Where are All the Women?

(Disclaimer: this is what I've been told, what I've read, and a bit of what I've experienced. I don't mean to jump to conclusions or play ethnocentric anthropologist, but the subject is troubling to me. If you've had different experiences or perspectives, feel free to share.)

Indian woman pull long hair into tight braids. Clusters of colorful bangles decorate their wrists, gold hangs from strategic locations from their nose rings to their jingly anklets, which match the little jewels that sparkle on the centers of their foreheads. They wrap their bodies in heavy layers of colorful silk and fabric and walk like moving statues – upright and strong.

Seriously, the women around here are absolutely gorgeous. It’s hard to spot an unattractive one anywhere. Young, old, they have so much grace. The men on the other hand…

“Indian men are so undeserving of Indian woman,” the shopkeeper of a upper-end fabric store tells us one day. Maybe she’s right, maybe not. I haven’t gotten to personally know too many Indian guys, and I’m generalizing when I say it does seem like males get the short end of the gene pool.

The thing is, though, these beauties are not very visible in public. Walking around the town, men and boys walk in herds or pairs – often holding hands. Women literally do not exist in bars, clubs, or many other social environments.

And you almost NEVER see a man and a woman in public together here, even if they are husband and wife. Wives here don’t seem to be a husband’s best friend. They are more accurately, a husbands number one servant.

Our Woman and Gender Studies professor once said, “marriage is a bondage, never a bond.”

She was talking about marriage in India specifically (although when I ask myself what's the purpose of marriage in the USA, maybe the statement isn't far off). And, in many ways I think she’s right. Although there are great progressive advances being made, especially in urban areas where women can get great jobs an educations, things can still here suck to varying degrees for Indian women, (according to Prof Women’s studies and other research):

Indian weddings are most commonly arranged marriages. The idea of the submissive, virginal, devoted house wife is engrained in Indian ideology and a focus in religious texts. A woman is supposed to regard her husband as God and worship him as such.

From birth, women are considered a burden on the family. There is “mysteriously” a much higher birth rate for males here than females. Female infanticide is a big problem because, “it is better to pay 500 rupees now than 50,000 rupees dowry later.” This is seriously twisted.

Families stress about marrying off their daughters. It’s considered disgraceful and burdensome to the family if it doesn’t happen. Girls just take up room and eat food, without being able to contribute to the family’s wealth or property. Because of this, families want to get rid of the girls ASAP.

Even though the Dowry Prohibition Act makes dowry (gifts/money paid to the grooms family by the bride’s family) illegal, it’s still a big part of the marriage ordeal here; there’s about 6000 dowry deaths each year.

After marriage, the bride moves into the husband’s household, where she is controlled by elder women of the family, expected to complete household chores such as cooking and cleaning for the entire family. She’s still considered an outsider, though, and remains extremely low on the power hierarchy of the family. It is difficult to acquire land or personal wealth.

And after all that, if her husband dies, a woman is traditionally expected to commit sati, or widow burning. She’s supposed to be so devoted to her husband that she should throw herself onto a funeral pyre. But really, the reason is that widows a) often cannot afford to exist without their husbands and b) if they were to remarry, or have sex with someone else, they risk fuck up the purity of the caste system. Of course this practice has been long banned, and rarely happens, but it still DOES happen.

So why all the traditional, heinous restrictions on women? Caste purity is a big part of it. Men are afraid women will sleep around, dirtying up other castes with mixed caste babies. This could threaten the man’s position in the caste hierarchy.

But my theory is that way, way, way back in the day, males realized how beautiful, intelligent, and awesome women were (and their natural dominance), and decided then and there to instill some hardcore hegemony to get the upper hand.

And you thought your boyfriend was controlling.