Manushi Editorial
But is it possible to talk of women as an undifferential mass? Isn't
life very different for a tribal woman, a Dalit woman in rural India,
a factory worker, a clerk, a doctor, a university student, a middle
class or working class housewife, an air hostess, a nurse, a woman in
purdah, or a woman prostitute?
Yes, there are a lot of factors dividing women from each other -
class, caste, religion, race, education (or the lack of it), one's
field of work 9in the house or out of it) and many other complex
historical forces. Yet if we look at the nature and basis of women's
oppression, we discover that our sex determines our common predicament
in a very fundamental way.
Right from childhood, marriage is posed as the "be-all and end-all" of
a woman's life. Women marry - but under what conditions? With how much
freedom of choice? Why does marriage turn out to be such an unequal
affair between a man and a woman? And what happens to a woman when her
marriage crumbles - as a widow, deserted wife or divorcee?
Whether we work outside the home or not, the burden of housework and
child-care falls upon us. For millions of women in this country, the
drudgery starts from childhood, when they should be at school and
playing. We toil with our mothers so that the family can be fed and -
perhaps - a brother can go to school. The result? We are two-thirds of
India's illiterates.
And this heavy labour goes unacknowledged by society, even by women
themselves. When we ask a woman what she does, how often is the answer
- "Oh nothing - I am just a housewife." Why are we taught to thus
trivialize ourselves and our labour?
When we work outside the home, how are we treated? Barring a small
section of highly educated women in the select professions and
careers, most of us are paid much less than men even when we do the
same job (in spite of the Equal Remuneration Act!).
We are given the most low-paid and least skilled jobs, and stay at the
same level the rest of our lives - because there are hardly any
opportunities to learn new skills. In any job, we are at a
disadvantage because the double-burden of work in and outside the home
consumes most of our energy - physical and mental. What creative
development is possible under such conditions?
Our ability to create life is a vital service to society but has
become our biggest liability. We are not allowed to control our own
reproductive capacities. Our bodies are treated as the property of
different men, whether fathers or husbands, to be safeguarded, used or
abused. Excessive childbearing wears out our health, out strength, our
lives. And yet society remains indifferent.
Ours is the longest history of oppression. Its forms have changed but
not the content. Society has devised hosts of institutions and systems
of morality to keep our sexuality and reproductive capacities under
control. We are made to bear the burden of morality all alone - hence
the double standards in every aspect of social life. As victims of
aggression and abuse, we are stigmatized. When we are raped, fingers
are pointed at us; as prostitutes it is we who are outcasts from
society, not the men who degrade us. Even our capacity to love is
being impaired because it comes in the way of our transfer as property
from one man to another.
To live as a woman is to live in fear - of molestation, rape, of
social stigma in almost every action of ours. We have to be afraid to
do so many things - to be outside the home, to be alone in the home,
to be with others, to acknowledge even to ourselves our own desires -
to love, to laugh, to live.
In spite of all our precautions and inhibitions, stones are still
thrown at us. We are insulted and humiliated everyday, every hour -
on the buses, the streets, at the workplace, at home.
That is how we live. Why?
And how do women die? How many are the victims of violence - silently
burnt to death in the kitchens where they toil, raped and murdered in
the fields, police stations, houses, streets, or driven to suicide?
Why are more and more women taking to crime and prostitution for a
livelihood? Why are more women dying in destitution, worn out by
hunger?
Why are women bearing the greatest burden of poverty, malnutrition,
superstition, ignorance? Why is there such a drastic decline in the
employment of women? Why are they being treated more and more as
"expendable assets"?
All this is borne out not just by our personal experience. The
Committee on the Status of Women in India and other scientific
investigators since then present alarming evidence of the steadily
deteriorating life conditions of women since Independence.
Why is all this happening? And why are we passively accepting the
situation? We as women have been systematically trained to be
submissive, to suffer in silence. Our revolt is all the more difficult
because of the peculiar predicament in which we are: we are
intimately tied through personal bonds and are dependent for love and
security on those who have become the instruments of our oppression.
Therefore we have learnt to think of our problems, whether economic,
emotional or sexual, as "personal" or "private" problems. We look for
individual solutions - try to adjust better, try to be a better wife,
mother, daughter or daughter-in-law. Tied to our oppressors as we are,
we try harder and harder to mould ourselves to their requirement and
demands.
We struggle on alone. We have not yet discovered that strength comes
from struggling together. That strength can come only if we do not
treat our problems as "personal" or "private". By doing this we
trivialize them. We have to realize that our personal problems are
social and political problems. We have to "politicise the personal".
The constitution and the laws pay lip-service to our problems. The
constitutional equality granted to us remains a myth for most of us.
Whatever gains have been made have been limited to a small section of
the upper and middle class. these limited gains shelved the debate on
the women's question and successfully prevented middle class women
from
It is time for us to start looking at the women's questions from the
bottom up. If today we want to further expand the horizons of our
freedom, we must look towards the toiling women of this country to
provide the initiative for an alternative. It is their labour which
produces social wealth. And it is this labour which gives them the
dignity and strength from which we have to learn. They alone are
capable of providing the leadership and militancy that is required to
bring about radical changes in this unjust system. The struggle to put
an end to all forms of exploitation - based on class, caste, religion,
race - can only be successful when women join this struggle for a new
society - in which one of the most fundamental inequalities, that
based on sex, has no place.
Today we no longer say - Give us more jobs, more rights, consider
us your "equals" or even "allow us to compete with you better". But
rather - Let us reexamine the whole question, all the questions. Let us
take nothing for granted. Let us not only redefine ourselves, our
role, our image - but also the kind of society we want to live in.
MANUSHI Editorial Collective
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Towards redefining ourselves and the society we live in.
Issue #1:
MANUSHI is a journal about women, by women - an attempt to talk to
each other about what we all feel but never say - an attempt to
collectively understand our predicament as women in this society,
every aspect of which is heavily weighed against women.
Manushi, First Issue, January 1979
