Gendercide

An Islamic high court in northern Nigeria rejected an appeal yesterday by a single mother sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex out of wedlock.

Clutching her baby daughter, Amina Lawal burst into tears as the judge delivered the ruling.

– The Independent, 20 August 2002

In the 19th century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

70 percent of the world’s poor are women. In a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and driven by fundamentalism and chaos. Many of them can neither read nor write. Deeply-rooted cultural and social traditions are largely to blame for the grim condition of women across the world. Education, income generation and healthcare for women are some of the central concerns of the United Nations Millennium Goals. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. But many complain these issues have not been sufficiently addressed.

Traditionally, the status of women was seen as a “soft” issue — worthy but marginal. The international press roared when the students were murdered at Tiananmen Square, however, no mention was found of the report published the next year stating that 39000 Chinese baby girls died annually as parents did not give them proper medical care and attention as boys received. Those Chinese girls never received any mention in the press, which makes us wonder if the journalistic endeavor of the media is skewed towards patriarchy?

In India, a bride is burnt every two hours to punish her due to inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so that her husband can remarry. When a terrorist is captured, media finds “Breaking News”, but when 100, 000 girls are deported to a brothel, it is not considered as news. 

Noble laureate Amartya Sen has calculated that 100 million women are missing from world today.  He argues that overall there are more women than men as women live longer than men. But in areas where there exist deep rooted gender inequality, the sex ratio is absolutely skewed.

More women are missing from world today. The reason is because they are women. one reason for this is that girls do not get adequate healthcare and food as boys. In India, girls within the age group of 1 to 5 years are 50% more likely to die than boys, and the reason is that girls are only taken for medical care when the illness is “serious”.

Statistics shows that in 20th century more girls and women have gone missing than men who died in all the battles of the century. Interestingly, the routine gendercide has killed more women than the number of people killed in the genocide of 20th century.

Gender  discrimination is one of the least important problem that women face today. Women are the modern slaves who are caught in brothels, and regularly beaten and sedated and fed just enough to live. ILO figures show, 12.3 million women are engaged in forced labor and usually in sexual servitude. India is one such country which has more modern slaves than any other country.

The question is what is more important – free trade, global warming, or the safety of women? What can be done to make the girls and women in our society safe? Discrimination, equality, wage differential etc. are utopian words for women who struggle for their basic physiological and safety needs. Its time that hollow words should be replaced by concrete action.

Purdah Among Hindu Women

Married in a conservative family, I have always wondered at the numerous rules that a woman has to follow in my husband’s family. Here I must confess, though to my taste, his family is more conservative than the society that I come from, but they are one of the most radical families in their society. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not criticizing anyone. You see, first time I saw my mother-in-law, otherwise an independent woman who brought up three children singlehandedly, to do purdah in from of someone, I felt aghast. My head spun and said, "This is twenty-first century man!” Well I had no right to react that way, even if it was confined in my head. I must have realized that my mother-in-law was bound by custom she was brought up with, something she has been discoursed to do.

Yes, purdah is still followed in Hindu families in northern parts of India. Though it was not originally a Hindu rule, but was adopted by the Hindu middle and upper class during the Mughal and British rule, in order to upgrade their position in the social hierarchy. The purdah (veil) system amongst Hindu women in some parts of Northern India originated during Mughal rule, to protect local women from Mughal invaders and now that India is a free country women should abandon the veil and get educated. So many classes amongst the Hindus adopted an Islamic tradition of purdah and Victorian tradition of chastity of women, to elevate their social position.

The origin of the purdah is not actually relevant. The point is that the purdah system exists only in parts of north India today, not in the west, south or the east. Even if some ‘medieval’ practices such as these did exist in these parts, it is clear that time diluted them … except in north India. Why? Obviously it is north India which bore the brunt of the attacks of various invaders throughout history and it is an indisputable fact that during war and foreign rule, women are often raped and kidnapped. That is why the system did not vanish in parts of north India, in fact it has become ingrained in some communities. Women are kept cloistered and denied an education.

Certainly, in the north-eastern parts of India and say Kerala, which were areas far far away from the invading armies, the status of women continued to improve. So really, it is a historical fact that the invading armies of the Turks, Arabs, the Mughals and the Victorian values the British brought in had something to do with the purdah system in north India.

But the question that is relevant today is why do women today still follow such custom? Evidently this is a very demeaning custom for women where their movement and expression are restricted due to the very use of a veil. From what I saw in my husband’s village and society, it is more of a custom that women want other women to follow. You see I was actually asked to do purdah in front of older men of the household as a sign of respect, whereas I do not have to follow the custom while I’m in front of my father-in-law. My sister-in-law must have a scarf or dupatta over her head when in front of her in-laws. My mother-in-law does purdah from elders from her village. this is so because they have been brought up to do it and have been constructed to do it. I, on the other hand, though not constructed to do it, was asked to do it, and did it out of respect for my mother-in-law. This is a custom perpetrated on women by other women and the cycle continues.

Though the severity of the tradition has reduced greatly, still there are instances where incidents like honor killing, female infanticide,  and sati still catch media attention. Women are subjugated and still they want to climb up. But social change works at a snail’s pace, and therefore, the observers must be patient.

All things said and done, one must not forget that this custom is a foreign custom that had crept into the Indian or rather Hindu society and the concept of Victorian chastity has been imbibed from the British themselves. Though we gained independence six decades ago, we are still chained to the ideologies the firangis brought to the country.