It was four in the morning and a white beam of street light was at my window. I was thinking about the condition of women in my country. I was born in Uttar Pradesh and am currently studying in Haryana, and these cultures are known to be misogynistic. Elements of patriarchy prevail in both the states. Being a university student, I am aware of the social system around me, but still, some experiences urged me to ponder over our society that morning. In this article, I am trying to theoretically reflect upon the social evils that women have to face in their lives.
First Story
One year ago, I visited a girls’ high school in Haryana, where the Principal told me that the girls in their school are so immoral that they are indulge in unethical relationships and internet activities. That is the primary reason of their distraction from studies. Such reductionist views are common for women in our society. Writer Pandita Ramabai addressed a similar reductionist view in her classic text The High Caste Hindu Woman (1887). In this book, many girls reply affirmatively for marriage. There are gorgeous dresses, sweet things to eat, decoration and music in marriage and everyone is being caring and fun.
What can be more tempting to a child’s mind than these?, Ramabai asks in the book. She has presented in the text that a female child is unwanted by parents and society. They experience deprivation in terms of food, care, love and education. That’s why, marriage is just an instrument to have love and attention that is, of course, temporary. Similarly, to understand the reality of the fact that this school Principal had shared, I moved to understand the social landscape of these high school girls.
It is not the consciousness that defines life, it is life that defines consciousness (Karl Marx).
The girls in the school were not allowed to celebrate Holi in the hostel due to exams. They didn’t have any special meal in the mess, said by one high school girl. “I am missing my family because I haven’t met them for months,” said another girl from the school, with a careworn face. A while later, a girl with a hopeless face asked me for my mobile phone to call her home.
I shall never forget that sorrowful scene I witnessed there. I also wanted to ask the same question to all: when their life is ghettoised on the school campus, isn’t internet a medium through which to feel happy or enjoy? Instead of giving superficial verdicts upon these girls, why doesn’t the school authority work up on the factors that play a role in the development of the self of these girls? Whatever one choose to consume on the internet or anywhere in life is completely depend upon their philosophy of self. The ‘self’ is an identity that develops through our lives. American sociologist and interactionist thinker Charles Horton Cooler gave the phrase ‘looking-glass self’ to emphasise that the self is a product of our social interaction.
Second Story
Due to Covid-19, I had to come back to my hometown in UP, when one day I heard, “You should arrange my marriage with an illiterate woman so that she will work even after I beat her,” a husband told his mother about his eight-month pregnant wife. On the other hand, I started ruminating about the whole family’s approach to care and anxiety towards the pregnant woman. In the famous text The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx explain the linkage between family and women.
Human lives develop from simple to complex (Herbert Spencer). Earlier, they human beings used to live a nomadic life, wandering from place to place in search of food. Then they learnt how to grow crops and began raising animals to solve day-to-day problems of food. This society is also called a hunting and gathering society.
Then, after meeting their daily needs of food, humans started to store and use surplus food. Be it animals, tools for farming or crop production, all these need a stable home and a person to gather them. This is how human beings started living in a stable environment called a home and women fell into the household task. “And once the production of these goods accelerated the communistic nature of society changed, fights between groups become common, as they fought over resources (V Geeta).”
Those who have less or zero resources in their lives depend upon those who have more resources. This created what Engels called ‘first division of society into two classes’ — masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. A consequence of this fact was the development of a new pattern in the relationship of male and female. Resources became more important and it seemed that only the process of production, which is done my males, could result in more resources. Thus, it led to the devaluation of household labour.
This growing significance of resources in that epoch led to the emergence of a new institution called ‘private property’. Men who were being looked at as the only creator of private property wished to keep all with them. “Private property was not only land, tools, animals, grain but also a woman (V. Geeta).” It’s not a secret to us, though many a times, we have all raised the question at various levels of life of why women are a property. Due to the merit of private property in a complex society, control and anxiety towards the agency of women, especially her body, increases.
This became a central concern in society because a woman’s chastity is linked to procreation and a private property owner wants to keep their property within their family only. Secondly, each male desires to have a son as there is no place in heaven for a man who is destitute of a male offspring (Manu). But it raises one question: is a woman just a means to an end? A wonderful writer emphasises this point in her writing. I shall argue that the capabilities in question should be pursued for each and every person, treating each as an end and none as a mere tool of the end of others, said Martha C Nussbaum (2000).