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January 06, 2008
REVIEWS: Feminism and the modern woman
This reader takes Women in Indian Society: A reader, published in 1988, a step further by exploring urban women’s issues in a world of globalisation, information technology and transnational media. It focuses on educated, middleclass urban women who are the direct participants of globalisation both as consumers and workers. Rehana Ghadially states that the new orientation of the feminist movement conceives women’s identities as global rather than national. Issues such as those centred on nutrition, motherhood and early marriage have been debated for a long time. The need is to prioritise problems of urban women in a globalised world and give voice to their experiences regarding issues of technology consumption, sexual harassment at workplace, sex tourism for the West, media and other representations, etc. Women’s skills in information and communication technology need to be developed so as to tackle the issue of ‘informational poverty’. Ghadially and Haselhoff highlight that urban youth, in particular women, have used cyber cafés to cope with economic and informational hindrances and become wealthy citizens of the global community.
Sexual Harassment at Workplace (SHW) is an ever increasing impediment to urban educated women’s productivity. It is usually legitimised by myths like women who mind eve-teasing have no sense of humour or SHW is a consequence of women’s loose morals. Cases like the harassment of nurses by patients and hospital staff, airhostesses by their colleagues and passengers, and of doctoral students by their advisors, show that SHW is a result of unequal power and gender relations and affects all classes of women. In 1997 a Supreme Court judgement provided an exhaustive definition of sexual harassment which gave confidence to victims to report. Celebrity Sushmita Sen too filed a case against the CEO of Coca Cola and obtained financial compensation after extensive media coverage. Awareness programmes and patrolling on campus, employers’ orientation, and media publicity in cities have proved effective strategies to counter SHW.
In India, the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 has not eliminated dowry violence. A father’s honour is measured by the goods he gives to his daughter. In the new economy cash is preferred for which the groom goes to the highest bidder. Class interests have supplanted caste concerns in which urban women, largely middleclass, become mediums of status elevation. Under state support, feminist struggles fail to challenge capitalist and patriarchal institutions that perpetuate the dowry custom.
Luthra states that when press covers sex-selective abortion (SSA) as crime against female foeticide committed by doctors under pressure from family members, it reflects the activists’ view that women are mute victims rather than articulate agents. However, in Shahargaon, one Jat woman left for her parents’ house to avoid an ultrasound exam and another ‘refused to cohabit with her husband after he forced her to abort’. Because such resistance does not find place in media coverage, the right wing’s accusation that women activists are ‘alienated, Westernised and maternalistic’ finds resonance.
A father’s honour is measured by the goods he gives to his daughter. In the new economy, cash is preferred for which the groom goes to the highest bidder.
Oza looks at the Miss World contest hosted in Bangalore, India in 1996 to highlight how women’s bodies and sexuality become mediums through which conflicting discourses about Indian culture, nationalism and economic independence are constructed. The pageant was celebrated to ‘showcase’ (a Hindu) India. Progressive organisations protested against the commodification of women’s bodies by patriarchal and capitalist structures, while their Hindu right-wing counterparts found women’s transgressive sexuality and body-selling as a threat to the Indian culture. Women’s sexuality also became a forum for defining modernised versus westernised India. A BJP activist stated that ‘We want women to become doctors, engineers… but we do not want them to smoke, drink and adopt western styles of living.’ In all these attempts, women alone were denied the agency to define themselves in relation to progress, culture and global economy.
Nationalism in India is gendered, such that the warriors and defenders of the nation are the males and women are the producers and nourishers. ‘Mother India’ is a woman whose honour needs to be defended against malicious ‘others’. In this masculine Hindu nationalism, minorities can only find a place if they accept Hindu mythological figures. Bharatiya Janata Party, for example, has changed rather delicate images of Ram to aggressive and wrestler-like ones and arouses Hindu men to guard their women from Muslim men. Shiv Sena portrays the warrior Shiva by erasing his patron goddess Bhavani. Women can only become part of this nationalist discourse by adopting masculine traits but cannot redefine nationalism beyond manliness.
Ramasubramanian and Oliver examine women’s treatment in Bollywood box-office hit movies with no viewing restrictions for minors. Their content analysis reveals that aggression against women is done far more by heroes than villains thus confirming ‘that force and physical aggression [are] legitimate means of expressing romantic love’. Eve-teasing including sexual remarks, singing, scenes like the hero rubbing against the heroine’s body or making obscene passes at her despite her constant protest are couched as slapstick comedy. However, when villains do the same, angry fights and drama ensues. Thus, the villain’s severe violence like rape and ‘eroticised murder’ are condemnable while less severe but constant aggression of the hero is commendable.
Women’s representation in TV programmes, so-called situated in modern contexts, remains traditional and stereotypical. A Centre of Advocacy and Research report found that in Hindi soaps, ‘the core structure… is built around a repackaged and larger-than-life Indian (read Hindu) family.’ Women are shown as the preservers of their husband’s family values. Male elders are the decision makers and tradition always prevails over modernity. Because the family remains unchallenged, other units of dealing with women’s issues are sidelined.
The reader opens up traditional feminist agendas to issues emerging out of urban women’s modern engagements with and representations in capitalist economy and communication network. The cover image showing hennaed hands of a woman operating a computer is a brilliant representation of tensions of tradition versus modernity and women’s independence versus patriarchal norms that emerge as women become global citizens.
Urban Women in Contemporary India: A reader
Edited by Rehana Ghadially
Sage Publications, India
ISBN 978-0-7619-3520-9
372pp. Indian Rs595
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