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The "travails of being an Indian woman"

Discussion in 'Married Life' started by Rihana, Sep 24, 2012.

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  1. BharatS

    BharatS Gold IL'ite

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    NCRB stats show more married men committing suicide - Rediff.com India News

    If one were to go by the report released by the National Crime Records Bureau, it seems that in the year 2010, men in India [ Images ] were the weaker sex. In other words, more husbands committed suicide than wives.

    Statistics reveal that last year 61,453 married men committed suicide in India while the number of married women who committed suicide was almost half, 31,754. The statistics was only slightly better for 2009. That year, NCRB statistics show, 58,192 husbands killed themselves as compared to 31,300 wives.


    Misuse of dowry law sparks concern - Times Of India

    Legal experts agree that more misuse is seen by women who are literate and have knowledge about the law even as illiterate women are the real victims.

    Since we are in this site, we feel that more women are suffering. But if we go to other sites where men yell for help, and able to see through their pathetic lifes, should we feel that only men are suffering while the society is building monuments on their martyr
     
  2. steve

    steve Platinum IL'ite

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    BharatS:

    You seem to have a different agenda. May be you could start a thread to discuss that than here?
     
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  3. BharatS

    BharatS Gold IL'ite

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    Also it is important that we should not go by mere number of complaints registered. It makes lot of difference in statistics. In case if wife dies in any way other than natural death within the 7 years of marriage, husband will be booked and tried by the law.
     
  4. BharatS

    BharatS Gold IL'ite

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    I know you are dragged into this willingly or unwillingly. But I neither have an agenda nor a fixed notion that people in our society suffer only because they belong to particular caste/community or GENDER.

    I agree that there was a time this used to happen (and still happens), but longing in the history while ignoring the current changes in the social dynamics is something that I cannot do. Because I believe in fair justice to real sufferers without any pre conditions.
     
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  5. Naksh

    Naksh Platinum IL'ite

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    what man. I am very good at that, i belong to Madras univ..so you need to have that skill to score marks. My thesis ran upto 169 pages (after all my editings). Yes my guide (here in the us of A) was not impressed too and made me cut it down to 61 (and i was very Grrrr bt that at that time. )

    this thread....is :spin ........way too serios for me looks like it.
     
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  6. arch1209

    arch1209 Platinum IL'ite

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    On a Sunday morning when I need to work on two papers here I come to Indus Ladies and read this thread and now I have to type in a reply, so I apologize for being random. I am just going to type in my thoughts about whatever I could gather and whatever stuck out to me.
    Someone talked about burqa being repressive and oppressive to women, well women in a lot of countries and cultures are fighting and giving up their lives to have their right to wear burqa and express their cultural identity. Yes, seeing a woman wear a burqa may seem oppressive to many women but I have heard very pertinent thoughts from educated Muslim women saying they have the right to choose what they want to wear and state does not have the right to decide that.
    Women's rights mean different things to different women, and I think we need to understand that. For an educated white woman it means getting equal wages and equal employment opportunities but women in India are still fighting for their right to be born.
    The problem with Feminism was that it was fought by upper middle class white women, so the causes that they were fighting for also "causes for white educated and upper middle class women," yet for some reason their fight was considered to be the fight of all women
    I remember last semester in one of my classes one of my white friends watched a documentary on female infanticide in India and asked me how can your culture hate and kill children. I told her yes my culture is patriarchal and it is not a society that is woman friendly, but neither is your culture. Everyday I go through life, trying to fight the "submissive, suppressive Asian woman" stereotype that people think I am. One of my male classmates asked me if it was true that women in India, walked two steps behind their husbands and touched their husband's feet. I told him yes most women would do that, because it is culture specific to them, some do it out of choice and many women have a choice to do it or not, but a lot of women have to do it even if they hate it. Let women have the choice to choose, to decide for themselves.
    I think women all over the world are in pitiable condition, what good is the west doing when women here are still fighting for their reproductive rights aren't they supposed to be more "empowered" and a more "civilized society"? It is okay for Hillary to be secretary of state, but she is not good enough to be President....While we can argue about Hillary vs Obama, there is no denying that her sex had a huge role in her not winning the nomination. Moreover it is US, where former Harvard President Lawrence Summers who proudly said that women were genetically lesser than men and they reward him by making him part of Obama's team...
    However, that being said I know that I represent only 1 or 2 percent of the Indian women who like steve says received things on a silver plate and it has taken me a long time to realize the privileges that I have, for no good reason.
    My question to my friend was, walk into an engineering/ science/ bio-technology classroom in India and there were at least be a 60/40 or 70/30 representation of woman to man ratio, but walk into any eng/ science courses in an american university it would be the exact opposite. When I was in class 12 I was told study hard, work hard, focus on making a career for yourself and not taken prom shopping. I am not saying that women in India have it better than their western counterparts, I am just saying that our rights and our wants are different but our plight is the same.
    When in undergrad I was a stern believer that a woman, educated woman who continues in a violent relationship/ oppressive situation is responsible for her own situation. But I have grown to realize the ignorance of my comment, firstly it trivializes the situation of women and places all the responsibility on her. Why don't we ask a man, an educated man why he does not stick up for his wife, why is it that he feels the need to feel more manly by beating his wife/ girlfriend etc. He was grown enough to marry her, but is not big enough to defend her honor?
    When I tell my mom about US DV numbers she disagrees, and she tells me "impossible American women will never stay with a man that beats her" I don't know what to tell my mom that's what the media tells her. We have the western stereotype of "man eater, divorce wanting, overambitious woman" and we have the Asian stereotype of "docile, submissive Asian woman"
    As far as the DV numbers go they are strongly skewed, half of the cases don't even go reported for years. Most women don't even realize they are being violated, physically, financially, psychologically and emotionally....
    I think this is all I can think of now!
     
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  7. monita

    monita Platinum IL'ite

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    Random thoughts from me too:
    I have to say change is happening. Quickly for some, and a bit slowly for others. My neighbor's DIL in India tells me how lucky I am that I can wear salwars instead of saris, and informs me that in their household they have now stopped covering their heads with their sari pallus and then punches the air. These women were brought up to be housewives and trained to always obey their husbands and Ils. Do they have the option to live life on their terms? May be. But they need to be really brave and defiant, for in this battle you fight alone. It's very difficult to find support. We are largely a tradition following society. I still have to make sure that I wear my bindi, bangles etc. when I am in India.
     
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  8. arch1209

    arch1209 Platinum IL'ite

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    Cannot agree more with you Monita, I visited my husband's extended family in northern UP/haryana border last year and realized the privileges and benefits I have enjoyed, for no particular reason.
    One of my husband's aunt told me that she had to have her fourth child, because she had three daughters and when she was pregnant the fourth time she was forcibly sent to get an ultrasound done. She said she ran away from there, because she knew if the doctor told her she had conceived a female, her daughter would be killed. She said she was beaten by her mother-in-law and left to starve but she had made up her mind that no matter what she would give birth to her child. She eventually gave birth to a son, and suddenly her world became more beautiful. But she said she was determined her daughters would not have a similar fate so she made sure, that unlike, her mother all her daughters completed post graduate, were working and got them married off to men that lived in urban areas. In her mind this is what she needed to do so her daughters could have a better life. While her daughter still cover their heads, at least, unlike their mother they were able to go to school, college get an education and at least get a chance to make some decisions.
     
  9. steve

    steve Platinum IL'ite

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    This thread is not about burqa and let's not make it one. That being said,

    • The problem is with people forcing it on others, not about them practicing it. Many right wing holders of extreme views sugar coat their arguments like you put above. Their beef is not about "their right to practice what they want", their agenda is about "enforcing it on others". The smart ones should see through that spin whether it's burqa, abortion, women's right to vote/higher education(taliban) etc.
    • "Educated" does not mean prejudice free or fair and just or even smart for that matter. There are a lot of educated zealots.
    • There will be counterarguments to everything. Though there is a theoretical basis (may be miniscule) for any argument, the moment someone voices that opinion, they are helping further that extreme view and thus becoming a tool in promoting that view often inadvertently.
     
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  10. Reflection123

    Reflection123 New IL'ite

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    While I appreciate your sensitivity towards the ordeals faced by "Indian women" in particular; to me your arguments, to some extent, also sound like isolating the Indian society and scapegoating it to be responsible for treating women in an atrocious way in general.

    I have tried to point out how the economics related to the type majority occupations, and the history of a place affect the position of women in that society.

    Yes, there is no denying that we are a struggling economy, and the change in women's position in society is more rapid in the areas where there is a faster economic development, and where most income generating occupations are mind-intensive rather than labor intensive. So there is definitely an economic factor...but India is not the poorest country in the world, and hopefully with the changing dynamics of occupations and income, India will do better in terms of equality towards women too.

    However, about the historical/cultural factor in terms of treating women bad in India particularly, I would strongly disagree. When the world was busy selling and buying women, India was very focused on treating them with a lot of respect. Complete equality was impossible in those times, given the culture of military invasions and household income dynamics, but India has done very well, in terms of treating women in a better way, compared to other cultures of those times. And it sustained that for a large part of its existence that has been well past a few thousand years. Yes, the direction of changed went downwards in past few hundred years, but now again that direction of change in women's conditions has become positive.

    If you'd like to counter that with the number of crimes against women on increase---I would suggest you to not isolate women in terms of being at the receiving end of crimes. People in general have become more aggressive, less tolerant, and mental diseases are on rise. Its not just the cases of rapes, or dowry deaths that are on rise, but murders, corruption, and crimes targeting towards people in general have been on an increase; and men have been victims of these increasing crime rates too. Also women are not just at the receiving end of crimes, I am sure comparatively there are more women than in past who are on the perpetrating end of crimes too. Can we say that we are a more liberated society because more women feel "free" to get involved in crimes now? No, right? Its just an overall rate of criminal activities that are involving men and women in different ways, and yes, that needs a stringent control and government intervention.

    However, women in an average household feel much more free about talking about their opinions and expressing their views, compared to the freedom of expression their grandmothers had. Their dreams are given importance, because people are realizing that its become easier for a woman to practice as a doctor/trader/lawyer.....without her family being ridiculed or the woman being battered by the society. Women get a lot of leverage in a lot of laws.

    It was not in my country that I was officially declared as a "dependent" on my husband just because I was married to him---and my freedom of working snatched from me. This is how "fairly" I was treated by the United States of America. And the trauma of being treated unequally was much worse to me than anything else served to me as a woman in my "Indian conservative society". I wasn't raised in mumbai/delhi--but my parents encouraged me to live a life of respect in my interior, small town of a semi rural area. While USA was the country to tell me that I had officially less rights and privileges than my earning husband.

    Am I, my friends, a lot of whom were born and lovingly raised in small Indians towns, not a part of the society?? Or the only women who qualify to form the "Real Indian Women", are the ones facing atrocities so glamorized in the West?

    Once I too thought life must have been a cakewalk for the white American girls and women, but its really not so when I had heart to heart chats with my friends here. Facing the peer pressure to find a guy very early in their lives, bullying by peers, having to remain dolled up at the cost of other things takes a toll on them too. I have seen women putting up with abusive or weird men--just because its kind of hard to get a man to marry you, and for a lot of years, women being rejected by men who sleep with you and leave, hurts their self esteem. A lot of them have been dealing with such pain using anti depressants and drugs. Yes, the economic conditions, and police security, in the USA are very good, and that supports their condition to a large extent.......but had these economic and safety factors not been there, women would have lived terrible lives even in the Western culture.

    Its kind of wrong and myopic to say India' has a culture of exploiting women in general; factors and situations should be considered in entirety, not in isolation, while making generic statements.
     
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