Abstract
This chapter situates the gender paradox that signals to the persistence of patriarchy in India by taking India’s ranking in the Global Gender Gap Reports as indicators of the problematic. In this situation, the Catholic Syrian Christian community of Kerala, South India, is taken as a case of analysis to look into the latent contradictions that marks women’s lives within a patriarchal framework where caste and religion intersect with gender. Feminist methodological tools such as narrations and life story analyses are introduced to analyse women’s experiences of gendered oppression, their negotiation of power and their attempts to subvert patriarchy. The concepts of power, space and consciousness are deployed heuristically as theoretical tools to analyse women’s reality
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Notes
- 1.
See United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 1.
- 2.
Radhika Santhanam asserts on the occasion of Women’s Day 2019 that in the context of the inequalities that Indian women continue find themselves in, Women’s Day should be an occasion to ponder over how much more is to be done for gender justice. See “From Revolution to Roses”, The Hindu, March 15, 2019, 8.
- 3.
Gender gap is assessed across four key pillars: economic opportunity, political empower-ment, educational attainment, and health and survival.
- 4.
While the country records improvement in political empowerment and educational attainment, it ranks third-lowest in the world on health and survival, remaining the world’s least-improved country on this sub-index over the past decade. See Global Gender Gap Report 2018 on www.weforum.org, accessed on 24-01-19.
- 5.
Sonalde Desai, “A Strange Paradox for Indian Women”, The Hindu, March 7, 2019.
- 6.
In India, census is conducted every ten years, the last one being the 2011 census.
- 7.
The strong pro-woman sex ratio Kerala is conspicuous when seen against the national figure of 940. Kerala is the only Indian state where the sex ratio has historically been above the national trend. Women population constitutes 52.02 per cent of the total population in the state. See Government of Kerala: Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Gender Statistics 2017–2018, available on the site http://www.ecostat.kerala.gov.in.
- 8.
Kerala had reached near equality in youth literacy during 1991–2001 (youth literacy for male—99.04, female—99.03). Going by a survey conducted under the Akshlakshami project of Kerala State Literacy Mission Authority, the literacy rate in the state has made a significant increase of almost 3 per cent from 93.91 per cent in 2011 to 96.69 per cent in 2018. Cf. Times of India, January 25, 2018.
- 9.
As per the reports of Sample Registration System, in life expectancy at birth, Kerala stood first among the states of India with 72.2 and 77.9 years for males and females, respectively. The gap between the life expectancy of male and female in Kerala has been growing in favour of females from 2.5 years in 1970–75 to 5.7 years in 2012–16. This is very much higher than that of India’s life expectancy at birth for male and female (67.4 and 70.2, respectively).
- 10.
Cf. Government of Kerala: Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Gender Statistics 2017–2018.
- 11.
See Sarath Babu George, “Gender Gap in Wages, Unemployment”, The Hindu, March 1, 2019.
- 12.
Out of the total population in Kerala, during 2011–12, about 57 per cent men were economically active or part of labour force, whereas only 25 per cent women were economically active. And around 75 per cent of the women population is considered as economically inactive. See Gender Statistics 2017–2018, 27–38.
- 13.
Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Gender Statistics 2017–2018, 41.
- 14.
See Gender Statistics 2017–2018, 46–50.
- 15.
Several studies have addressed the problematic of Kerala gender paradox over the years. See K. Saradamoni, “Women, Kerala and Some Development Issues”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29, No 9, (Feb 26, 1994), 501–509; Kodoth and Mridul Eapen, “Looking Beyond Gender Parity: Gender Inequities of Some Dimensions of Well-Being in Kerala”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XL, No. 30 (July 23, 2005), 3278–3286; Mridul Eapen, “Mental Health of Women in Kerala: The Need for a Gender Perspective”, Samyukta: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 2, (July 2, 2002), 25–35; Aparna Mitra and Pooja Singh, “Human Capital Attainment and Gender Empowerment: The Kerala Paradox”, Social Science Quarterly, Volume 88, Number 5, December 2007, 1227–1242; Latest to this addition is by Shobha Arun, Development and Gender Capital in India: Change, Continuity and Conflict in Kerala, London: Routledge, 2018.
- 16.
Any discussion on ‘patriarchy’ can be seen with suspect when taken as a grand narrative that counter positions women and men, overlooking other factors that contribute to the complexity of human identity construction such as race, ethnicity, caste and class differences. How the notion of patriarchy is deployed in this work will be explained in Chap. 3.
- 17.
See Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, New Jersey: Zed Books, 1986, 6–41.
- 18.
Ashis Nandy opines that colonialism never seems to end with political freedom. He defines it as shared culture which includes codes that both the rules and the ruled share. Cf. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: The Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983, xi–11.
- 19.
For an elaborate study on culture in relation to gender, see Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds) Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India, Kolkata: Stree and Jadavpur University: School of Women’s Studies, 2012.
- 20.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds) Women Contesting Culture, xviii–xix.
- 21.
The Catholic Syrian Christians, also known as the Syro-Malabar Church, make one of the three catholic rites in India. The term ‘Syrian’ refers to the presumed West Asian origins of the group’s ancestors and to their use of Syriac as a liturgical language. The terms ‘Syrians’ and ‘St Thomas Christians’ are used interchangeably by many authors. The origin and particularities of this community will be elaborated in the next chapter.
- 22.
K.G. Kumar, “Women in Kerala: engendered or endangered?”, The Hindu, Business Line, March 10, 2003.
- 23.
A deeper analysis of the brahminical caste identity of Syrian Christians will be brought in the next chapter.
- 24.
See “Hegemonic Spatial Strategies: The Nation-Space and Hindu Communalism in Twentieth Century India” in Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jaganathan (eds), Community, Gender and Violence, Subaltern Studies XI, New Delhi: Permanent Black 2000, 167–211.
- 25.
Stewart Clegg describes power as the ‘politics of everyday life’ meaning by it the broader application of power to daily events and experiences, not limiting it to the formal sense as in the popular notion of power politics. See Stewart R. Clegg, Frameworks of Power, London: Sage Publications, 1989, 150.
- 26.
Max Weber defined power as the position within a social relationship, which equips one actor to carry out his/her will despite resistance. Cf. Weber M. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947, 152.
- 27.
Cf. Steven Lukes, Power a Radical View, London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1974, 23–24.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Gramsci uses the expression egemonia (hegemony) as the equivalent of direzione (direction) plus dominazione (domination). See Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Novell Smith (eds and trans) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971, 55.
- 30.
See Steven Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents: Culture and the Politics of Consciousness in Caste Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, 230.
- 31.
For Giddens, to be an agent is to deploy (chronically in the flow of life) a range of casual powers, including that of those deployed by others. See Giddens A. The Constitution of Society, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984, 14.
- 32.
Naila Kabeer, “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment” Development and Change, Vol. 30 (1999) 435–64, 438.
- 33.
Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity, New Delhi: Oxford, 1995, 178.
- 34.
The phrase ‘everyday forms of resistance’ was coined by James C. Scott pointing to the exercise of power by peasants in their struggle to confront the hegemony of the ruling classes is applicable to women. James Scott calls resistance, the ‘weapon of the weak’. See James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985, 30–34.
- 35.
The term ‘panopticon’ was a name suggested by Jeremy Bentham towards the end of the eighteenth century, for the central observing tower in prisons built with modern architecture that allows guards to see continuously inside each cell, even though the prisoners cannot see that they are being observed. As no prisoner can be certain of not being observed from the central watch tower, the prisoners gradually begin to police their own behaviour. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan New York: Pantheon, 1977, 208.
- 36.
See Foucault Michel, Power/Knowledge, Colin Gordon (ed.), New York: Pantheon, 1980.
- 37.
Ibid., 98.
- 38.
Gary Gutting (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 82.
- 39.
Kalpana Kannabiran, Padmini Swaminathan, “Feminist Research Is a Political Project”, Economic and Political Weekly, (April 30, 2016), Vol II, No 18, 37–38, 37.
- 40.
See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, (Donald Nicholson Smith trans.) Oxford: Blackwell, 1991; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, (Richard Nice, trans.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984, part II, chapters 2 & 3; Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Social Theory, London: Verso 1991; See also Soja, Third Space: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real—And Imagined Places, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
- 41.
Cf. The Production of Space, 26–34.
- 42.
Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive, Space for Power: Women’s Work and Family Strategies in South and South-East Asia, Noida: Rainbow Publishers, 2002, 57.
- 43.
Ibid., p.12. Deshmukh conceptualizes space as consisting of physical, economic, sociocultural, political and mental spaces. Ibid., 21.
- 44.
Cf. Soja, Third Space, 89–90.
- 45.
Lefebvre has explored at length the concept of spatial practice, see The Production of Space, 16–18; 45–46, 288–289, 377.
- 46.
Cf. Seemanthini Niranjana, Gender and Space: Femininity, Sexualization and the Female Body, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001.
- 47.
Ibid., 16.
- 48.
Cf. Meera Kosambi, Crossing Thresholds, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007, 7.
- 49.
Cf. Antonio Gramsci, “Notes on Italian History” in Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Novell Smith (eds), Selections from Prison Notebooks, 323–343.
- 50.
See Steven. M. Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents, 8–9. Pierre Bourdieu makes the same assertion in his observation that people work to make the dominant order’s often-capricious foundations seem moral, necessary and natural. See Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977, 164.
- 51.
Cf. Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Seabury Press, 1970, 22.
- 52.
Ibid., 23.
- 53.
See Selections from Prison Notebooks, 333. For an elaboration of the concept, see Partha Chatterjee, “Caste and Subaltern Consciousness” in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies VI: Writings on South Asian History and Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, 169–209.
- 54.
Cf. Selections from Prison Notebooks, 327.
- 55.
Cf. Marc Pruyn, Building the Case for Agency in http://www.marcpruyn.com/files/Ch.2_Lit._Rev.pdf (accessed on June 24, 2006).
- 56.
See Hierarchy and its Discontents, 7–10.
- 57.
Padma Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open: Women’s Resistance in Colonial Maharashtra” in Anindita Ghosh (ed.), Behind the Veil, Ranikhet: Permanent Black 2007, 21–57, 56.
- 58.
Cf. Ibid., 10.
- 59.
Kalpana Kannabiran, Padmini Swaminathan, “Feminist Research Is a Political Project”, 37.
- 60.
The notion of ‘politics’, as noted by Leslee and McGee, indicates the methods, practices and ideologies used by an individual or group to assert power or to gain control and power over another. See Julia Leslee and Mary McGee (eds), Invented Identities, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, 9.
- 61.
In this context, the distinction Sandra Harding makes between method and methodology is important for understanding what is distinctive about a feminist social inquiry. Methodology is a theory and analysis of how research should proceed, whereas Method means techniques of gathering evidence. Cf. Sandra Harding, “Introduction”, in Sandra Harding (ed.), Feminism and Methodology, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987, 1–14, here 2–3.
- 62.
See in this regard Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Nancy Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” Feminist Studies 14, (1988), 575–599.
- 63.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds) Women Contesting Culture, lxvi.
- 64.
Cf. Amia Lieblich, R.T. Mashiach and Tamar Zilber, Narrative Research: Reading, Analysis and Interpretation, Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1988, 8.
- 65.
Panjabi and Chakravarti, Women Contesting Culture, 357.
- 66.
See Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, “Speaking Gender: Vāc and the Vedic Construction of the Feminine” in Julia Leslee and Mary McGee (eds) Invented Identities, New Delhi Oxford University Press, 2000, 70.
- 67.
Kim Etherington, Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Our Selves in Research, London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004: 81.
- 68.
Roets G., & Goedgeluck, M., “Daisies on the road: Tracing the political potential of our postmodernist, feminist approach to life story research.” Qualitative Inquiry, Volume: 13 issue: 1, (2007), 85–112.
- 69.
In this analysis, I take ‘discourse’ in the Foucauldian sense as pointed out by Edgar and Sedgwick in Key Concepts in Cultural Theory, London and New York: Routledge 2004, 117.
- 70.
Sandra Harding (ed.), Feminism and Methodology, 7.
- 71.
Panjabi and Chakravarti, Women Contesting Culture, xxxii.
- 72.
It is noted that the concept of intersectionality has a complex genealogy. It grew out of black feminism, which has examined the interconnections between racism and sexism. See Crenshaw, Kimberle, 1991a. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” in Katharine T. Barlett and Rosanne Kennedy (eds.), Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, Boulder, CO: Westview Press; and Kimberle, (1991b) “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241–1299. Cited by Amy Allen, “Feminist Perspectives on Power” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/feminist-power/.
- 73.
Collins, Patricia Hill, “Piecing Together a Genealogical Puzzle: Intersectionality and American Pragmatism”, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, Vol.3, No.2 (2011): 88–112.
- 74.
Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive, Space for Power, 17.
- 75.
In the research underlying this work, I have deployed what has come to be known in recent times as the Q-squared (Q2) method, signifying a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Combining the two methods has served to bring greater clarity to the issues addressed. For instance, on the question of domestic violence women, particularly those from higher educational backgrounds, under-report their vulnerability to violence, whereas in the in-depth interviews in a spirit of confidentiality, they narrate with greater openness their experiences of violence. The methods used include in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, use of cultural symbols, language and so on, as well as an interview schedule specifically designed for this research which was administered on a one-to-one basis.
- 76.
Moore H., Feminism and Anthropology, Cambridge Polity Press 1988, 55, as cited by Naila Kabeer, Reversed Realities…, 114.
- 77.
This research focuses on the experiences of married women belonging to the age group of 25–65 years.
- 78.
‘Diving deep’ is an expression I borrow from Carol Christ, a feminist theologian, who has named her book on women’s spiritual quest, as “Diving Deep and Surfacing” (See Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
- 79.
See April Lindinsky, “Prophesying Bodies Calling for a Politics of Collectivity” as cited by Sanal Mohan, ‘Theorising History in The Context of Social Movements: Challenges to The Reigning Paradigms of History’ in Felix Wilfred and Jose D. Maliekal (eds) The Struggle for the Past: Historiography Today, Chennai: University of Madras, 2002,104.
- 80.
Panjabi and Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xxxii.
- 81.
Ibid., xxiii
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Abraham, K. (2019). Introduction. In: Persisting Patriarchy. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21488-3_1
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