An in-depth look at the plight of Indian women and the belated signs of a new awakening
Indian women in any avatar remain victims. They are the primary underdogs of an exploitative society where the law of the jungle persists: the more powerful thrive at the expense of the less powerful. That law, since time immemorial, has put men before women.
The Government, and society, have traditionally adopted a patronising attitude - "it would be nice to include women in education, employment, etc". For years, women's issues have been viewed as a "social welfare" problem to be treated with appendage solutions. Statistics, however, reveal that such a distorted perspective will cost the nation dearly.
Now at last, as India enters the last two decades of this century, Indian women are beginning to stir. Dowry deaths have shocked them out of their placid stoicism. Unchecked assaults on their bodies have appalled them. Rising political consciousness has emboldened a growing number, and a fertile political milieu has brought them out into the streets to protest against their degradation.
Awakening: For Indian society, the protests over rape, the angry morchas against dowry, the rising clamour for equality in jobs, in law, in education and in the eyes of society, are only the nascent awakening of a struggle. Yet, as it gathers momentum, it spells a time for reckoning.
For it is not just the dowry deaths, the young women sacrificed at the altar of avarice, or the rapes reported daily with sickening regularity. The energy to protest comes from a deeper urge to stand up, to rebel against a social calcification of centuries, from a force which, if it attains its full potential, can transform society no less fundamentally than a revolution.
In western countries, the women's question is mostly one of identity, job equality and sexual roles. (Who will do the dishes, who will change the nappies, who will bring home a bigger pay packet?). In India, the question is simply one of stark survival. The statistics are startling:
- Infant mortality among females continues to remain higher than among males. In 1969, 70 per 1,000 female infants perished as compared to 58 per 1,000 male infants, which means about 75,000 more female infants died than male infants.
- Literacy among women in India is even more depressing. According to the independent Washington-based Population Reference Bureau, which UN agencies consult, the percentage of Indian girls enrolled in schools (in the 6-11 age group) in 1975 was 49 per cent as compared to 73 per cent for boys. The figures for the 12-17 age group, i.e. high school, were an abysmal 19 per cent for women as compared to 36 per cent for men.
- The percentage of Indian women employed in the labour force in the organised sector has dropped dramatically, from 34.44 per cent in 1911, to 31.53 per cent in 1961, to 17.35 per cent in 1971, according to the 1975 report of the National Committee on the Status of Women. Obviously, fewer employers are giving jobs to women. During the decade 1961-71, the male and female populations rose 24 to 25 per cent. Though the number of men workers rose by 15.2 per cent, the number of women workers actually declined by 41.4 per cent.
- Crimes against women have soared. More than 4,000 cases of rape were reported last year, i.e. 12 rapes a day, or one every two hours. In 1975, 3,526 cases were reported. Social workers, however, estimate that rape is far more widespread: possibly one out of 20 cases is actually reported, the rest being smothered due to social pressure. The number of dowry deaths, molestation and eve-teasing cases registered have also spiralled alarmingly in the past year.
A mere 2.5 per cent of the Central Government's 1.87 million employees are women. The Government has traditionally displayed a glaringly insensitive attitude towards women. Constitutionally, women are considered to be on par with their male counterparts - subsequently, there are no special allocations for women in the annual budgetary exercises.
In reality, however, this invariably produces a negative effect. The Planning Commission, for instance, has identified education, health and welfare as areas for women's development. And yet, the proportional allocation for these programmes has been steadily declining and has dropped from 24.1 per cent in the First Plan to a mere 11.17 per cent in the Fifth Plan.
- Summing up this alarming mass of data is the final climactic statistic: higher infant mortality, lower life expectancy and fewer births for females as compared with males has reduced the proportion of women in India's population. Over 70 years, the number of females for every 1,000 males has declined sharply from 972 in 1901 to 930 in 1971. In 1901, there were only 4 million more males than females in India, but by 1980 the male population exceeded the female population by 25 million.
Women's Status: In plain economics, this means that as the struggle for resources intensifies, with rising population and an inequitable rise in income, women are the first to bear the brunt. Social worker Tara Ali Baig, now president of the International Union of Child Welfare, agrees: "In any home, where financial compromises are to be made, it's the women who are compromised against. They are the first ones to be axed in any crisis situation." In a recent study on child welfare, she outlines the popular male-female myth in relation to the family situation. It works something like this:
- You can only trust your own kith and kin: you must, therefore, have enough children to compensate for deaths which will inevitably occur;
- You must have sons to look after you in your old age;
- The mother must feed her child until the age of three, till which age he hardly needs clothes, and consequently needs nothing;
- By eight or 10, the child can help the family and add to the family income. By 10, girl children can be married off, which removes one economic burden;
- If a wife dies from a combination of malnutrition and excessive childbirth, it is always possible to get another wife.
It is clear that the "New Woman" propagated by feminists and the media is a myth and as Shyam Benegal commented to India Today, "Women are now playing two roles - one of the traditional housewife and the other, more recent one of being a number two wage packet." She is a threat to the beliefs of the society. Tradition functions as a buffer against every social trauma. Changing life-styles question this, more so as the woman is playing an important role in the re-alignment.
Varied Problems: For sociologists, it is an intriguing period. With many forces at work, questions are being raised and roles are being examined. At each economic level, the problems are different. The alienation between the classes is well illustrated by writer Ismat Chugtai, who said: "These women's organisations are doing nothing. I know in Bombay one of these groups tried to rehabilitate prostitutes. They were thrown out by the prostitutes who said. 'You go and sleep with ministers to get promotions for your husbands. At least we are honest.'"
The problems for urban working women are not small. First, to land a job at all is difficult enough. Quite clearly, there is a sharp demarcation in the job market between those jobs meant for women and those for men. Sexual harassment on the job, discrimination in transfers and promotions and a general contempt are some of the issues most women have to deal with.
The last to be hired, they are also the first to be fired. Since her pay packet is considered only pocket money and secondary to her husband's, there is no sympathy when a women loses her job. There are only a few women like Dolly Thakore, television commentator, who can say, "I am an independent woman and I speak from a position of confidence. I wouldn't be dependent on a man for anything. I don't live off people."
For women of lower income groups and in rural areas, the problems are phenomenal and there are no easy answers. To Lajjo, 30 years old and mother of seven children, "The women's condition is a question of two rotis." Her own situation is so inextricably intertwined with her husband's economic condition, that questions such as why she is being paid half of her husband's salary for the same amount of work on a construction site or why she has to manage all the housework alone after working outside all day, become semantic - only to be considered as finer points in living.
Despite the double duties they are forced to perform, the traditional male mind may still consider them dispensable. Whether he takes another wife, or turns blatantly predatory or adulterous, the psychological assault is redoubled. In terms of maternal mortality alone. India features highest among the countries of the world. It is estimated that for every 100,000 children born in India each year, 573 mothers die in childbirth. About 20 times as many suffer from severe complications as a result of repeated childbirth.
But statistical indicators are merely portents. They are by no means a summation of the stagnating role of Indian women, just as the strident feminist organisations campaigning against rape and dowry deaths in the cities, tend to highlight the fever but not the disease. Just as Madhu Kishwar editor of Manushi says: "I feel angry ... there is provocation all over, from the mass media on the streets, at work. If you live, breathe feminism then it's really a hard struggle ..." The commonest, most widespread, and deep-rooted assaults against women are psychological.
The female psyche is brutalised long before the bodily outrage occurs. New Delhi-based psychologist Sudhir Kakar, whose widely-quoted study The Inner World interprets Hindu traditions and myths in Western psycho-analytic thought, dispels the notion that urban, educated Indian women are necessarily advanced or advantaged.
It is right from the cradle that the brainwashing begins. Bangles and anklets which communicate the fragility that is incapable of doing anything strenuous are put on the poorest of babies. They might as well be handcuffs. A devastating Hindi saying spells out a father's attitude, "A girl in the home is like spit on the ground: once spat it cannot be taken back into the mouth, any more than a girl can be taken back into her own family."
Each girl lives, waiting only for the time when she will go to her "real" home and it is crucial for her survival to behave exactly as ordained, to be accepted there. There is just no going back.
Infanticide: As in some grotesque rewrite of Shakespeare's stages of man, this central idea stubbornly pervades the lives of women from birth to death. The arrival of a daughter means gloom even in the most enlightened families. It is a time for consolations for the mother, often cloaked with, "A Laxmi has arrived." There can be little hope for girls if their arrival in this world brings no happiness to their parents. An 80-year-old woman, when asked what it was like when her daughter was born recalled, "It was like a funeral."
This traditional anti-girl feeling is tragically translated in the statistics. It is not uncommon today to hear of abandoned babies in city drains, in a jungle or outside a temple or foundling home. For every baby boy abandoned, there are five baby girls. Experienced nurses in public hospitals report that the desire to get rid of girl babies is so strong that some mothers have to be forced to feed them. Sometimes it even drives parents to commit infanticide on female babies.
Women's Education: The feeling of being second class begins to be recognised in earnest as girls go to school. Although the female literacy rate has increased from 0.69 per cent in 1901 to 18.4 per cent in 1971, the number of illiterate women has also increased from 161.1 million in 1950-51 to 215.3 million in 1970-71. The comparable figures for illiterate males are 139.9 million and 172 million. With education so closely interlinked with employment, these figures are dismal in any context.
For the majority living below subsistence level, poverty is the predominant factor that governs the attitude towards education. The major reasons which stand in the way of girls' education are inadequacy of facilities, distances of schools, irrelevance of the content of education and most important of all, the fear of the alienation of girls from their environment as a result of education.
Significantly, school enrolment figures between the ages of 12 and 17 drop from 49 to 19 per cent, and marriage between the ages of 15 and 19 shoots up to 56 per cent. Parents are simply not willing to make the same investment for a girl as they would for a boy. Either the girl is married off or diverted into household chores and taking care of younger siblings or earning her livelihood outside.
According to a report by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (Icssr), a large number of girls are working in bidi factories and supporting sick parents and young siblings from their entire earnings. The Icssr also found that girls constitute a higher proportion of the unpaid family workers throughout the country and that has to be a major reason for their exclusion from schools. There is strong social restriction on girls continuing their studies after marriage with the prevalent attitude, "Why does she need any more education now that she is married?"
More than any other issue, women's organisations have been galvanised by the rising curve of assaults on women to demand the death penalty for rapists. But the Government has prevaricated. Said Vasant Sathe, the urbane minister of Information and Broadcasting: "The media is blowing these stories (of rape) out of proportion." Delhi Police Commissioner P. S. Bhinder adds his weight to the inertia: "Rape is not a national issue."
Women have to deal with these attitudes as well as age-old myths, such as, "No woman can be raped unless she wants it," or "Dressed like that she was asking for it." These myths have to have been coined and propagated by men, for every woman knows none of these are true. No woman could possibly want it, because in India rape is tantamount to death. None of these myths stand up to the fact that a large number of rapes are committed on very young girls or old women.
Politicising Rape: Says feminist writer, Rami Chhabra, "Rape has now become a political issue with every political leader jumping onto the bandwagon. The statistics are being distorted and all this is bound to boomerang on women eventually." On the other hand, New Delhi law teacher, Lotika Sarkar declares: "I don't care if politicians jump onto the bandwagon as long as the issue is dealt with."
She further elaborated that far more strict punishment was necessary for rape as well as eve-teasing. "The word 'eve-teasing' should be changed to assault because it does not communicate the seriousness of the situation," said Sarkar. Any woman who has caught a bus in India knows how true that statement is.
And Indian women cannot even turn to the law courts for redress. The rape law is virtually impossible to implement. Despite the existing legislation which protects women's rights, legal redress is seldom sought by women, not only because of the notoriously long-winded legal procedures, but also because their social and economic status prevents it.
Dowry Deaths: The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, is no better. It bans the practice in letter, but in reality all the law does is to recognise that the problem exists. It is virtually unheard of for a husband or his family to be sued for insisting on taking dowry.
If anything, demands for dowry have escalated over the years along with dowry deaths. If justice does not take its course when murder is committed, the families of brides can hardly be expected to find succour when confronted with demands which could range from cows, to cars, to straight cash to build a house.
This lack of respect because she is a female haunts women through their lives. No matter how hard they might labour, women are still derided for being "weak" and "emotional" - too weak to take decisions, too weak to stand on their own, beholden and dependent on men for their survival.
And, if, at the end of their lives, they should happen to be left widowed, their lives come full circle. India might have come a long way from sati, but certainly not far enough. When women go to their husbands, they go with the price tag of their dowry tied prominently to their trousseau.
But if they should lose their husbands, at whatever age, they are banished to a life of total isolation. Traditionally they are considered inauspicious. In some castes widows are not even allowed to attend religious functions. Remarriage is still unheard of and considered a desecration of the husband's memory.
Employed Women: Nowhere is the ineffectiveness of women's capacities more evident than in the steady degradation of their economic status. Sociologists have come to regard the escalation of social pressures on women as a direct result of their economic downgrading.
Between 1951 and 1971 the number of women in the agricultural sector declined from 31 million to 25 million. In the non-agricultural sector, women workers declined (in the same period) from 9.3 million to 6.2 million.
The number of men workers increased by 27 per cent while women suffered a decline of 12 per cent. Yet another statistic reveals that the Government, despite paying lip-service to equality, remains a major offender in employing few women in Government departments. The Central Government employs only 47,000 women out of a total work force of 1.87 million that is, less than 2.5 per cent. Being the country's biggest employer, the Government has become the biggest offender in ignoring the potential of half the nation's work force.
Feminist activist Rami Chhabra says: "While we helped Mrs Gandhi get into power, we have done nothing to make her more aware of the women's condition." The few women in powerful positions conceal rather than reflect the status of women. So far removed are these women from the day-to-day problems of average women that they are unable to translate women's difficulties into national policies.
The Icssr survey, as well as the National Committee report feel that the disparity in employment of women can only be bridged if:
- A system of quotas or job reservations in organised industries and services be introduced as a short-term measure.
- The Equal Remunerations Act, which seeks to ensure that women are paid wages on par with men, is effectively implemented.
- Women's organisations are mobilised to safeguard their interests and ensure employment.
- And maternity, health and child-care facilities are provided for working women.
What the reports, committees, and feminist organisations seek is not lowering of pressures on the working women, but raised employment opportunities. In effect, that means increased utilisation of the female work force in the country. If that occurs, would it release women from the combined burdens of enforced child-bearing, inescapable domestic labour, and the countless social taboos that prevent their contribution in development? At the rate things are going, it would seem not.
Women are likely to remain the easiest and most widely accepted form of bonded labour available. Till the barriers of tradition are torn down and, like their western counterparts, they can organise themselves into a powerful political lobby waging single-minded war, their condition is unlikely to improve. Either way, the prospects are portentous.
If Indian women are unable to find a voice, unable to distinguish between slavery and survival, their social imprisonment will slowly harden and corrode the fabric of society till it is dragged into a morass. Yet, the odds are mounting so rapidly that there is only one viable road for them - to stand up and light. Whether they can, or more important, are allowed to, will determine the difference between life and death for Indian society.