The Life of Women in India: Gender Chronicles: Part 1

photo source: flickr.com

Domesticated and Powerless

These are sketches of the lives of Indian women, how their lives still are not their own and how they navigate the man’s world.

Irrespective of religion, caste or regional differences, an average housewife in India wakes up very early and makes tea or coffee for the entire family first. 

If she is a housewife, she must cook for the children and the adults in the family. 

Husbands and other male adults in the family would be seen sipping their morning tea or coffee sitting in a chair on the front verandah and reading the newspaper in perfect reverie. 

The wife never gets a chance to sit like that, relax, or read a newspaper, as the first thing in the morning. 

She could be seen running around in the house, scolding children and being scolded by her husband. 

The gender division is deep-rooted and woven into the fabric of domestic life. 

It is so naturalised that no one finds anything odd about it.

Often, many housewives and working women have told me (working women especially), that they do not even get the time to empty their bowels in the morning (that might or might not happen sometime later in the day); such is the demands from each family member on the woman of the house in the mornings. 

The husband keeps asking, “Where is my watch? Have you ironed my shirt? Why are you so late preparing hot water for my bath?” 

The children keep yelling, “Amma, where is my maths textbook? I need my new pair of socks'' and so on…

She is the sole caregiver. 

If the in-laws stay with a couple, the young woman is responsible for their care.

It does not matter whether they are her parents or her husband’s. 

Often a woman has to take care of 2 pairs of elderly people, parents from her side and her husband’s.

Who cleans the house? Undoubtedly, women. 

Very few men could claim to have cleaned the toilets they use daily.

It is the woman’s job. 

Jump to 30-40 years back in time and look at the society of the southernmost state, Kerala.

In some Kerala households, tea and coffee shreds were to be put aside for reuse, exclusively for making tea or coffee for the women in the family. 

The mother-in-law would teach the new daughter-in-law this ‘method’ of preparing morning tea as if it were a valued family tradition. 

In certain communities, the wives would be asked to eat food from their husbands' plates, without cleaning it.

Finishing off husband's leftover food is described as a privilege, a pledge of loyalty. 

For some women in poor households, this practice was rather a boon. 

The man obviously would have the best of the platter. 

If he loved his wife, he would leave some good menu items on the plate for his wife, items otherwise he only would get to eat.

Caste and Gender Hierarchy: A Lethal Combination

In some upper-caste Hindu communities, a man would have many wives. 

The children of the least preferred wife would have to endure discrimination on this count. 

A girl had no choice when it came to matters such as marriage and pregnancy. 

Often she would know about her marriage only a few days before the actual event. 

She would never know beforehand who the bridegroom was, what he was, how old he was, or where he was from. 

Sometimes, a maid would tell her some details that she had overheard about the groom. 

Women of such communities were not to show their faces in public, or to a man outside her immediate family. 

Hence at the marriage venue, they would sit covered fully in a white cloth from head to toe.

She would get only a blurred first view of the bridegroom when seen through this veil. 

If a woman were to go out, for example, to a temple, or a relative’s house, she would similarly cover herself.

She would also hold a palm leaf umbrella as an additional cover. 

This umbrella had the name, ‘Marakkuda’, meaning ‘the umbrella that masks’.

Sometimes a woman was married to a much older man, who would take her as his third or fourth wife. 

And women were not allowed to wear a blouse, inside or outside their homes. 

They clad themselves with an additional white cloth (other than the white cloth they wrap around their hips).

Lower-caste women were not even allowed to have such modest attire. 

They were to be in public with bare upper bodies.

A knee-length cloth piece wrapped around their hips would be their only daily wear. 

In the early 19th century, lower-caste women fought many battles for their right to cover their breasts. 

These protests were crushed but gradually, as society progressed, women began to wear blouses defying the societal customs. 

In this crazy world of gender and caste hierarchy, the high-caste woman was not supposed to be 'polluted' by the gaze of outsiders. 

Whereas, the low-caste woman was made to expose her body before everyone, because high-caste men held the privilege of seeing their bare bodies. 

Gender discrimination and caste hierarchy indeed is a fatal combination for women. 

The collution of the two oppressed both high-caste and low-caste women in different ways.

If one tries to chronicle the lives of women in one’s society or community, often it is a horrific past that emerges out of the shrouds of untold history. 

I will tell you more stories as I recollect them from my memory, and collect them from society as ground reports.

I also salute the many women who told me these stories, loved me, cared for me, and filled my life with warmth and hope.