This book gives a sense of how far the Indian society has come in reworking its ideas on gender and also shows how some areas are still in need of urgent attention, says TINA DAS
In contemporary India, gender has become a point of discussion not just in the sphere of academia, but also in media, and coffee houses as well as dinner tables. While spilling over of discussions is a step in the right direction, there remains a truth that cannot be wished away — discrimination and inequality based on one’s gender. Gender: Discrimination and Inequality in Contemporary India is a collection of essays edited by Jaya Shrivastava, which takes a look at how gender is constructed, performed, and censored in India.
Shiv Kumar Yadav’s essay, ‘Gender Discrimination and Inequalities: Status, Causes and Solutions’, is a succinct summary of the issues that plague women. Yadav draws mostly from literature, and dwells on the nature of a woman’s role as described in prominent texts. Women have been generally regarded, even in religious texts, and in texts of literary prominence, as second class citizens and those who must submit to their assigned male counterparts to hope for any growth and development. The essay is an attempt to locate how power is generated and distributed through one of the most powerful tools of knowledge, books.
Nikhil Kumar along with Mukesh Bharti and Preeti Misra take the arguments forward through their exploration of sexual minorities, and Nikhil Kumar takes a look at the philosophical aspect of discrimination based along the lines of gender.
Society is an undeniable and powerful force that reaffirms and censors gender roles. Ritu Agarwal and Anuja, in their respective research, give us a glimpse of how society frames discriminatory practices against a gender, particularly women, and validates it through repetition, and the threat of punishment and social exclusion.
The growing debate on Triple Talaq, along with an opening up of voices of Indian Muslim women, avenues have opened up for critically analysing the arena of marriage and the autonomy of women within it. Added to it is the dimension of technology, minutely assessed by Faisal Akhtar and Asif Akhtar Khan in ‘Gender Inequality and Mobile Phones: Problems and Conclusions for Developing Nations’.
In India, property and women have always shared an uneasy relationship. From ownership to occupation and labour, women have had to negotiate serpentine paths to stake a claim in property. As the global economy spreads out its vast and intricate net, an increasing number of women have joined the workforce. However, as the section on economy in the text points out, that is just tip of the iceberg. While opportunities for women might have increased in number, a glaring lack of awareness and access to equal pay continue to plague female workers across disciplines.
Along with a gender-oriented gap in pay, there are also multiples cases of sexual harassment, both documented and undocumented, that continue to hound not just women, but anyone who does not identify with the binary of male or female. While protests have existed in India from a long time, the nature and demands of the same have undergone massive change over the years.
From physical marches to online protests, the very nature of expressing dissent and registering protest have shifted with the rise in technology and the globalisation of economy and lives.
However, a personal favourite from the eclectic collection is possibly the take on Khabar Lahariya, a rural media project by certain women of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Neelu Sharma and Gopal Singh provide an insight into how protests in the era of online dissemination of information function at the grassroots. Run by a group of rural women journalists, Khabar Lahariya originated from Bundelkhand, a place plagued with caste and gender based violence, low literacy rates, and poverty. With a readership of 80,000 people comprising mostly of people from rural and semi-rural areas, the platform provides access to the world.
The collection is definitely a bird’s eye view of the current socio-cultural and political scenario in a country that has struggled with maintaining a healthy sex ratio in most of its States even today. While they do provide an insight into numerous areas, like Government funds for women and minorities, to the public health services, brought to the forefront in recent times by movies like Pad Man and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, a lot still remains to be written about. The essays have looked at specific communities and geographical locations, and yet, various areas, like that of North-Eastern India or parts of South India have not been explored. The thrust of the research is concentrated along parts of North and Central India.
The book might have made inroads into certain areas, but it would be best to say that most of the research is still at a nascent stage. Be it the case study of mobile phones or the history of women’s movements in India, a need for further investigation with a bigger sample size is required.