Breaking the nexus of male privilege is essential to women’s existence, says Dr Shweta Singh
The recent spate of violence against women being reported in the news makes it sound like a new occurrence. In media, the ideas of womanhood and empowerment are unrealistic and likely to create an unrealistic assessment of women’s access to public space. Whereas, womanhood is not much of contested space in Indian small towns, cities and villages. Unlike metropolitan areas, like Mumbai and Delhi, where at least intellectually, the disparate identities and contentious spaces are hallmarks of ‘modernising’ societies. Yet in both, class continues to determine parameters of womanhood; more so than caste or religion. Class, though, is complex to decipher (like any other sociological construct). Education and employment interact with family resources to predict class as a status for women but not the quality of life.
The quality of life varies for women who are working and earning a wage. In the same way, women who work inside the household see differential returns and recognition of their labour ranging from being taken for granted, to appreciation and applause. Unfortunately, these nuances of distinction in women’s lives have been subjected more to an outsider-gaze than an inward-looking exercise, at least in social policy. The ‘western’ sensitivity and sensibility has focused mostly on the inequity in gender relation measured through resource consumption or categorising the social systems within which they are embedded. The stereotyping alienates, drawing an odd, unrelatable picture of women and their communities. In comparison, local writing using local languages represents women and their concerns — violence, drudgery, and aspirations for self and family — starkly, without theorising much. So, they also don’t lend themselves to the policy drafting board, too well.
Womanhood practise is a grouped norm. The so-called ‘modern’ norms are circulated by activism and feminism and social organising but remain confined to women in colleges or women in social work type of fields. But by their very nature, the activist, or the feminist, or the socially organised woman is different from the women living a life embedded in relationships. The so-called ‘traditional’ women are spread within families and communities and other ‘institutions of belonging’. Even though democratic systems are the most conducive to all forms of expressions of identity, some womanhood ideals gain more visibility. But they lack followers and so don’t impact policy. That is why it is even more important to identify the commonalities in women’s dreams and goals in a fast-changing Indian context.
The most important aspect of this common cause search in policy must begin within the functionality of women. It must be the exercise of rights and responsibilities by women in urban, rural, or in between spaces, keeping the context within which they operate daily. This context is impacted by women’s perceived sense of freedom, mobility, social support and utility. The first cause for policy advocacy is therefore access to public spaces. Women expect and need to feel safe and have zero restrictions on their mobility while out of the house whether it is to go to school, to till the land early in the morning at a farm or to sit behind a desk at a call centre at night…or to visit places of worship or entertainment, to run chores like buying household essentials at the kirana shop or to window shop at the mall. Whether it is mobility by train, or bus or their two-wheelers — women should be able to go wherever at whatever time. This mobility is a function of perceived safety and freedom as well as safety from violence and freedom from judgement.
The take-home from Nirbhaya event in Delhi was that women had experienced the lack of safety in Delhi across classes — women labourers, college students, older women, little girls in swanky homes or slums — were unsafe and at risk of sexual violence. While the perpetrators of violence could be men of any class — poor immigrant workers riding a bus at night or sleek imported car-owning sons of rich elites. Rates of violence against women are increasing, underreported and prosecution of perpetrators remains unpredictable. The complexity here is again that of status. The affiliation of perpetrators and criminals to a higher class or political parties or power centres (police, advocates, judges) in criminal justice systems modifies the process of justice and slows their conviction. Breaking this nexus of privilege is essential to women’s very existence. Women can impact their locational reality or everyday life if they become a force on the local structure, local process, and national policy.
(The author is a policy analyst, author and coach.)