5 days ago
Gender Agenda Newsletter: Are you settled?
'The more things change, the more they stay the same,' Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890), the French journalist, had said in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guepes (The Wasps).
When I was in school in the 1990s and lived in a neighbourhood of government-job professionals who mostly had two children, it surprised me to see that parents would send their sons to boarding schools in the hills, where the education was believed to be better, but also far more expensive than regular day schools. Their daughters often went to government-run KVs (Kendriya Vidyalayas), where the expectations and the fees were low.
I am not surprised to see that fewer girls than boys are enrolled in private schools even today. The proportion of girls going to private schools was 33%, while that of boys was 39% boys, in 2023-24. Private schools in India still have the image of being better than state-run institutions. Government schools recorded 54% girls and 49% boys.
When girls do get the opportunity to study, they are often subject to all kinds of other social prisons, like being asked to get back to college hostels a couple of hours before the men. Natasha Narwal was known for the Pinjara Tod movement, which took up discriminatory practices in girls' students hostels, 10 years ago. She inspired a nation-wide movement of protests and demands for equality.
At roughly the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao programme focussing on 'challenging mindsets and deep rooted patriarchy in the societal system'. In 2021, a Parliamentary Committee on Empowerment of Women found that the government had spent 80% of the scheme's funds on media campaigns. Over the years, governments have initiated schemes to tackle female foeticide with cash transfers. But money, as they say, cannot buy everything. It can of course buy a 'good boy'.
A girl, and by that corollary a woman, is seen as belonging to the family she will eventually marry into. Large loans must be taken for her wedding, to 'fund' the groom, leading families into deep debt. An unmarried woman in rural India is seen as an aberration; in urban India, she's seen as 'not settled' — her parents must worry about her future, relatives must 'look for a boy' for her. Most people don't see the irony in this — yes, she isn't 'settled' because she didn't settle. And that's cause for cheer.
Toolkit
Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print is a documentary on Hotstar about the feminist magazine Ms. launched in 1972 in America. The first issue had had an illustration of a blue Kali, with eight arms, each holding an iron, hand mirror, phone, steering wheel, typewriter, frying pan, duster, and clock. It sold 3 lakh copies. Ms. tackled issues of domestic violence, sexual harassment, and the repealing of laws that criminalised abortion.
Wordsworth
SOGIESC: Sexual Orientation (who you're attracted to), Gender Identity (what gender you identify with), Gender Expression (how you present yourself), and Sex Characteristics (biological attributes you're born with, like reproductive organs). This is an umbrella term for LGBTQAI+ communities. When the 19th Congress of the Philippines was adjourned, news organisations and those advocating for minority rights were disillusioned that the SOGIESC Equality Bill of 2022, formulated to ensure equality, was not taken up. Senator Risa Hontiveros, a health and women's rights advocate, hoped it would be passed in the next Congress, scheduled to convene next week.
Ouch!
Don't be afraid to be women, to allow yourselves to be led by a man.... Women, you are failing, you are eradicating masculinity, making society hypersensitive
Javier 'Chicharito' Hernandez, Mexican footballer
Woman we met
Taanya Kapoor, 33, started the Women and Gender Book Club in June 2023, to 'get back to reading for fun'. She remembers putting out (what was then) a tweet, asking people if they'd like to read fiction and non-fiction by women, with her. 'I just had 200 or 300 followers then, and when I woke up in the morning, there were 80,000 retweets,' she says. Now, with over 700 members of all genders from across the world, the club picks a book to read each month based on suggestions and a final poll. Sometimes, authors attend the Zoom meetings to speak about their books: Shrayana Bhattacharya (Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh), Farah Bashir (Rumours of Spring), and Neha Dixit (The Many Lives of Syeda X). Kapoor herself is in the process of doing a PhD on the contradictions of modern daughterhood in middle-class India.
