Gender bias in a land of goddesses

 

Less than one-third of the researchers are women in the world. In India, the percentage of women researchers is a meagre 13. There are hardly any women in the higher echelons of research institutions. In the four major government institutions that fund research – Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology, Department of Earth Science, and CSIR – only twice has a woman become a secretary. AIIMS and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have had only one woman director each so far.

A few studies done on this problem identify two chief reasons: (1) the appointing committees are male-dominated and biased; (2) household responsibilities which, in India, are conventionally laid on women’s shoulders almost entirely.

Well-known novelist Anita Desai made some very interesting observations about Indian attitude towards women [‘A Secret Connivance’ in The Times Literary Supplement in 1990]. It’s worth reading it in her own words:

One form of imprisonment in India is that created specifically for women. Like other countries where women are traditionally suppressed, India deified its women…. In India, which tends in everything to plurality and excess, there are 100,000 cults built around the Mother Goddess in one form or another – that fecund figure from whom all good things flow – milk, food, warmth, comfort. Her ample bosom and loins, her enticing curves and buxom proportions make her not merely the ideal mother but the ideal woman – consort, lover, plaything. She is the richest source of art in India – sculpture, painting, dance and poetry. Around her exists a huge body of mythology. She is called by several names – Sita, Draupadi, Durga, Parvati, Laxmi, and so on. In each myth, she plays the role of the loyal wife, unswerving in her devotion to her lord. She is meek, docile, trusting, faithful and forgiving. Even when spirited and brave, she adheres to the archetype: willing to go through fire and water, dishonour and disgrace for his sake.  As Sita says when she offers to accompany her man into exile for fourteen years: ‘Surely your fortune is also mine… We will be together. The water will be nectar, the thistles milk, the rawhides many-coloured blankets. I cannot be cast away like water left in a cup. Dear Rama, I am the humble dust at your feet, perfectly happy.’

That “humble dust” at her man’s feet is the ideal Indian woman. If she pretends to be anything else, it is her very identity that she stands to lose.

But much water has flowed down the Ganga after Ms Desai made the above observation. India opened up her hitherto “Hindu rate of growth” to the wider possibilities of globalisation and liberalisation as well as the greed of privatisation. Wealth became the predominant passion of the nation. Women had a role to play in that high drama of wealth-creation. Indian men condescended to let the “humble dust” at their feet transmute itself into a partner in wealth-creation. So Indian women became increasingly visible in many workplaces. But she was seldom allowed to cross the glass ceiling.

India has a long way to go if it is to achieve gender equality. It is easier to create discourses in which women are goddesses than to treat women on a par with men.

PS. ‘This post is part of #CauseAChatter with Blogchatter’ #gendertalks