present Naga women have been able to enter public domain through some
women’s organisations, especially under the initiative of churches. Likewise,
the participation of Meitei women in Manipur, in commercial and socio-political
aspects is well known in contemporary days like Meira Paibis- the Women Torch-
bearers.

Among the Khasi matrilineal society, Tiplut Nongbri (1984) explicitly draws
attention to male-dominated power structure in politics, as well as cultural
conceptions of men and women which asserts male superiority. For example, a
man is said to have twelve units of strength while a woman has one. Authority in
household is shared (which may cause conflict) between a mother’s elder brother
and her husband. But the sole inheritress of ancestral property is the youngest
daughter who is thus less dependent economically on her male relatives than a
woman in a patrilineal society. It must be noted that the youngest daughter (Ka
68
Khadduh) also inherits significant responsibilities including cremation of her Women in Tribal Societies
mother and the provision of welfare to any family members in need. She is actually
only custodian of the ancestral property since she is not permitted to sell without
consulting her mother’s brother and father. Further, Nongbri notes that the
institution of Ka Kadduh is blamed by some for the lack of responsibility taken
by divorced husband for the welfare of their children; they assume the youngest
sisters will take care of them. The divided loyalties of men between their natal
households (MB) and affinal households can result in unfortunate women being
neglected from both sides.

The Mizo women are mostly literate yet kinship relations are strictly patrilineal.
Traditional Mizo society term women as “white animals”, depicts women’s lower
status by equating them with crabs having no social value, no religion, their
words having no weights, having limited wisdom etc. The Mizo have the oldest
coded customary law, the “Mizo Hnam Dan”. Women are not usually inheritors.
Widows have better position and have social security and can spend life at their
own will. Male inheritance of valuable and landed property is widely practiced
among the Jamatia tribes of Tripura also.

Bride-price, bride-wealth and women’s status have been issues of anthropological

debate since long past. Prevalence of this tradition is quite evident among the
tribal and indigenous societies across the world. Opinion varies from seeing it as
a means of buying the bride for prices making women a sort of commodity to
critical explanation of socio-cultural status given to the bride and her family that
works in complex social web of relations and perceptions. Citing example from
the African tribes like Sonjo, Thonga, Gusii and the Tiv, scholars like Robert F.
Gray (1960:34-57), Junod (1927), Mayer (1950), Bohanon (1955:61) shows that
besides socio-cultural aspects, an economic aspect has always been there in the
bride-price institution. Especially among the subsistence economies this
institution serves the purpose of currency of economic activities and works as an
incentive and requirement to venture into the interpersonal and inter-group
domains of other categories and gives meaning to the goods and services they
live on. The notion that bride-price depicts higher status of women in tribal
society has not been proved anywhere if one looks it in terms of gender relations
and life situation of the woman after marriage. It has been, contrarily, seen that
women are the route for social interaction and transaction where the institution
of bride price acquires a significant position.

5.10 SUMMARY
From the foregoing discussion we can come to the conclusion that situation of
tribal women has to be looked at beyond conventional lenses. Women are an
integral structure of gender system that encompasses almost every aspect of a
society. Gender is an extremely important element of social structure in tribal
societies. Gender relation is complex and varied. There is a need to re-look at
and re-define social realities of women’s world through gender perspective.
Compared to the vastness of the tribal world in India, very little has been done
on women’s studies. Through gender perspectives a well integrated and well
planned study programme can generate valuable and relevant data base which
can be used for the practical benefits of tribal women in the country.

69
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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East India: Impact on Women’ . New Delhi: National Commission for Women.
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Forest Based Industries in Rural India. IASC conference paper.
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and M. Stratehm (eds.) Nature, Culture and Gender, 143-73. Cambridge:
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Goodale, Jane. 1980. ‘Gender, Sexuality and Marrriage: A Kaulong Model of
Nature and Culture’. C. MacCormack and M. Stratehm (eds.) Nature, Culture
and Gender, 119-42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goody, Jack. 1976. Production and Reproduction. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gray, Robert F. 1960. ‘Sonjo Bride-Price and the Question of African “Wife
Purchase”’. American Anthropologist, Vol. 62, no.1 Pp. 34-57.
Junodh, A. 1927. The Life of a South African Tribe. London: Macmillan & Co.
K, Bhanumathi. 2011. ‘Status of Women Affected by Mining in India’. Role of
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(accessed from http://www.womenenvironment.org/detail.php?pageId=319)

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Kabery, Phyllis. 1939. Aboriginal Women: Sacred and Profane. London: Rutledge Women in Tribal Societies
& Kegan Paul.
Laya. 1999. Land Alienation in Tribal Andhra Pradesh. Vishakapatnam: Laya.
Leacock, Aleanor. 1972. ‘Introduction’. The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State. New York: International Publishers. Pp 7-67.
Leacock, Aleanor. 1978. ‘Women’s Status in Egalitarian Society: Implications
for Social Evolution’. Current Anthropology, 19 (2): 247-75.
Leacock, E.B. 1977. ‘The Changing Family and Levi-Strauss, or Whatever
Happened to Fathers?’. Social Research 44, 2: 235-259.
Mander, H. 1998. Tribal Land Alienation in Madhya Pradesh: A Brief Review of
Problem and the Efficacy of Legislative Remedies. Bhopal: Government of
Madhya Pradesh.
Marak, C. 1997. ‘Status of Women in Garo Culture’. S. Sen, (ed.), Women in
Meghalaya, pp. 56–72. New Delhi: Omsons.
Maria-Barbara W.F. 1985. ‘Production and Status of Women: An Anthropological
Interpretation of Historical Materialis’. Anthropos 80:1-14.
Marianne, Haahr. 2010. ‘ How Land Scarcity is Eroding Women’s Rights: The
Case of Female Seclusion’. Shalini Gidoomal (ed.) Reclaiming Rights and
Resources: Women, Poverty and Environment. Nairobi: CARE International.
Mayer, Philip. 1950. Gusii Bridewealth Law and Custom. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Meigs, Anna. 1976. ‘Male Pregnancy and Reduction of Sexual Opposition in a
New Guinea Highlands Society’. Ethnology, 15: 339-407.
Moore, H. L. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. UK: Polity Press.
Nongbri, Tiplut. 1984. ‘Khasi Women and Matriliny: Transformations in Gender
Relations’. Indian Journal of Gender Studies. Oct: 2004 (345-365)
Poewe, K. 1980. ‘Universal Male Dominance: An Ethnological Illusion’.
Dialectical Anthropology, 5: 110-125.
Pradhan, M. and W. Stanley. 1999. Land Alienation in the Tribal Areas of Orissa.
Bhubaneshwar and Semiliguda: CPSW and WIDA.
Sacks, Karen. 1979. Sisters and Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual Equality.
Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.
Sahlins, M.D. 1968. Tribesmen. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Service, Elman R. 1971 (Original 1962). Primitive Social Organisation: an
Evolutionary Perspective (2nd edition). New York: Random House publication.
Shalini Gidoomal (ed.) 2010. ‘Women Struggle to Combat Soil Degradation’.
Reclaiming Rights and Resources: Women, Poverty and Environment. Kenya:
CARE International, Nairobi.
Sonowal C.J. 2009. ‘Environmental Education in Schools: The Indian Scenario’.
Journal of Human Ecology, 28(1): 15-36 (2009)
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Social Stratification and Sonowal, C.J. 2010. ‘Transition of Gender System through Time and Space:
Gender
Case Study of a Tribal Group in Assam, India’. Global Journal of Human Social
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Turnbull, C. 1978. ‘The Politics of Non-Aggression’. A. Montagu (ed.) Learning
Non-Aggression. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp 161-221.
Van Allen, Judith. 1972. ‘Sitting on a Man: Colonialism and the Lost Political
Institutions of Igbo Women’. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 6 (2): 165-
181.
Zehol, Lucy. (ed.) 1998. Women in Naga Society. New Delhi: Regency
Publications..
Zehol, Lucy.1998. ‘Women’s Movement in Manipur: Some Observations’. M.N.
Karna (ed.) Social Movements in North East India. New Delhi: Indus Publishing.
Company:

Suggested Reading
Banu, Zenab. 2004. Dis-empowerment of Tribal Women: Perspective on 73rd
Constitutional Amendment. Delhi: Kanishka Publishers.
Bodra, Gomati. 2009. Empowerment of Tribal Women. Delhi: Mohit Publications.
Janet Saltzman Chafetz. 1990. Gender Equity: An Integrated Theory of Stability
and Change. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Kamlesh, Mann. 1996. Tribal Women: On the Threshold of Twenty-first Century.
New Delhi: M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd..
Moore, H.L. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press,.
Sharma, S.P. and A.C. Mittal. 1998. The Tribal Women in India (3 Sets). New
Delhi: Radha Publications.

Sample Questions
1) How is the concept of gender related to men and women in a society?
2) What sort of work-roles tribal women perform in general? Have you seen
any difference in work-roles of women in traditional and transitional setting?
3) What are the major criteria that determines the access and control of women
over valued resources, production and reproduction in different tribal
societies?
4) Write on the scope of studying tribal women through gender perspectives.

72
 MANE-004
Gender and Society
Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

7
CROSS CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
UNIT 1
Sexuality and Gender 5
UNIT 2
Globalisation and Gender 18
UNIT 3
Mass Media and Gender 32
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Former Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Discipline of Anthropology
Professor Rekha Pande SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Professor of History, SOSS and
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Assistant Professor
Studies, School of Social Sciences Discipline of Anthropology
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur Dr. P. Venkatramana
Associate Professor Assistant Professor
Faculty of Sociology Discipline of Anthropology
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C.J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Academic assistance provided by Dr. N.K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate (DBT) for the Expert Committee
Meeting.

Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi

Course Coordinator: Dr. Mitoo Das, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Content Editor
Professor Rekha Pande, Professor of History,
SOSS and Head, Centre for Women’s Studies,
University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad

Block Preparation Team

Block Introduction
Prof. Rekha Pande, Professor of History
SOSS, and Head, Centre for Women’s
Studies, University of Hyderabad,
Hyderbad
Authors are responsible for the academic content of this course as far as the copyright issues are concerned.
Unit Writers
Dr. Mamtha Karollil (Unit 1)
Assistant Professor, School of Human Studies
Ambedkar University, Delhi
Dr. Mala Narang Reddy (Unit 2)
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Policy Studies
TERI University, Delhi
Dr. Ratheesh Kumar (Unit 3)
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences University of Hyderabad

Print Production Cover Design

Mr. Manjit Singh Dr. Mitoo Das, Asstt. Professor
Section Officer (Pub.), SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Discipline of Anthropology, SOSS, IGNOU

June, 2012
© Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2012
ISBN-978-81-266-6142-8
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other
means, without permission in writing from the Indira Gandhi National Open University.
Further information on Indira Gandhi National Open University courses may be obtained from the
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BLOCK 7 CROSS CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVES
Introduction
The three units in this section on Cross Cultural Perspectives focus on three
issues, Sexuality and Gender, Globalisation and Gender and Mass Media and
Gender from an anthropological perspective. It is important to understand the
relationship between sex, gender and sexuality as they are understood within
various frameworks of academic and popular understanding. Categorising
ourselves in terms of being a ‘man’ or ‘woman’ is a fundamental way in which
we understand ourselves and one another. Normatively, these social categories
of ‘gender’ map onto the biological realities of possessing male or female
secondary sexual characteristics – what is called the ‘sex’ of a person. Biological
explanations typically draw on genetic, hormonal or socio-biological
(evolutionary theory) accounts of gender and sexuality and are often employed
to defend the normative or to veil over the social and political construction of
gender and sexuality. Feminism provides some conceptual framework to
understand the subjugation of women by men through sexuality and sexual
identities. Sexuality is constructed through a negotiation of meanings in symbols
and practices. A pan-cultural phenomenon is the control of female sexuality,
even as the precise contours of meaning this takes finds different shades in
Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. Such conceptions of female sexuality ties in
with the female body which is seen as the site for the protection and maintenance
of family honour. Cultural values also inform what is understood to be kinship
across the world. India has a long history of multiple sexualities and non- gender
identities that do not fall into the man-woman binary. It was only in the 19th
century and with the advent of modernity specifically through British rule in
India that these sexualities and gender identities faced systematic erasure in the
bid to create the modern nation state with the heteronormative family as a chief
institution within it.

The phenomenon of globalisation which has impacted our society in numerous

ways, has particularly affected the everyday lives of women, especially from
developing countries. On the one hand, globalisation has provided numerous
jobs for people in developing countries, led to improved standards of living due
to greater access to products and services at lower prices, and enhanced transfer
of technology for human benefit. On the other hand benefits of globalisation
have not been uniformly distributed, leading to the widening of gap between the
rich and the poor. In many cases, the condition of unskilled and asset-poor people
has worsened due to the impact of globalisation. Women have also been both
positively and negatively impacted. In some societies, existing gender biases in
patriarchal societies have been aggravated, whereas in others, women have been
able to challenge the traditional social norms due to improved employment
opportunities. In many cases, however, female marginalisation as a result of
globalisation cannot be denied. Not only has globalisation led to an increased
incidence of poverty among women, it has also made them more vulnerable due
to declining state support programme and greater informalisation of female
employment. The only way to minimise the negative impacts of globalisation is
to make the process of development planning and implementation, both at national
and international level, more gender sensitive. There is a shift in the current
Cross Cultural Perspectives policy stance towards people-centred and gender-wise policies. Gender
mainstreaming is now an important agenda in all development initiatives at
international and national levels. Concerted efforts in this direction will lead to
equitable and just development.

Media exercise enormous influence and power in unprecedented ways in our

everyday lives. People are exposed to the multiple forms and contents of the
media as most of them spend a considerable amount of time in watching television,
films and videos or reading newspapers, magazines or listening to music and
surfing the Net. And by doing so, most people actively take part in constructing
a media culture or cultures, since human capacities to speak, think, form
relationships with others and the sense of creating one’s own identity are now
largely shaped by the media. Gender-based social images that are transmitted
through media have a powerful impact on the larger cultural domain. The crucial
linkages between media and the construction of gender are important. Gender
representations are neither simple nor the audience readings of the text are rather
complex and multi-dimensional. Even though there is a huge difference and
change has occurred in the economic and social status among certain sections of
women, women as a social and cultural entity are still in a structurally subordinate
position to most men. And this cultural equation gets reflected in the construction
and representation of gender in the media industry as well as in media texts.

4
 Sexuality and Gender
UNIT 1 SEXUALITY AND GENDER

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The Role of Biology
1.3 The Role of Society, Language, Power
1.3.1 Feminism, Sexuality and Gender
1.3.2 Freud: The Psychoanalytical Conceptions of Gender and Sexuality
1.3.3 Foucault: The Discursive Production of Sexuality
1.3.4 Butler: A Foucauldian Interpretation of Freud
1.4 Culture and Sexuality
1.4.1 Gender Identities, Sexual Identities and Culture
1.4.2 Male and Female Sexuality and Culture
1.4.3 Kinship and Sexuality
1.5 History of Sexuality in India: Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer
(LGBT-Q) Politics
1.6 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through the module, a student should:
 understand and critique biologically determinist frameworks of understanding
sex, gender and sexuality;
 be familiar with social constructionist frameworks for understanding sex,
gender and sexuality;
 understand anthropological work in this paradigm demonstrating how
different cultures articulate the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality
in different ways; and
 be familiar with the Indian context of sexual politics.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Sexuality is a broad area of study related to an individual’s sex, gender identity
and expression, and sexual orientation. Categorising ourselves in terms of being
a ‘man’ or ‘woman’ is a fundamental way in which we understand ourselves and
one another. Normatively, these social categories of ‘gender’ map onto the
biological realities of possessing male or female secondary sexual characteristics
– what is called the ‘sex’ of a person.

Thus a range of psychological traits and behaviours such as aggression, verbal

ability, assertiveness, passivity, etc., as also who one desires – an aspect of
sexuality- are associated with male and female. Across cultures, the relationship
5
Cross Cultural Perspectives between sex, gender and sexuality tends to be narrowly defined. Thus, a person
with a vagina is a woman with characteristic ways of experiencing herself and
the world and with characteristic patterns of desire: “normally”, she would desire
a man.

It is important to make a distinction between two types of questions in relation

to sex and gender. First is the question of the reality of gender, or in other words,
do sex differences link to differences in social life so that there are two types of
beings called men and women? ‘Sex differences’ research in psychology at the
turn of the 20th century studied an enormous range of behaviours and
characteristics across the sexes using a range of scales, inventories and
questionnaires. A review and analysis of this massive and uncoordinated body of
research by Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) concluded that there was small but
consistent differences between the sexes in just four areas: verbal ability (girls
showed higher), visual-spatial ability (boys are superior), mathematical ability
(boys were superior) and aggressiveness (boys are more aggressive). They argued
that there is a tendency to report findings of difference and under-report findings
of similarities so that men and women may be more similar than different with
more differences within the population of men or women.

Second, conceding that there are observed differences between the sexes on some
traits and characteristics, to what do we owe these differences? Sometimes the
existence of real differences between men and women is taken to mean that
these are inevitable and rooted in biology (genes, hormones, physical
characteristics). Thus, from within this framework homosexuality can be seen as
a genetic aberration or men can be thought as naturally more sexually aggressive
than women. However, these differences might also stem from environmental or
social influences or from our tendency to make sense of our experiences in a
world which offers us certain ways of understanding them (the role of language).
These two explanations are often competing and form the two poles of what is
known as the nature-nurture debate.

Today, claims that our psychology is either completely determined by culture or

biology is rare and explanations suggest that biology and environment interact
in complex ways to produce the social phenomena we experience as gender or
sexuality. Thus while biological givens cannot be denied altogether, it is also the
case that the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality is reinforced and
reproduced by a range of social institutions including religion, the state, education
and the family.

Some of the evidence from sex-difference research is sometimes borne out in

our social life. Thus, that males are more aggressive seems validated by the fact
that domestic violence, rape and other violent crimes are predominantly
committed by men. However, explanations or accounts of these differences are
not merely academic but also political because biologically determinist
explanations can justify social disadvantage deriving from these differences,
inevitable as they are. Biological determinist explanations are also often the basis
on which non-normative sexualities and gender identities are marginalised (as
aberrant or abnormal). On the other hand understanding the social construction
of these paves the way to the reorganisation of the world that is respectful of
difference.

6
This module first introduces the concepts of sex, sexuality and gender and Sexuality and Gender
examines closely some problems with biological determinism before presenting
frameworks of understanding that tend towards the ‘social’ as deriving from
such diverse fields as feminism, psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Building
on these social-constructionist frameworks, the module next specifically reviews
research on sexuality as conducted within an anthropological framework. Finally,
the module considers some concepts useful for engagement with the praxis of
sexuality and gender – policy and politics as they relate to gender and sexuality.

1.2 THE ROLE OF BIOLOGY

Although many accept an interaction between biology and society to produce
sexed and gendered individuals, there is a common sense assumption that
biological factors provide a powerful, irrefutable push in certain directions while
environmental factors merely provide a moderating effect. Also, not only is
biology a more powerful force than society, there is also a tendency to value the
natural over the cultural – especially in contemporary Western society. Thus for
instance, stating that homosexuality is unnatural is also often to say that it is
unacceptable. Here biology or nature is recruited in the aid of ideology that
advantages some and disadvantages others. Most human activity such as wearing
clothes, writing a book or pursuing education cannot be categorised as ‘natural’
activities but still do not come under moral censure.

Biologically-determinist theories of sex and sexuality have drawn heavily on

science, from physiology in the 19th century to neurobiology and genetics in the
20th and 21st centuries. These explanations have focused upon hormonal, genetic
or evolutionary factors. Thus, aggression is linked to the male reproductive
hormone testosterone. However, evidence of this link has primarily come from
animal studies with consequent problems of generalising to humans and where
human subjects have been used, the evidence is contradictory. A genetic
foundation has been attributed to both aggression and homosexuality though in
both cases research has failed to identify a gene in men that make them aggressive
or a ‘homosexual gene’.

More compelling are explanations that suggest that certain behaviours (aggression
and promiscuity in males; heterosexuality) are genetically reinforced through
natural selection because they aid in the survival of the species. Thus the
reproductive function of females – pregnancy and child-care would recommend
that they remain confined to the home to avoid endangering their young. With
this division of labour, aggressive men who can defend themselves better when
hunting are more likely to pass on their genes to their children while nurturant
mothers are more likely to pass on their genes to their children who have higher
chances of survival because of the nurturance they receive from the mother. In
the context of sexuality, women are less promiscuous than men because the
investment in pregnancy and the responsibility for the care of the child would
recommend that she chooses a man who is most likely to support her in the
upbringing of the child. On the other hand, a man who is free of the burden of
pregnancy and child-care would best ensure the passing on of his genes by
impregnating as many females as possible.

Evolutionary theory applied to sexuality would understand the biological

differences between the sexes and the inevitable attraction between them as
7
Cross Cultural Perspectives genetically programmed to ensure that the human race and society flourishes.
Here, a key idea is that men and women have sex in order to reproduce and this
plays a functional role in human evolution. A consequence of such reasoning is
that homosexuality thereby becomes “unnatural” and an aberration. However a
problem with this reasoning is as Jeffrey Weeks (2003) points out, most
heterosexual human sexual activity is not undertaken for the purpose of
reproduction. For example, masturbation, cross-dressing or sexual fetishes
practiced between heterosexual couples do not require intercourse between bodies.
Thus heterosexual activity is not only about a propagation of the species or one’s
gene pool.

1.3 THE ROLE OF SOCIETY, LANGUAGE, POWER

The problem with biological bases of sexuality is that they tend to be reductionist
– complex social and political dynamics are veiled-over to present a simplistic
analysis that is based on biology. Biological explanations cannot account for
why powerful institutions such as religion, laws, the police and military have to
be employed to police, control and limit the expression of a sexuality committed
to reproduction.

Various traditions in the social sciences have attempted to develop frameworks

of understanding that acknowledge the role of social or cultural forces in shaping
our sexual lives as also the role that power plays to advantage certain sections of
society while marginalising others. Here we briefly examine feminist,
psychoanalytic and poststructuralist understandings of sex, gender and sexuality.

1.3.1 Feminism, Sexuality and Gender

BOX
Feminism: Feminism is committed to theorising bases of inequality (in
opportunities, rights, priveleges) between men and and to a programme of
social change for addressing it. Different views of why there is gender
inequality gives rise to different forms of feminism with different
recommendations for change (Burr, 1998).

Psychoanalysis: Theory of the human mind in which the self or the ego
wrestles with the sexual drives of the unconscious on the one hand and the
demands for restraint and denial arising from the super-ego on the other.
Psychoanalysis emphasises the role of early childhood experiences in
producing subjectivity (or the self) including gendered and sexed
subjectivities.

Poststructructuralism: Poststructuralism names a theory, or a group of

theories, concerning the relationship between human beings, the world,
and the practice of making and reproducing meanings. Poststructuralists
affirm that consciousness is not the origin of the language we speak and
the images we recognise, so much as the product of the meanings we learn
and reproduce. Language here is not understood in terms of the words we
speak but in terms of discourse : systems of thoughts composed of ideas,
attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct
the subjects and the worlds of which they speak.
8
Feminists see biological accounts of male sexuality and/or aggression as justifying Sexuality and Gender
coercive male sexuality such as rape, sexual harassment. Radical feminists go a
step further to propose that sexuality and male aggression is the cornerstone of
women’s oppression. Their central argument is that, heterosexuality is defined
by male domination and female submission; when the most fundamental of human
relations are defined in this manner, then it is little wonder that other contexts
(such as work and the family) follow suit with men having unequal power and
privilege in relation to women (Burr, 1998). Some radical feminists claim that
gender is reinscribed each time a heterosexual act takes place such that through
the act of male penetration of female bodies, where the person with the penis is
the ‘giver’ (dominant) and the person with the vagina, the ‘receiver’ (submissive),
gender is reproduced. Men and women are (re)produced in each instance of
coercive male sexuality such as rape, sexual harassment, the wolf-whistle and
pornography- where women are pitted as passive objects of male desire. These
are not isolated examples of male dominance but reflect general male privilege
and power that men as a class hold over women as a class.

1.3.2 Freud: The Psychoanalytic Conceptions of Gender and

Sexuality
According to Sigmund Freud, children’s gender identity rests on their recognition
that they have (in the case of boys) or don’t have (in the case of girls) a penis. For
boys, the penis represents their entry ticket into the powerful world of men; both
boys and girls are thought to believe that girl’s lack of penis is a result of castration
for some wrong-doing and boys live in constant fear of this happening to them
too. During the Oedipal phase, when he is 3 to 5 years old, boys’ increasing
sexual awareness become directed to his mother. But the boy fears that his
powerful but distant father will castrate him in retaliation and he deals with this
anxiety by repressing his feelings for his mother and identifying with the father,
taking on all that the father stands for – his voice of authority and the social
norms and values he embodies. Little girls on the other hand, who are aware that
their castrated status renders them second class citizens, inevitably see their
mothers as also castrated and therefore second best. In her identification with
the mother, the little girl therefore takes on the board a submissive attitude in
relation to a man (heterosexuality). Moreover, since she has not had to resolve
the Oedipus complex, as also not having identified with an authority figure,
develops not the strength of character and moral rectitude that little boys develop.
According to Freud, children start out as “polymorphously perverse” and may
feel desire for either parent; in some of his postulations, he predicates the final
identification to the same-sex parent to be dependent on the presence of innate
dispositions of corresponding masculinity or femininity.

Freud’s theory of gender and sexual identity clearly valourises masculinity; later
psychoanalytic formulations have built on Freud’s ideas while producing less
misogynistic accounts. Freud’s views have been criticised on many grounds
including the assumed superiority of the penis over the vagina, the implication
that only father discipline in the home (and represent authority) as also for ignoring
gender as a system of power relations in society and taking for granted male
power in society.

9
Cross Cultural Perspectives 1.3.3 Foucault: The Discursive Production of Sexuality
Michel Foucault, a poststructuralist theorist, provides a most vivid illustration
of the ways in which the modern sexual subject is produced in networks of power
operating through knowledge and discourse in the three volume History of
Sexuality series (1976-84). Foucault’s theories of discourse hold that the individual
subject is produced in and through specific discourses that circulate in any society
at any given moment– in the media, through speech, through practices, through
academic, legal papers and documents etc. E.g., subject categories such as
‘homosexual’ and or ‘criminal’ do not exist prior to their construction in language
and discourse. People termed ‘homosexuals’ only know themselves as such and
are called as such through the discourses of science and medicine that constructs
bodies of knowledge about a subject named as ‘the homosexual’ or ‘the criminal’.
Power operates through such knowledge as is spread through discourses (the
power/knowledge axis) by producing such categories of identification or the
subject.

A key idea that Foucault debunks is the idea of sexual repression during the 17th
century and the subsequent liberation from repression in the 19th century as
proposed by historians of sexuality. Instead, he argues that even in the age of
supposed liberation, power operated in more insidious ways to produce specific
kinds of sexual subjects. Foucault examines the ways in which sex has been “put
into discourse” through medicine, the church, psychoanalysis, education
programmes, demography and the criminal-justice system. All of these discourses
on sexuality just produce different kinds of sexual objects through different
technologies of power.

Foucault is critical of disciplines such as psychology and psychiatry that work

on the principle that it is possible to liberate us by helping us to realise the deep
truths that we have repressed. According to Foucault, psychiatry itself is the
source of these fundamental truths. So for instance, by examining the medical
and psychiatric discourses on sexuality during the “repressive” Victorian times
and during the current era, Foucault demonstrates how these discourses actively
produces particular “truths” about sexuality. Foucault talks about the paradox of
freedom–“talking about ourselves as requiring freedom owing to fundamental
constraints produces an ‘us’ that is fundamentally constrained” (Hepburn, 2003).
For Foucault, there is no true hidden sexuality: the “repressed” sexual subject
and the “liberated” sexual subject are products of discourse and forms of power
and knowledge.

1.3.4 Butler: A Foucauldian Interpretation of Freud

In Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that Matter (1993), poststructuralist feminist
thinker Judith Butler propounds a theory of the relationship between language,
the unconscious, sex and gender. A key idea in Butler’s theory is the idea of
performativity. According to Butler, there is no essential woman who is the author
of her gendered identity – mannerisms, thoughts, feelings, personality features
that constitute what is called ‘feminine’. The gendered subject is not the cause
of gendered acts but is in fact an effect of these performative acts. Butler says
that if gender is what one does rather than is, then it should be possible to do
gender in ways that that show the constructed nature of heterosexuality in ways
that challenge vested interests to present them as natural or essential or non-
constructed. In drag, the disjunction between the body of the performer and the
10
gender enacted is highlighted and this according to Butler draws attention the Sexuality and Gender
imitated nature of all gender identities.

Butler also does an interesting reinterpretation of Freud; she challenges the idea
of innate dispositions of masculinity or femininity that Freud sometimes proposes
as required for identification with same-sexed parent. Butler challenges Freud’s
idea that dispositions lead to masculine or feminine identifications. Instead she
says that it is these identifications that cause the dispositions (of femininity or
masculinity). So according to her when a little girl desires her mother, it is not
the incest taboo that operates but the homosexual taboo. This formulation requires
that people identified as heterosexual desire the parent of the same sex. Why
would this happen? Butler says that what is forbidden is what is desired- here
she becomes Foucauldian. In other words, the law produces the desire that it
subsequently prohibits. So the taboo against homosexuality produces this very
desire for the same sex parent in a child. This being forbidden, the child has to
relinquish the desired object and identify with the desired object. So girls identify
with their mothers and boys with their fathers (Salih, 2002).

So what is she saying here? Whereas Freud suggested something innate about
masculinity or femininity that makes one identify with a man or woman, Butler
sees society’s prohibitory rule as producing a man or woman. Or in other words,
Butler thinks all of gender identity (which includes desire for the opposite sex or
heterosexuality) as being based on a prohibitory rule in society. The idea here is
that heterosexuality is based on a prohibited homosexuality; heterosexuality
requires homosexuality in order to define itself and maintain its stability (Salih,
2002).

1.4 CULTURE AND SEXUALITY

The manner in which we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings
finds life within symbolic meaning-systems existing in different cultures. Research
shows how cultural values systems inform such diverse sex (or sexuality) related
things as gender-identities, the control of female sexuality and understandings
of kinship and family.

1.4.1 Gender Identities, Sexual Identities and Culture

The Western binary of heterosexual ‘men’ and ‘women’ as created by a strict
definition of the relationship between sex and gender (including sexuality) is
challenged by transgender people such the Hijra in India or Tom and Dee in
Thailand and the Fa’afafine in the Pacific.

Hijras are the ‘third-sex’, the ‘eunuch’ or the intersexed hermaphrodite in India
(Reddy and Nanda 2009). Though the most visible alternative sex/gender, they
are located within a larger spectrum of sexual and gender configurations in India
which includes the kothi, panthi and naran. Narans are characterised by gendered
“feminine” practices and the ability to bear children; in other words, all women
are narans. Kothis are those men who “like to do women’s work” and are the
receivers or the ‘bottoms’ in same-sex encounters with other men. Panthis are
the givers or the ‘tops’ in sexual intercourse with other men and distance
themselves from the “female” practices typically embodied by kothis and narans;
they may partner with both kothis and narans. Hijras- in this configuration- rank
11
Cross Cultural Perspectives themselves the most authentic of kothis, deserving the most respect (izzat) in the
community. Thus, the gender system here is seen as categorised on the basis of
practice rather than anatomy into ‘men’ (panthis) and ‘not men’ (kothis and
narans). It may also be noted that gender identities are predicated on desire lines
– sexual-relations between masculine and feminine even when these are not tied
to biological sex.

Similarly, according to Sinnott (2008), Toms are masculine-identified women

who present their masculinity through their dressing style and their personality
and on the basis of their attraction to feminine-identified women who may have
sex with Toms or with men. Toms do not try to pass as male and consider
themselves to be women with masculine souls. Thus here we see that gender
cannot be seen as mapping neatly onto sex and as an interaction between male
and female sexes.

1.4.2 Male and Female Sexuality and Culture

A phenomenon that is observed cross-culturally is what is commonly referred to
as “the double standard” for men and women with regard to sex outside the
conjugal unit – here men escape societal censure to a greater extent than women
and women’s sexuality is regulated to a greater extent than men’s. Biologically
determinist discourses such as “men are driven by uncontrollable sexual drives”
are prevalent in contemporary advanced industrial societies of the West such as
Britain (Hollway 1998) and justify such unequal practices. According to Hollway,
the male sexual-drive discourse and the have-hold discourse –where according
to Christian scriptures, sex is correct only when within marriage and toward the
formation of a family- presents men with a contradiction which they then visit
upon women. This results in the creation of the “good woman” who one marries
(the Madonna) and the “bad woman” (the Whore): the Madonna-Whore
syndrome. This in turn links to the control of female sexuality because every
“good woman” is a potential “fallen woman” at risk of being overwhelmed by
uncontrollable sexual urges.
These dynamics can also be observed in Islamic culture (Mernissi, 1987) as also
in Hindu societies (Kakar, 1989). Fatima Mernissi, observes how there are two
contradictory understandings around female sexuality in Muslim society – the
explicit theory of female sexuality casts them as passive and deriving pleasure
from submission to male desire, but the implicit theory casts them as seductive
active pursuers of their desire and posing a danger to male rationality. Again,
these competing constructions result in the notion of women as needing protection
from men as also requiring control of their own sexuality for the good of society.
Sudhir Kakar (1989) in the Indian context, points to similar notions of the “mother-
whore-partner-in-ritual trichotomy” in the Manusmriti (ancient Hindu laws of
conduct ascribed to Brahma). Kakar notes the phrase:“Her father protects her in
childhood, her husband protects her in youth and her son protects her in old age;
a woman is never fit for independence”. This, Kakar says refers to a protection
not from external danger but from a woman’s inner sexual proclivities. A
subsequent verse supports this interpretation; this verse chastises the father who
does not give his daughter away in marriage at puberty and the husband who
does not satisfy her sexually when she in her season (ritu).
Such conceptions of female sexuality ties in with the female body being seen as
the site for the protection and maintenance of family honour. Lila Abu-Lughold
12
(2009) studies the wedding rituals of a Bedouin community in Egypt’s Western Sexuality and Gender
Desert for discourses of sexuality circulating therein. Rituals at the wedding
involves public defloration of the bride by the groom with much significance
given to the consequent blood stained sheet on which she rests, which is publicly
displayed. Lughold observes how weddings become an occasion where families
find themselves in some rivalry, the honour of each at stake in the competition
between the bride who fights against the groom who has to penetrate her. In this
Muslim community, sexuality is not a private playing out between two individuals
but owned publicly by the community or the families of the bride and the groom.
Interestingly, while outsiders are scandalised by the “barbaric” nature of this
ritual and notes the humiliation of women involved Bedouin women are in turn
scandalised by how pleasure and enjoyment are brought to the fore-front when
sex becomes a private affair between the bride and the groom in non-Bedouin
Egyptian wedding rituals.

Similar debates frame the wearing of the Burqa or the veil by Muslim women in
Islamic cultures. From a modern feminist perspective, the veil represents
repressive control of female sexuality; however, Lama Abu Odeh (1997) shows
how for many Arab women, the veil represents a resistance to objectification of
their bodies by the capitalist gaze and represents a certain freedom for women
who participate in the public world by shielding them from unwanted attention.
Other studies report how sexuality is not repressed in the covering of the body
but many men and women in Muslim society see the privacy around the body as
heightening pleasure in the knowledge that they are the only people who will
view their partners body, thereby heightening intimacy.

1.4.3 Kinship and Sexuality

In many cultures, sexuality and kinship are intricately connected issues. This is
because dominant sexual moralities frame heterosexual relations within marriage
as the only legitimate means to forming families or kinship bonds. What is valued
here is the “blood tie” (order of nature) over the other forms of relationship, such
as marriage for instance, which is formed through laws of social origin (order of
law). Thus, the sexual relationship between man and woman become an important
component of the idea of kinship. However, David Schneider (1968) in his study
of kinship amongst the Yap in the Pacific Rim found that in the Yap community,
pregnancy is not seen as linked to sexuality or sexual intercourse and fatherhood
is defined by a man’s ability to care for a child more than his role as a progenitor.

This study shows how what most cultures take to be natural or commonsensical
(relations as blood-relationships) is in fact a social or cultural construction specific
to particular cultures or points in history. Such an understanding paves the way
to understand “alternative” forms of family and kinship as followed by people of
marginalised sexualities and gender identities. Judith Butler (1993) analyses the
documentary film Paris is Burning by Jenny Livingston (1990), which studies
the ball culture of New York and the African-American, Latino gay and
transgendered people involved in it. Balls are highly competitive events where
participants have to “walk” or perform set themes and are judged for their
“realness” (adhereing to high-class femininity for example). These participants
come from various “houses”, each with its own “mother” which serve as surrogate
families in place of their real families which often reject them on account of
their sexual or gender identities. According to Butler, this can be seen as a
13
Cross Cultural Perspectives resignification or a process of attaching new meanings to - and thereby
destabilising of- heteronormative family configurations.

A parallel to this can be found in the patterns of kinship followed by the hijra
community in India. An authenticating criterion for the hijra identity is their
affiliation and social obligation to one of the hijra houses or lineages in the
community. By engaging in a specific hijra kinship ritual, individuals not only
acquire a guru or teacher within the community but also signify their membership
in the particular house/lineage to which the teacher belongs.

Alternative forms of kinship are also formed at the junctures of culture and
technological advancement. In Europe and North America, activism and advocacy
by gay and lesbian groups has won these groups in some countries the right to
same-sex marriage; Netherlands in 2001 was the first country to institute this. In
some countries, civil unions or registered partnerships between same-sex couples
allow them rights comparable to marriage rights, though with some restrictions
such as the right to adopt. In addition, in the 80s technological advancement has
resulted in many assisted reproduction technologies. In in-vivo fertilisation of
IVF, the ova is fertilised by the sperm in a petridish and then placed in the woman’s
uterus. Either the sperm or the ovum could be obtained via donation. This means
that sexuality has been delinked from reproduction and family formation. In
many countries, such donations are regulated by the law and even prohibited.
Surrogacy further complicates the situation in that a couple can approach another
woman to carry through the pregnancy. These technologies alter the meaning of
motherhood to include three meanings; the mother is the one who a) provides
the ovum, b) who gestates the baby. In all of these arrangements, a third party is
introduced into the traditional conjugality and to many people this is evocative
of adultery or non-monogamy. Therefore, such procedures often become the focus
of social, political and religious censure.

1.5 HISTORY OF SEXUALITY IN INDIA: LESBIAN

GAY BISEXUAL TRANSGENDER QUEER
(LGBT-Q) POLITICS
Research into literature across history in various Indian languages has
demonstrated how India has a long history of multiple sexualities and non- gender
identities that do not fall into the man-woman binary (Vanita and Kidwai, 2000
cited in Menon, 2007). In this context, Vanita talks of several language terms
such as tritiya prakriti (the third nature, for men who prefer sex with men) in the
fourth century Kamasutra; swayamvara sakhi in an 11th century Sanskrit text
(for women choosing women as life partner), and chapti for female to female
sexual activity. The non-binary gender system underlying the hijra identity also
has a long history in both Hinduism as also Muslim cultural traditions in India.
In Hinduism, hijras identify with figures such as Arjun of Mahabharata, who
lived for a year in the guise of a eunuch during exile while participating as dancer
at weddings and births; this gives legitimacy to the ritual contexts in which hijras
perform (Nanda 2011). Similarly, Shiva as Ardhanarisvara (vertically divided
half-man/half-woman) as also certain female avatars of Vishnu are other figures
that hijras identify with. Hijras also enjoyed the historical role of the “eunuch”
in the five hundred year history of Muslim court culture in India.
14
It was only in the 19th century and with the advent of modernity specifically Sexuality and Gender
through British rule in India that these sexualities and gender identities faced
systematic erasure in the bid to create the modern nation state with the
heteronormative family as a chief institution within it. In 19th century, British
introduced the anti-sodomy law of 1860 England in India via Section 377 of the
Indian Penal Code thereby criminalising same-sex activity – which had been
hitherto invisible to the law. Likewise, hijras under colonial classification were
categorised as one of the “criminal castes” alongside their removal from any
royal protection through an erasure of the traditional royal patronage they had
previously enjoyed.

A Foucauldian analysis can here show how the modern ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ as
personages (not sexual acts or unions as evidenced in ancient Indian languages)
entered the Indian lexicon as sites of both oppression and resistance to draconian
laws as codified under Section 377 IPC. Thus, the law and queer movements
that resist the law give a new significance to same-sex activities and unions,
creating identities such as ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ and groups of people with
experiences that can be understood in terms of ‘gay and ‘lesbian’.

In India, these terms as also the politics surrounding these terms came into the
public space/discourse with the AIDS epidemic and international funding for
HIV/AIDS prevention in India in the mid to late 1990s (Menon, 2007). While
the aims of these NGO housed programmes was AIDS prevention, it had
unintended consequences in terms of opening up space for the articulation of
non-normative sexualities as is practiced by sex-workers and “gay” and “lesbian”
people. Thus discourses of health and medicine aimed at regulating sexuality,
paradoxically opened up ways to articulate non-normative sexualities.

Reddy and Nanda (2009) show how the hijras of modern India are not just a
‘traditional’ sexual category but has also become a contemporary identity formed
at the intersections of religion and politics. Here, ‘tradition’ comes to be employed
towards ‘modern’ ends in contemporary India. Thus, hijra candidates can
capitalise on the religious basis of their identities, their distance from family,
gender and caste affiliations as also their sannyasi or ascetic leanings. This can
be understood as a re-inscribing of the status-quo and of discourses that are
oppressive (such as Hindu nationalism) but may also be read as creative ways in
which a community that has been systematically marginalised attempts to stake
a place for itself in a world intolerant of multiplicities and difference.

1.6 SUMMARY
This module problematised the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality
as they are understood within various frameworks of academic and/or popular
understanding. Biological explanations typically draw on genetic, hormonal or
sociobiological (evolutionary theory) accounts of gender and sexuality and are
often employed to defend the normative or to veil over the social and political
construction of gender and sexuality. Feminism provides some conceptual
framework to understand the subjugation of women by men through sexuality
and sexual identities. Psychoanalysis is another tradition that helps to understand
how early childhood dynamics and cultural constructions of right and wrong
kinds of sexuality produces sexual and gendered subjects. Foucault introduces
the notion of power and discourse as shaping the body and provides another
15
Cross Cultural Perspectives framework for understanding the interaction of nature and nurture. This
framework of understanding is extended in the work of Judith Butler who takes
discourse back to early childhood dynamics as examined by Freud.

The module next examines the question of the relation between sex, gender and
sexuality through an anthropological framework of understanding that looks at
the manner in which sexuality is constructed through a negotiation of meanings
in symbols and practices. Different cultural configurations allow for a variety of
indexing of gender identities that is different from the gender binary of ‘man’
and ‘woman’ that neatly maps onto sexed differences in reproductive abilities. A
pan-cultural phenomenon is the control of female sexuality, even as the precise
contours of meaning this takes finds different shades in Christianity, Hinduism
and Islam. Cultural values also inform what is understood to be kinship across
the world; the traditional Western notions of sexual relations (and blood ties) at
the core of kinship is challenged by cultural configurations elsewhere; this finds
a modern parallel in new patterns of kinship that erotic minorities follow, aided
as they are by technologies of assisted reproduction and regulated surrogacy.
Finally, the module concludes with a consideration of how some of these
frameworks as discussed in the module has helped to understand LGBT-Q politics
in India.

References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2009. “Is there a Muslim Sexuality? Changing Constructions
of Sexuality in Egyptian Bedouin Weddings”. Brettel, C.B. and Sargent,
C.F.(Eds.), Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, 5th Edition. New Delhi: PHI
Learning Public Limited.
Burr, Vivien. 1998. Gender and Social Psychology. London: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.”
New York: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1981. The History of Sexuality Volume 1. New York: Vintage
Books.
Hollway, W. 1984. “Gender Difference and the Production of Subjectivity”.
Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., and Venn, C. (Eds), Changing the Subject:
Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity. New York : Routledge.
Kakar, S. 1989. Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Menon, Nivedita. 2007. “Outing Heteronormativity: Nation, Citizen, Feminist
Disruptions”. Menon, N. (Ed). Sexualities. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.
Reddy, Gayatri & Nanda, Serena. 2009. “Hijras: An ‘Alternative’ Sex/Gender in
India”. Brettel, C.B. and Sargent, C.F.(Eds.). Gender in Cross-Cultural
Perspective. 5th Edition. New Delhi: PHI Learning Public Limited.
Salih, Sarah. 2002. Judith Butler: Routledge Critical Thinkers. New York:
Routledge.

16
Schneider, David. 1968. American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Prentice-Hall: Sexuality and Gender
New Jersey.
Sinnott, M. 2008. “Romancing the Queer”. Martin, F, Jackson, P, McLelland, A
and Yue, A. (Eds.) Asia Pacific Queer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities.
Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
Weeks, Jeffrey. 2003(1986). Sexuality. London: Routledge.

Suggested Reading
Brettel, C.B. and Sargent, C.F. Eds. 2011. Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective,
5th Edition. New Delhi: PHI Learning Public Limited.
Burr, Vivien. 1998. Gender and Social Psychology, London: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1981. The History of Sexuality Volume 1, New York: Vintage
Books.
Kakar, S. 1989. Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Salih, Sarah. 2002. Judith Butler: Routledge Critical Thinkers. New York:
Routledge.
Weeks, Jeffrey. 2009(1986). Sexuality. London: Routledge.

Sample Questions
1) What are some of the problems with the biological explanations of gender
and sexuality differences?
2) Explain the Butlerian concept of ‘performativity’. Deliberate the potential
this term holds for a politics of transformation (towards a world tolerant of
difference).
3) What has anthropology offered to widen the narrow definition linking sex,
gender and sexuality that dominates the ‘modern’ world today?
4) What is the Madonna-Whore syndrome?
5) What is the history of Indian sexuality from a Foucaultian perspective?

17
Cross Cultural Perspectives
UNIT 2 GLOBALISATION AND GENDER

Contents
2.1 Introduction: Globalisation Processes and their Impacts
2.2 Globalisation and Gender Equality
2.2.1 Feminisation of Poverty and Female-Headed Households
2.2.2 Women, Work and Globalisation
2.3 Gender Inclusive Globalisation
2.4 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to understand:
 the processes of globalisation and their differentiated impacts on marginalised
populations and women;
 how globalisation contributes to enhanced gender inequality; and
 how the negative effects of globalisation can be minimised by mainstreaming
gender in our social and economic policies.

2.1 INTRODUCTION: GLOBALISATION

PROCESSES AND THEIR IMPACTS
Within cross cultural perspectives, it is important to discuss the issue of
globalisation and gender. The phenomenon of globalisation which has impacted
our society in numerous ways, has particularly affected the everyday lives of
women, especially from developing countries. In this unit we will study the
implications of globalisation on gender, with special focus of women’s work
and poverty among women. Let us begin by first understanding what we mean
by globalisation.

Globalisation refers to a number of events that have been rapidly changing the
world, especially since the 1980s. It is primarily driven by the global economy,
mainly the policies of privatisation (selling government owned assets and
businesses to private multinational companies)1 and deregulation (lifting trade
restrictions, easing of government regulation, allowing foreign businesses to
operate within our country, and floating of national currencies in the global market
place).2

1
Prior to the 1980s, in most of the countries, governments were handling all the businesses
and governments owned all the assets in a country.
2
Bond, Michael. http://www.eveoftheapoc.com.au/Downloads/WhatIsGlobal.html accessed
on 20.1.12
18
 The ultimate goal of globalisation processes is to have a privatised economy, Globalisation and Gender
which allows a healthy competition for goods and services within the free market
(across national borders). It is believed that this enables people to have access to
better services and products at lower prices, eventually leading to a better standard
of living, or, human well-being.3 Along with the diffusion of goods, services,
and capital, globalisation also involves diffusion of technology, information,
culture, and people across national borders (Çağ atay and Ertürk 2004), and all
this has led to fundamental changes in human institutions in practically all societies
across the globe (ibid.).

Since the mid-1980s, many scholars in the social sciences have studied the causes,
scope, and impact of globalisation (Meyer 2006:83). Along with economic
integration of different countries, globalisation has also brought industrialisation
to the developing countries, which has led to economic growth in these regions.
Since the 1980s, many Asian countries have emerged as significant manufacturers
of products such as textiles, steel, cars, electronics, computer equipment, etc.
This has led to the creation of jobs for millions of people in these countries.
As a result, one important trend worldwide has been that there has been an increase
in the contribution of the secondary sector (manufactured products or material
goods) and tertiary sector (essential services)4 to the gross domestic product
(GDP) of most countries. This means that there has been an increase in jobs in
the secondary and tertiary sectors. Growth in tertiary sector, however, has been
greater than the secondary sector. And the relative contribution of the primary
sector (agriculture, mining, forestry, and fishing) to the GDP has been declining
steadily.
ğ This trend in the global economy is closely related to skill differentiation. The
unskilled and semi-skilled jobs (mainly in the primary and secondary sectors)
are primarily taken up by the less privileged sections of the society, whereas
skilled jobs of the service sector are occupied by upper income groups of the
society. Wage differences between the skilled and unskilled jobs have also grown
sharply, creating heightened disparities between these groups. On a broader level,
disparities between rural and urban areas, developed and developing countries
have also increased. Effects of globalisation have also differed across groups of
class, race, ethnicity and gender.
Many researchers have said that globalisation is a double-bladed phenomenon
(Ça atay and Ertürk 2004) with unequal distribution of benefits and harms. Trade
liberalisation is not inherently welfare producing; it can produce and re-produce
inequality, social disparities and poverty at the same time as it expands wealth
(Sen, 1996:132).
Today the global system is marked with widening income disparities, economic
growth disparities, human capital disparities such as, life expectancy, nutrition,
infant and child mortality, adult literacy and enrolment ratio. Along with this are
disparities in the distribution of global economic resources and opportunities
and globalisation adds to this. In such a scenario, it is the interests of the poor
and under privileged that are most affected and amongst them of the women.

3
Bond, Michael. http://www.eveoftheapoc.com.au/Downloads/WhatIsGlobal.html accessed
on 20.1.12
4
Such as finance, insurance, real estate, wholesale, retail, motor trade, catering and
accommodation, transport and communications. 19
Cross Cultural Perspectives The dominance of rich nations, multinational corporations and international
capital over markets, resources and labour in the developing countries through
trade, aid and technology transfer has greatly weakened the capacity of nation
states and governments to promote human development and offer protection to
the poor people. Since the resources for the social sector come out of an ever-
shrinking common pool, the burden on women is much more. The worst hit in
this transformation is the unorganised or informal sector, marked with income
disparity and dominated by the poor and under privileged. (Pande, 2001, 1)
Apart from changes associated with global trade, the other facets of globalisation
are increased migration, spread of global culture, development of the internet
and easier communication and transportation around the world, accelerated
development and transfer of technologies in all spheres (including reproductive
technologies), tourism, etc. All these have both positive and negative dimensions
and also differentiated impacts on men and women. However, detailed discussion
on these is beyond the scope of this unit. We shall concentrate here on impact of
trade liberalisation on gender equality.

2.2 GLOBALISATION AND GENDER EQUALITY

While we stated in the beginning that the major transformation in global economy
occurred around 1980s, we need to understand that the processes of globalisation
are closely associated with colonialism and capitalism, which have transformed
traditional economies over the last couple of centuries. “All scholars agree that
colonialism and capitalism restructured traditional economies in a way which
had a profound impact on women’s economic activities, on the nature of sexual
division of labour, and on the kinds of social and political options which remained ğ
open to women. However, there is considerable debate about the exact nature of
the effects of these processes on women’s lives. Scholars like Boserup (1970)
and Rogers (1980) have suggested that capitalist exploitation combined with
eurocentric ideas about the roles and activities proper to women led to the
destruction of women’s traditional rights in society, and undermined their
economic autonomy. Other writers have pointed out that it may be wrong to
imagine that the pre-colonial/ pre-capitalist world was one where women had a
significant degree of independence. However, the penetration of capitalism into
subsistence economies, through the growth of commercial agriculture and wage
labour, is acknowledged as having generally deleterious effect on rural women.
A number of authors have stressed that the development of intensive agriculture
and the introduction of new forms of technology discriminated against women.
An increasing market in land and labour, together with changes in land tenure
systems and developing migrant labour, also worked against the interests of
women” (Moore 1988:74-5).
The transformation of global economy around the 1980s has accentuated the
disadvantaged position of women in developing countries. Feminist researchers
and activists have repeatedly pointed to a variety of gender biases of structural
adjustment policies5 (Ça atay and Ertürk 2004). In the case of Morocco, Skalli

5
Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) are economic policies for developing countries
that have been promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) since the
early 1980s by the provision of loans conditional on the adoption of such policies. SAPs are
designed to encourage the structural adjustment of an economy to promote privatisation and
20 deregulation.
 (2001) mentions that the social effects and costs of Structural Adjustment Globalisation and Gender
Programs (SAPs) have proved to be specifically detrimental to women in low-
income households and made their status even more vulnerable. The situation is
quite similar in other developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The differentiated impacts of globalisation processes on men and women are
because of a number of reasons. Firstly, a discrepancy exists in almost all
economies between women and men’s access to resources, knowledge, ownership
and control over assets. Patriarchal societies like the Indian society, where men
have authority and control over property, men traditionally hold a privileged
position as compared to women, who are seen as subordinate. Patriarchy also
manifests itself in the social, legal, political, and economic organisations, and it
is seen that globalisation has heightened already existing biases in patriarchal
societies. Discussing the case of Morocco, Skalli (2001:76) states that “the
patriarchal structure of the society operates at all levels to position women in
lower status than men. Patriarchal ideology and systemic gender biases have
denied women not only equal educational and employment opportunities and
treatment before the law, but also equal access to and control over resources,
adequate health services, housing, social welfare, and support. These are important
social indicators that have a direct bearing on the incidence of female poverty
and reflect the different levels at which social exclusion is produced, justified
and perpetuated.”
Discrepancy also exists between men and women in terms of patterns of paid
and unpaid work, wages, ability to generate income, educational patterns and
political and economic power (Ça atay and Ertürk 2004). Women’s low
educational opportunities and skill training have a direct bearing on female work
ğ
pattern. Women get caught in the cycle of exploitation and underpayment as
they increasingly occupy the low-paying unskilled jobs. There exists salary gap
between working men and women, and many women continue to work below
the minimum wage. In rural areas, female labour around the world continues to
go unrecognised and unpaid, as it falls under the category of farm work or income-
generating activities within home, in areas such as arts and crafts, weaving, and
cottage industries. Mies (1982) describes in her study of lace-makers of Andhra
Pradesh (India) that growing impoverishment of the peasant agricultural sector
has led women in poorer agricultural households to take up lace-making (for
private exporters) as a way of generating supplementary income. These women
are invisible as workers because of the prevailing and overriding ideology that
they are really only ‘housewives’ who happen to be using their leisure time in a
profitable way. Thus, women generate supplementary income for the household
without altering the sexual division of labour or the nature of gender relation in
the society. Consequently, women’s insertion into the global market production
system has merely served to reinforce existing gender relations (Moore 1988:83-
85).
Let us now take a closer look at how globalisation is said to have contributed to
growing poverty among women.

2.2.1 Feminisation of Poverty and Female-headed Households

Research into the social impacts and gender-specific effects of structural
adjustment policies and studies on the proliferation of female-headed households
have led to increased attention to the notion of feminisation of poverty. There is
21
Cross Cultural Perspectives a growing perception around the globe that poverty is becoming increasingly
feminised, that is, an increasing proportion of the world’s poor are female. A
1992 UN report found that the number of rural women living in poverty in the
developing countries increased by almost 50% between 1970 and 1990 (an
awesome 565 million) and majority of them lived in Asia and in Sub-Saharan
Africa (Moghadam 2005:2).

There are different measures of poverty in economics, however, whether measured

by income/consumption or the broader array of entitlements/capabilities
indicators, the incidence of poverty among women appears to be on the increase
(ibid: 4-5). Concept of feminisation of poverty is not only a consequence of lack
of income, but is also the result of the deprivation of capabilities and gender
biases present in both societies and governments (Chant 2006). The rise in female
poverty is attributed to many factors such as population growth, the emigration
of men, increasing family break-up, low productivity, a deteriorating environment,
and structural adjustment policies (Moghadam 2005:4-5). As you will be able to
understand by now, most of these are closely associated with globalisation
processes.

Since impoverishment of women and children is closely associated with the

striking increase in single-parent female-headed households, focus on such
households is critical to addressing the problem of feminisation of poverty. Such
households are at the highest risk of poverty for women due to lack of income
and resources (Sara and Pramila 2007). According to a case study in Zimbabwe,
households headed by widows have an income of approximately half that of
male-headed households, and female-headed households have about three quarters
of the income of male headed households (Brenner 1987).
There is a continuing increase in the number of female-headed households in the
world. The main factors responsible for this increase in rural area are the rise in
male out-migration, occurrences of illnesses and deaths of husbands. It is stated
that 30-35 per cent of all rural households in India, for example, are female-
headed households compared to 25 percent in Cambodia, 21.4 per cent in
Mongolia and 15.7 per cent in Korea (Ng 2000).
It is also important to note that female-headed households are very common
among urban poor as well, in both developed and developing countries. Moore
(1988:63-4) states that a common feature of urban life is that many women are
choosing not to marry and a significant number of married women are choosing
to live separately from their husbands. Discussing the case of the US, Peterson
(1987:334) mentions that “women are increasingly likely to carry the primary
responsibility for supporting themselves because of rising divorce rates and non-
marital childbearing. At the same time, many women remain locked into dead-
end jobs with wages too low to support themselves and their families. Child-
care responsibilities and lack of affordable child-care prohibit many women from
participating in the labor market at all.”
Skalli (2001:80-4) discusses the case of feminisation of poverty and female-
headed households in Morocco in the context of structural adjustment policies.
In Morocco, female-headed households are increasing in the urban and rural
areas. A major proportion of such households are headed by widows or divorcees,
where widows tend to be more vulnerable than divorcees, due to their advanced
age. These women are generally employed in the low-paying jobs, mainly in the
22
manufacturing industry. However, it is specifically the informal sector that Globalisation and Gender
employs these women, where they are engaged in little income-generating
activities like needlework, sewing and knitting, from home. Work in non-formal
sector exposes women to a number of constraints and prejudices, because of the
absence of labour laws, social security regulations, as well as social welfare
benefits. In Morocco, restructuring of the economy has resulted in the
disengagement of the state from and reduction in its investments in the social
services sector (health and education services). Cuts in public expenditure, and
cancellation of subsidies on essential goods, worsened women’s vulnerability
and their exploitation. In particular, women’s chances of securing employment
in the formal sector decreased. This implied, an increased pressure to work in
the informal sector at all ages, for longer hours, minimal wages, and a greater
urgency to migrate within and outside the country in search of cash-earning
activities some of which can be risky for their physical, mental, and psychological
health. On the other hand, economic recession and restructuring, as well as socio-
economic, demographic and cultural changes have also led to the breakdown of
the traditional family support network. For women in low-income households,
in both rural and urban settings, this directly translates into the burden of
combining unpaid domestic labour with low-income, labour-intensive activities
in the informal sector.
Situations very similar to this one exist in other developing countries. Another
issue closely related to poverty and female-headed households are the feminisation
of subsistence agriculture. As you know, gloabalisation has triggered
industrialisation all over the world and one of the major consequences of this
has been the increase in the production of cash crops. Moore (1988) states that
commercialisation of agriculture has led to women in rural areas taking up the
major responsibility for growing of subsistence crops. In Africa,
commercialisation of agriculture forced women into working longer hours in
the subsistence sector, in order to provide for the family, while men became
involved in cash-cropping. Also, as industrialisation opened up job opportunities
in urban areas, there was increased migration of men from rural to urban areas,
which further heightened the responsibility of women to manage subsistence
farming.
In the case of Ghana (Africa), Bukh (1979, in Moore 1988:76) describes that
during the boom in cocoa production men took over the job of producing cocoa,
while women took on responsibility for cultivating the basic food for the
household. When the price of cocoa fell in the 1970s, many men migrated to
look for work, leaving the women and children behind on the farm. Many women
found it difficult to cover their household and personal expenses, so they
supplemented their incomes by combining farming with petty trading, wage
labour, craft work and food processing. As evident, this increased the workload
of women enormously.
While, similar situations are found in other communities in Africa, Moore (1988:
77-8) says that we should be cautious about setting up a straightforward equation
between women and subsistence agriculture, and men and cash crops. There are
plenty of examples of women growing cash crops, working as wage labourers
and engaging in a wide variety of other market-oriented activities. And the overall
effect of the commercialisation of agriculture has frequently been the
impoverishment of the peasant agricultural sector as a whole, rather than a simple
gain for men. 23
Cross Cultural Perspectives 2.2.2 Women, Work and Globalisation
So, as we have seen in the last section, closely linked to the feminisation of
poverty is the changing nature of women’s work. Studies in this field have been
dominated by the growing phenomenon of women’s participation in non-
agricultural employment. In this section we will study the issue of feminisation
of work in the context of export-oriented manufacturing in developing countries.
Changes in occupational structure, and in the overall organisation of an individual
country’s economy are directly determined by the part the country’s economy
plays in the international arena. The level of industrialisation of a country is one
of the major determinants of women’s participation in non-agricultural
employment. Industrialisation alters patterns of work, it changes the relationship
between the workplace and the home, and it reorganises the distribution of
employment opportunities within the different sectors of the economy, by creating
new forms of employment and destroying others (Moore 1988:97-99).
The rapid increase in the number of women engaged in non-agricultural
employment in developing countries has not occurred uniformly in all regions.
Also, the increase has not taken place in the same sectors of employment. While
some women have gone into the industrial labour force, most have gone into
light industrial manufacturing. In some countries, a significant proportion of
women have gone into the tertiary sector of employment, where they are employed
in personal services and government occupations, as well as in professions.
Let us discuss the case of light industrial manufacturing in detail.
World Market Factories / Export Processing Zones
Global capitalist development has led to the emergence of world-market factories
in many parts of the developing world, particularly in Asia and Latin America.
These world-market factories produce goods exclusively for export to the rich
developed countries of the world. The companies that run these factories may be
owned by local capitalists or they may be subsidiaries of large multinationals. In
either case, their choice of location is determined by cheap and compliant labour,
the advantages of tax concessions and by conveniently inadequate regulations
governing health and safety provisions.6 World-market factories produce textiles,
soft toys, sports equipment and ready-to-wear clothes, electrical goods and
components for the electronics industry. In many instances, these factories play
a very limited role in the manufacture of the product, which means that they are
little more than a stage in a production process controlled by multinationals
(Moore 1988:100).
The most interesting aspect of these world-market factories is that the vast majority
(over 80 per cent) of the workers who are employed in them are young women
between the ages of 13 and 25 years.7 These women, of course, are the assembly-
6
Many developing countries have demarcated Export Processing Zones (EPZs) for such activity.
The idea of EPZ is essentially to provide special incentives to exporters and to allow them to
avoid or bypass many of the laws and physical and material constraints, which supposedly
inhibit export growth in the rest of the economy. The significance of the Export Processing
Zones lies essentially in its physical, social and economic separation from the rest of the
country (Ghosh 2002:47).
7
Education is thought to have a positive effect on women’s participation in the labour force
because it improves employment opportunities for women, it encourages greater female
mobility in search of employment, it is assumed to increase the aspirations and expectations
of women workers, and it is supposed to weaken the barriers of cultural tradition which prevent
24 women from entering the labour market (Moore 1988:103).
line operatives; the administrative and technical posts, which are far fewer in Globalisation and Gender
number, are occupied by men. A number of studies report that the preference for
employing women by these companies is due to women’s apparently innate
capacities for the work, their docility, their disinclination to unionise, and the
fact that women are cheap because, while men need an income to support a
family, women do not (ibid:100-101). This shows that the gender biases inherent
in social life are strategically used in employment of women, for the production
of cheaper goods.

Impact of Wage Labour on Women’s Lives

Many researchers have studied the impacts of such employment on the lives of
women. It is interesting to note that these studies do not uniformly talk of the
disadvantages and exploitation of women in such forms of employment. Many
studies point to the benefits that some women in developing countries have gained
from these employment opportunities (for e.g. Swantz 1995; Sen 1996; Joekes
1997). Studies on Caribbean region show that paid work is desirable because it
provides women greater independence from men and their families. Among older
married women in Puerto Rico, it was found that long-term employment in
industrial production leads to a greater sense of self-worth, and greater class
consciousness (Safa 1990). In addition, several studies of Latin American
countries contend that when women enter the labor force, more equitable patterns
of resource sharing and decision-making within the household unit occur (Meyer
2006:88).

Ganguly-Sarcase (2003) also states that globalising processes of market

liberalisation and SAPs may not necessarily have a negative impact on women.
While new forms of inequality do result from economic reforms, there may be
other opportunities for greater independence in certain societies, like the lower
middle-class women in West Bengal, India. Other researchers like Omvedt (1997
in Ganguly-Scrase 2003) have stated that in light of democratisation in gender
relations within the Indian family, the effects of structural adjustment on women
have not been as much of a burden as its opponents claim. Feldman’s study
(1992 in ibid.) of women workers in export-processing enclaves in Bangladesh,
shows that women from rural middle-strata families were able to increase their
employment opportunities, thus challenging the traditional prohibitions on female
mobility that were shaped by Bengali culture and a variant of Islamic doctrine.

Salaff (1981) in her study of working women of Hong Kong, shows that in the
low-wage economy of Hong Kong, each family depends on the wages of several
family members in order to survive, and daughters’ wages are increasingly crucial
part of family income. While there are several advantages of the working daughter
to the family, these women also see their employment as beneficial, as it opens
up a number of opportunities for them. Most marriages are no longer arranged
and women tend to meet their potential spouses through peer group activities.
Women save part of their earnings to buy household goods for their marital
homes, and to make contributions to their dowries. Working daughters keep a
small and regular amount for themselves from their earnings to use for personal
effects and leisure activities. In this sense wage-labour makes leisure time
activities with peers financially possible. In recognition of the money they put
into the family, working daughters are usually exempt from household tasks
such as cooking, child care and laundry. Working daughters are also given more
25
Cross Cultural Perspectives say in family affairs, particularly in relation to the activities of younger siblings
(Moore 1988:100-112).

Apart from improving women’s position within home and providing greater
independence, there are some other positive outcomes of women’s employment.
Research indicates that women’s access to economic resources in the form of
paid employment reduces their dependence on children for social status and
economic security, thereby reducing levels of fertility. Relatedly, paid work has
been found to positively influence women’s own health as well as that of their
children (Meyer 2006:88).8

However, there are several scholars who adhere to the ‘female marginalisation’
hypothesis. These researchers contend that the studies discussed above are overly
optimistic in regard to women’s gains from employment. In today’s world while
information and communication technology has become a potent force for
transforming social, economic, and political life in the globalised world, the
gendered division of labor is already emerging. A large number of women tend
to be concentrated in the end-user, lower skilled jobs and comprise a very small
number among managerial, maintenance, and design personnel ( Pande, 2006: 7).
According to Papps (1992), development has led to the displacement of women
from traditional subsistence activities and restricted employment opportunities.
Moreover, in many cultures, deeply held social traditions (such as housework as
women’s duty) have not changed as a result of women becoming breadwinners
in the household. For those women who have found employment in the modern
sector, they often face continuing gender exploitation in the form of hazardous
working conditions, marginalisation into low paying jobs, barriers to promotion,
and unequal pay (Meyer 2006: 89). This is also reflected in the examples that we
discussed in the section on female-headed households.

Both these kinds of studies illustrate the multi-faceted process of economic

globalisation. While women may experience increased independence and power
within the household when they enter the labour force, the conditions under
which they gain employment and how they participate in the economy are crucial
determinants of whether or not they improve their economic and social status
(ibid).

2.3 GENDER INCLUSIVE GLOBALISATION

With an understanding of the gender-differentiated impacts of globalisation, we
now come to the issue of gender-inclusive globalisation. Ever since the concerns
of negative impacts of globalisation processes have been raised by social scientists
and feminist researchers, there have been discussions and efforts in the direction
of making globalisation policies and processes gender-inclusive. Let us understand
what this means.

As we know, globalisation is deemed beneficial to a country because it is supposed

to lead to economic growth, resulting from a better allocation of resources in the
world economy, exchange of knowledge, transfer of technologies and a

8
Miles and Brewster (1998 in Meyer 2006:88) find that in the Philippines, female wage
workers in white-collar jobs and self-employment are significantly more likely than those
not employed to have obtained prenatal care and substantially more likely to have adopted
26 a contraceptive method in the year following childbirth.
consequent increase in productivity, as well as the development of human and Globalisation and Gender
physical capital. With the expansion of domestic production, income opportunities
as a whole generally increase, benefitting a large number of people (UN 2008).
However, as we have seen in the last section, within the context of globalisation,
women can be the winners or losers. Their multiple responsibilities and gender-
related constraints, such as a lack of access to productive inputs and resources,
can mean that they are not able to seize the opportunities provided by trade
expansion to the same degree as men. Moreover, the opportunities provided to
men may have negative consequences for women and they may even lose their
livelihoods as a result of import competition. In order to promote a mutually
supportive(high growth, low gender inequality) scenario, it is well-understood
now that women’s multiple roles, responsibilities and limitations need to be
taken into account in globalisation policies and programmes (UN 2008).

The growing understanding on this issue has led to the emergence of the concept
of gender mainstreaming. In July 1997, the United Nations Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC) defined the concept of gender mainstreaming as “the process
of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including
legislation, policies or programmes, in any area and at all levels. It is a strategy
for making the concerns and experiences of women as well as of men an integral
part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and
programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres, so that women and
men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal of
mainstreaming is to achieve gender equality.”9

Thus, gender mainstreaming is not only about adding a woman’s component

into an existing activity. Gender sensitivity must be integral to all planning and
implementation processes.10 Some of the ways for ensuring gender mainstreaming
include the gender mainstreaming plan of sectoral policies; targeted interventions
by the state to reduce gender inequalities, equal participation of women (especially
at decision-making levels of sectoral policies), and monitoring by women’s
organisations (UN 2008).

Let us take the case of gender mainstreaming in sectoral policies. In developing

countries, every sector needs policies, which would increase employment
opportunities for women in the unorganised sector because majority of poor
unskilled women can primarily be occupied in this sector. Jhabvala and Sinha
(2002) mentions that in India, forestry is a sector where women’s employment
can be increased manifold. They suggest that reforestation programmes of nursery
growing, plantations and tending of plants, as also collection, processing and
sale of minor forest produce, can be handed over to women’s groups. One
calculation has shown that if nursery growing for the forest department in Gujarat
(west India) could be done through women’s groups, it would increase
employment among one lakh women, for six months.

In the health sector, policies which would link informal health providers,
especially midwives, with the formal health system, would increase both
employment and earnings of the health providers. Increasing micro-finance
schemes would increase employment opportunities through livelihood

9
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/gender/newsite2002/about/defin.htm accessed on
25.2.12
10
Ibid. 27
Cross Cultural Perspectives development. Direct access to markets would increase employment opportunities
as well as earnings. Training and skill development would also enhance
productivity, earnings, and opportunities (Jhabvala and Sinha 2002:2042).

Another important way of gender mainstreaming is gender-budgeting. Since the

mid-1980s, a variety of gender-budget initiatives have been undertaken with the
purpose of rendering public budgets gender-equitable. It has been seen that in
public spending and methods of raising revenue, there are inherent gender biases,
and many of these biases appear to be commonly exacerbated by market
liberalisation policies (Ça atay and Ertürk 2004:16). The budget is an important
tool in the hands of state for affirmative action for improvement of gender relations
through reduction of gender gap in the development process. It can help to reduce
economic inequalities, between men and women as well as between the rich and
the poor. As we have discussed previously, reductions in social programmes
(such as health and education), due to structural adjustment policies, have been
disproportionately harmful for women and girls. Since social programmes have
a direct bearing on human capabilities, women have become more vulnerable
due to these reductions. Gender-budget initiatives can ensure public provisioning
of social programmes, and potentially reduce women’s vulnerabilities. A positive
example from Indonesia in this direction is that, during the Asian economic
crisis of the late 1990s, which caused loss of employment among women in both
formal and informal sectors, efforts were made in Indonesia to keep poor children,
especially girl children, in school through scholarships, half of which were
allocated to girls (ibid:18).

Women’s participation, at the level of decision-making, planning and

implementation of development programmes, is also central to ensuring gender ğ
mainstreaming. This involves seeking out grassroots women’s organisation and
NGOs – from small groups of producers and networks of small and medium-
sized entrepreneurs, to gender activists and academics concerned with trade and
development. Consultation and inclusion of this segment of civil society as key
stakeholders is a necessary step towards ensuring the effective participation of
women (UN 2008).

2.4 SUMMARY
In this unit on Globalisation and Gender, you have seen the complex relationship
between gender inequalities and the economic liberalisation policies that underpin
globalisation processes. On the one hand, globalisation has provided numerous
jobs for people in developing countries, led to improved standards of living due
to greater access to products and services at lower prices, and enhanced transfer
of technology for human benefit. On the other hand benefits of globalisation
have not been uniformly distributed, leading to the widening of gap between the
rich and the poor. In many cases, the condition of unskilled and asset-poor people
has worsened due to the impact of globalisation. Women have also been both
positively and negatively impacted. In some societies, existing gender biases in
patriarchal societies have been aggravated, whereas in others, women have been
able to challenge the traditional social norms due to improved employment
opportunities. In any cases, however, female marginalisation as a result of
globalisation cannot be denied. Not only has globalisation led to an increased
incidence of poverty among women, it has also made them more vulnerable due
28
 to declining state support programme and greater informalisation of female Globalisation and Gender
employment.

The only way to minimise the negative impacts of globalisation is to make the
process of development planning and implementation, both at national and
international level, more gender sensitive. Many developing countries and
governments may lack the resources and mechanisms to protect those who have
lost livelihoods in the context of globalisation. However, gender mainstreaming
in the spheres of policy-making can be undertaken meaningfully. There is a shift
in the current policy stance towards people-centred and gender-wise policies.
Gender mainstreaming is now an important agenda in all development initiatives
at international and national levels. Concerted efforts in this direction will lead
to equitable and just development.

References
Boserup, E. 1970. Women’s Role in Economic Development. London: George
Allen & Unwin.
Brenner, J. 1987. “Feminist Political Discourses: Radical Versus Liberal
Approaches to the Feminisation of Poverty and Comparable Worth”. Gender &
Society. Vol.1. No. 4. pp. 447–65.
Bukh, Jette. 1979. The Village Woman in Ghana. London: Croom Helm.
Ça atay, Nilüfer and Korkuk Ertürk. 2004. Gender and Globalisation: A
Macroeconomic Perspective. Working Paper No. 19. Geneva: International
Labour Office.
ğ
Chant, Sylvia. 2006. “Rethinking the ‘Feminisation of Poverty’ in Relation to
Aggregate Gender Indices”. Journal of Human Development. Vol. 7. No.2. pp.
201–220
Ganguly-Scrase, Ruchira. 2003. “Paradoxes of Globalisation, Liberalisation, and
Gender Equality: The Worldviews of the Lower Middle Class in West Bengal,
India”. Gender and Society. Vol. 17. No. 4. pp. 544-566
Ghosh, Jayati. 2002. “Globalisation, Export-Oriented Employment for Women
and Social Policy: A Case Study of India”. Social Scientist.Vol. 30. No. 11/12.
pp. 17-60.
Jhabvala, Renana and Shalini Sinha. 2002. “Liberalisation and the Woman
Worker”. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 37. No. 21. pp. 2037-2044
Joekes, S. 1997. “International Trade and Development – A Background”. E.
Haxton and C. Olsson. (eds.) Women and Sustainability in International Trade.
Uppasala: Global Publications Foundation. pp. 6-21
Meyer, Lisa B. 2006. “Trade Liberalisation and Women’s Integration into National
Labor Markets: A Cross-Country Analysis”. Social Indicators Research. Vol.
75. No. 1. pp. 83-121
Mies, M. 1982. The Lace Makers of Narsapur. London: Zed Press.
Moghadam, Valentine M. 2005. The Feminisation of Poverty and Women’s Rights.
SHS Papers in Women’s Studies/ Gender Research, No. 2 . UNESCO.
29
Cross Cultural Perspectives Moore, H. L. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ng, Cecilia. 2001. Women: Globalisation and Women. http://www.hrsolidarity.
net/mainfile.php/2001vol11no2/25/ accessed on 20.2.12
Pande, Rekha. 2006. “Digital Divide, Gender and the India Experience in IT”,
Vol. 1, Encyclopaedia of Gender and Information Technology. ( ed) Eileen M.
Trauth. USA: Pennsylvania State University, IGI Global. pp. 191- 199.
Pande, Rekha. 2001. “The Social Costs of Globalisation : Restructuring
Developing World Economies”. Journal of Asian Women’s Studies. Vol. 10,
December, Japan: Kitakyushu Forum. pp.1-14.
Peterson, Janice. 1987. “The Feminisation of Poverty”. Journal of Economic
Issues. Vol. 21, No. 1. pp. 329-337
Rogers, B. 1980. The Domestication of Women: Discrimination in Developing
Societies. London: Tavistock.
Sara, Horrell and Krishnan, Pramila. 2007. Poverty and Productivity in Female-
headed Households in Zimbabwe. Journal of Development Studies 43 (8): 1351–
80.
Sen, G. 1996. “Gender, Markets and States: A Selective Review and Research
Agenda”. World Development. Vol. 24. Pp. 821-829
Skalli, Loubna H. 2001. “Women and Poverty in Morocco: The Many Faces of
Social Exclusion”. Feminist Review. No. 69. The Realm of the Possible: Middle
Eastern Women in Political and Social Spaces. pp. 73-89
Swantz, M.L.: 1995, “Women Entrepreneurs in Tanzania: A Path to Sustainable
Livelihoods. Development. Vol 1. pp. 55-60.
Safa, H. 1990. “Women and Industrialisation in the Caribbean.” S. Stichter and
J.L. Parpart (eds.). Women, Employment and the Family in the International
Division of Labor. London: Macmillan Press.
Salaff, Janet. 1981. Working Daughters of Hong Kong. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
United Nations. 2008. “Mainstreaming Gender into Trade and Development
Strategies in Africa”. Trade Negotiations and Africa Series. No. 4

Suggested Reading
Bianchi, Suzanne M. 1999. “Feminisation and Juvenilisation of Poverty: Trends,
Relative Risks, Causes, and Consequences”. Annual Review of Sociology.Vol.
25. pp. 307-333
Gimenez, Martha E. 1990. “The Feminisation of Poverty: Myth or Reality?”
Social Justice. Vol. 17.No. 3 (41).Feminism and the Social Control of Gender.
pp. 43-69
Ganguly-Scrase, Ruchira. 2003. “Paradoxes of Globalisation, Liberalisation, and
Gender Equality: The Worldviews of the Lower Middle Class in West Bengal,
India”. Gender and Society.Vol. 17.No. 4. pp. 544-566

30
Jhabvala, Renana and Shalini Sinha. 2002. “Liberalisation and the Woman Globalisation and Gender
Worker”. Economic and Political Weekly.Vol. 37.No. 21. pp. 2037-2044
Kelkar, Govind. 2005. “Development Effectiveness through Gender
Mainstreaming: Gender Equality and Poverty Reduction in South Asia”.
Economic and Political Weekly.Vol. 40.No. 44/45. pp. 4690-4699

Sample Questions
1) What do you understand by feminisation of poverty? Explain in relation to
female-headed households.
2) Briefly discuss the processes of globalisation and some of its positive and
negative impacts.
3) Discuss the impact of wage labour on women’s lives.
4) What do you understand by gender mainstreaming? Why is it important?

31
Cross Cultural Perspectives
UNIT 3 MASS MEDIA AND GENDER

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Understanding Mass Media
3.3 Locating the Linkages between Mass Media and Gender
3.4 Gender Stereotypes
3.5 Anthropology of Media
3.6 A Feminist Critique of Mass Media
3.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After reading this unit, you will be able to understand:
 the interfaces between culture and mass media in terms of (re)producing
certain notions on gender and shaping gender relations in contemporary
societies;
 a basic understanding of mass media with its definitions, characteristics,
meaning and scope;
 key issues like; what makes the study of mass media relevant to students
and teachers of anthropology;
 the linkages between the concept of gender and mass media;
 the cultural implications of gender stereotyping in the mass media texts of
our time;
 how “the audience” is constructed and look into the possible ways in which
we can interpret the content and meaning of media representations; and
 finally a feminist critique on the production and representation of gendered
images in mass media.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
As we live in a world that is “media saturated”, it is apt to say that no one can
escape the influence of mass media. Media exercise enormous influence and
power in unprecedented ways in our everyday lives. People are exposed to the
multiple forms and contents of the media as most of them spend a considerable
amount of time in watching television, films and videos or reading newspapers,
magazines or listening to music and surfing the Net. And by doing so, most
people actively take part in constructing a media culture or cultures, since human
capacities to speak, think, form relationships with others and the sense of creating
ones own identity are now largely shaped by the media. Marshal McLuhan claims
32
that the media made the world into a “global village”. Now we are familiar with Mass Media and Gender
a range of countries, regions and cultures and the issues and lived experiences of
the people of these cultural landscapes (Knightley 1975). The mass media—
particularly the visual media and television—has become “the cultural epicenter”
of our world (Castells 1996).

The terms “mediation and “ media” derive from the Latin “medius”e “middle”—
assumes two or more poles of engagement. The following discussion will explore
the different dimensions of such mediations as part of mass communication,
media production and consumption and will underline the crucial linkages with
the notions on gender.

3.3 UNDERSTANDING MASS MEDIA

The idea of “the mass” can be understood as a larger public in a very general
way. Raymond Williams argued that there were no masses, only ways of seeing
people as masses (Williams 1964). In this sense the terms such as “mass society”
and ‘mass public” can be artificial constructions that serves the purpose of
undifferentiating and homogenising people into a singular category called “the
masses”. This notion of homogeneity became more compelling in the early part
of the twentieth century with the growth of the mass production and the mass
media. This has created a large group of people who consumed almost the same
products such as films, music and other common consumer goods. The notion of
mass culture became a coiner to these economic and social events of simultaneous
consumption of cultural and economic goods.

A medium is a means for communication such as print, radio or television. In

this wider sense, mass media are defined as large scale organisations which use
one or more of those technologies to communicate with large numbers of people.
Historically speaking, the period between 1860 and 1930 was crucial in the
formative moment and growth of mass media with the innovations in electronic
technology and in chemical industry. The introduction and development of
photography, cinema, cable telegraphy, wireless telegraphy, phonograph, radio
and television made the mass media industry a powerful cultural entity through
which a range of cultural meanings were produced and exchanged.

As mass media rules the modern social life and cultures, there needs to generate
an intense academic interest among those who are trying to study culture. Early
scholars on media like Paul Lazarsfeld and others seemed to show that media
effects are direct and powerful. But most recent research revealed that mass
communication is mediated in complex ways and its effects on the audience
depend on factors such as class, gender, social context, race, emotional state of
individuals and the time of experience among the many more culturally related
issues. In short, the relationship between mass media and society is a complex
one.

Television, videos, films, radio, newspapers, magazines, comics are all cultural
products. Cultural products are different from mundane and material products in
the sense they serve as vehicles of meanings, values and ideas and also work as
a form of communication. But cultural products like industrial products also
need consumers. So there is a constant thirst for novelty in the field of cultural
production as mass media need a large number of consumers. Mass media thus
33
Cross Cultural Perspectives constantly work towards innovation in terms of what is produced, how it is
produced and what do these products mean to people.

Mediation refers to the act of bringing together two parties (with the intervention
of a third party) by the provision of some form of link in order to convey a
message or to provide agreement or reconciliation. A process involved in the
channeling of social knowledge and cultural values through an institutional agency
to an audience (O’Sullivan et al 1994). In this sense mediation is more than a
third party intervention, rather its form and nature of intervention and how does
it shape the ways of communication becomes key concerns. In what ways
newspapers, radio and television produce common ways of knowing the world?
Once the processes and technologies of mediation are subjected to analysis, the
ideologies of the media can be exposed.

Studies on mass media, especially on television as the most pervasive medium,

has enormously expanded in the second half of the twentieth century (McQuail
1994). There are four major distinct areas that can be observed in studying media
and they are:
1) Media content studies, concerned with the cultural character of media output.
This can include the process of stereotyping, biased contents that can promote
violence or anti-social behaviour and such effects especially on children.
2) The question of ownership and control; especially on the increasing
concentration of media production into a few numbers of large corporations
and the commercialisation of programming.
3) Ideological impact of mass media in promoting a total pattern of life and
culture.
4) The media practice of agenda setting, distortion and reduction of information.

While connecting media universe with its social and cultural context, the concerns
over the issues of democracy, access, social class and gender representations and
the emergence of a new public sphere need to be centered for discussion. In
order to understand the social make-up of the media text and the media markets,
certain key questions can be raised such as: who owns the media? Whose news
gets broadcasted? Who all get access? Who are the people often unable to express
their voices in the new means of representation? In what ways particular people
and cultures are represented?

3.3 LOCATING THE LINKAGES BETWEEN MASS

MEDIA AND GENDER
Why Study Media and Gender? In what ways these two are related?

The media becomes significant in its power to represent ‘socially acceptable’

ways of being or relating to others and its potential to negotiate and produce
public recognition, honour and status to groups of people is immense. Cynthia
Carter and Linda Steiner note that in the 1860s, feminists in the UK and USA
who were arguing for more progressive and egalitarian definitions of womanhood
complained bitterly that the newspapers and magazines of the day either ridiculed
or ignored women’s lived experiences.
34
It was during the ‘second wave’ of the women’s movement in the 1960s that Mass Media and Gender
systematic research into media images of women flourished. Almost immediately,
feminist scholars and activists started examining how women were being
portrayed in a wide array of media texts- including cinema, videos, prime-time
television dramas, newspapers, pornography, magazines, popular music,
advertising and soap operas. The objective was to problematise the media
enculturation through anti-women and sexist content that made hierarchical and
binary sex-role stereotypes into ‘natural’ and ‘normal’.

Critical forms of feminist scholarship in the 1970s took a critical turn by

examining the ways in which media representations supported the interests of
the twin systems: patriarchy and capitalism. A critical and productive concept
informing some of this research was that of ideology and hegemony. According
to Antonio Gramsci (1971), the notion of hegemony presents an explanation of
how and why ‘dominant’ classes in society have to constantly renegotiate their
powerful positions in relations to the ‘subordinated’ classes. To maintain control
and power, these élites have to rule by winning public consent, rather than
maintaining their control through coercion or repression. When the hegemonic
and ideological ways of being of the powerful are naturalised and made to seem
‘normal’, they are presented to everyone as if no other explanations are possible,
thus producing the larger “common sense”.

As Carter and Steiner rightly note “the media are instrumental in the processes
of gaining public consent. Media texts never simply mirror or reflect ‘reality’,
but instead construct hegemonic definitions of what should be accepted as
‘reality’(Carter and Steiner 2004). The contents and representations in the media
appear to be inevitable, ‘real’ and commonsensical. Thus, media images align
with the interests of powerful groups in society. Feminists have redeployed the
notion of hegemony in order to argue that most women cannot see how patriarchal
values are culturally translated to appear as ‘non-ideological’, ‘objective’, ‘natural’
and ‘non-gendered’.

As we have discussed previously, though sex and gender are not synonymous,
they are closely related. Conventionally, the term “sex” has long been used to
refer to the biological differences (male and female) while the term “gender” is
used to refer to the socially and culturally acquired behaviours and roles (feminine
and masculine). Recent debates on sexuality and identity have re-defined sex
and gender as existing along a continuum rather than in terms of dichotomous
polar opposites as male/female or masculine/feminine (Butler 1990).

As sex and gender get re-defined in different ways according to historical, political
and socio-cultural contexts, such productions, reproductions and counter-
productions of ideas on those concepts are placed in the media texts for reception.
Media act as powerful agents of constructing and representing gender. Both print
and visual media, television in particular, are arenas for constructing stable notions
of gender through an act of stereotyping. Though the notions of masculinity and
femininity vary in different cultural contexts, the media images on these concepts
tend to homogenise them in their representative modes and meanings.

Margaret Mead, drawing from her ethnographic studies in Samoa (1928) and
New Guinea (1930), has explained that what is understood as masculinity and
femininity varies across cultures. In other words, not only do different societies
35
Cross Cultural Perspectives identify a certain set of characteristics as feminine and another set as masculine,
but also, these characteristics are not the same across different cultures. Thus,
feminists have empirically demonstrated that there is no essential co-relation
between the biology of men and women and the features and behaviours that are
thought to be masculine and feminine. In fact the enculturation process has a
greater impact on molding children to appropriate such gender-specific forms of
behaviour, action, clothing and so on. Socialisation often works as subtle, hidden
and at the level of ideology. Enculturation designs bravery, aggression and
confidence as “masculine”, and modesty, sensitivity and shyness as “feminine”
and the value that society attributes to them, are produced by a range of
institutions; and media performs a key role in socialising boys and girls differently
along the lines of such norms and values.

Women’s role in the media industry and their level of participation is one of the
major areas of concern. Several studies find the inferior positions and low ranked
jobs that women are assigned within the domain of media industry worldwide.
Ann Ross Muir (1988) argues that if women are confined to the lower-paid and
lower-status positions within the media industry, then there are fewer possibilities
for them to influence the content and representation and work against the
stereotyping of women. She adds that most television content exhibit a masculine
point of view since men dominate and control the industry (Muir 1988).

Drawing from the industrial relationships in media, Stott and Steiner observe
that although the working conditions for women journalists has considerably
improved in the last few decades, historically women have been desperately
aware that majority of their male colleagues doubted their capability to perform
‘serious’ journalism merely because they were women. Some even believed that
any woman journalist who became successful did so basically through her sexual
availability (Carter and Steiner 2004). This biased view still prevails among
many reporters and editors and producers in the media industry across the world.

If we look at the participation of women in television industry, we can see most

of the the television industries worldwide are dominated by men (UNESCO
1987). It can be a reflection of gender relations in other streams of life in which
women are mostly confined to home. This dominant cultural pattern had a
significant impact on the gender configuration in the television industry as
predominantly men centered. In the early years of television, there were very
few women occupying prestigious position of higher authority and power. The
recent decades witnessed certain changes in bringing more awareness towards
gender equality in the mass media industries. Television now provides a range of
opportunities for women. However, the crucial question remains on the production
of gender sensitive content of the media texts. Is there any major shift in the
gender stereotyping in the content of television? It may be premature to understand
gender equality in the domain of mass media parallel with the increase in women’s
participation as media professionals. The relationship between patterns of
employment within television organisations and televisual representations are
differently located in terms of explaining gender equality. We then need to raise
a crucial question; if the presence of more number of women does not correspond
with any major shift in organising the content of programme, then what goes
wrong? Statistics reveal that in most of the mass media industries across the
globe, women are not able to occupy major decision making positions in
comparison with men.
36
Van Zoonen’s work on feminism and journalism (1989) shows a clear mismatch Mass Media and Gender
between institutional norms and individual intentions in the production of media
content. Women journalist who espoused feminist ethics found that although
such ideas were included in their training, it seems difficult to apply those ideas
in an institutional setting. The organisational socialisation puts tremendous
pressures to get back to conventional ideas on gender and as a result of such
continuous imposition; women tend to perceive these patterns as ‘normal’ and
thus taken for granted.

Women in Media Industry

In Britain, the 1975 enquiry into equal opportunities carried out by the
Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians with in
the industry showed that the position of women had not improved but had
deteriorated since the 1950s, when women represented 18 percent of the
workforce in Television. By 1975, the figure decreased to 15 percent, with
women concentrated in areas such as costume, make-up and production
secretary, with very few in technical production roles. In 1986, figures by
ITCA (Independent Television Companies Association) found out that out
of 306 cameramen (sic) only 12 were women; of 269 sound technicians, 8
were women and of 1,395 engineers, 19 were women (Muir 1988). Monica
Simms’ survey of the BBC in 1985, revealed similar findings. Looking at
the BBC top grades, she found that 169 were men while only 6 were women.
The BBC today has vastly improved its equal opportunities policy, but even
so very few women make it to the top.

Source: Casey et al. 2004. Key Concepts in Television Studies. London and New York:
Routledge.

3.4 GENDER STEREOTYPES

In this section, we will begin with the concept of representation in order to get
into the idea of stereotyping. Every human communication contains “signs”. A
sign can be identified with three basic characteristics. Firstly, a sign has a concrete
form. Secondly a sign refers to something other than itself. In other words,
anything that tells us about something other than itself is a sign. Thirdly, a sign
can be recognised by most people in a society. The physical form (verbal or
figural image) of the sign can be called “signifier”. The mental association of the
sign or what it refers to, can be known as “signified”. The process, and products,
that give particular meanings to a sign is called representation. The concept of
representation is central to the study of media and culture. By understanding the
modes and meanings of representation, we can explore the questions of power
and ideology. As a term that is frequently used in media studies “representation”
or ”to represent” can mean the ways of depicting or presenting something for an
audience to read or consume. Since an unmediated “real world” cannot be
accessible, re-presentation makes mediation possible to reach the audience with
different versions of the world. So what we see in television, hear in the radio or
read in the newspaper will be a construction, involving decisions about the selection
of the content, the placement of the camera, editing the material and so on.
Another way of looking at the concept of representation is the ways in which
media images lead us to make sense of cultural symbols. This can further lead to
an understanding of how different social groups are often depicted in media
37
Cross Cultural Perspectives texts and how does stereotyping of certain cultural groups and people take place.
Media representations thus can be understood as a reflection of reality or maybe
a distortion of something “real” or “true”. This implicates our interest to look at
how far media images are true to that reality or how far the media distort the
reality in order to reproduce certain ideologies. In the various ways of re-presenting
the “real”, media texts often get into a consistent form of construction, which
makes certain social groups into a fixation; what we call the process of
stereotyping. For instance, women are often depicted or seen mainly in limited
range of roles such as housewives, girlfriends or secretaries, and in the case of
some ethnic minorities, the representation can be predominantly in the roles of
terrorists, criminals or servants (in the case of Muslims and Black people). Some
scholars argue that the immediate and sharply contrasted reversal of stereotypes
as part of media ethics will not serve the purpose. This is because of the complex
nature of relationship between representation and reality. One cannot easily
recognise what is real and what is representation. So we need to look at various
instances of stereotypical representations in order to uncover the issue “who
represent whom?” Richard Dyer talks about the importance of looking at the
concept of “pleasure” in this regard (Dyer 1985). Who is getting pleasure out of
experiencing a media text? Or what kind of pleasure a media text can offer by
particular ways of representation and who are the target audience to those
representations? Do audience members all get pleasure from media content in
the same way? Given the social differences in terms of race, class, gender, ethnicity
and sexual orientations, it is unlikely that all viewers, readers and listeners would
be equally at ease with the modes of representation. Representations are produced
and circulated in a social context of meanings in relation with power and ideology.
This commonsense of meanings is governed by power which projects certain
meanings as positive and denigrates some others.

Stuart Hall invites a question that we need to ask beyond the old notion—that
representations are reflections or distortions of something real—and to center
the issue whether events in the world really do have a single and essential fixed
meaning that is “true” against which distortion could be measured (Hall 1997).
In other words, reality has no fixed meaning until it has been represented and
particular representation and their meaning are subject to change over space and
time. In Hall’s understanding, what we call ‘reality’ does not exist outside of the
process of representation (Hall 1997).

Similarly, the concept of sign took a significant turn in Baudrillard’s writing. He

has argued that while living with postmodernity, people largely experience and
live in a mass-media-produced blizzard of signs. People struggle to distinguish
and separate reality from representation with the infinity of signs in the visual
and new media texts that form a ‘hyper-reality”.

Stereotypes are some sort of a standard fixation of characteristics attributed to

persons, groups and cultures. The term derived from the Greek term “stereos”
means solid and “typos” means mark. Walter Lippmann, an American journalist
of the early twentieth century developed the concept in his book “public opinion”
(Lippmann 1922). Lippmann finds two crucial aspects of stereotypes. Firstly,
stereotypes tend to be resistant to change; second, they generally carry a pejorative
and narrow range of meanings (O’Sullivan et al 1994). Stereotypes are
theoretically identified as inaccurate and simplistic generalisations about
individuals or groups or particular cultures. However, most mass media texts
38
continue to make stereotypical representations. Stereotypes and stereotyping are Mass Media and Gender
products and processes that are linked with power and ideologies. Tessa Perkins
(1979) observes that stereotypes can often represent certain real social relations
and they maybe partial, but not necessarily false. So the relationship between
stereotypes and social reality is a complex one. For instance, the depiction of
women in inferior roles need not necessarily read as a text that tends to reproduce
women’s inferior status in the society. On the contrary many cultural
commentators have argued that media texts construct and perpetuate stereotypes,
and there is evidence to support this view.

Who produces stereotypes about whom? This leads to a discussion on the question
of representing the other. Who is the other? The representative entity that is
situated ones own self (outside ones own gender, race, class, religious and ethnic
identities) is “the other”. In most instances the construction of the other turns out
to be the construction of “the inferior other” by the dominant individuals and
groups in the society. How othering is produced in media texts in the form of
stereotyping? What is the relationship between media and the existence of
stereotypes? The role of the media in agenda setting, gate-keeping and ownership
continue to be crucial in the persistence or relegation of stereotypes.

In Indian cinema industries, ranging from Bollywood to all south Indian industries,
there is a widespread pattern of stereotyping the image of the female protagonist.
There is a notion of homogenising the physical appearance and mental attitudes
of women who perform the lead role in Indian cinema. Women were seen as
readers of ‘inferior literature, subjective, emotional and passive, while men emerge
as writers of genuine authentic literature - objective, and in control of their
aesthetic means’.

Grose observes the Sun Newspaper’s visible culture of sex that invaded every
part of the paper, including the pages it has from time to time made exclusively
for women. In the paper’s own version of its history: “The Sun called its women’s
pages filled them with sex. They were produced by women for women. But they
were subtitled “The pages for women that men can’t resist”, acknowledging that
there are plenty of topics that fascinate both men and women, like sex” (Carter
and Steiner 2004).

Grose’s observation can be located within the pages of many magazines that are
written by women for women. It shows how women themselves inadvertently
collude in the construction of stereotypes. What messages are such magazines
trying to send to their readers? Women’s magazines tend to fall into mainly two
categories: firstly those concerned with home making and child care. The second
type concerned with providing important tips to marketing themselves to catch a
mate. This division itself makes both categories into a problematic dualism in
which the first category of women represent the characters which are homely,
pure, chaste, maternal and modest. On the other hand the second category of
women stands for the features of amoral, sexual, sinful and danger. These dualism
can be observed in most of the Indian films in which there is a presence of two
female protagonists—one traditional “Indian woman” who represents the first
category (who often becomes triumphant in the competition to win the male
protagonist’s heart) and the modern/western woman who represent the second
category, a symbol of danger that threatens the “Indian Culture”.

39
Cross Cultural Perspectives Heather Gilmour, in her study on computer games, argues that most computer
software now being developed for girls helps reproduce hierarchical gender
difference between boys and girls rather than challenging the power structures.
She observes that in most computer games, ‘girls continue to be essentialised as
emotional, highly social, modest and soft-spoken while males are defined as
competitive and technologically inclined’ (Gilmour, 1994).

Such assumptions about gender distinctions are not based on any essential
differences between boys and girls, but instead illustrate the ‘ideologies and
assumptions of researchers and developers’. Having surveyed 180 students (90
boys and 90 girls) about their genre preferences, Gilmour found that the
differences between boy and girl gamers are primarily matters of ‘cultural
gendering of leisure and play’, rather than inherent biological differences. While
game software developers address girls as a homogeneous, gendered group, girls
maintain certain heterogeneity of game preference and use. Gilmour urges on
computing experts to go beyond conventional notions of femininity as a
monolithic category that inevitably work to restrict feminine behaviour, pleasure
and self-definition (Gilmour, 2004).

Gender and Game Shows

Looking at the male dominance in the participation and ownership in the
mass media industry, Chaudhuri explains the relationship between the male
supremacy in the industry and the masculine nature of representation.
Examining game shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? She argues
that women are far less likely to apply to be contestants, are less likely to
be chosen and are less likely to win large prises. This observation
corresponds with the fact that most programs of this kind are produced,
presented and compiled by men. Presumably, most questions asked in such
contests have a male orientation. Women contestants may be treated
differently from men. So we can argue that even though there is an increase
in the employment level and participation of women in the media industry,
the larger culture of the industry continued to be masculinist and this
eventually make an impact on the mode of representation and shaping the
content overwhelmingly masculine in nature.

Source: Chaudhuri, A, 1999. Who Wants to be a Quiz Show Contestant? Guardian, 29

November.

3.5 ANTHROPOLOGY OF MEDIA

Anthropology’s role as the self appointed interpreter and representative of the
cultural “others” has been dwindled and it was replaced by the global media
agencies in the recent decades. The ethnographic accounts that provided
knowledge about different non-Western cultures and communities around the
world give away a major share of such production to the mass media industry.
Anthropologists have been displaced to a certain extend by the big media like
CNN, BBC, Hollywood and other global media in the making of ethnography
and (re)presenting the “unfamiliar” cultures. In a technology-mediated era, an
anthropological subject like marriage has its location more in the internet in
terms of arranging negotiations. Countless marriage alliances are channeled
through the space of the web. Anthropology in its desire to understand cultures,
40
thus cannot escape the media as it is one of the significant aspects of contemporary Mass Media and Gender
social life.

Against this backdrop, anthropology finds its own analytical space to understand
these developments through an emergent subfield known as Anthropology of
Media. Among other things, Anthropology of Media engages the readers in an
anthropological critique of how mass media are employed to construct and
represent cultures (Askew and Wilk 2002). The strength of anthropology lies in
its concern with people and their lived experiences. Anthropology of Media is
concerned with certain key questions; firstly what meanings do people construct
out of mass mediated images and sounds? How do they negotiate embedded
ideologies and power politics? What new forms of social interactions have media
technologies enabled and how are existing social formations transformed? How
are conceptions of space and time altered through the influence of the media?
Media anthropology thus comprises ethnographically informed, historically
grounded and context sensitive analysis of the ways in which people use and
make sense of media (Askew and Wilk, 2002).

As interpretive and symbolic anthropology developed as significant subfields in

anthropological inquiry in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the question of the
production of meaning became central to anthropological concern. Clifford Geertz
was one of the champions of this school of thought. Geertz argued that culture is
a system of symbols in which meanings are produced and exchanged in multiple
ways. The most influential aspect of Geertz’s work has been his emphasis on the
importance of the symbolic — of systems of meaning — as it relates to culture,
cultural change, and the study of culture. According to Geertz, anthropological
analysis of culture has to be therefore not an experimental science in search of
law but an interpretative one in search of meaning. Crucially, Geertz compares
the methods of an anthropologist analysing culture to those of a literary critic
analysing a text; in fact this methodological turn suggest the way of looking at
culture as understanding a mediated text (Geertz 1973). This methodological
position in ethnography has brought anthropology and media studies in a common
analytical ground.

In the 1970s, the focus on the power of the media texts to shape cultural values,
behaviour and attitude was subsequently taken up by British cultural studies
scholars like Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, David Morley, John Fiske, Ien
Ang and so on. Earlier, scholars like Powdermaker, Adorno and others
concentrated on the idea of production of the media text in relation with power
and ideology. The turn towards cultural studies opened up a window to explore
media reception in more nuanced ways. Cultural studies scholars questioned
and challenged the assumption of unambiguous, unilineal and single dimensional
transmission of media messages directly from producers to consumers. The
question of power and control remained central to their analysis. However, power
no longer was understood as monopolised entirely or exclusively by media
producers. Informed by the writings of Antonio Gramsci, Michael Foucault,
Jaques Derrida and others, cultural studies scholars attributed some measure of
power to the acts of viewing and listening, the power of the audience to manipulate
the text. They reconceptualised the audience members into active subjects rather
than automate regulators. This can be seen as an extension of the reader-centered
approach adopted in literary criticism. Media audience members were thus
elevated to a level above that of passive receptacle. Rather than mere consumers
41
Cross Cultural Perspectives of the media texts, audiences were recognised as active participants in the
production of meaning. However, Stuart Hall and Laura Mulvey refer to the
media producers’ arena of strategies in constructing the content when it concerns
with identities like ethnicity, gender, race and class. With the application of a
wide range of strategies such as stereotyping, naturalising, reductionism, binary
opposition, erasure, fantasy, fetishism and so on, that the production predisposes
and guides the audience to a reading that favour existing power structures (Hall
1981, Mulvey 1989).

Getting back to the domain of anthropological inquiry, Margaret Mead and

Gregory Bateson championed the use of camera (both still and moving) in their
study on the Balinese culture and personality in the 1930s. Cultural documentation
in the visual form became a key ethnographic practice. Anthropology in its
positivist orientation claimed to be a “value-free science” which remained a
theoretical illusion. This is partly because of the unavoidable selection the
anthropologist has to make among a variety of cultural events. So in a way,
looking back or revisiting the early ethnographic representation, one has to look
at the text exactly like a mediated content what Geertz has rightly suggested.

However, understanding mass media from a feminist perspective within the

discipline of anthropology has a very recent birth. In fact, gender was not a major
concern in classical anthropological writings. The early ethnographies were
revisited by feminist scholars and problematised the texts for being highly male
oriented. Feminist anthropologists like Lila Abu-Lughod, Henrietta Moore, Sherry
Otner and others brought to the center the questions of gender inequality, problems
of ethnographic representation, male dominance and the nature-culture dichotomy
that made women the cultural inferior, as certain fundamental problems within
the discipline (Otner 1974, Abu-Lughod 1986, Moore 1988).

There emerged a wide range of attempts to read the media in an ethnographic

sense in the Western contexts. Studies on the Hollywood, Disneyland, Western
television, popular music and internet have been flourished in academic circles
in those parts of the world. However, the Indian academia is still in an early
phase of producing such anthropological insights. Though scholars of journalism,
mass communication, cultural studies and film studies have made certain
significant contributions to media studies in India, the contribution of
anthropologists is still minimal.

To mention a few notable contributions, media’s perception and presentation of

women’s issues were discussed by Ammu Joseph and Kalpana Sharma in their
edited volume “Whose News?” In this work, certain crucial issues related to
Indian women between 1979 and 1988 have been examined such as dowry-
related death; rape; the right to maintenance of Muslim divorcees; the re-
emergence of the practice of Sati; and sex determination tests (Joseph and Sharma
1994). Sonai Bathla made a study on the media concerns on women’s political
participation that figured in the news media in India during the Lok Sabha election
reviews in the late 1990s (Bathla 2008). There is tremendous focus on the study
of cinema in India in recent years. Sociology, film studies and cultural studies
made significant contributions in the areas of television, cassette culture and
cinema. Peter Manuel, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Madhava Prasad, Ravi Vasudevan,
Christopher Pinney, Arvind Rajgopal, Patricia Uberoi, Jenny Rowena, Ashis
Nandy, Poornima Mankekar and others are some of the key figures who have
42
worked on audio visual cultures, texts and representation in India. Robin Jeffrey’s Mass Media and Gender
work on the Indian newspapers throws light on the space of print culture and its
cultural dynamics (Jeffrey 2010). Since there is a significant move towards
interdisciplinary perspective in anthropological research in India, the area of
media analysis has been gaining momentum in the last few years.

3.6 A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF MASS MEDIA

Feminist critiques on the question of representation attempt to understand how
television, newspapers and other media texts stereotype, under-represent and
misrepresent women’s experiences. The major concern was to problematise the
male dominated domain of media that needs to be subject to equal opportunities
for women.

There is little doubt that feminism has been one of the most influential theoretical
turn in academics, particularly on the debates on culture, for the past three to
four decades. Feminism also overwhelmingly made significant influence in the
area of media studies, demanding for social change and continued to resisting
against the male dominated participation and representation in the media industry.
As a political and academic movement that consistently threatening the status
quo, feminism, to some extend (especially in male receptions), has become a
“dirty” word and its ideas subject to a backlash. This is partly because of the
misrepresentation of feminist ideas in the media. Moreover, in recent times,
feminism has become fragmented (as it could not represent the differences within
women in terms of caste, class, race, ethnicity and sexuality) and has found itself
under new criticisms and some of them perceived as “from within” (Casey et al
2004).

As a political, social and academic movement and a theoretical perspective,

feminism foregrounds gender as a significant and important factor of our cultural
identity. Gender is regarded as a powerful mechanism that structures our material
and social worlds. At particular historical junctures, there were different streams
of feminist thought emerged with their own unique stand points such as Marxist,
Liberal, Radical, black and dalit feminisms. However, all of them, at different
levels, argued that women as a social group have been treated in a range of
unfavorable ways by men as a social group in economic, political, educational
and social institutions. It is important to note that feminism has seen patriarchy
as not just a simple and straightforward question of individual men being
oppressive or discriminatory to individual women. Feminism identifies patriarchy
as embedded in our culture and social institutions and this might have an impact
on individual behaviour and attitudes of men towards women. Media as a powerful
institution in constructing and representing gender relations has also come under
feminist scrutiny in terms of stereotyping women’s lives in the media texts and
women’s participation in the industry.

Feminist scholars took serious interest in studying the media in the late 1960s
and 70s by focusing on sexual politics, gender roles and relations. Significant
works like Kate Millett’s “Sexual politics” (1970) and Germaine Geer’s “The
Female Eunuch“(1971) provided a critique to understand issues beyond
conventional forms of patriarchy and realised the new modes and structures
through which patriarchy is operated (Casey et al 2004).
43
Cross Cultural Perspectives While the early concerns of feminist thinking tended to focus on women’s relative
absence in powerful positions within the media industry, in the 1970s feminist
concerns were largely on the narrow range of representation of women and the
negative stereotyping of their lives. In the mid 1970s, scholars like Laura Mulvey
provided with a new way of thinking about the gaze, concerns with positioning
of spectators to experience the film or television through male eyes. This is known
as the male gaze thesis (Mulvey 1975). The approach is based on the idea that
male gaze sexualises women and turns them into mere sexual objects to be looked
at. Here looking is understood to involve desire, control or desire to control. The
male gaze is tied up with the issues of power. Recently feminist scholarship
began to look at the process of stereotyping in a more critical fashion as it is not
a simple and straightforward event. The focus also went into the construction
and representation of masculinity and masculine sexuality. The relation and the
impact of the second aspect on the content and representation becomes a point
of critique. Male camera operators, directors and producers have objectified
women’s bodies and limited their range of roles in which women appear.

Although gender refers to the concerns of both men and women, majority of
critical writings and debates, has, until quite recently been, about women’s
experience and the representation of women. However, recent studies have
attempted to widen the scope of gender and media studies by locating the question
of representation of men, discourse of masculinity and masculine sexualities.
Men, in most media text, inhabit a wider range of roles, that too in the public
domains of occupation in the form of professionals, employers, labourers. They
appear also in wide range of age, and also in wide range of body shapes and
voice qualities. Many surveys on advertisements and programmes in television
suggest that women are shown as domestic beings (as housewives or mothers)
or as sexual objects or accessories to men (bodies to sell products or assistants to
powerful men). The older women representation generally goes along with the
notions of cruelty (in the case of mother-in-laws in Indian soaps) or subjects of
fun. Women from ethnic minorities, especially dalit and dark skinned women
often fail to appear in the characters of “good” or “ideal” woman, but they are
mostly depicted as the “other” and as “bad” and “undesirable”. Contrast to this,
“normal” femininity is depicted as overwhelmingly young, slim, tall, fair skinned
and heterosexually domestic. On the other hand, “normal” masculinity has often
seen as less restricted and more often associated with action, power, authority
and control.

The traditional association between men and sport, news and current affairs has
hardly been shifted. Football commentators and their uniform voice quality has
reproduced over the years a peculiar taste towards such a uniform and unique
male voice that resist to a different voice whether it is of a man or a woman. The
construction of an “ideal” female voice in Indian cinema corresponds to this
point. Sanjay Srivastava discusses about the singing voice of Lata Mangeshkar
and its representation as the “ideal” feminine voice. Lata’s voice, a particular
female singing voice – with its specific tonality and modulation – became an
expression of gender identity in India—the ideal feminine voice, the most
desirable voice of the ideal Indian woman. He argues that Lata’s singing voice
has instituted a very specific identity for Indian womanhood, one which has
almost no precedence in traditional forms of Indian music. One music critic has
noted that Lata’s style has become “the ultimate measure of sweetness in a
woman’s voice (Srivastava, 2004). This construction and representation of the
44
“ideal feminine” erase the possibility of representing other heterogeneous women Mass Media and Gender
voices in media texts such as in Indian cinema, television and radio.

Advertisements in newspaper and in visual media have a stronger impact on

shaping gender images than books on feminism and scholarly experiments on
gender equality. Matlin (1987) explains how the media’s misrepresentation of
women in advertisements has created plenty of stereotypical representations of
women. She observes that women are often shown in a sexual or vulnerable
position in order to sell the product, whether it is an advertisement for shaving
cream or alcoholic beverage.

Matlin describes how the medium is an important force in shaping reality it is

these stereotyped representations that help to shape women’s opinions of what
they should look like. Often girls and women forget that, and become sensitised
by advertisements (Carter and Steiner, 2004). We must study advertisements
and their surrounding texts together; analysing the concurrent and convergent
meanings they construct and circulate about the constitution of gender.

The problem with the “hot” content

Many of us, the internet users, are now caught in the web of Youtube in
terms of our experience of video watching. Some scholars argue that the
internet spaces, like the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter,
personal blogs, and video sharing sites like the Youtube are enabling spaces
for marginalised groups by offering emancipatory potentials. The basic
assumption behind this argument is that everyone gets a possible space to
create his or her own content that can resist and challenge the dominant
and hegemonic representations. But when we look at these virtual spaces,
most of their fields continue to remain with anti-women, anti-dalit and
racist content. For instance, if you type any (celebrity) woman’s name in
the Youtube (or any such) search box, the top most leading suggestions/
options would be “hot”, “hot videos” ,and “sexy” after those particular
woman’s names. But this would not happen when you try with a male name.

In a sense ranging from Arab Spring movement to the Anna Hasare

campaign, social network sites like Facebook and Twitter have been a
revelation in connecting with people. Recently a group of youngsters, in
the name of “change.org” a portal for social change has launched an online
campaign for the removal of sexually violent content in those very social
networking sites like the Facebook. The group has found that there is a
large amount of sexually violent content floating in such virtual spaces to
demeaning women (Tejaswi, 2012).

Examining the visual spaces with reference to sexual content and

pornography, Robert Jenson explores how the sexual charge is connected
to the ideology of male dominance and female submission that is central in
contemporary commercial pornography (Jensen, 1994). He argues that
whether a pornography user feels guilt and shame or is proud of his use, the
result is generally the same: the use of pornography continues to sexualise
and objectifies women and reduce them into mere sexual bodies for male
pleasure. He further explains with a subjective account on the effects that
pornography had on him. Based on his experience, Jenson argues that:
45
Cross Cultural Perspectives
• Pornography is an important means of sex education.
• Pornography constructs women as objects, which encourage men to
see women in real life in that same way.
• Pornography creates or reinforces desires for specific acts, most of which
focuses on male pleasure and can cause female pain.
• Rather than unlocking sexual creativity, pornography shapes and
constrains a person’s sexual imagination with its standardised scripts.
• Race is an important aspect of pornography, reinforcing the view of
women of colour as the ‘exotic primitive’.
For Jenson, the concept of authentic sexual desire is problematic; there is
no pure, natural sexuality that is not mediated by culture. Here he simply
contends that pornography is a force that can shape desire and that we
should be concerned with how men may be conditioned to desire sexual
acts that are humiliating, degrading and sometimes painful for women
(Jenson, 2004).
Sources:
1) Tejaswi, A. 2012. “Youths Fight it Out Online”. Decan Chronicle, April 19, 17-19.
2) Jenson, R. 2004. “Knowing Pornography”. in C. Carter and L. Steiner (eds), Critical
Readings:Media and Gender, Maidenhead: Open University Press.

3.7 SUMMARY
In this unit, we have examined how gender-based social images that are
transmitted through media have a powerful impact— though not straightforward
and simple—on the larger cultural domain. We began with the basic understanding
of the development of the mass media and the features of the media industry and
the modes of representation that media perform in different contexts. The crucial
linkages between media and the construction of gender were explored. The issues
related to the construction and representation of masculinity and femininity in
media texts were discussed with relevant examples from both Western and Indian
contexts.

The nature of media industry and the occupational division between genders and
the related inequalities were foregrounded with a view to understand the crucial
question; “who produce the media content, and for whom?” It is evident from
the above discussions that contemporary media, especially television is not a
monolithic entity. Gender representations are neither simple nor the audience
readings of the text are rather complex and multi-dimensional.

In this unit, we have discussed why the field of media and gender is an interesting
and relevant field within the discipline of anthropology. The discussion on media
and gender from an anthropological perspective thus demonstrates; even though
there is a huge difference and change found in the economic and social status
among certain sections of women, women as a social and cultural entity are still
in a structurally subordinate position to most men. And this cultural equation
gets reflected in the construction and representation of gender in the media
industry as well as in media texts. Feminist theorisation has clearly had a
transformative impact on the fields of anthropology and media studies.
46
References Mass Media and Gender

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Society. Berkley: University of California Press.
Adorno, T. 1991. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London:
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Askew, K. and Wilk, R. 2002. The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. USA:
Blackwell.
Benedict, R. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Patterns of Japanese
Behaviour. Boston: Houghton Miffin.
Bathla, S. 2008. “Gender Construction In News Media in Marie John” (eds)
Women Studies In India- A Reader. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London
and New York: Routledge.
Carter, C. and Steiner, L. 2004. Critical Readings: Media and Gender. UK: Open
University Press.
Casey, B. et al. 2004. Key Concepts in Television Studies. London and New
York: Routledge.
Castells, M. 1996. The Rise of Network Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Dyer, R. 1985. “Taking Popular Television Seriously” D. Lusted P. Drummond
(eds) TV and Schooling. London: BFI
Geer, G. 1970. The Female Eunuch. UK: Harper Perennial.
Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books.
Gilmore, H. 2004. “What Girls Want: The Intersections of Leisure and Power in
Female Computer Game Play”. C. Carter and L. Steiner (eds) Critical Readings
: Media and Gender. UK: Open University Press.
Gramsci, A. 1971. Selection from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and
Vishart.
Hall, S. 1981. “The Whites of Their Eyes: Racists Ideologies and the Media”. G.
Bridges and R. Brunt (eds) Silver Linings : Some Strategies for the Eighties.
London: Lowrence and Wishart.
————. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices. London, New Delhi: Sage/ Open University Press.
Jeffrey, R. 2010. Media & Modernity. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Joseph, A. and Sharma, K. 1994. Whose News? The Media and Women’s Issues.
New Delhi: Sage.
Knightley, P. 1975. The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero. London:
Deutsch.
Lippmann, W. 1965 (1922). Public Opinion. New York: Free Press.
Mead, Mararet. 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of
Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation. New York: William Morrow & Co.
Mead, Margaret. 1930. Growing up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of
Primitive Education. New York: William Morrow & Co.
47
Cross Cultural Perspectives Mead, M. and Bateson, G. 1942. Balinise Character: A Photographic Analysis.
New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
McQuail , D. 1994. Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage.
Millett, K. 1970. Sexual Politics. London: Abacus.
Moore, H. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. USA: University of Minnesota
Press.
Mulvey, L. 1989. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Visual and Other
Pleasures. London: Macmillan.
O’Sullivan, T., Hartley, J., Saunders, D., Montgomery, M. and Fiske, J. 1994.
Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.
Otner, S. 1972. “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” pp. 67–87. M. Z.
Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds). Woman, Culture and Society.. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Perkins, T. 1979. “Rethinking Stereotypes”. M. Barrett et al (eds). Ideology and
Cultural Production. London: Croom Helm.
Powdermaker, H. 1950. Hollywood: The Dream Factory. An Anthropologist Looks
at the Movie Makers. Boston: Little Brown.
Srivastava, S. 2004. “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-year plans: The
Idea of Lata Mangeshkar”. Economic and Political Weekly. May 15.
UNESCO. 1987. Women and Decision Making: The Invisible Barriers. Paris:
UNESCO.
van Zoonen, L. 1989. “Professional Socialisation of Feminist Journalists in the
Netherlands”. Women’s Studies in Communication, 12(3) : 1-23.
Suggested Reading
Bathla, Sonia. 1998. Women, Democracy and the Media. New Delhi: Sage.
Craig, S. (ed.) 1992. Men, Masculinity and the Media. London and Thousand
Oaks: Sage.
Norris, P. (ed) 1997. Women, Media and Politics. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Thomham, Sue. 2007. Women, Feminism and Media. UK: Edinburgh University
Press
Sample Questions
1) What is mass media? What are major areas of concern in media studies?
2) What are the factors that lead to the marginal role of women in the media
industry worldwide?
3) What is stereotyping? Write a feminist critique on the gender stereotyping
in media by citing examples from the Indian context.
4) Write a brief history of anthropological investigations in the areas of media
and gender.

48
 MANE-004
Gender and Society
Indira Gandhi
National Open University
School of Social Sciences

Block

8
WOMEN IN INDIA AND SOME INSIGHTS
UNIT 1
Women’s Movements in India 5
UNIT 2
Emplowerment, Emancipation and Policies in India 26
UNIT 3
Women and Health 44
Expert Committee
Prof. Patricia Uberoi Faculty of Anthropology
Former Professor of Sociology SOSS, IGNOU
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi Dr. Rashmi Sinha, Reader
Discipline of Anthropology
Professor Rekha Pande SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Professor of History, SOSS and
Head, Centre for Women’s Studies Dr. Mitoo Das
University of Hyderabad Assistant Professor
Andhra Pradesh Discipline of Anthropology
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Prof. Karuna Chanana (Retired) Dr. Rukshana Zaman
Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Assistant Professor
Studies, School of Social Sciences Discipline of Anthropology
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. Nita Mathur Dr. P. Venkatramana
Associate Professor Assistant Professor
Faculty of Sociology Discipline of Anthropology
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Dr. C.J. Sonowal Dr. K. Anil Kumar
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Assistant Professor
Inclusive Policies Discipline of Anthropology
School of Social Sciences SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
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Professor Rekha Pande, Professor of History, SOSS
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University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad

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Block Introduction
Prof. Rekha Pande, Professor of History
SOSS, and Head, Centre for Women’s
Studies, University of Hyderabad,
Hyderbad
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Prof. D. Padmavathi (Unit 1)
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Sri Padmavathi Mahila Visvavidyalayam, Tirupati
Dr. Radhika Govinda (Unit 2)
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Human Studies
Ambedkar University, Delhi
Dr. Sunita Reddy (Unit 3)
Assistant Professor, Centre for Social Medicine and
Community Health, SOSS, JNU, New Delhi

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BLOCK 8 INTRODUCTION

The three units in this section on Women in India and Some Insights focus on
three major issues, the women’s movement, empowerment, emancipation and
policies in India and finally on women’s health, policies and programmes. These
three lessons contain real examples, stories in the areas of movements, policies
and health concerns, and are to be read and understood in an exemplary and
empirical manner.

In the pre-independence era, the women’s movement began as a social reform

movement in the 19th century. At this time, the western idea of liberty, equality
and fraternity was being imbibed by our educated elite through the study of
English and the contact with west. This western liberalism was extended to the
women’s question and was translated into a social reform movement. The reform
movements were not homogeneous and varied a lot in terms of the ideas and
changes that was to be fostered. They did however share a common concern for
rooting out the social evils, partly in response to charges of barbarity from the
colonial rulers. These reformers took up the issue of women’s education, widow
remarriage, age of marriage for girls and property rights for women. The social
reform movement did not radically challenge the existing patriarchal structure
of society or question gender relation. They picked up for reform only those
issues which the Britishers were pointing out as evidence of degeneration in the
Indian society. Even the women’s institutions and organisations that sprang up
during this period did not have an independent ideology but only took off from
what the men stated. This is understandable because it was primarily the wives
and sisters of the reformers who had initiated the establishment of these
organisations. The direction and content of reform as laid down by the reformers
was accepted by the women’s organisations without any question. Yet, In spite
of its limitations, it cannot be denied that the social reform movement did help
in removing prejudices against women’s education and provided a secular space
for women in the public realm. In the national movement for the first time limited
number of women belonging to the elite section of Indian society started taking
part in the political activities. Till 1919, the national movement was limited to
the urban middle class and it was only later with Gandhi’s entrance into the
national movement participation of the masses began to take place. The post
Independence period, saw the introduction of constitutional and legal provisions
and protecting the society and the women from the discrimination and to provide
equality to all the citizens irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion and sex.
This period saw some prominent movements such as, Telangana Movement, a
protest of the people who wanted both food and freedom from the oppressive
regime of the Nizam, the Patils and the Jagirdars in Hyderabad State, the Chipko,
Movement, i.e., peoples’ ecological movement for the protection of the natural
environment and the Anti Arrack Movement, not just for the elimination of liquor
but for the protection and survival of their own culture. From 1975-1985
(International women’s decade) saw the emergence of autonomous women’s
movement in which autonomous women’s groups and organisations started
fighting for liberation.

All these efforts resulted in a development approach shift in focus from Women
in Development (WID) and Women and Development (WAD) paradigms to the
Women in India and Some more recent Gender and Development (GAD) paradigm. It was in the time of
Insights
WID and WAD that a new generation of women emerged in India who questioned
the supplementary role allotted to women in development programmes, most of
which involved training women in the skills of ‘family management’ and ‘home
economics’. In India, their critique was bolstered by the publication of a report
titled Towards Equality in 1974. Documenting the widening of gender inequalities
in employment, health, education and political participation since Independence,
the report was intended for the United Nations International Women’s Year World
Conference to be held in 1975. Yet it is ironic, despite India progressing towards
better growth and development, the health of women is deteriorating. The maternal
mortality rate (MMR) and infant mortality rates (IMR) are very high in India.
The perspectives to understand health and illness have evolved from ‘cultural’
to ‘ecological’ to ‘critical medical anthropology’ in the discipline of anthropology.

4
 Women’s Movements in
UNIT 1 WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS IN INDIA India

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Position of Women in India
1.2.1 Position of Women in the Vedic Period
1.2.2 Position of Women in the Medieval Period
1.2.3 Position of Women in the British Period
1.3 Women’s Movements in the Colonial Period
1.3.1 Social Reform Movements
1.3.2 Nationalist Movements
1.4 Women’s Movements in the Post Colonial Period
1.4.1 Telangana Movement
1.4.2 Chipko Movement
1.4.3 Anti Arrack Movement
1.5 Women’s Movements in India since the 1970s
1.6 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 be aware about the position Indian women as mentioned in the scriptures;
and
 learn about the position of women in the colonial and post colonial periods
through movements.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
The beginning of women’s movements can be observed first from a social reform
movement in the 19th century. During the colonial period women’s movements
in India were born out of the same historical circumstances and social milieu as
earlier 19th century social reform movements, which provoked a new thinking
about various social institutions, practices and social reform legislations. The
women’s movements ideological and social content changed from time to time
and continued into our times. The movement in its entirety can be divided into
three distinct phases.
Phase I Social reform movement, national movement and social reform legislation
in the colonial period.
Phase II Women’s movements in the post colonial period.
Phase III Women’s movements in India since the 1970s.
5
Women in India and Some Patriarchy, caste system and several other social and religious ideas and practices
Insights
which have originated in the ancient Indian social milieu continue to dominate
our anthropological thinking about the social status and position of Indian women
and are still relevant issues and therefore when one discusses them a historical
overview is a necessity.

1.2 POSITION OF WOMEN IN INDIA

Society has been patriarchal for most part of recorded history. It is difficult to
talk about the position and status of women, with all women being categorised
as uniform. There has been infinite variation on the status of women depending
on the culture, class, caste, family structure and property rights. Even while women
have right to kinship systems, the entire mechanisms of marriage, descent,
residence and inheritance are rarely organised in such a way as to guarantee
women access to resources or to allow them to secure access for other women.
In fact under patriarchal order kinship, conjugal and familial systems tend to
construct women in such a way that they hardly live as independent beings and
they are seen only in relation to men, thus depriving women of their selfhood
and agency (Pande, 2010, 131). Hence for a proper understanding of the social
reform movements for the development of women in India it is necessary to
examine the historical background that necessitated and brought about social
reforms. In Indian history, we see major shifts in the position of women in different
periods and some of these changes are reflected in the texts that prescribe codes
of behaviour and therefore capture the dominant worldview of the period.

1.2.1 Position of Women in the Vedic Period

The role and status of women throughout ancient and medieval period has been
far from static ranging from one of authority to freedom to one of subservience.
Most of the historical sources by and large refer to the elite sections of society
concentrating on the court and the aristocracy and hence when they talk of women
they generally refer to women of this class because women from other classes
and tribal backgrounds had different norms. Tribal women and women from the
labouring castes and classes are rarely visible as they represent those groups
which did not have a literary culture and therefore did not leave behind much
evidence. However, there are references to them in literature and historians also
use archaeological evidence to try and reconstruct the lives of the pre-literate
societies.

It is generally accepted that one of the basis of the stratification in society is the
economic surplus that is appropriated by a ruling class and in the context of the
hunter gatherers we see that such a surplus is not there and there the question of
private property does not assume much significance as these societies were
relatively egalitarian. It is with the rise of sedentary settlements that we see the
emergence of stratification as the existence of a class of non-food producers
who lived on the labour of others is seen. In the Indian context a large number of
Neolithic settlements are noticed. In the north-western parts of India, the rise of
the Indus Valley Civilisation based on urban settlements and long distance trade
was excavated a century ago. However, in the absence of any written record and
the un-deciphered nature of the Indus seals we are unable to proceed any further
and therefore unable to reconstruct the position of women.

6
Though it has often been stated that the position of women was much better in Women’s Movements in
India
the Vedic period and things started deteriorating with the coming of Muslims,
and the often quoted examples are given of Gargi and Maitrey who participated
in the Sabha and Samitis it cannot be denied that ancient societies were patriarchal
on the simple count that the predominant structure and values of society were
oriented to giving men a superordinate status, a fact that was reinforced by sacred
literature. In fact one can see continuity in modern times which is one of the
reasons that the social reformers and freedom fighters took up the agenda of
women’s movement in the post Independent period as one of the unfinished
businesses of Indian social reform.

Many accounts were written about women in the 19th century by the European
travelers. The Orientalists reconstructed the glory of Indian civilisation in the
past. The past was presented as a homogeneous whole without any aberrations.
The effort was to make the natives understand their laws and appreciate the
efforts made by their rulers. The colonial restructuring of gender and the circular
institutionalisation of literature both worked to undermine the authority of Indian
literature and the societies that gave rise to them. Though they retrieved and put
into circulation many Sanskrit and Persian texts, it was a highly restructured
version of the past that emerged in the Orientalist framework (Tharu et al (ed),
1991). All these texts showed that women had a very high status in the Vedic
period which was a golden age and then the status of the women declined with
the coming of Muslim rule and now it was for the British to improve the status
of women. One also sees a change in ancient India during the transition from the
early to the later Vedic period when the pastoral and semi-nomadic society of the
early Vedic period with its relative equality gets settled during the later Vedic
period and the territorial units are established during this period. Another
perceptible change is seen during the Upanishidic period and later during the 6th
century B.C with a proliferation of urban settlements. The emergence of the
grhya and the srauta sutras offers us a glimpse of the position of the women
during this period. Agriculture was established along with craft specialisation in
the urban centers and the ‘grahapati’ or the householder seen as the ideal. He
was the one who exercised control over the household. We get a clear indication
of the growing control of the householder over the women of the household and
their dependence on the men.

Many of these scholars depended for their sources on textual materials which
are Brahmanical in origin. These texts are heavily preoccupied with religious
and legal questions. Women are viewed mainly in the context of the family, the
relationship between husband and wife being the main backdrop. The first
millennium BC, can be called the era of the founding of Brahmanic patriarchy,
and the 19th century colonial period saw the reconstruction of Brahmanic
patriarchy, as part of a larger scale ‘construction of Hinduism’ (Chakravarty,
1998).

Buddhist texts are at a considerable distance from this ideal along with the Jaina
and other heterodox religious traditions. Though the Buddha and Mahavira spoke
for equality of women, we also notice some resistance from members of the
Sangha.

As has been pointed out, most of the historical sources of the earlier period
generally refer to elite groups, the king, the court and the rich merchants. We
7
Women in India and Some have to infer about other sections of society from indirect references. The women
Insights
of aristocracy were regarded as gentle creatures, the mothers of future rulers.
Marriage was frequently a disguise for a political alliance and for those of lesser
standing a means of mobility for the family. The aristocratic woman led a well
protected and isolated life. Reference to women from respectable homes moving
about veiled goes back to early centuries A.D. and the purdah of Islam intensified
the seclusion of women (Thapar, 1975, 8). The women of the artisan families
and those of the peasants had a less relaxed life. Here the pressure was not so
much from social mores as from the needs of economic survival, where leisure
was limited and women participated in the professional works of men. Perhaps
the most independent among the peasant women were those who had distinct
economic roles, where they had individual access to local markets. There are
ample references to such women in the Smriti literature like the Manusmriti, the
Smritis of Apastamba and Gautama. In addition, the Jataka stories also offer us
many glimpses from the lives of these women drawn from royalty, aristocracy,
trading, artisanal, hunting, fisher folk and labourers. What clearly emerges from
reading these sources and the Sanskrit literature and dramas and inscriptions is a
distinction between different classes of women, where royal women needed
protection and the subaltern women were more unfettered. This distinction can
be seen in the realm of religion also, with Lakshmi and Parvathy being demure
while Kali and Durga being ferocious.

According to ancient and later Brahmanical law books, for a woman her dharma
was stridharma, and her notion of dharma was not a self definition but a world
view thrust on her with predominantly male interests. Due to their supposedly
fickle nature and the inherent pollution in the female body women were seen as
being subordinate to the voice of authority in the family and had to engage in
frequent acts of ritual purifications. They had to visit temples with great regularity,
perform sacred rites with higher faith and submit to religious fasts.

At the same time, we have examples of women who composed many hymns of
the Rigveda. Apala, Lopamudra, Gargi, Maitreyi, Ghosha were few of the women
philosophers. There were groups of women who studied throughout their lives
and were known as Brahmavadinis. Women also attended political assemblies
and offered sacrifices along with their husbands.

1.2.2 Position of Women in the Medieval Period

Most of the source material that is available for the reconstruction of Medieval
India is written within the Indo-Persian tradition and was composed in a court
setting. We do not get much information about the women and their activities.
The few women who find mention in the records are women like Razia, Nurjehan,
Rudramma Devi, who were exceptions and hence cannot be generalised. We
have no information on the domestic life of ordinary women of medieval times.
India witnessed significant socio-economic changes during the medieval period
giving rise to new social groups which could not fit into traditional hierarchy.
We have a large number of inscriptions of the newly emergent groups who prosper
because of the changes in the economy, particularly agrarian expansion and crop
diversification. The polities that appear throughout the subcontinent during the
Middle Ages were not the dispersed fragments of a previous central government,
but new formations arising out of the extension of agrarian settlement and the
resulting growth of population.
8
During the medieval period these newly emerging social groups, attempted to Women’s Movements in
India
redefine their position and status within the given traditional hierarchy and
spearheaded a movement articulating their demands for restructuring the existing
order. By declaring that God dwells in each individual and one could attain God
through faith these saints brought religion to the downtrodden and henceforth
marginalised sections of society. This movement is referred to as the Bhakti
movement. What is important is that women could also now practice bhakti and
they were regarded as an equal in the eyes of God. In the 12th century, the Lingayat
Movement began by Basavanna rejected many of the Hindu beliefs and customs
such as Sati, female infanticide etc. which according to its founder brought disaster
to Hinduism (Mukherjee 1974). He upheld the individuality of women, their
right to choose their husbands, remarriage of widows and right to divorce under
certain circumstances.

The advent of lslam did not make conditions better for women in general and a
large number of biases and prejudices continued. The invasions of the Arabs and
later the Turks and the subsequent setting up of Mughal rule helped to harden
the rules and oppressive practices against women. Any woman found without
Purdah was considered as shameless. The practice of polygamy and easy divorce
by men and the law of inheritance went against them. Education was denied to
them. Restrictions on their rights and freedom got aggravated.

During the Mughal period, household was an institution in which gender relations
were structured, enforced, and, possibly, contested. During this period the harem
metamorphosed into a bounded space which could be understood as a family.
The record of routine events (like the king’s visits to the royal women, preparation
of marriages, and distribution of gifts) were a repertoire of the processes involved
in the making of ‘hierarchical relationships, building alliances and reinforcing
kinship solidarities’ (Lal, 2004).

The Mughal rulers attempted to put down Sati. Humayun introduced a system of
licensing to bring it under some control. Akbar actively pursued the opposition.
Jehangir abolished it by law and Aurangazeb pursued the implementation of this
law (Baig 1976). But none of them could pursue their reforms vigorously.

1.2.3 Position of Women in the British Period

The advent of the Europeans into India did not change the situation of women.
Like other Western powers, the primary objective of the British in the earlier
days was trade. Later when they were faced with the administration of newly
conquered areas, they thought it safe not only to keep the existing social structure
intact but also to induct its religious pundits (Brahmins) to interpret its rules
when necessary.

The introduction of English education first started to train Indians for jobs under
British administration. This created upper class elites who began to doubt the
rationale of many of the existing practices in their society. The establishment
and expansion of the British rule also encouraged British missionaries to enter
their colonies and start schools, orphanages and destitute homes especially for
widows. They stood against sati, child marriage, purdah and polygamy. The
new Indian elite exposed to European liberalism of the 18rh century through
Western education, felt the urgency for reform of their own society. This produced
tangible results in the subsequent periods.
9
Women in India and Some
Insights 1.3 WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS IN THE COLONIAL
PERIOD
The women’s movements in the colonial period are mainly of two different
concerns: (1) social reform movements and (2) nationalist movements.

1.3.1 Social Reform Movements

The women’s movements began as a social reform movement in the 19th century.
The British conquest and its rule over India brought about transformation in
Indian economy as well as in society. The new land revenue settlements,
commercial agriculture and infrastructural facilities like roads, railways, postal
and telegraph services etc. ushered in by the British led to a significant change in
the Indian village economy. The new economic system and administrative
machinery required a new type of educated personal which resulted in the
establishment of Western educational institutions imparting modern education.
The Indians who were the beneficiaries of the new economic system were attracted
towards this and as a result a new class of intelligentsia evolved in the Indian
society. The articulate intelligentsia became the pioneers of all progressive
democratic movements: social, political, economic and cultural. The reform
movements were not homogeneous and varied a lot in terms of the ideas and
changes that was to be fostered. They did however share a common concern for
rooting out the social evils, partly in response to charges of barbarity from the
colonial rulers. This was a period of the hegemonic control and influence of
colonial ideology. This was a time of transition, one of the emerging bourgeois
society and values of new modes of thought.

The colonial intervention in the 19th century intruded into the areas of our culture
and society and this affected transformation in our social fabric. This potential
threat was sensed by the Indian intellectual reformers, exposed to western ideas
and values. At this juncture, the Indian intellectual reformer sensitive to the power
of colonial domination and responding to Western ideas of rationalism and
liberalism sought ways and means of resisting this colonial hegemony by resorting
to what K. N. Panniker (Presidential address, Indian History Congress, 1975)
refers to as cultural defense.

This cultural defense resulted in a paradoxical situation. Spurred by new European

ideas of rationalism and progress, the reformers tried to create a new society,
modern yet rooted in Indian tradition. They began a critical appraisal of Indian
society in an attempt to create a new ethos devoid of all overt social aberrations
like polytheism, polygamy, casteism, sati, child marriage, illiteracy etc. all of
which they believed were impediments to progress of women. All the social
reformers shared a belief common to many parts of the world in the 19th century
that no society could progress if its women were backward. To the reformers, the
position of Indian women, as it was in the 19th century was abysmally low and
hence their efforts were directed at an overall improvement in the status of women
through legislation, political action and propagation, of education. This was
mainly spurred by the first wave feminism of the west and concentrated on basic
rights for women.

The social reform movement did not radically challenge the existing patriarchal
structure of society or question gender relation. They picked up for reform only
10
those issues which the British were pointing out as evidence of degeneration in Women’s Movements in
India
the Indian society. Even the women’s institutions and organisations that sprang
up during this period do not reveal the development of an independent view. As
a result even when women were speaking for themselves they were speaking
only the language of the men, defined by male parameters.

Women were seen as passive recipients of a more humanitarian treatment to be

given by Western educated elite men. There was thus an attempt to reform women
rather than reform the social conditions which opposed them. There were no
attempts to alter the power structure and the men-women relation in the society.
This was but natural since the change in the status of women was being sought
only within questioning patriarchy itself. The attempt was to create a new Indian
woman, truly Indian and yet sufficiently educated and tutored in the 19th century
values to suit the new emerging society. Thus education for girls was not meant
to equip them to be self-sufficient, independent and emancipated and train them
to follow some profession but to be good housewives (Pande and Kameshwari,
1987).

Women also joined in the struggle against colonialism, but while they were
encouraged to participate by leaders like Gandhi, their work in the struggles was
just an extension of their domestic work. Very few women were allowed to join
the front ranks with men, and the ones that did, spoke of the isolation they felt at
times (Kumar, 1993). As a form of backlash to these new ideas that colonialism
brought to India, women’s roles were being pushed to a more traditional way of
life.

In spite of its limitations, it cannot be denied that the social reform movement
did help in removing prejudices against women’s education and provided a space
for women in the public realm. The reformers took up issues, such as, sati, female
infanticide, polygamy, child marriage, purdah, absence of education among
women etc. There were two groups of social reformers, 1) Liberal Reformers
and 2) The Revivalists. Both the groups undoubtedly recognised the oppressive
social institutions’ customs of India. But the former group on the basis of liberal
philosophy put forth their work for the cause of women whereas the latter group’s
work was based on a programme of the revival at the Vedic society in modern
India. While arguing in favour of equal rights for women appealed to logic,
reason, history, the principal of individual freedom and the requirements of social
programme, social reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chandra
Sen, Iswarachandra Vidya Sagar, Kandukuri Veeresalingam Panthulu, M. G.
Ranade, Karve, Swami Vivekanantia, Swami Dayanand Saraswathi and others
provided leadership to the women’s movement by frankly acknowledging the
degraded position of Indian women. The social reformers concentrated their
attention on important aspects of women like sati, age of marriage the sad plight
of widows and their right to remarry. The social reformers established a number
of societies like Bramho Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission and others for the cause
of Indian women. The best exponent of liberalism was Raja Ram Mohan Roy
who was the first Indian to initiate a social reform movement and campaign for
the cause of women. He advocated equality between the two sexes and declared
that women were not inferior to men morally and intellectually.

Roy’s attention was drawn towards the inhuman practice of sati, after female
infanticide. From 1818 onwards he began his active propaganda through speeches
11
Women in India and Some and writings against sati. Largely because of his effort and persuasion, the East
Insights
India Company declared the sati practice illegal and a punishable offence in
1829.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy also opposed other evils like early marriage, polygamy
etc. He supported female education and widow and inter-caste marriage. He
wanted that women should have the right of inheritance and property. Roy’s
Brahmo Samaj played a significant role in the reform activities concerning
women.

The Brahmo Samaj, soon after its inception became a vigorous social reform
movement first in Bengal which then quickly spread to other parts of the country
and added to the volume and strength of similarly aimed local reformist
movements. The members of the Brahmo Samaj opposed the caste system and
they concentrated greatly on improving the low conditions of women and played
a very important role in the introduction of several beneficial measures.

Like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwara Chandra Vidya Sagar also helped women.
He did so by propagating widow remarriage. The child marriage evil resulted in
large numbers of young girls ending up as widows whose lives were miserable
due to the severe restrictions imposed on them. He argued in favour of widow
remarriage and published his work on “Widow Remarriage” in 1853.

Arya Samaj was established by Dayanand Saraswathi in 1875. Dayanand

Saraswathi emphasised compulsory education of both boys and girls. A series of
schools for women- Arya Kanya Patasalas - were the first concerted effort of the
Samaj to promote women’s education in a systematic way. Prarthana Samaj
founded by some Maharashtra Brahmins in 1867 had leaders like M. G. Ranade,
N. G. Chandrasarkar and R. G. Bhandarkar. It concentrated more on sponsoring
education for women. Both Brahmo Samaj and Prarthana Samaj made forceful
efforts to prove that Hindu religious tradition were not the source of legitimacy
for the sorrowful condition of women in society. Under the influence of the
liberal thought of the west the two Samajes strove to restore to women their
dignified status.

The efforts of Vidya Sagar, Keshub Chandra Sen and D. K. Karve resulted in the
enactment of widow remarriage act of 1856. In the South Kandukuri
Veeresalingam led the widow remarriage movement. In 1874 he performed 63
widow remarriages throughout the Madras presidency and financially supported
men who married widows by providing them houses and other benefits.

Another aspect that the reformers worked on was the age of girls at marriage. In
the 19th century the average age of marriage for girls was 8 or 9. The extensive
propaganda by Vidya Sagar and other reformers in this regard led the British
government to legislate in order to improve the condition of minor girls and the
age of consent bill was passed in 1860 which made sexual intercourse with a girl
of less than 10 years of age as rape. Further social reformers like Mahadev Govind
Ranade, Behramji Malabari and Tej Bahadur Sapru in their attempts to raise the
age of marriage cited several cases of consummation at the age of 10 or 11 which
led to serious physical and psychological disturbances. Behramji, a Parsi journalist
published his notes on infant marriage and enforced widowhood in 1884
suggesting certain reforms to be adopted in the educational institutions to
12
discourage child marriage and also suggested some corrective measures to the Women’s Movements in
India
Government. It was between 1884 and 1889 that enormous pressure was brought
to bear on the government to enact law to further raise the age at marriage of the
girl. At last due to the collective efforts of the reformers in 1891, the Bill known
as the Age of Consent was passed, which rose the marriageable age for girls to
12 years.

The social reformers felt that through female education the social evils that were
linked to the issue of preserving and strengthening basic family structure could
be eliminated and good wives and mothers could emerge from the same. Starting
from Raja Ram Mohan Roy including the liberal as well as orthodox reformers
supported female education. This resulted in the establishment of schools for
girls and homes for widows. Between 1855 and 1858 while he was inspector of
schools, Vidya Sagar established 48 girls’ schools. M. G. Ranado along with his
wife propagated female education and started a girls’ high school in 1884. The
limited enforcement and practicability of legislations like widow remarriage act
of 1856 and others in a tradition bound society was recognised by D. K. Karve,
who, therefore, concentrated his efforts on promoting education among widows.
In 1896 Karve along with 15 of his colleagues founded the Ananth Balikashram
for the education of widows, where the courses were drawn up with an idea to
make the widows self reliant. He also started Mahila Vidyalaya in 1907 and S.
N. D. T. Women’s University in 1916 a separate educational institution for women
so as to lessen the resistance of orthodox section with regard to women’s
education. The social reform movement in its later phases resulted in producing
women social reformers who worked for their own cause. Pandita Ramabai started
Sharda Sadan in Bombay in 1889 to provide an ashram to destitute high caste
widows. In 1912-1913 a widow’s home was established by sister Subbulakshmi,
another widow in Madras.

Another important aspect of the social reform movement phase of women in

India was that of property rights for Hindu women (Mukharjee 1975a). The
existing practice was particularly harsh on the Hindu widow who had no claim
on her husband’s property except the right at maintenance as a result of which
she was at the mercy of her husbands relatives. Raja Ram Mohan Roy suggested
that the government should enact and enforce laws to remove these disabilities
and bring economic freedom and self reliance. As a result of such efforts, special
marriage act of 1872 with its provision for divorce and succession to property to
women was passed. The married women’s property act of 1874 widened the
scope of stridhan (women’s property) and expanded the right to own and acquire
property by women. It also gave a widow a life interest in her husband’s share of
the property and a share equal to that of a son.

Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Annie Besant were the
prominent reformers of the revivalist group who also worked for the cause of
Indian women. This group believed in the revival of the Vedic society in modern
India. Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of Arya Samaj was against child marriage.
He encouraged widow remarriages and also set up several rescue homes and
orphanages. Annie Besant leader of the theosophical movement was also against
child marriage and supported remarriage of child widows. She laid emphasis on
the importance of female education, thus adding strength to the social reform
movement.

13
Women in India and Some Muslim women in India made little progress in their position both in the pre-
Insights
British period or later British period. Western education, the major vehicle of
progress during the British period did not reach them, partly because of the
existence of Purdah and seclusion of women from external environment and
partly, because education was considered inessential for them. Educated Muslims
formed only a small segment of the population in the 19th century and were
confined to urban areas in the country. Consequently, efforts in education and
association formation among Muslim women did not begin until the 20th century,
one notable exception being the Tyabji family of Bombay. Badruddin Tyabji
who graduated from Elphinstone College founded a Muslim self-help association
in 1876. His female relatives were later active in starting a Muslim girls school
(Amina Binte Badruddin Tyabji) and running a girls’ orphanage (Begum Nawale
Misra) and starting nursing centres (Shareefa Hamid Ali).

Thus the social reformers laid the foundation of the women’s movement in India.
Social reform movement was the first attempt to remove the obstacles in the life
of women. It created awareness among the people that women must be liberated
and be made equal of men.

1.3.2 Nationalist Movements

As a result of the social reform movement of the 19th century, the social evils
were eliminated and opportunities were provided to women for their education.
The expansion of women’s education and their admission to educational
institutions had produced a sizable number of English educated middle class
women by the late 19th century- and they made their presence felt in political
activities. The characteristics of the second phase of women’s movement i.e. the
national movement are: for the first time many women belonging to the middle
class, started taking part in the political activities. Till 1919, the national movement
was limited to the urban upper class and it was later with Gandhi’s entrance into
the national movement, participation of the masses began to take place. In this
phase, political developments and women’s participation in the National
movement went hand in hand.

The partition of Bengal in 1905 resulted in the launching of Swadeshi movement

by the nationalists. Though there was the absence of mass awakening amongst
the women, but meetings were arranged and khadi spinnings were taken up by
women. Women contributed their bangles, nose rings and bracelets to the national
fund. In villages, women started putting away a handful of grain daily for such
purpose. The women of Bengal and Punjab took active part in the Swadeshi
movement. The women workers of the Arya Samaj were also responsible for
arousing national spirit among the people. Swarna Kumari, sister of Rabindranath
Tagore and her daughter Sarala Devi were strong supporters of the Swadeshi
movement. Important women who participated in the revolutionary activities
were Mrs. Shyamji Krishna Varma, Ms. P. Nauroji, Ms. M. Chettopadhya, and
Madam Bhikaji Rustum, K. R. Kame, a regular among the Indian revolutionaries
based in Europe, coordinated to the activities of the revolutionaries. She also
raised issues of women’s equality at international socialist circles reflecting the
Indian reality.

This Swadeshi period marked the formation of several women’s organisations.

Sarala Devi took steps to organise the women’s movement and its nucleus in the
14
form of Bharat Stri Maha Mandal in Lahore in 1910. Branches of this organisation Women’s Movements in
India
were established at Allahabad and Calcutta. The objective of this society was to
bring together women of all castes and creed on the basis of their economic
interest for the moral and material progress of Indian women. Parvati Devi, the
headmistress of a Hindu girls’ school at Kanchi a small town in the Madras
presidency started Kanchi Mahila Parishad to equip women of Kanchi with
knowledge to create public opinion over burning issues of the nation.

The period from 1911-18 is of great significance in the history of Indian national
movement because for the first time a woman Annie Besant led the national
movement as president of Indian National Congress. The setting up of Home
Rule League and organisation of the Home Rule agitation raised the tempo of
the movement. It was due to women like Annie Besant that organised movement
for the emancipation of women took place and the demand for political rights
for women came to be firmly established on the political agenda. The important
achievement of the women’s movement in India during the second phase was
the founding of Women’s Indian Association (WIA).

Pandita Rama Bai’s Sharda Sadan (1892) in Poona, Shri Mahipatram Rupram
Anathashram in Ahmedabad (1892), Shri Zorastrian Mandal in Bombay (1903),
Maternity and Child Welfare League in Baroda (1914) , Bhagini Samaj in Poona
(1916) all were established and worked with the particular objective of improving
women’s lives. These regional organisations were followed by national
organisations like Women’s Indian Association (1917) and The National Council
of Women in India (1920). All India Women’s Conference (1926) went on to
organise 12 women’s conferences till 1937 and Federation of University Women
in India (1920) stimulated the interests of women in civic and public life and
concentrated on the removal of disabilities of women and promoted social, civil,
moral and educational welfare of women and children.

The Women’s Indian Association was mainly concerned with influencing the
government policy on women’s suffrage, educational and social reform issues.
Its main objectives were spread of women’s education, elimination of child
marriage and other social evils, franchise for women and establishment of equality
of rights between men and women. This association played an important role in
articulating the women’s movement till its merger with the All India Women’s
conference.

From the beginning, the Indian women’s movement approached the suffrage
campaign as a measure to achieve social reform. The leaders believed that
enfranchisement of women would mean additional support for reform legislation.

The entry of Mahatma Gandhi with his experience altered the national politics
dramatically. He realised the importance of mass base to Indian nationalism, and
subsequently an ideology which suited the same was introduced. Gandhian style
of mass mobilisation had implications for the Indian women’s movement in as
much as increasing number of women were sought to be mobilised for
participation in the independent movement. Even though Gandhi recognised the
existence of a set of problems unique to women, he saw no conflict between a
women’s movement and a national movement. During the Gandhian era of
national movement, women continued their movement for political rights and
social reform activities by forming organisations.
15
Women in India and Some Gandhi launched an all India Satyagraha in 1919 against the provocative
Insights
enactment of the Rowlat Act. Women took out processions, propagated the use
of Khadi and even courted jail. Though a few number of women were arrested,
yet a beginning was made. Though the non-cooperation movement ended in
failure, it awakened the women of all sections and imparted first lessons in
Satyagraha.

After the struggle for franchise, for the first time, Indian women exercised their
vote in the elections of 1926. The franchise granted to women was very restricted.
The first woman to stand for election was Kamala Devi Chattopadhaya. Madras
was the first state which nominated a woman member, Dr. Muttu Lakshmi Reddy
to the legislative Council. She saw to the enactment of the abolition of Devadasi
system and laws to close brothels and protect the minor girls. She brought
amendments to the children’s act and worked for the creation of health schools.

A large number of women including Sarojini Naidu, actively took part in the
Dandi March. Women participated by breaking salt laws, forest laws taking out
processions, picketing schools, colleges, legislative councils and clubs. In 1931
Sarojini Naidu attended the Second Round Table Conference as an official
representative of the women of India.

During the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, Kamala Devi Chattopadhyaya

addressed meetings and picketed foreign cloth and liquor shops. She was in-
charge of the women’s wing of the Hindustan Seva Dal. The inauguration of
provincial autonomy under the India Act of 1935 gave women an opportunity to
be elected to the state legislatures and also become administrators. In the elections
of 1937, 8 women were elected from the general constituencies, 42 from the
reserved constituencies and 5 were nominated to the Upper House when the
ministries were formed, 10 women took office one as minister and others as
deputy speakers and parliamentary secretaries.

The Quit India Movement which was the last in the series of the nationalist
agitation was launched by Gandhi in 1942 with a significant slogan “Do or Die”.
Men leaders were arrested in the first round up and in their absence women
carried on the movement and bore the burnt of the British wrath, The women not
only led processions and held demonstrations but also organised camps in which
they were given training in civil duties and first aid and were educated on
democracy. Women organised political prisoners’ relief fund while some women
went underground and directed the movement secretly. In the Indian National
Army of Subhash Chandra Bose, Rani Jhansi Regiment was created for women.
Women were trained in nursing, social service and to use weapons. Thus women
took part in various activities of the national movement. The specific feature of
this phase of women’s movement is the establishment of several women’s
organisations led by women themselves on an all India basis to enhance their
social, economic, cultural and political scene.

The male leadership during the freedom struggle did not encourage a second
line of leadership and women could assume leadership only when the men were
in prison. However, in such times, there was an upsurge of women, which took
not only the British government but their own men folk by surprise. Here were
these women, of the upper or middle class leading sheltered lives in their homes,
peasant women, working women pouring out in tens and thousands in defiance
16
of government order and police atrocities. It was not only their display of courage Women’s Movements in
India
and daring but what was even more surprising was the organisational power,
they showed.

It was primarily due to the efforts of women and their role in the freedom struggle
that women got the right to vote and complete equality in the constitution of
India. However a great gap arose between the theoretical status of women and
their rights and what existed in reality.

1.4 WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS IN THE POST

COLONIAL PERIOD
The period after India’s independence is called post-colonial period. Immediately
after independence, India had to deal with a variety of problems. Years of colonial
domination had destroyed our indigenous crafts and depleted our natural
resources. Industrialisation, changing technologies illiteracy, lack of mobility all
resulted in the inability of women to cope with the new order.
During this period the social reformists tried to channelise the Indian society by
introducing constitutional and legal provisions and protecting the society and
the women from discrimination and by providing equality to all the citizens
irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion and sex. A few of the prominent
movements are:
Telangana Movement;
Chipko Movement;
Anti Arrack Movement. .

1.4.1 Telangana Movement

The Telangana Movement began in 1946 and continued till 1951. It is one of the
two major post-war insurrectionary peasant struggles in India. The Telangana
Movement (1946-51) was a protest of the people who wanted both food and
freedom from the oppressive regime of the Nizam, the Patils and the Jagirdars in
Hyderabad State. The peasants on the Nizam’s personal estate were bonded to
the ruler. Under Jagirdari system various illegal taxes and forced labour were
extracted from peasants by the landlords. Apart from this there were the Deshmukhs
and Despandes (principal revenue officers of a district who became land owners
overtime) or tax collectors of the Nizam who grabbed thousands of acres of land
and made it their own property. Peasants thus became tenants at will.
One common social phenomenon was the Vetti system of forced labour and
exactions imposed on all peasant sections in varying degrees. Each family had to
send someone to collect wood for fuel, carry post to other villages, carry supplies
etc. Foot wear, agricultural implements, pots or cloth had to be supplied free to
landlords. Another system that prevailed was keeping of peasant girls as slaves
in the landlord’s house. When landlord’s daughters were married these with were
often sent with them to serve as concubines.
When the exactions of the landlords reached the point of evicting peasants from
their land, the peasants began to resist. Sporadic struggles were launched in 1946
against the Deshmukhs of Visunur, Suryapet, Babasahebpet and Kalluru.
17
Women in India and Some Large number of women who were desperate because of extreme poverty, slavery
Insights
and sexual exploitation by the feudal lords fought courageously in this movement.
In order to mobilise and develop political acumen among women, the communist
party formed a women’s organisation which published a woman’s Journal Andhra
Vanitha. Through this they campaigned against child marriage, widow remarriage,
increased wages etc.

Crucially affected by the oppression of landlords and money lenders, women

who were a large section of the agricultural labour and tobacco leaf pickers became
militant in the struggle for land, better wages, fair, rent, reasonable interest on
cash and grain loans.

Among the bonded class, rape, becoming concubines to landlords’ married

daughters etc. were prevalent. The oppression of the upper class women was
kept under wraps as the violence they faced was not visible and structural purdah
was strictly observed both by high caste Hindu and Muslim women. Child
marriage and early widowhood were common. Education for women was unheard
of. In Telangana the cultural dominance of Muslim feudal rule kept women out
of the mainstream for long. Andhra Maha Sabha, which sprung up to assert the
cultural identity of the people, added women’s education to their agenda of
constitutional reform and civil liberties. Thus many women, who were drawn
into the cultural movements, drew closer to the communist party which was
working through the Andhra Maha Sabha. When the Andhra Maha Sabha added
basic agrarian reforms to its programme of action these women also plunged
into the struggle.

Women from all classes participated in the movement with energy and
commitment where both the urban middle class as well as the peasant sections
of the population, drew their support slowly but surely into the movement. The
communist party which seriously took up issues of social reforms for women
like widow remarriage, prohibition of child marriage, education for women and
opportunities, also began to identify women of ability to make the movement
stronger. Some of the women who took active part in the movement were Dubala
Salamma, Ch. Kamalamma, Regulla Achamma, Chityala Ailamma, Pesaru
Satbamma, Malla Swarajyam, Dayani Kausalya, Pramila Tail, Chakilam
Lalithamma, Bullemma, Narasamma, Vajramma, Saidamma, Suganamma, etc.

The Communist party in Andhra served as a rear base for the Telangana struggle,
arranging for relief and supplies. The entry of the Indian Army into Hyderabad
in September 1948 brought about the surrender of the Nizam and the disbanding
of the Razakars. The force of the Army was then turned on the peasants, the
communist party was banned and repression increased. The rich peasantry
withdrew its support once the Nizam was gone and the squads had to move into
the forests. Finally the struggle was withdrawn in 1951.

Some changes took place after the withdrawal. Forced labour was abolished,
village became active and people resisted the return of the old Jagirdari system.
The demand for division along linguistic zones to facilitate all round political,
social and cultural development of the people was also subsequently pushed
forward. More important was the fact that it had set a revolutionary tradition
among Telugu people.

18
1.4.2 Chipko Movement Women’s Movements in
India
Chipko Movement was born in a small hilly village, Advani in Tehri Garhwal
district of Utter Pradesh. The illiterate adivasi women led this movement in
December 1972. It challenged the old belief that forests mean only timber and
emphasised their roles in making soil, water and pure air as the basis of human
life. This philosophy popularised the movement in many countries. The women
symbolically tied sacred threads around the trees, faced police firing in February
1978 and later courted arrest. This movement continued under the leadership of
Sri Sunderlal Bahuguna in various villages. The movement’s plan is a slogan to
plant five F’s- food, fodder, fuel, fiber and fertiliser to make communities self
sufficient in all their basic needs.

The Chipko movement is inimical to gender in its theoretical underpinnings as

well as the political and economic ones. Women and children gather firewood
for domestic consumption. They rely on the forestry for combustible crop residues
such as rice straw. This, however, is considered inferior to fuel-wood. Therefore,
forestry activities that increase the availability of fuel-wood and development
projects that promote improved stoves both release women’s labour from fuel
collection and permit its use in other productive activities, and improve the
agricultural environment by permitting crop residues to be better used for
enriching depleted soil. The movement points out the link between women’s
burden as food providers and gatherers and their militancy in protecting natural
resources from violent devastation.

The Chipko women believed that the trees were alive and could breathe like
them. Thus trees should be respected. Besides supporting agriculture and animal
husbandary, the forests grew medicinal herbs used for healing powers. The hill
women used fruit, vegetables or roots from it in times of scarcity. This dependency
on forest resources was institutionalised through some social and cultural
mechanisms, like religion, folklore and oral tradition. Many wooded areas bore
marks of the hill folk’s instinct for the plantation and preservation of the forest.

The Chipko movement against tree felling is a phenomenon no less. On April

1974, these women whose annual per capita income was Rs.129 rose against
tree -felling. It is nationally and internationally discussed as the peoples’ ecological
movement for the protection of the natural environment. Men migrated to the
plains and women were left to cope with an impoverished existence and to provide
for the old and the children. Women repeatedly challenged administrators and
politicians stating, planning without fodder, fuel and water is one eyed planning.
In the course of this movement, Garhwal women successfully undertook
leadership roles and questioned the right of the men to decide the fate of the
forests or to enter into contracts without consulting them, who were the worst
affected. The forests were these women’s home, and hence they would not let it
be cut down. The police force used all repressive and terrorising methods to
retreat the non-violent strength of the women.

One of the women, Gaura Devi led 27 village women to prevent the contractors
and forest department personnel, about 60 men in all, from entering the Reni
forest to cut 2,415 trees. While the women blocked the narrow passage leading
to the forest, the men used all sorts of threats and also misbehaved with the
women. But the women bravely refused to budge. In the course of this movement,
19
Women in India and Some Garhwal women successfully understood leadership roles and questioned the
Insights
right of the men to decide the fate of the forests or to enter into the contracts
without consulting them.

1.4.3 Anti Arrack Movement

The anti-arrack movement of women in Andhra Pradesh was one of most historic
and significant movements of the 1990s. The historic bangle waged by the women
of Andhra Pradesh against the social evil of alcohol drinking is a magnum war in
Indian social history. Women have played a historic role in bringing about a ban
on consumption and sale of distilled liquor in Andhra Pradesh. The movement
indeed was not just for elimination of liquor but for the protection and survival
of their lives and culture. The rural women in the villages raised their voices
against the degeneration of the progress of their families through the damage
caused by their men to their children and themselves.

The movement was started in a small village, Dubagunta, in Nellore district of

Andhra Pradesh. The main reason for the movement was said to be the successful
literacy mission that has been going in Nellore district. The National literacy
Mission (NLM) was officially launched in Nellore District from 2nd January 1990
and was implemented from January 1991. This program was implemented in a
very innovative way with recognition of development as an instrument of change
and empowerment of women. Hence a campaign approach was adopted to spread
the message of literacy. Primers were written, popular performances used and a
center for people’s awareness created. Besides this, cultural committees were
organised to convey the meaning and need for literacy in the forms of songs,
dance-dramas and street plays. (Pande, 2002)

Sharing of problems through such mediums helped women to create a close

bonding. They decided to fight the vice of drinking. The women reasoned that if
the arrack shops were closed the men would not get liquor and hence would not
drink. These women then marched together the next day and were able to get the
arrack shop closed in their village.

The Dubagunta episode was soon quoted in another literacy primer, under the
title, Adavallu Ekamaithe, (If Women Unite). The lesson had an electrifying
impact on women in other villages who felt that they could do the same. In many
villages women’s committees were formed. Their fight turned into a larger issue
involving contractors, the excise department and the state itself. The women
wanted to know why their village did not have drinking water, schools for children
or proper wages but plenty of arrack shops (ibid).

Anti-arrack movement though started as a spontaneous outburst of lower class

and lower caste women it soon became a rage through classes and castes against
local arrack shops, excise officials, liquor contractors and all the machineries of
state involved in the trade.

Apart from these, the women resisted pressure tactics and attacks from those
whom they were fighting. The inspirational guidance extended by the veteran
freedom fighter Mr. Vavilala Gopala Krishnaiah, added momentum to the
movement organised and spread to all villages in the district. Soon all the arrack
supply sources were blocked. There were spontaneous and simultaneous
demonstrations in all the areas against the evils of arrack consumption.
20
The women’s struggle against the sale of arrack in Andhra Pradesh had 20 non- Women’s Movements in
India
political organisations that fought for the scraping of auctions and bring about a
complete ban on its manufacture. Through this movement, women have definitely
emerged out winners because they are well aware of their strengths and ability to
bring about change in society. Most importantly, the anti arrack agitation is a
very good example of the articulation of a family violence in public. It showed a
feminist way of looking at issues, especially a private issue like family violence
and aligning it to a larger issue of state and society. It questioned the notion
about domestic violence being private and women not being able to do anything
about it.

This movement gave tremendous self-confidence and sense of power to women,

who realised their strength and used it to their benefit. Women emerged out
winners because they are well aware of their strengths and ability to bring about
change in society.

1.5 WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS IN INDIA SINCE THE

1970s
In the post Independence period during the first few decades, the major concern
was for overall economic growth. This was immediately followed by another
decade, which witnessed an increased concern for equity and poverty alleviation.
Gender issues were subsumed in poverty related concerns and there were no
specific programs which aimed at women. Women during this period were
involved in such movements like the law and famine relief movement but did
not start to pick up issues involving their oppression until the 1970s. NGOs and
other such organisations from the 70s started emphasising on women’s
development and provided women avenues of collectively voicing their concerns.
These grass root organisations have questioned the welfare approach to women
and incorporated an empowerment participatory approach. While questions about
the success of these organisations are often raised, it is often seen that women
exposed to some amount of mobilisation show great potentialities, receptiveness
and defining capacities (Banerjee, 1992).

The myth of equality for women was shattered by the path breaking, Towards
Equality Report of 1974. It focused attention on the fact that despite many
progressive social legislations and constitutional guarantees, women’s status had
indeed not improved much. Women continued to have an inferior status in many
areas like political, economic and social. The report pointed out to a sad fact that
society had not yet succeeded in framing the required norms and institutions to
enable women to fulfill their multiple roles. The increasing incidence of practice
like dowry indicated a further lowering of the status of women. The report also
pointed out that the concern for women and their problems which received an
impetus during the freedom movement had suffered a decline in the last two
decades.

In the post independence period, the women’s movement has concerned itself
with a large number of issues such as dowry, women’s work, price rise, land
rights, political participation of women, Dalit marginalised women’s right,
growing fundamentalism, women’s representation in the media etc. It has also
been able to draw a large number of women around three major issues: girl
child, gender violence and globalisation. 21
Women in India and Some The important characteristics of the 3rd phase of women’s movement i.e. from
Insights
post independence era to 1985 are as follows: till the 1970s a kind of passivity or
accommodation due to the socio-economic circumstances of free India influenced
the women’s movement. The economic crisis of 1960s created an atmosphere in
which issues concerning women are more and in which women started taking
place (1975-1985- International Women’s Decade) saw the emergence of
autonomous women’s movement in which autonomous women’s groups and
organisations started fighting for liberation.

Ideals of equal status and important provisions for the welfare of women were
incorporated into the Indian constitution, while the pre-independent legislative
acts continued to be in force. The constitution guaranteed equal rights to both
the sexes. Article 15 and Article 16 (2) of the constitution forbids discrimination
and accepts all as equal in the eyes of the law (Article 14). In the early 1950s a
series of legislations such as the Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act,
Dowry Prohibition Act and Equal Remuneration Act were passed.

The emergence of independent India as a welfare state also affected the contours
of Indian women’s movement. The government Central Social Welfare Board
(CSWB) promotes welfare and development services for women, children and
under privileged sections of the society. It has a nation wide programme for
grants-in-aid for welfare activities with a special emphasis on women’s welfare.

The period from the late 1960s has been marked by an economic crisis and
stagnation, rising prices, increasing landlessness and generalised discontent both
in the rural and urban areas. The left parties took interest in the economic crisis
and started organising movements. Through women’s issues were not taken up,
women were mobilised in large number and they participated in the general
struggle of the rural poor, tribals and industrial working class. Women’s
organisations such as Shramik Mahila Sangathana (the working women’s
organisation) took up the issue of rising prices of essential goods, adulteration
etc. This saw its culmination in the anti price movement of 1973 as a united
front organisation of women belonging to political parties such as CPI (M),
Socialist Party, Congress and even non-political women. The political parties
mobilised women to achieve their own political gains. This resulted in the
establishment of National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) by the Communist
Party of India. The economic hardships of the rural masses also drew the attention
of some political parties. While pressing for better working conditions for peasant
women, issues like wife beating, alcoholism, dowry and sexual harassment from
the upper castes were also given attention. Thus in the early 1970s while elite
women’s organisations were conducting cultural activities and beauty shows,
the poor women were getting entrenched into serious movements.

The decade from 1975 to 1985 saw the emergence of autonomous women’s
movement. The year 1975 was declared as the International Women’s Year (IWY)
which was later extended to a decade. The government appointed the Committee
on the Status of Indian Women (CSIW) in 1971 to examine the rights and status
of Indian women and to suggest certain measures to enable women to play their
proper role in the building up of the nation.

Paying unequal wages to women for equal work is a part of the general
discrimination against women in the work place especially in the agriculture,
22
plantations, mines and other unorganised industries. Working women’s hostels, Women’s Movements in
India
legal facilities and trade union rights are not available to women. Mortality rate
among women is higher than that of men due to malnutrition. Violence against
women appears in the form of dowry deaths, wife battering, mass rape during
caste and communal riots, gang rape, sexual harassment of women and stereotyped
representation of women in media. Along with these, poverty and deprivation
affect the conditions of dalit and tribal women, many of whom are forced to
prostitution.

Autonomous women’s movements emerged during the international women’s

decade which provided an opportunity towards attention on women’s issues. In
1975, March 8th was celebrated as international women’s day for the first time.
Important features of the women’s autonomous movement are that women
organised themselves and led the movements and fought against oppression,
exploitation, injustice and discrimination.

The women’s organisations that emerged during the autonomous movement

period could be divided into six categories:
i) Autonomous groups whose main propaganda is agitation and to raise
consciousness.
ii) Grass root or mass based organisations like trade unions, agricultural
labourers’ organisations, democratic groups, tribal organisations etc. in which
women’s issues like wife beating, sexual harassment by the landlords,
alcoholism of men have been taken up.
iii) Groups that concentrate on providing services, shelter homes etc. to needy
women.
iv) Professional women’s organisations such as doctors, lawyers etc. that seek
to agitate against discrimination and more often create alternate channels
for professional activity.
v) Women’s wings or fronts of the political parties.
vi) Groups involved in research and documentation on women’s issues.

The above mentioned groups and organisations take up women’s problems and
its members are mostly women and they are run by women. Saheli, Manushi,
Stri Shakti, Stri Mukti Sangathana, Pennurimai Iyyakam etc. are some known
women’s organisations. All these groups have taken up various issues like
atrocities against women. They issue pamphlets, collect signatures to support
demands, organise protest rallies, make demonstrations to mobilise public opinion
etc. They also organise street corner meetings, street plays, skits and songs and
poster exhibitions. They also bring out feminist magazines to raise awareness
among women.

The autonomous movements besides creating general consciousness among

women, exposed the conversation of the judiciary as in the Mathura Rape case,
by removing the bill boards and stopping shows where women have been shown
or used as sex symbols. These autonomous movements have also given rise to
special interest groups involved in the anti-dowry and anti-rape campaigns. More
research is being carried out on subjects related to women. In the academic field,
women’s studies became an upcoming field to be taken more seriously during 23
Women in India and Some the 1970s (Patel 1975). As a result of the pressure created by the women’s
Insights
movements, amendments in the laws regarding rape, dowry, marriage etc. were
made.

1.6 SUMMARY
Unlike the women’s movements in America and Britain, in India, the concern
for women’s freedom was first espoused by enlightened males during the Bristish
era who had imbibed liberal ideas. Upto the 1920s the struggle was carried on by
men. It was only after Mahatma Gandhi’s entry into politics, that the nationalist
movement under his leadership was transformed from a middle class movement
into a mass movement where women for the first time raised their voices against
the disabilities that they suffered. It is the women’s movement in India that has
been the force behind the long struggle of women’s advancement from
subordination to gender equality and finally to women’s empowerment. Though
a lot needs to be achieved and there are various impediments in making this
reality available to a large section of women, the women’s movement has brought
women’s issues centre stage and made them more visible.

References
Baig, Tara Ali. 1976. Women Power of India. New Delhi: Sultan Chand and
Sons.
Banerjee, Narayan. 1992. Grassroots Empowerment Mimeograph. New Delhi:
Center for Women’s Development Studies.
Kumar, Radha. 1993. History of Doing. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Lal, Ruby. 2004. Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Mukharjee, B.N. 1975. “Awareness of Legal Rights Among Married Women
And their Status”. Indian Anthropologist, 5 (2) 30-58.
Pande, Rekha. 2010. Divine Sounds from the Heart, Singing Unfettered in their
Own Voices- The Bhakti Movement and its Women Saints (12th to 17th century).
U.K: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Pande, Rekha. 2002. “The Public Face of a Private Domestic Violence”.
International Feminist Journal of Politics. Vol. 4, No. 3, pp.342-367.
Pande, Rekha & Kamweshwari J. 1987, “Women’s Discourse on Education (A
Preliminary Reading of the Speeches Delivered at the Annual Conferences of
the Andhra Mahila Sabha, 1913 & 1914)”. Proceedings of Indian History
Congress, pp. 390 -396.
Panniker, K.N. 1975. “Presidential Address”. Proceedings of Indian History
Congress.
Patel, K.A. 1975. “International Women’s Year : Half of Humanity and New
International Order.” Mainstream, 13 (49).
Thapar, Romila. 1975. “Looking Back in History”. Devaki Jain (ed.) Indian
Women. New Delhi: Publication Division, Government of India.
24
Tharu, Susie and K. Lalit (eds). 1991. Women Writing in India, Vol. 11. NewDelhi: Women’s Movements in
India
Oxford University Press.
Chakravarty, Uma. 1998. Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita
Ramabai. New Delhi: Kali for Women Press.

Suggested Reading

Altekar, A.S. 1962. The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization. New Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidas.

Subbamma, Malladi. 1994. Women’s Movements and Associations. Hyderabad:

Mahilabhyudaya Samastha.

Thomas R. 1964. Indian Women through the Ages, Bombay: Asia Publishing
House.

Sample Questions
1) Discuss the position of women in Vedic society?
2) How did the status of women start declining during the Medieval period?
3) Critically analyse the women’s movement in post independent era.
4) “Social reform movements’ contribution towards the emancipation of
women” Discuss.

25
Women in India and Some
Insights UNIT 2 EMPOWERMENT, EMANCIPATION
AND POLICIES IN INDIA

Contents
2.1 Introduction
2.2 What is the Meaning of the Term ‘Emancipation’? Understanding its
Meaning and Relevance in the History of Women’s Struggles in India
2.3 What is ‘Empowerment’? Examining the Concept and its Origins
2.4 Tracing the Trajectory of ‘Empowerment’! Engaging with Women, Public
Policy and Development in the Context of the State-women’s Movement
Relationship, and Five Year Plans in India
2.5 Is Public Policy Sufficiently Engendered? Case Study of Towards Equality
(1974) and Mahila Samakhya
2.6 Unraveling the Politics of Women’s Empowerment
2.7 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
 explain the meanings of the terms ‘empowerment’ and ‘emancipation’;
 trace the struggles for emancipation and empowerment, especially in the
context of the state and women’s movement in India;
 assess whether and how public policies have contributed to women’s
empowerment;
 unpack the politics and discourses of women’s empowerment and
 understand feminist approaches to gender and development.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The terms ‘emancipation’ and ‘empowerment’ are both used when referring to
women’s movements, gender and development. However, these terms have
different meanings and are associated with specific periods in the women’s
movement and approaches to gender and development. We shall first take a look
at the term ‘emancipation’, and engage with its meaning and relevance in the
history of social reform movements and nationalist struggle for freedom from
colonial rule in India. We shall then turn our attention to the concept of
‘empowerment’, examine its linkages with power, and theoretically locate its
origins. Further, we shall attempt to trace the trajectory of the concept in India,
with particular attention to the state-women’s movement relationship and the
Five Year Plans. With the aim of delving deeper into whether and how public
policy is sufficiently engendered, we shall take a closer look at the making of
26
Towards Equality (1974) and the country-wide state-sponsored women’s Emplowerment,
Emancipation and Policies
education and empowerment programme, Mahila Samakhya. Last but not least, in India
we shall unravel different facets of women’s empowerment in conjunction with
the politics of NGO expansion, projects and funding in the context of post-
liberalisation India.

2.2 WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE TERM

‘EMANCIPATION’? UNDERSTANDING ITS
MEANING AND RELEVANCE IN THE
HISTORY OF WOMEN’S STRUGGLES IN
INDIA
‘Emancipation’ refers to liberation from oppression or bondage of any kind.
When used in conjunction with women, it can also be taken to mean escape
from narrow gender roles into which women get typecast and which perpetuate
gender-based inequalities. The period of 19th and 20th centuries is often referred
to as one of social, sexual, economic, political and legal emancipation of women
in not only India but also the West. Below are a few instances of key actors who
made efforts towards women’s emancipation in pre-independent India:

Raja Ram Mohan Roy is regarded as the ‘maker of modern India’. He

founded one of the first socio-religious reform movements in India, namely,
the Brahmo Samaj. He campaigned for the rights of women, in particular,
for women’s rights to property and education, and against polygamy and
sati. His efforts are said to have borne fruit when in 1929, sati was legally
abolished (Sarkar and Sarkar 2008).

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar championed the cause of women within

mainstream Hindu society. He opened a number of schools for girls’
education in Bengal. His writings and activities are said to have helped
create public opinion in favour of legalising widow remarriage and abolishing
polygamy, which in turn led to the passage of the Hindu Widows Remarriage
Act of 1856 and the Civil Marriage Act of 1872 (Basu n.d.).

Pandita Ramabai was amongst the few female leaders of the movement for
women’s emancipation. She advocated for women’s education and shed
light on the plight of child brides and child widows. She founded Arya
Mahila Sabha, which is known as the first feminist organisation in India.
She set up Mukti Mission for young widows, and Krupa Sadan and Sharda
Sadan for destitute women (Kosambi 1988).

Sarala Devi Chaudhurani formed Bharat Stree Mandal (The Great Circle of
India Women) with the aim of bringing together women of all castes and
classes to promote women’s education. She is remembered for her speeches
at the Indian National Congress meetings in favour of women’s right to
vote. She was involved in not only petitioning the government to give women
the right to vote but also in bringing about changes in laws pertaining to
marriage, divorce and property rights (Basu n.d.).

27
Women in India and Some These and other such actors were primarily concerned with issues such as purdah,
Insights
sati, education, age of marriage, polygamy and widow remarriage, which affected
Hindu upper caste, middle class, urban women. While they encouraged women
to come out of their homes and work for the nation, there was no questioning of
traditional gender roles of mother and wife that women were expected to conform
to. They contended that women’s uplift was crucial as women were the mothers
of future generations. The state was expected to play a paternalistic role by
‘protecting’ women and women’s interests.

In comparison to the 19th century social reform movement, the 20th century
nationalist movement somewhat widened its ambit; the latter brought into its
fold poor, illiterate, rural and urban women too, not only engaging in social and
legal reform but also campaigning for women’s political and economic rights
and encouraging participation in the struggle for freedom from colonial
domination. While the social reform movement had been predominantly led by
male leaders, women leaders and women’s organisations began to emerge later
on (Basu n.d.; Sarkar and Sarkar 2008). Several women’s movement scholars
regard the period of emancipation of women as the beginnings of the women’s
movement in India (Kumar 1993; Sen 2002). We shall delve into important aspects
of the contemporary women’s movement in section 2.4 of this unit.

2.3 WHAT IS ‘EMPOWERMENT’? EXAMINING

THE CONCEPT AND ITS ORIGINS
What is central to the idea of empowerment is ‘power’. Power operates at various
levels such as the family, the household and other social structures. Power operates
in the following different ways as:
– power over: This power involves an either/or relationship of domination/
subordination. Ultimately, it is based on socially sanctioned threats of
violence and intimidation, it requires constant vigilance to maintain, and it
invites active and passive resistance;
– power to: This power relates to having decision-making authority, power to
solve problems and can be creative and enabling;
– power with: This power involves people organising with a common purpose
or common understanding to achieve collective goals;
– power within: This power refers to self confidence, self awareness and
assertiveness. It relates to how individuals can recognise through analysing
their experience how power operates in their lives, and gain the confidence
to act to influence and change this (Williams et al. 1994 as cited in Oxaal
and Baden 1997).

Apart from ‘power’, the notion of empowerment is constructed around a cluster

of other recurring concepts: choice, agency, achievements, women’s interests,
gender, participation, and rights-based approaches.1 The term ‘empowerment’
has been used by various actors across the ideological spectrum, including
individuals, international development institutions, state actors and policy-makers,
non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and women’s movements. Below are
a few instances of how different actors interpret ‘empowerment’ differently (Oxaal
and Baden 1997):
28
 Emplowerment,
Empowerment is about participation. Development must be by people, not Emancipation and Policies
only for them. People must participate fully in the decisions and processes in India
that shape their lives... Investing in women’s capabilities and empowering
them to exercise their choices is not only valuable in itself but is also the
surest way to contribute to economic growth and overall development (UN
Human Development Report, 1995).

Empowerment is about challenging oppression and inequality.

Empowerment involves challenging the forms of oppression which compel
millions of people to play a part in their society on terms which are
inequitable, or in ways which deny their human rights (Oxfam, 1995).

Empowerment is a transformative process that challenges not only patriarchy

but also the structures of class, race, religion and ethnicity, which determine
the condition of women and men in society (Batliwala 1994; Kabeer 1994).

Empowerment has its origins in Socialist feminist discourse and Third World
organisations like Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era (DAWN).

DAWN is a network of Southern activists, researchers and policymakers

(e.g. by Moser, 1989), founded in the mid-1980s. The empowerment of
poor and marginalised women is central to DAWN’s vision of development.
It envisages empowerment as being a collective rather than individual
process. It has sought to link micro-level activities, i.e. grassroots and
community level initiatives to a macro-level perspective.

Empowerment is essentially a bottom-up process rather than something that can

be formulated as a top-down strategy. This means women must empower
themselves; empowerment is not something that can be done to or for women.
The feminist slogan “the personal is the political” roots the process of
empowerment in an expansion of women’s consciousness. When women
recognise their ‘power within’ and act together with other women to exercise
‘power with’, they gain ‘power to’ act as agents (Cornwall 2007).

Over the years, the term empowerment has risen in popularity. The reasons for
this are the changing role of the state and planning; and donor governments,
multilateral funding agencies and international development institutions
embracing NGOs as partners in development. UN conferences too have
successively advocated women’s empowerment as being central to the project
of development. Significant in this regard was the UN World Conference on
Women held in Beijing in 1995. The Conference Report called its Platform for
Action ‘an agenda for women’s empowerment’ (UN 1995). The World Bank,
the UK Department for International Development (DFID), USAID, Oxfam,
and other bilateral and private donors have all embraced the concept. It is argued
that northern development institutions and aid agencies find the concept of
empowerment appealing. After all, the concept originated in the South, and
espousal of the concept would ensure that they are not accused of cultural
imperialism.

29
Women in India and Some
Insights 2.4 TRACING THE TRAJECTORY OF
‘EMPOWERMENT’! ENGAGING WITH
WOMEN, PUBLIC POLICY AND
DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE
STATE-WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
RELATIONSHIP, AND FIVE YEAR PLANS IN
INDIA

‘From at least the 19th century, the role of the state in defining and influencing
the status of women has informed the many struggles for women’s equality.
The state, its policies and programmes continue to be the focus of much of
the energies of the women’s movement in post-independent India as well...
The relationship with the state has been fraught with conflicting emotions -
fears of co-option, subversion of the feminist agenda, of becoming reformist
rather than enabling radical social change. The dilemmas of this interaction
have not, however, prevented an interaction with the state. What has varied
is the nature of issues and the degree of involvement... This engagement
involved lobbying, pressurising and highlighting women’s issues/
contributions to inform policy formulation... and challenge state policy. There
were [also some] examples of a direct involvement with the government
and its development programmes... Despite fear of co-option by the state, a
few women both as individuals and in groups decided to participate in
government-sponsored programmes as a means to mainstream the gender
question. ... The Women’s Development Programme (WDP) in Rajasthan
launched in the early 1980s and the subsequent Mahila Samakhya programme
launched towards the end of the 7th Plan period [in the late 1980s]
demonstrated that spaces were available even within the formal state
structures to try and bring about change from within...’ (Jandhyala 2001).

The first two decades after Independence were a period when the women’s
movement considered the state its ally. The postcolonial Indian state defined
itself as the primary vehicle for social transformation. It was, in fact, strikingly
innovative in creating institutions to guarantee development for all (Frankel 1978;
Kohli 1990; Kothari 1970). With respect to women’s development, in particular,
the Central Social Welfare Board was set up at the national level in 1953. Similar
Boards were set up at the level of the states too whose responsibilities included
provision of counselling, legal services and short-stay shelter homes for women
(Gopalan 2002). The boards and the constitutional guarantee of women’s rights
satisfied many women who had participated in the social reform and nationalist
movements in pre-Independence India. Regarding the state as a key instrument,
they laid emphasis on seeking solutions from the state through the passage of
‘progressive’ legislations (Sen 2002; Jandhyala 2001) and not surprisingly shared
a welfarist approach with the government.

By the 1970s emerged a generation of women who criticised the approach to

women’s development and to the place accorded to women in state-led
development processes (Desai and Krishnaraj 1987). These were mostly educated,
urban, middle class women, strongly influenced by either the Left or by Gandhian
30
movements. They questioned the supplementary place allotted to women in the Emplowerment,
Emancipation and Policies
Community Development Programmes of the 1950s and ’60s, ‘which involved in India
training women in the skills of “family management” and “home economics”’
(John 2001: 109). According to them, such programmes failed to challenge
traditional gender roles. Their critique was bolstered by the publication of the
Towards Equality Report in 1974 that discussed the condition and status of women
in India. Commissioned by the Indian government, the report was intended for
the 1975 United Nations International Women’s Year World Conference. It
documented the widening of gender inequalities in employment, health, education
and political participation since Independence.

Such critique formed part of a general dissatisfaction with the developmental

state. It was felt that the state had failed to deliver the promise it had made about
social transformation and elimination of poverty. Accounts of these years have
rightly seen them as a period of crisis for the Indian state, the clearest indication
of which was perhaps the rise of a range of social movements. Rural and urban
women, especially from the poorer sections of the society, got organised in
affiliation with or as part of social movements of peasants, workers, and tribals
(Desai 2002; Sen 1990). In 1975, the Congress government declared a state of
emergency. Consequently, from 1975 to 1977, women’s organisations, along
with other political organisations, were driven underground. The suspension of
fundamental freedoms and the lack of governmental transparency during this
period led to a deep suspicion of the state among women’s activists. Scholars
(Gandhi and Shah 1991; John 1996; Menon 1999) identify the declaration of
Emergency as marking the end of an era in women’s and social movements’
activism.

Post-Emergency, there was a realisation that the women’s movement’s explicit

commitment to gender issues had taken a backseat to class issues in not only
state policy but also in the social movements and party organisations that they
had been a part of. As a result, autonomous women’s groups, sans party affiliations
and hierarchical organisational structures, were formed in towns and cities. During
the late 1970s and early 1980s, these groups organised and led public
consciousness-raising campaigns around issues of violence against women (Desai
2002; Kumar 1993). These campaigns specifically addressed the issues of dowry
and (custodial) rape. Within months, the Union government passed new laws on
dowry, rape and domestic violence; introduced new policy measures, including
the creation of national and state-level programmes and resources for addressing
violence, a ministry of women and child welfare, and support groups within the
criminal justice system to help abused women (Jandhyala 2001). The government
hoped that these laws and policy measures would go some way towards satisfying
the movement’s expectations that it knew it was increasingly unable to meet.
Women’s movement activists had a mixed response to the steps taken by the
government. Some activists felt these steps reflected the success of agitations in
getting the state to take cognisance of the movement’s demands; they were now
prepared to work with state structures to influence policy and legislation. Others
considered the laws to be dubiously progressive. There were also those who felt
that the new laws and policy measures would only contribute to increase in state
control to the detriment of the people’s freedoms (Menon 2004).

An increase in emphasis on ‘gender’ in the international development agenda

too affected the state-movement relationship. Proponents of the Gender and
31
Women in India and Some Development framework, led by Third World women’s groups, campaigned to
Insights
make grassroots ‘empowerment’ the favoured strategy for undoing social
inequalities and for enabling development globally (Kabeer 1994). Autonomous
women’s groups turned NGOs were the chosen vehicles for implementing the
strategy in Third World countries (Chaudhuri 2004). India was no exception to
this trend. The international focus on women’s and gender issues, indeed, played
an important role in the Indian state taking up these issues through policy and
legislative measures. The United Nations’ declaration of 1975-1985 as the
International Women’s decade was significant in this regard. ‘As a member
country, India was required to report its efforts in working towards women’s
equality and [in creating] what the UN called “national policy machinery for the
advancement of women”’ (Desai 2002: 74).

The basic assumption that development processes impact men and women in
the same way had begun to be questioned. There was a gradual recognition that
the overall goal of development of a country cannot be achieved unless women’s
status and condition, and women’s involvement in development processes are
not taken into account. In the Sixth Five Year Plan (1975-80), a whole chapter
was devoted to women and to resources to be allocated for women’s issues. The
Plan recognised women’s role in national development as partners/contributors
rather than recipients/beneficiaries (Lingam 2002). Post-Emergency, the Janata
party government promoted rural-based NGO efforts by setting up semi-
governmental bodies such as the Council for the Advancement of People’s Action
and Rural Technology (CAPART). By the mid-1980s, the Congress government
had begun to make funding available to NGOs. In 1985, the government set up
an exclusive Department of Women and Child Development under the Ministry
of Human Resource and Development. In 1986, the National Policy on Education
directed that education be used as ‘an agent of basic change in the status of
women’ (GOI 1992). In 1989, the Development for Women and Children in
Rural Areas (DWCRA), a pilot project was extended across the country.

In fact, women’s NGOs had expanded dramatically in the Indian subcontinent

after the 1975 declaration of the United Nations’ International Decade for Women.
By the Seventh Five Year Plan (1985-90), the government had (at least on paper)
embraced the idea of NGOs as the ‘third sector’, complementing government
agencies and private businesses (Purushothaman 1998). The 1995 UN World
Conference on Women in Beijing gave a further fillip to this strategy, which was
subsequently picked up by women’s movement organisations. Some developed
partnerships with the state to expand their outreach. Others started accepting
direct and indirect funding from bilateral donors, international NGOs and
development institutions. Several women’s movement activists and organisations
felt that attempts to ‘engender’ the state needed to go beyond simply advocating
for policy change to opening up spaces for women themselves to actively engage
with officials of different state agencies and branches in restructuring state
policies, programmes and practices. The collaboration with the state was seen as
a means to expand reach to marginalised women on a scale that women’s groups
by themselves could never achieve (Jandhyala 2001). The Women’s Development
Programme of Rajasthan (WDP) and Mahila Samakhya (MS) are examples of
joint initiatives of the women’s movement and the state.

32
 Emplowerment,
WDP, set up in 1984, was a result of collaboration between state and central Emancipation and Policies
governments, local voluntary organisations, and the women’s studies wing of in India

the Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur. It functioned with considerable

autonomy in the initial years. It mobilised rural women to perform leadership
roles in the community, especially as volunteer sathins (helpers) in
development projects. It refused state-defined priorities like family planning
and engaged instead in various consciousness-raising activities around
employment and wages, political participation, challenge of child marriage
customs, and promotion of education (Sunder Rajan 2003; Jandhyala 2001).

In the following section, we delve deeper into the making of Towards Equality
(1974) and the aforementioned joint initiatives, especially Mahila Samakhya, to
closely examine whether and how attempts have been made to sufficiently
engender public policy in India. But before we so, below is a snapshot view of
the shifts in perception regarding the attention paid to women and gender-related
concerns in India’s Five Year Plans (Patel 2004):

Plan Activity Approach

First Plan Set up the Central Social Welfare Welfare work through voluntary
(1951-56) Board organizations and charitable
trusts
Second Plan Supported the development of Rural development
(1956-61) Mahila Mandals at the grassroots
Third, Fourth Provisions for women’s education, Women as “targets” of family
and Interim pre-natal and child health services, planning and social sector
Plans supplementary feeding for children, “beneficiaries”
(1961-74) nursing and expectant mothers
Fifth Plan Programmes and schemes for Shift in the approach from
(1974-78) women in development welfare to development
Sixth Plan Separate chapter for women in the Accepted women’s develo-
(1980-85) Plan pment as a separate agenda; took
a multidisciplinary approach
with a three-pronged thrust on
health, education and employment
Seventh Plan Working group for employment of Bringing women into the
(1985-90) women; statistics on women: quota mainstream of national
for women in development development
schemes
Eighth Plan The core sectors of education,
Paradigm shift from
(1992-97) health and employment outlay for
development to empowerment
women rose from Rs. 4 crores in
and benefits to women
the first plan to Rs. 2,000 crores in
the eighth
Ninth Plan Concept of a women’s component Empowerment of women as its
(1997-2002) plan to assure that at least 30% of strategic objective
fund benefits from all sectors flow
to women
Tenth Plan Self-help groups Suggests specific strategies,
(2002-2007) policies and programmes for the
empowerment of women
33
Women in India and Some
Insights 2.5 IS PUBLIC POLICY SUFFICIENTLY
ENGENDERED? CASE STUDY OF TOWARDS
EQUALITY (1974) AND MAHILA SAMAKHYA
The Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI) was constituted by a
resolution of the ministry of education and social welfare, Government of India
on 22 September 1971 with Phulrenu Guha, then Union Minister of Social Welfare
as chairperson. The Committee was set up to review the changes in Indian
women’s status that were expected to result from constitutional equality,
government policies and social reform since Independence. Vina Mazumdar
critically reflects on the review exercise. She observes that the entire emphasis
was on social status, education and employment, to the exclusion of the political;
the focus was on rural areas rather than urban; the Committee was only asked to
find out the reasons for the slow progress of women’s education but it also looked
into the content and method of education; while the terms of reference asked
that the implications of discrimination in employment and remuneration, and
population and family planning programmes on women’s status be studied, it
omitted health.To quote Mazumdar, ‘How are we going to define status? Status
means different things in different contexts... [The] drafting committee was to
draw up and put before us an approach. The committee imposed a self-denying
ordinance on itself: not to be influenced by any other country reports or any
feminist literature and philosophy... We also refused to reopen the equality debate,
despite Naik sahib’s suggestion that we look into questions such as: Does equality
mean identity or similarity? Does it mean that women do all the things that men
do? After all, men cannot do all the things that women do. We refused to reopen
this debate because we adopted a very firm position on the Constitution... as a
deliberate departure from the inherited social, economic and political systems...
How did we interpret inequality? We related it first to the variety of social,
economic and cultural inequalities inherent in our traditional social structure,
making specific references to caste, class and community. Second, we related it
to the increasing forces of disparity through structural changes in the economy...
We referred to the urban, middle class bias of planners and social scientists and
identified the state, intelligentsia, in general, and the educators in particular, for
their blindness and indifference to the declining conditions of the majority of
women... But we failed to see that our rejection of the modernization process as
an unmixed blessing was also a critique of the dominant development paradigm’
(2008: 30-31).

We now turn to the Mahila Samakhya programme, whose guiding philosophy

carries the imprint of the CSWI report. Mahila Samakhya was inspired by the
vision and methods of WDP, and was the first state-sponsored, national-level
programme for rural women’s empowerment. It was initiated in 1989 by the
Department of Education, Government of India with joint funding from the Dutch
government under the banner of ‘Education for Women’s Equality’. It aimed at
actualising the 1986 National Policy on Education (NPE) through the Programme
of Action. Below are relevant excerpts from the same:

34
 Emplowerment,
EDUCATION FOR WOMEN’S EQUALITY Emancipation and Policies
in India
4.2 Education will be used as an agent of basic change in the status of
woman. In order to neutralise the accumulated distortions of the past, there
will be a well-conceived edge in favour of women. The National Education
System will play a positive, interventionist role in the empowerment of
women. It will foster the development of new values through redesigned
curricula, textbooks, the training and orientation of teachers, decision-makers
and administrators, and the active involvement of educational institutions.
This will be an act of faith and social engineering. Women’s studies will be
promoted as a part of various courses and educational institutions encouraged
to take up active programmes to further women’s development.

4.3 The removal of women’s illiteracy and obstacles inhibiting their access
to, and retention in, elementary education will receive overriding priority,
through provision of special support services, setting of time targets, and
effective monitoring. Major emphasis will be laid on women’s participation
in vocational, technical and professional education at different levels. The
policy of non-discrimination will be pursued vigorously to eliminate sex
stereo-typing in vocational and professional courses and to promote women’s
participation in non-traditional occupations, as well as in existing and
emergent technologies (NPE 1986).

1.1.1 Education for Women’s Equality is a vital component of the overall

strategy of securing equity and social justice in education. Paras 4.2 and 4.3
of the National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 are very strong and
forthright statements on the intervening and empowering role of education.
Inter alia, they emphasize the provision of special support services and
removal of factors which result in discrimination against women at all levels
of education. The POA clearly spells out the actions which need to be taken
to promote education for women’s equality; it can hardly be improved upon.
What is sought to be done is to modify the contents of the POA wherever
appropriate. What comes out clearly is the need for will to implement and
institutional mechanisms to ensure that gender sensitivity is reflected in the
implementation of educational programmes across the board. Education
for Women’s Equality is too important to be left to the individual
commitments or proclivities of persons in charge of implementing
programmes. It should be incumbent on all actors, agencies and institutions
in the field of education at all levels to be gender sensitive and ensure that
women have their rightful share in all educational programmes and activities
(Programme of Action 1992).

Mahila Samakhya started as a pilot project in 10 districts in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat

and Karnataka. Mahila Samakhya currently operates in over 30,000 villages in 9
Indian states: Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Assam,
Bihar, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand. The programme is considered as an innovative
one not only because of its focus on grassroots women’s ‘empowerment’ but
also because of its hybrid government-organised NGO (GONGO) form. This
form is aimed at merging the benefits of small NGOs with large-scale government
development programmes (Sharma 2006). Women’s movement activists and
organisations and civil servants have played a crucial role in Mahila Samakhya
from the time of its conception. 35
Women in India and Some
Insights Activity

Carefully read the text below (Jandhyala n.d.) on the Mahila Samakhya
programme and answer the questions that follow.

The Mahila Samakhya experience over the past twelve years offers a unique
case of trying to explore and understand the issues of women’s education
and empowerment and the inter linkages thereof in different regional and
rural contexts within India. It offers an example of the importance of
empowerment of women as a critical precondition to facilitate greater
inclusion of women and their daughters into education. Further, it provides
an alternative paradigm to women’s mobilisation and empowerment to the
current and dominant focus on economic interventions as the principal
strategy for women’s empowerment. The uniqueness of the MS strategy
was pithily captured in the Programme Appraisal Report of 1989. “There is
no programme comparable to the Education for Women’s Equality
programme in terms of the scale and mix of activities, in terms of
organisational location and form, or in terms of the long term ambition to
grow into a major vehicle for women’s empowerment throughout India.”
Has this euphoric expectation been met? Successive evaluations have
generally concurred with this early expectation with some limitations. The
organisational form and diversity of activities has been an effective vehicle
for women’s empowerment and education in the areas where the programme
is being implemented. However, it has a long way to go to have an impact
across the country.

…Through successive plan periods, MS has not deviated from [its] basic
objectives

that have been articulated in a set of non-negotiables that are to be accepted

by any new state to which the programme is extended. Essentially they state
that the pace of women’s mobilisation shall not be hurried, women’s concerns
and problems as articulated by them will be the starting points for the
programme, and project personnel will play a facilitative than a directive
role. Given the radical nature of the approach, it was clear that such a
programme cannot be implemented through the normal governmental
departments but would require a structure that would allow for women from
outside government to be part of the implementation process. Autonomous
project societies, therefore, have been set up at individual State levels.
Further efforts are made to find women committed to the cause of women’s
empowerment and with experience of having worked with poor women to
steer the programme at different levels. This enabled capturing the “worm’s
eye view and not a bird’s eye view” of situations of poor women. Grassroots
level workers are in almost all cases poor women themselves from within
the communities the programme works in and hence bring a radical edge to
the interventions.
…Dave and Krishnamurthy’s study, Home and the World (2000) that
explores women’s perceptions of empowerment has been one of the few
attempts to examine the changing relations within the household. Change
in relations within the household has often been softly and tentatively
36
 Emplowerment,
articulated. The sharing of household work and responsibilities has emerged Emancipation and Policies
out of men acknowledging the right of their women to attend sangha in India
meetings. Looking after children, milking the cow, cooking are some of the
tasks men have taken over when women are not there.” It is evident that the
changes in the relationship with the husbands are not the direct result of
confrontation… women engage in strategic planning to maintain
relationships. ‘We allow men their illusions.’ This enables them (women) to
negotiate a place for themselves without disturbing the surface of things.”1
Women have reported not only changes in their relationship with husbands
but also in the relationships with mothers-in-law. And how they are able to
assert themselves with respect. For the women the institution of family and
marriage continue to be a defining element as they negotiate and tease out
spaces ad autonomy of existence and action for themselves.

…MS consciously took a decision not to exhort sangha women to acquire

literacy skills. Instead waited till the sanghas themselves felt the need to
acquire the basic skills of reading and writing. Over the past few years with
an increasing number of women standing for elections in panchayat
elections, and sanghas also federating at block levels, each sangha
recognises the need for at least some of their members to befully literate.

A song composed by sangha women in Gujarat says, “we thought we were

uneducated but we were only illiterate. Now we know we can learn reading
and writing-we know we are not inferior. We are part of this world!”

• What do you learn about the programme from the text before you?
• What is the programme structure like?
• Whom has the programme sought to mobilise?
• Has the programme brought about a difference in the lives of those it has
mobilised?
• What do we learn about the state-women’s movement relationship from
the text?
• Is education about literacy for Mahila Samakhya programme planners?
• What forms the content of the Mahila Samakhya programme?
• Which are some of the problems in the idea and implementation of the
programme?

2.6 UNRAVELING THE POLITICS OF WOMEN’S

EMPOWERMENT
It is important to place all of these developments in the larger context of economic
liberalisation. In popular perception, liberalisation of the Indian economy is
associated with the reforms initiated under the leadership of the then Finance
Minister Manmohan Singh, part of the Congress government, in 1991. Generally
speaking, economic liberalisation implies privatisation and withdrawal of the
state from several economic processes. Indian women’s movement scholars and
activists’ discussion on how economic liberalisation has changed the character
37
Women in India and Some of the movement today invariably tends to be focussed on NGOs or ‘NGOisation’
Insights
(Chaudhuri 2004; John 2001; Menon 1999 and 2004; Ray 2000; Subramaniam
2006; Sunder Raj an 2003).

NGOs have been broadly defined as self-governing, private, not-for-profit

organisations that are geared towards improving the quality of life of
disadvantaged people (Vakil 1997). Whereas 12,000 Indian NGOs were
registered with the Home Ministry in 1988 (a subset of the total number of
NGOs), their number is said to have risen to around two million by 2002
(Kamat 2002). These include groups providing social welfare services,
development support organisations, social action groups struggling for social
justice and structural changes, and support groups providing legal, research
or communications support. Some are big in terms of membership and
funding. But many are small and are locally based. A lot of these big and
small NGOs work with women.

Almost every donor operating in South Asia has set aside a significant proportion
of resources for women’s organisations and projects on women. Availability of
donor funding has contributed in no small measure to the expansion of NGOs in
the field of women’s empowerment, with a focus on self-help groups and micro-
credit financing.

For most governments, donors and international financial institutions like the
World Bank, sponsoring development, women’s active participation in the market
economy is a vital sign of empowerment. Empowerment is basically interpreted
as economic empowerment or the ability to earn an income. It has come to be
synonymous with projects that give women small loans and enlist them in small-
scale business activities such as producing handicrafts for sale. Credit schemes
have certainly brought millions of women out of their homes and into the public
domain. They are seen as having the potential to link women with the formal
banking sector and thereby integrating women in mainstream development (Von
Bülow et al. 1995).

But critics (Cornwall 2007) of such an approach argue that focus on women’s
economic empowerment conflates power with money, and imbues the acquisition
of money with almost magical powers - as if once women have their own money,
they can wish away overnight social norms, institutions and relationships part of
their lives. Economic empowerment policies may bet on women pouring their
resources into their households, expanding their roles as mothers and wives to
meet their family’s needs.

But much depends on how they choose to spend such newly-acquired economic
power, and whether, where and how entry into the market offers women sufficient
resources to begin to challenge and transform the persistent institutionalised
inequalities that shore up the established gender order. The empowering effects
of work need to be better understood and contextualised given the enormous
differences between the countries and the women that are the targets for
development’s one-size-fits-all interventions.

Another approach to supporting women’s empowerment is the promotion of

women’s participation in politics. This includes promoting women in government
and national and local party politics as well as supporting women’s involvement
38
in NGOs and women’s movements. Increasing the number of women in formal Emplowerment,
Emancipation and Policies
politics is by itself not enough. Women in politics may be elites, in positions due in India
to their personal connections with male politicians and be unable or unwilling to
represent women’s gender interests. There are a range of possible mechanisms
to increase women’s participation in and empowerment through political life.
These include: reform of political parties; quotas and other forms of affirmative
action; training to develop women’s skills and gender sensitivity; work with
women’s sections of political parties; and the development of women’s political
organisations. Critics argue that this approach fits well with the broad programmes
of democratisation and good governance, and strengthening of civil society that
the neo-liberal framework seems to promote. They claim that this approach does
little to redress the power issues that lie at the very heart of the matter - such as
in the cultures and conduct of politics itself. Opening up the debate on women’s
political participation means asking new questions about what is needed to
democratise democracy. It calls us to ask whether greater representation of women
within flawed and dysfunctional political orders can really do the trick.

Almost every development NGO, today, claims to be working with the ‘poor
and marginalised’ women. At the international level, development institutions
and aid agencies claim that they are promoting the empowerment of ‘poor and
marginalised’ (Parpart 2004). But who are these poor and marginalised women?
There is a tendency in development discourse to universalise the category of
‘poor and marginalised’. But just as the universalisation of the category ‘women’
and presumption of homogeneity of interests among all women at all times and
in all contexts have led to complications, there are problems with presuming the
homogeneity of ‘poor and marginalised’ women. Poor and marginalised women
could be upper-castes or ex-untouchables, urban or rural, Muslim, Christian or
Jewish, young or old, engaged in paid labour or otherwise.

Women’s movements, in general, and grassroots women’s organisations, in

particular, have a vital role to play in promoting women’s empowerment and
resistance. They build bottom-up pressures on policy makers and governments.
They are much closer to realities on the ground than official agencies of
development, and can avoid the one-size-fits all model of empowerment. The
gains of the empowerment strategy are that with more funding, more committed
women can be full time activists, and can have time for documentation of and
reflection on activism. However, critics claim that this has also resulted in
feminism becoming a 9 to 5 job, with those with hardly any commitment to the
cause of women and gender getting involved because of the salary that a NGO
job can fetch. Critics also lament NGOs’ lack of autonomy from getting and
retaining funding. These developments, they argue, result in the depoliticisation
of women’s activism (Batliwala 2007; Menon 2004).

2.7 SUMMARY
What we shall attempt to do in this section is to employ the conceptual lens of
gender and development approaches to re-present some of the salient points
presented in this unit2. My reference to gender and development approaches
pertains to the shifts in focus from Women in Development (WID) and Women
and Development (WAD) paradigms to the more recent Gender and Development
(GAD) paradigm. Generally speaking, WID draws on liberal feminist ideas, WAD
39
Women in India and Some on Marxist feminist ideas, and GAD is said to have emerged as an alternative to
Insights
both WID and WAD. The WID and WAD perspectives arose in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. WID proponents articulated the concern that women had been
left out of development, and needed to be ‘factored’ in (Pearson & Jackson,
1998) whereas WAD proponents saw ‘women’ as a class and sought to create
‘women only’ projects (Connelly, Li, MacDonald & Parpart, 2000).

It was in the time of WID and WAD that a new generation of women emerged in
India who questioned the supplementary role allotted to women in development
programmes, most of which involved training women in the skills of ‘family
management’ and ‘home economics’. In India, their critique was bolstered by
the publication of a report titled Towards Equality in 1974. Documenting the
widening of gender inequalities in employment, health, education and political
participation since Independence, the report was intended for the United Nations
International Women’s Year World Conference to be held in 1975.

By the 1980s, GAD had emerged as an alternative to WID and WAD. It drew on
the grassroots organisational experiences and writings of Third World feminists
(Sen and Grown 1988) and on the analysis of Western socialist feminists (Moser
1989). The GAD perspective emphasises the interconnections between gender,
class, religion, race and ethnicity, and the social construction of their defining
characteristics. Its emphasis is much more on the relationships between women
and men rather than on women alone. Proponents of GAD have campaigned to
make ‘empowerment’ the favoured strategy for undoing social inequalities and
for enabling development globally (Kabeer 1994). NGOs have emerged as the
key institutional mechanisms of the GAD approach. They have significantly
grown and diversified in the last two decades. It is important to note that the
availability of donor funding, especially with liberalisation of the Indian economy,
has significantly facilitated the expansion of NGOs (Ray 2000). The 1995 UN
World Conference on Women in Beijing too has been catalytic in this regard. A
number of other factors have also mattered such as the choice of a section of the
women’s movement to collaborate with the state in the Indian context.

Notes
1
You may be already familiar with several of these concepts; others shall be
tackled as we move along in the unit.
2
This section draws substantially on Govinda (2012 forthcoming) ‘Mapping
Gender Evaluation in South Asia’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies.

References

Basu, A. (n.d.) “Indian Women’s Movement”,

http://www.du.ac.in/fileadmin/DU/Academics/course_material/hrge_15.pdf (last
accessed 29th November 2011)

Batliwala, S. 2007. “Taking the Power out of Empowerment - An Experiential

Account”, Development in Practice 17 (4-5): 557-65, August

Chaudhuri, M. (ed.). 2004. Feminism in India, New Delhi: Kali for Women &
Women Unlimited
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Connelly, M. P., Li, T. M., MacDonald, M. & Parpart, J. L. 2000. “Feminism and Emplowerment,
Emancipation and Policies
Development: Theoretical Perspectives”. J. L. Parpart, M. P. Connelly and V. E. in India
Barriteau (eds.) Theoretical Perspectives on Gender and Development, http://
www.idrc.ca/en/ev-9419-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html#begining (last accessed on 11
May 2010)

Cornwall, A. 2007. “Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development

Practice”. Development in Practice 17 (4-5): 471-84

Desai, M. 2002. “Multiple Mediations: The State and the Women’s Movements
in India”. D. S. Meyer, B. Robnett and N. Whittier (eds.) Social Movements:
Identity, Culture and the State. Oxford: OUP, pp. 66-84

Desai, N. and M. Krishnaraj. 1987. Women and Society in India. Bombay: Ajanta
Publications

Frankel, F. 1978. India’s Political Economy, 1947-77: The Gradual Revolution.

Princeton: Princeton University Press

Gandhi, N. and N. Shah. 1991. The Issues at Stake: Theory and Practice in the
Contemporary Women’s Movement in India. New Delhi: Kali for Women

Gopalan, S. 2002. Towards Equality - The Unfinished Agenda, Status of Women

in India, 2001. New Delhi: National Commission for Women, Government of
India (GoI)

Government of India. 1992. National Policy on Education 1986 (with

modifications undertaken in 1992). New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource
Development (MHRD)

Jandhyala, K. 2001. “State Initiatives”. Seminar, 505, http://www.india-

seminar.com/2001/505/505%20kameshwari%20jandhyala.htm (last accessed on
1 December 2011)

John, M. 1996. Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory and Post-colonial

Histories. Berkeley: University of California Press

John, M. 2001. “Gender, Development and the Women’s Movement: Problems

for a History of the Present”. R. Sunder Rajan (ed.) Signposts: Gender Issues in
Post-Independence India. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp.
100-124

Kabeer, N. 1994. Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development

Thought. London: Verso

Kamat, S. 2002. Development Hegemony: NGOs and the State in India. New
Delhi: OUP

Kohli, A. 1990. Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of

Governability, Cambridge: CUP

Kothari, R. (ed.). 1970. Caste in Indian Politics. Delhi: Orient Longman

Kumar, R. 1993. A History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for

Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800-1990. New Delhi: Kali for Women 41
Women in India and Some Lingam, L. 2002. “Women’s Movement and the State”. G. Shah (ed.). Social
Insights
Movements and the State. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 310-34

Mazumdar, V. 2008. “The Making of a Founding Text”. M. John (ed.). Women’s

Studies in India: A Reader. New Delhi: Penguin Books, pp. 27-32

Menon, N. (ed.). 1999. Gender and Politics in India. Delhi: OUP

Menon, N. 2004. Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law.

Delhi: Permanent Black

Moser, C. 1989. “Gender Planning in the Third World: Meeting Practical and
Strategic Gender Needs”. World Development. 17 (11): 1799-1825

Oxaal, Z. and S. Baden. 1997. “Gender and Empowerment: Definitions,

Approaches and Implications for Policy”. IDS Working Paper 40, Brighton: IDS

Parpart, J. 2004. “Lessons from the Field: Rethinking Empowerment, Gender

and Development from a Post-(Post-?) Development Perspective”. K. Saunders
(ed.) Feminist Post-Development Thought: Rethinking Modernity,
Postcolonialism and Representation. New Delhi: Zubaan, pp. 41-56

Patel, V. 2004. “Gender in State and National Policy Documents - A Case Study
of India”. Grassroots Participation in Governance, Reconstructing Governance:
The Other Voice organised by Karnataka Women’s Information and Resource
Centre in partnership with UNDP and Gender Studies Unit, National Institute of
Advanced Studies, Bangalore on February 20-21, 2004

Pearson, R. & Jackson, C. 1998. “Introduction: Interrogating Development:

Feminism, Gender and Policy”. C. Jackson and R. Pearson (eds.) Feminist Visions
of Development: Gender Analysis and Policy. London: Routledge, pp. 1-16

Purushothaman, S. 1998. The Empowerment of Women in India: Grassroots

Women’s Networks and the State. New Delhi: Sage

Ray, R. 2000. Fields of Protest: Women’s Movements in India. New Delhi: Kali
for Women Sarkar, S. and T. Sarkar (ed.). 2008. Women and Social Reform in
India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Sen, I. (ed.). 1990. A Space Within the Struggle: Women’s Participation in People’s
Movements, New Delhi: Kali for Women

Sen, S. 2002. “Towards a Feminist Politics? The Indian Women’s Movement in

Historical Perspective”. K. Kapadia (ed.) The Violence of Development: The
Politics of Identity, Gender and Social Inequalities in India. New Delhi: Kali for
Women, pp. 459-524

Sen, G. & Grown, C. for DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a
New Era). 1988. Development Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World
Women’s Perspectives. London: Earthscan Publications

Sharma, A. 2006. “Cross-breeding Institutions, Breeding Struggle: Women’s

Empowerment, Neoliberal Governmentality and State (Re)formation in India”.
Cultural Anthropology 21 (1): 60-95
42
Subramaniam, M. 2006. The Power of Women’s Organizing: Gender, Caste, and Emplowerment,
Emancipation and Policies
Class in India. Oxford: Lexington Books in India

Sunder Rajan, R. 2003. The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship
in Postcolonial India. Durham and London: Duke University Press

Vakil, A. C. 1997. “Confronting the Classification Problem: Towards a Taxonomy

of NGOs”. World Development 25(12): 2057-70

Von Bülow, D., E. Damball and R. Maro. 1995. “Supporting Women Groups in
Tanzania Through Credit: Is This a Strategy for Empowerment”. CDR Working
Papers, Copenhagen: Centre for Development Research

Suggested Reading

Batliwala, S. 2007. “Taking the Power out of Empowerment - An Experiential

Account”. Development in Practice 17 (4-5): 557-65, August

John, M. 2001. “Gender, Development and the Women’s Movement: Problems

for a History of the Present”. R. Sunder Rajan (ed.) Signposts: Gender Issues in
Post-Independence India. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp.
100-124

Kumar, R. 1993. A History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for

Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800-1990. New Delhi: Kali for Women

Sample Questions
1) What does the term ‘women’s emancipation’ mean? Explain with examples
of issues and actors.
2) What is women’s empowerment? Discuss the steps taken by the Indian state
and the women’s movement to actualise the goal of women’s empowerment.
3) Briefly analyse the shifts in perception regarding the attention paid to women
and gender-related concerns in India’s Five Year Plans.
4) List three gains and shortcomings each of the empowerment strategy.
5) Describe the salient features of the different gender and development
paradigms and state which is the one with which ‘empowerment’ is
associated.

43
Women in India and Some
Insights UNIT 3 WOMEN AND HEALTH

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Health Status of Women
3.2.1 Mortality and Morbidity Indicators
3.2.2 Inequities in Health Conditions across State, Caste, Rural-Urban Distribution
3.3 Women and Ill- Health: Understanding the Causal Factors/ Linkages
3.3.1 Patriarchy
3.3.2 Poverty
3.3.3 Gender
3.3.4 A Dozen Messages on Women and Health
3.4 Policies and Programs for Improving Health of Women
3.4.1 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme
3.4.2 Reproductive and Child Health Program
3.4.3 Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY)
3.5 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to understand:
 health status of women- morbidity, mortality across caste, class;
 factors/ causation of ill- health among women- patriarchy, gender, poverty,
reproduction, culture; and
 policies and programs for improvement of health of women.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Anthropologists understand and analyse individual behaviours, interactions, social
structures, health and illness in any society within a cultural context. Culture is
an abstraction, blueprint or guide for all sorts of conditions and for social analysis.
There is a link between cultural contexts, healing institutions and human
behaviour related to illness and health seeking. The ways in which we interpret,
perceive health, illnesses, seeking medical care are all influenced by our culture.
Pluralistic society in which multiple cultures exist side by side, the dominant or
core culture is the one whose norms, values, language, structures and institutions
tend to predominate. In health context, bio-medicine is the dominant culture and
all other forms of healing systems are subordinate or ‘alternative’ forms of
healings. Tenets of science and medicine are considered natural or “correct” and
therefore outside of cultural considerations. A medicocentric view focuses on
disease, identified through signs and symptoms, and not on the patients’ perception
of a problem. A medicocentric physician uses a reductionist model. An ‘emic’
44
perspective of a patient may relate his or her own illness perceptions and Women and Health
experiences in myriad ways; such as, inability to carry out daily functions,
symptom recognition, interpretation, misfortune and discomfort.

However, understanding health only from the cultural point of view leads to
cultural determinism. The perspectives to understand health and illness have
evolved from ‘cultural’ to ‘ecological’ to ‘critical medical anthropology’ in the
discipline of anthropology. In anthropological literature, sometimes nature/biology
is pitted against nurture/culture explanation for human conditions. Neither is
true. Both positions are too extreme and too simplistic. Real human thought and
action is the outcome of complex interplay of cultural, biological, social,
psychological, economic and political variables.

Anthropologists have been documenting health concerns of women, listening to

their every day experiences of illness, health, birth, death, pain suffering from
women’s own perspectives and have captured through ethnographic traditions
which is a hall mark of anthropologists. However, 90 percent of what has been
written by anthropologists in the area of women’s health has focused on
reproduction. It is recognised that after decades of scholarly neglect, the last
twenty five years have witnessed a veritable explosion of social science research
on human reproduction (Inhorn 2007, ix).

Anthropologists have contextualised women’s health from their larger socio-

economic, cultural, and political forces. Using participatory research,
anthropologists have explored women’s health based on their own lived
experiences and determined their own health priorities. However, it is often seen
that the health priorities are set up from top down approach by the states, often
neglecting the local voices and socio-cultural needs. A lot has been written by
anthropologists on ‘Child Birth’, however, very little has been researched on
other aspects of women’s health. There is a dearth of literature and research by
medical anthropologists in the Indian context, on women’s health. Very few studies
which are carried out in India are written by foreign scholars. Thus the gaps in
the anthropological literature pertaining to women’s health in this unit have been
filled from other disciplines. This will give a comprehensive understanding of
women’s health where most of the data on morbidity and mortality is from
demographic literature and contributions by the public health specialists and
feminist researchers.

The first section of this unit will deal with the morbidity and mortality indicators
along with reproductive health of women globally and nationally, recognising
the importance of understanding women’s health issue separately. The second
section will focus on social determinants and linkages to understand poor health
among women in India. Third section will deal with the state programs and
policies related to women’s health and the limitations of such programs from
anthropological and public health perspective.

3.2 HEALTH STATUS OF WOMEN

Even though biologically women are a stronger species in terms of survival at
birth, and also live longer than men, the social practices put the women in the
most disadvantageous position, from womb to tomb and they are discriminated.
Most often they are killed when they are still in the womb (foeticide) or when
45
Women in India and Some they are born (infanticide), or they are abandoned, sold or neglected. When they
Insights
are growing they are subjected to all sorts of discrimination from food, to
education to heath care. These atrocities are conducted, all due to the preference
of a son.

In the marital home, women continue to live subjugated lives, until she bears
children, more importantly sons. It is only when the sons grow up, she may
exercise some power within the family. Women as care givers in the family often
give priorities to the needs of other family members at the cost of their own
health. They neglect their health till it becomes critical. Old age adds to the woes
of women, especially health care when she is either deserted or live at the mercy
of her children.

3.2.1 Mortality and Morbidity Indicators

It is now a well known fact that the maternal conditions or the reproductive
period (15-44 years) is the leading cause of death and disability among women.
According to a combined report of WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and World Bank
(2007), more than 99 percent of the estimated 536,000 maternal deaths each
year occur in the developing world. Report of ICPD Cairo conference (UN 1995)
states that an early and unwanted childbearing, abortion, HIV and other sexually
transmitted infections and pregnancy related illnesses and deaths account for a
significant proportion of the burden of illness experienced by women, especially
in low-income countries.

It is ironical that for all these diseases, cost-effective interventions exist, still
reproductive health problems account for the majority of the disease burden in
women of this age group (World Bank, 1993).

In India, even though, women have higher life expectancy of 66.1 years, compared
to male members with 63.8 years1 , women lead a highly morbid life due to
various reasons, which will be discussed in the next section. Statistics show
poor health condition of women in India. According to National Family Health
Survey (NFHS) 3, total fertility rate is 2.7 which have come down from 3.4 in
NFHS 1 survey in 1992-93.

It is ironic, despite India progressing towards better growth and development,

the health of women is deteriorating. The maternal mortality rate (MMR) and
infant mortality rates (IMR) are very high in India. The MMR is 212 out of every
100,000 women in 2007-2009 and the IMR is 50 out of every 1,000 infants in
2009, who die during childbirth (Office of Registrar General India, 2011). These
high numbers of maternal and infant deaths are attributed to higher percentages
of ‘home deliveries’, compared to 42 % of delivery by the medical professionals.
Further, the reasons given are inadequate prenatal care, delivery in unsafe
conditions with inadequate facilities, and insufficient postnatal care and severe
anemia. Around 33% of women have below normal body mass index (BMI).
56.2% of pregnant women between the ages of 15 and 49 suffer from any form
of anemia according to NFHS 3, which has increased from 51.8% in NFHS 2.
Severe anemia is responsible for 9.2 percent of maternal deaths in India. There is
a negative correlation with the education, 60% of women who are illiterate are
anemic compared to 44.6% who have completed 12 or more years of education.

1
http://wikigender.org/index.php/Women_in_India:_Statistical_Indicators,_2007#Sex_ratio
46
Similarly looking at wealth index 64.3% anemic women fall under the lowest Women and Health
wealth index, compared to highest wealth index having 46.1% anemic women.

However, the positive aspect is that there is substantial increase in the antenatal
care. Utilisation of antenatal care services for the most recent birth among ever –
married women increased substantially over time, from 66 percent in NFHS-2
to 77 percent in NFHS -3. The rate of increase was higher in rural areas than in
the urban areas. 29.4% of tribal women have no antenatal care (NFHS 3).

The Millennium Development Goal 5 focuses on reducing the maternal mortality

ratio (MMR) by 75 percent between 1990 and 2015 and ensuring universal access
to reproductive health by 2015 (UN 2007). We have approached 2012 and still
far from this goal. These maternal deaths can be preventable, provided timely
pre and post natal care, and skilled birth attendance during delivery and emergency
obstetric care are available. Not just ensuring the medical services, accessible,
available, affordable it is necessary to ensure, good literacy, nutrition and working
opportunities to better their lives.

3.2.2 Inequities in Health Conditions across State, Caste, Rural-

Urban Distribution
India is the second most populated country in the world. It is also the most stratified
society on the lines of caste, class, religion, ethnicity, region and gender. Health
is also linked to development, so one can see health of women varies across
states, class, and caste groups. The rural and urban divide also influences health
of the women. On one hand the health indicator related to women and children
in Kerala are as good as any other developed countries and on the other hand the
health indicators in some EAG (empowered action group) states like, Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan are worse than Sub-Saharan
African countries. Some of the health indicators among the Scheduled Castes
groups are even worse than the Scheduled Tribes.

At all India level the maternal health indicators gives a very gloomy picture,
only 15% received all recommended types of antenatal care, only 38.7% of births
delivered in health facility, 46.6% deliveries assisted by health personnel and
41.2% deliveries with a postnatal check-up (NFHS survey- 2005-06). Caste /
tribe classification shows that the Scheduled Tribe women has highest levels of
anemia of 68.5%, SC having 58.3%, OBCs with 54.4% and others having 51.3%
(NFHS 3). The place of delivery is an important indicator to understand the
health of women. Between the age group of 20-49 years, 67.5% urban and only
28.9% rural women deliver in a health facility. Among the lowest wealth index,
only 12.7% deliver at the health facility compared to 83.7% highest wealth index.
The lowest 17.7% tribal women deliver at a health facility (NFHS 3). The reasons
for not delivering at health are varied. The most important is that 72.1% rural
and 69.6% urban women feel it is not necessary to deliver in health facility, for
26.9% rural and 21.5 urban it costs too much. For 11.8% rural women it is too
far or no transport. The other reasons being, non-functional, no-trust, no female
provider, husband/family did not allow, not customary. However all these are in
the single digit percent.

The social distance is much more serious and greater compared to geographical
distance. Millions of women in India lack the freedom to go out and seek medical
help. According to the second National Family Health Survey, (IIPS, 1998–1999),
47
Women in India and Some only 52 percent of women in India are ever consulted on decisions about their
Insights
own health. They resort to medical help only when the ailment is aggravated and
become serious. There is also a culture of silence, when it comes to reproductive
health problems, especially if it is a male doctor. It is more likely in rural context,
where women tries to seek health care and in the absence of female doctors or
functional health services in the reach may resort to local remedies or go untreated
and their by risking their own health.

3.3 WOMEN AND ILL HEALTH:

UNDERSTANDING THE CAUSAL FACTORS/
LINKAGES
3.3.1 Patriarchy
Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate
association with their oppressors. ~Evelyn Cunningham

Cunningham’s quote is apt for understanding patriarchy in the real sense. It is

ironical that women are most oppressed by men and they live in intimate
relationship with their oppressor. Health of the women has to be understood
within the concept of patriarchy.

Marcia Inhorn (1996) in her book Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural
Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt offer a general definition of
patriarchy that is multileveled and summarised as relations of relative power
and authority of males over females. These are learned through gender
socialisation within the family, manifested in both inter-and intra gender
interactions within the family and other interpersonal milieus, legitimised
through deeply engrained, pervasive ideologies of inherent male superiority
and heterosexist privilege and institutionalised on many social levels (legal,
political, economic, educational, religious, and so on).

Valentine Moghadam has written that under classic patriarchy, “the senior man
has authority over everyone else in the family, including younger men, and women
are subject to distinct forms of control and subordination” (Moghadam 2004, p.
141). Furthermore, property, residence, and descent all proceed exclusively
through the male line. Today, however, this definition may be considered an
overly simplistic description because the phenomenon has evolved substantially
over time.
As already mentioned, to varying degrees, patriarchy is nearly universally
prevalent. Although, as Gerda Lerner (1986) has noted, anthropologists have
found societies in which sexual differences are not associated with practices of
dominance or subordination, patriarchy does exist in the majority of societies.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead (1973, 48) too is of the opinion that “All the
claims so glibly made about societies ruled by women are nonsense. We have no
reason to believe that they ever existed......men everywhere have been in charge
of running the show. ... men have been the leaders in public affairs and the final
authorities at home.”
However, many scholars today hold that patriarchy is a social construction. Lerner
has written that there are indeed biological differences between men and women,
48
but “the values and implications based on [those differences] are the result of Women and Health
culture” (Lerner 1986, 6).

The existence of patriarchy may be traced back to ancient times. Lerner has
stated that the commodification of women’s sexual and reproductive capacity
emerged at about the same time as the development of private property, thus
setting the stage for patriarchal social structures. The sexual subordination of
women was subsequently written into the earliest system of laws, enforced by
the state, and secured by the cooperation of women through such means as “force,
economic dependency on the male head of the family, class privileges bestowed
upon conforming and dependent women of the upper classes, and the artificially
created division of women into respectable and not-respectable women” (Lerner
1986, 9).

Modern patriarchy is structural, meaning that it underlies the foundations of all

of society’s institutions. In most societies, any accomplishments in the direction
of gender equality must be made within a larger patriarchal structure. This is one
reason why women are at such a constant disadvantage socially, politically, and
economically. In the world today, the vast majority of leaders are men. Moreover,
Laura Bierema has noted that while women make up over half the workforce,
they fall far short of men in terms of pay, promotions, benefits, and other economic
rewards (Bierema 2003, 3).

Often, patriarchy is associated more strongly with nations characterised by

religious fundamentalism. Yet male domination and female subordination are
salient features of social structure in virtually all societies, regardless of the race,
ethnicity, class, or religion of the members. Most patriarchal societies have
adopted characteristics associated with male domination, namely, aggression and
power, as well as the consequences of these characteristics, ill health for women.

Resulting from patriarchy is the control of sexuality of women. Some of the

cultural, religious practices arising out to control and regulate women’s sexuality
are quite harmful for the health of women. In some societies of sub-Saharan
Africa, Arab, Malaysia, Indonesia, 80 millions girls and women living today
have undergone female circumcision, also called female genital mutilation (FGM).
These cultural practices are done on adolescent girls as ‘rites the passage’ and
also in order to control their sexuality which are brutal and painful. In some
states in USA, this practice has been banned and it is a punishable act under the
law. However, in other countries it still persists. There are serious health risks of
FGM, like infections, hemorrhage, damage to adjacent organs, scar tissue
formation, long term difficulties with menstruation, sexual intercourse and child
birth.

3.3.2 Poverty
Women constitute 70% of the world’s poor (UNDP 1995, 4). Under feminisation
of poverty, women are much poorer as compared to men world over. Poverty is
the underlying factor for poor health status for not just women but the whole
Indian population. Women’s low status, poverty and the reproductive risks add
to their morbidity conditions. As mentioned earlier girl child is discriminated
against boys for all the resources. Girls have higher malnutrition levels due to
the disproportionate distribution of food to them as compared to their male
counterpart.
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Women in India and Some A study in the Delhi slums revealed that 40 percent to 50 percent of the female
Insights
infants below the age of one year were malnourished. And in female children in
the age group 5–9, the rate of malnutrition increased to 70 percent (Mahbub ul
Haq Development Centre, 2000: 127). Child malnutrition depends not so much
on income or food availability as on the health care available to children and
women. Income poverty explains only about 10 percent of the variation in child
malnutrition (Mahbub ul Haq Development Centre, 2000)2 .

3.3.3 Gender
Under gender dimension it is pertinent to see how men’s and women’s life
circumstances affect their health status. Gender is socially and culturally
constructed and politico- economically situated. It is widely agreed that sex-
ratio is a powerful indicator of the social health of any society, it conveys a great
deal about the state of gender relations (Patel 2007). Worldwide, there are 43
million more men and boys than women and girls. According to Amartya Sen,
there are 32 million missing females in India. (Menon-Sen and Shiva Kumar,
2001:11). Sometimes it is not so much to do with poverty but gender
discrimination. It is seen that the sex ratio has been declining, especially in more
prosperous states like Punjab and Harayana (George and Dahiya 1998). The sex
selection is much more in better socio-economic background, the plush areas of
South Delhi has adverse child sex ration compared to East and West Delhi. In
rural Punjab, 21 percent of girls in poor families suffer severe malnutrition
compared to 3 percent of boys in the same families. Thus, sometimes poor boys
are better fed than rich girls (UNDP, 1995). It shows that the gender discrimination
is much more significant than poverty. The gender difference in seeking medical
help is quite obvious from the childhood. Medical help will be more likely to be
sought for boys compared to girls. UNDP (1995) reports this difference to be as
great as 10 percent. Other social factors like; early marriages, repeated pregnancies
further disadvantage women and leads to ill health as compared to men.

3.3.4 A Dozen Messages on Women’s Health

This subsection is based on the list of 157 ethnographies, where Marcia Inhorn
captured dozen most important thematic messages about the women’s health
(Inhorn 2007, 3). It is important to understand the wide range of spectrum in
which women’s health is captured in anthropological literature. However, the
dozen messages are given briefly and not elaborated.
1) The power to define women’s health: It is ironical that women’s health is
usually defined by others i.e., powerful biomedical and public health
establishments rather than women themselves. Numerous ethnographic
studies from around the globe document the fact that women themselves
rarely define their health problems in the same ways that the biomedical
community defines them (Inhorn 2007, p. 7).
2) The reproductive essentialisation of women’s lives: Women’s lives are still
essentially seen as reproducers. Child bearing and child rearing are seen as
the most important aspects of their lives and tie them to the realm of
reproduction, ignoring the other capabilities of women’s lives like work,
activism, leadership etc. 90% of what anthropologists have written in the
area of women’s health have focused on reproduction.
2
(http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Defining_Agenda_Poverty_Reduction/Vol_1/
50 chapter_23.pdf)
3) The cultural construction of women’s bodies: Lock (1993) provides evidence Women and Health
that the body itself is a cultural construction. Cultures construct the body
images and notions of beauty. Plumpness in one culture may be viewed as
beautiful and desirable and in other cultures it can be seen as obesity and
disliked. Recent anthropological literature has gone beyond reproduction
and there are excellent ethnographies on teenage dieting, breast
augmentation, plastic surgery, living with disability.

4) The increasing medicalisation of women’s lives: The normal stages of

women’s reproductive life cycle from menarche to menopause and most
important child birth have been pathologised. All the important stages of
transition or growing up phase, like menarche, child birth, menopause, aging
has been medicalised.

Medicalisation
Medicalisation is a social process through which a previously normal
human condition (behavioral, physiological or emotional) becomes a
medical problem in need of treatment under the jurisdiction of medical
professionals. The process of medicalisation is based on the biomedical
model of disease, one that sees behaviors, conditions, or illnesses “as a
direct result of malfunctions within the human body” (Beard 2010).

5) The increasing biomedical hegemony over women’s health: Italian social

theorist Antonio Gramsci (quoted in Inhorn 2007, 16) defines hegemony as
domination achieved through consent rather than force. In terms of
biomedical hegemony over women’s health, physicians rarely have forced
women to accept them as their primary medical practitioners, such consent
has come from women who have actively participated in this process of
medicalisation and have often demonstrated their desire for cutting edge
biomedical technologies, especially in western context. However, there is a
resistance and protest against harmful technologies and its impact on
women’s bodies.

6) The production of health by women: Ethnographers who study

ethnomedicines have documented the ways in which women around the
world ‘produce’ health, often through their formal and informal roles of
traditional healers and midwives. In medical anthropology the term
‘household production of health’ has been used to designate the ways in
which women of the household produce healthy families by countering
hegemony of biomedicine wither because they do not trust them or due to
inaccessibility (Inhorn 2007, p. 19). Van Hollen study in Tamilnadu Birth
on the Threshold: Childbirth and modernity in South India’ (2003) documents
the rituals related to pregnancy ‘cimantan’ to fulfill the desires of the pregnant
women and also gives ethnographic accounts of giving birth literally at
threshold.

7) The health demoting effects of patriarchy: Inhorn notes that whether it is

the ‘micropatriarchy’ of authoritarian doctor –patient relationship found in
many bio-medical settings or the ‘macropatriarchy’ of gender oppression
and its ill effects on women’s health, patriarchy has health demoting effects
on women. It can be seen in many ways, ‘missing girls’ undernutrition,
neglect, violence, abuse perpetrated against women. Elisabeth Croll’s (2000)
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Women in India and Some incisive ethnography Endangered Daughters: Discrimination and
Insights
Development in Asia, shows how the perceived benefits of sons and the
perceived disadvantages of daughters have led to cruel ‘culture of gender’
rife with both overt and covert daughter discrimination.

8) The intersectionality of race, class, gender (etc) in women’s health: There is

a need for exploring intersectionality of various forms of oppression in
women’s lives, based on gender, race, class, age, nation, religion, sexual
orientation, disability, or appearance (Schulz and mulling 2006, cited in
Inhorn 2007 p. 22). There are multiple forms of oppression that may intersect
in women’s lives. In Indian scenario, caste/ tribe is another major factor for
ill health among the women, discussed in the previous section.

9) The state intervenes in women’s health: State is the most powerful agents of
surveillance and control over its citizens. Indian state has been controlling
the population by having anti- natal policies, going in for coercive, targeted
family planning program (Rao 2004). This is one such intervention apart
from other interventions, like immunisation etc.

10) The politics of women’s health: Women’s bodies and health becomes the
site for overt and covert, micro and macropolitical struggle. Studies show
how women’s health is politicised and inturn there is health activism and
resistance. In Indian context, there are women’s groups, feminist writers,
public health activists who have been protesting and resisting coercive and
harmful contraceptive technologies.

11) The importance of women’s local moral worlds: Many women’s issues are
not just political but also moral in nature. Arthur Kleinman (1995: 27 cited
in Inhorn 2007: p. 27) highlights the notion of ‘local moral worlds’ shows
the importance of ‘moral accounts....of social participants in a local world
about what is at stake in everyday experience’. For women around the world
the local moralities, often religiously based, have major effects on women’s
health decision making, particularly when the moral stakes are high. Issues
related to abortion, assisted reproduction using third party donations in IVF
– sperms, eggs, embryos, uterus as in the case of surrogacy are prohibited as
per law or if there is a religious ban.

12) The importance of understanding women’s subjectivities: There is need to

understand women’s own subjectivities by listening to the narratives of
women on their subjective experiences of health and illness.

3.4 POLICIES AND PROGRAMS FOR IMPROVING

HEALTH OF WOMEN
There are various programs for improving the health of women by the central
government carried out by the state government. Two of them are given below.

3.4.1 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme

ICDS was launched on 2nd October 1975, today, ICDS Scheme represents one of
the world’s largest and most unique programs for early childhood development.
Though the objectives of ICDS Scheme is to improve the nutritional and health
52
status of children in the age-group 0-6 years, the services are also meant for Women and Health
lactating and pregnant woman. The services comprises of supplementary nutrition,
immunisation, health check-up, referral services, and nutrition & health
education3 . The pregnant and lactating women from the below poverty line
families are given supplementary food, iron and folic supplements and
immunisation at the Anganwadi centers.

3.4.2 Reproductive and Child Health Program

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India identified National
Institute of Health and Family Welfare, as National Nodal Agency for coordinating
the training under RCH 1, in December 1997. The second phase of RCH program
i.e. RCH II commenced from 1st April, 2005 till year 2010. The main objective
of the program was to bring about a change in mainly three critical health
indicators i.e. reducing total fertility rate, infant mortality rate and maternal
mortality rate with a view to realising the outcomes envisioned in the Millennium
Development Goals, the National Population Policy 2000, and the Tenth Plan
Document, the National Health Policy 2002 and Vision 2020 India.4

3.4.3 Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY)

The JSY is an Indian government-sponsored conditional cash transfer scheme to
reduce the numbers of maternal and neonatal deaths and increase health facility
deliveries in BPL families. JSY was launched by the Indian government as part
of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in 2005, in an effort to reduce
maternal and newborn deaths by increasing institutional deliveries. The JSY
covers all pregnant women belonging to households below the poverty line, above
19 years of age and up to two live births. The JSY integrates help in the form of
cash with antenatal care during pregnancy period, institutional care during delivery
as well as post-partum. This is provided by field level health workers through a
system of coordinated care and health centers. Benefits for institutional delivery
are more generous in rural areas and in low-performing states, ranging from
Rs.600 to Rs.1,400. A subsidy is also available to private sector providers for
emergency caesareans, on referral. The program also provides a cash incentive
to the health worker who supports the woman throughout her pregnancy and
accompanies her to the facility.

3.5 SUMMARY
Thus it can be summarised that India lags behind in ensuring healthy lives to its
women in spite of sustained economic growth. Secondly anthropologists
especially in India have a greater responsibility to understand women’s health
and possibly carry out applied research which will improve the health of the
women. There is a need to understand the subjective experiences of women’s
health from their own real life experiences. It is important to understand women’s
health with the interface and advancement in science and technology, opening
new avenues for reproductive technologies and the practice of surrogacy in today’s
globalised world. I would like to end this unit with a very meaningful quote by
none other than famous anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man. ~Margaret Mead
3
http://wcd.nic.in/icds.htm accessed on 3 March 2012
4
http://www.mohfw.nic.in/NRHM/RCH/Index.htm 53
Women in India and Some References
Insights
Bierema, Laura L. 2003. “The Role of Gender Consciousness in Challenging
Patriarchy”. International Journal of Lifelong Education 22: 3–12.

Croll, Elisabeth. 2002. Endangered Daughters: Discrimination and Development

in Asia. New York: Routledge.

Dudgeon, Matthew R. and Marcia C. Inhorn. 2004. “Men’s Influences on

Women’s Reproductive Health: Medical Anthropological Perspectives”. Social
Science and Medicine, Vol. 39, No. 9, pp. 1303-1314

Guarneri, Christine and Dudley L. Poston, Jr. 2008. “Patriarchy”. International

Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol 6. Second Edition. Pp. 173-174. William
A. Darity (Ed.). Detroit, MI: Macmillan.

Inhorn, Marcia. 1996. Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender
and Family Life in Egypt. USA: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.

Inhorn, Marcia C. 2006. “Defining Women’s Health: A Dozen Messages from

more than 150 Ethnographies” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Vol. 20, No. 3
pp. 345-378.

Inhorn Marcia. 2007. Reproductive Disruptions. New York: Berhahn Books.

Lerner, Gerda. 1986. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Lock Margaret. 1993. Encountering with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in
Japan and North America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Mead, Margaret. 1973. “Review of Sex and Temperament in Three Privative
Societies”. Redbook: 48.
Meade, Teresa, and Pamela Haag. 1998. “Persistent Patriarchy: Ghost or
Reality?”. Radical History Review. 71: 91–95.
Moghadam, Valentine M. 2004. “Patriarchy in Transition: Women and the
Changing Family in the Middle East”. Journal of Comparative Family
Studies. 35: 137–162.
Patel, Tulsi. 2007. Sex–selective Abortion in India: Gender, Society and New
Reproductive Technologies. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Pateman, Carole. 1989. “God Hath Ordained to Man a Helper: Hobbes, Patriarchy,
and Conjugal Right”. British Journal of Political Science. 19: 445–463.
Rao, Mohan. 2004. From Population Control to Reproductive Health: Malthusian
Arithmetic. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Sabu, George and Ranbir S. Dahiya. 1998. “Female Feticide in Rural Haryana”.
Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 33, No. 32.
United Nations Development Programme. 1995. Human Development Report
1995. New York: Oxford University Press.

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United Nations. 1995. Population and Development, Vol. 1: Programme of Action. Women and Health
Adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development: Cairo:
5-13 September 1994. New York: Department of Economic and Social
Information and Policy Analysis, United Nations.

Van Hollen, Celia. 2003. Birth at the Threshold: Child Birth and Modernity in
South India. California: University of California Press.

World Bank. 1993. Investing in Health: World Development Report. New York:
Oxford University Press.

Website Links
Beard, Ren. “Medicalization of Aging.” Encyclopedia of Aging. 2002. http://
www.encyclopedia.com

Office of Registrar General. India. 2011. http://censusindia.gov.in/vital_statistics/

SRS_Bulletins/MMR_release_070711.pdf
United Nations. Millennium Development Goals Report. 2007.
www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/mdg2007.pdf
World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank. 2007. Maternal
Mortality in 2005. www.who.int/whosis/mme_2005.pdf 5

World Health Organization. 2002. WHO Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2002
Estimates (Revised).
www.who.int/healthinfo/bodestimates/en/

Suggested Reading
Lingam, Lakshmi (ed). 1998. Understanding Women’s Health Issues: A Reader.
New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Pal, Manoranjan, Bholanath Ghosh and Premananda Bharati. 2009. Gender and
Discrimination: Health, Nutritional Status, and Role of Women in India. USA:
Oxford University Press

Sample Questions
1) Women’s health in India is precarious. Substantiate your answer with the
morbidity and mortality indicators.
2) Patriarchy has demoting health effects. Discuss how it manifests in social
practice of female foeticide and gender discrimination.
3) What the one dozen messages pertaining to women’s health as drawn by
Marcia Inhorn?
4) What are the efforts made by the Indian government to improve the health
conditions of women?

55