Some Are More Equal –

Women - Equality, Liberation, Freedom, ... Responsibility!

 I remember a young woman new at her professional post at a level that is considered a first rung in ascent to establishment, and mistakenly or otherwise invited to a get together one afternoon consisting of her colleagues' wives, sitting in a corner, was asked about her husband - when she explained she and not her husband was the employee in question the woman asking her had exclaimed "how nice, when you don't have any responsibilities, you can go anywhere and have fun". 

The young woman was left wondering if they were under the impression she had talked about a weekend in Paris or answered a question about a tough career.

.....................................x..................................... 

 Another time it was a neighbour, a young married male, who had instructed her to go to the kitchen "since it is the best place in the house" - and she had asked him why he was planning to sit in the sitting room with her husband instead of everyone joining in the kitchen. 

Subsequently he remarked many years later to the effect that she had not visited his home - and she had merely acknowledged that it was so, with a “that is true”, and had refrained out of courtesy to his wife and mother from explaining why.

.....................................x.....................................

 Then there were the women in the gym, whom she did her best to make friends with. Being courteous and friendly is what ought to be necessary and sufficient, she thought - but it was so only in about half or less of cases. 

There were those that were unsure and then there were those that had a ruling cliques that would not tolerate a non-kowtowing new person, and generally they made it hard to let her use a few of the machines. She specialised in her own way, working out quietly rather than joining in cliques or their ways (gossip, cell phones, talk about high events) and using experience and listening to her own body to fine-tune an effective workout. They tried to get her off any machine she would use, and this went into a showdown. They complained to the management - "who does she think she is?" - and she was informed this was the complaint. 

She asked why it mattered to anyone - as long as they had a courteous and friendly treatment why they thought of a question on those lines at all. Perhaps they did not believe she treated them as equal, she thought; since she had no other intentions than treating them as equals it could only mean they saw something more, and would not be satisfied until they brought her down, not to their own levels but at a level where she would be grovelling to them for use of a machine.

.....................................x..................................... 

 Is this why women are so quick to declare they are not for women's liberation or rights or equality with men, I wonder, reflecting on these and other such incidents seen, heard, and been party to conversations taking place around about the topic. Perhaps the women are not after all declaring a loyalty of a colonial subject to a master out of apprehension - perhaps it is more than that. 

 A new acquaintance, a distant new relative, is next at the table at a dinner at a wedding. She opens the topic - "is there much of a women's movement in India?" she asks. She then continues by explaining that whether here or in west, most women hurry to disclaim and declare their distance from such an idea. She then talks to them about what they think it is about, and turns out they have a distorted perception brought about not a little due to the whole misinformation, the whole disinformation, about the topic. 

 A few people on the sidelines can serve the purpose of the press most willing and eager to distort the issue when it serves the purpose of those in power to so distort and discredit a cry of distress, a movement stemming out of a genuine need. Such people might not be bad at all and what they have to say might be just as genuine but it serves to magnify and distort the picture. 

 Many decades ago my mother related some conversations she had on the long visit to Washington D.C. - they had a lot of preconceived notions about India, and while they were not all untrue the picture was distorted by those being all they knew and thought was all. Sensational reportage on television had done it then, and I found it was so on the more recent stay of ours in Germany. We were asked questions about things that sounded horrible, disgusting, but were not only reported on television - were shown. I then explained it from various angles to the one person who had asked, but that would hardly undo the impression created in the whole country, or even all of the world perhaps, about India. 

 So it is about the women's movement too, perhaps, I said to her. We then discussed the differences of her country - her hemisphere - versus India, as far as women are concerned. It has been a question asked before and the answer depends on the listener - some can hear and take in more, some need a short reply, some a pointed focus - and I am sure most of those who need to hear how bad it is in India are in all likelihood disappointed.

.....................................x.....................................

 We have had two things in our favour in India in many ways - one, the majority society follows a way of life and so on (Dharma) that does not preclude a cleansing, a reformation, when needed; it does not get destroyed by any of it either. And often reformers have been precisely those in power that you would not expect to give up their superior status and privileges. And the colonial occupations made it often necessary to open eyes and make these reforms happen, which was a bit of a paradox. The colonial rulers were not interested in reforming us but more into converting us, of course; so our ways were attacked as bad, backward, and so on - often with no admission of how close their own ways were in precisely the same spheres, or that they were worse. So the fact that instead of dying from the assaults it brought about a much needed cleansing here while elsewhere situations were not necessarily better, and so forth, is quite paradoxical.

.....................................x..................................... 

 About the women's liberation or rights or freedom, then. 

 To begin with it was our social reformers, men, who brought about a great deal of that - education and a need to qualify for a job was considered and education was encouraged, and women followed in their steps and went and got education of the western, modern sort right after men - a foot behind sometimes and sometimes not. Knowledge had never been considered a male bastion, and it was only a matter of applying it to the new education, and jobs the new way. 

 We do not have exclusivity of male in higher spheres because to begin with goddesses equal to gods exist for all of the gods - and if anything the Mother goddess is the unique one, ubiquitous in her worship by men and women. So no sphere of knowledge is out of question for women - the deity of learning is a goddess, Saraswatie. 

 Goddess personifying all wealth is Lakshmie - and every new girl (daughter) or woman (bride) entering the home is to be taken as Lakshmie come in person. A queen, a woman warrior is far from unknown - she would be the personified Durgaa, the protecting deity leading to Divine victory. Power, Shakti, is female, as is Wealth, Lakshmie, and Learning, Vidyaa. 

 So a great deal many reforms were carried out by men, with women getting rights (and frequently matching obligations as well) to education, to work, to property rights and so on; and women followed to establish the path - not lagging and giving rise to suspicions that they couldn't do it or were undeserving as a social class. But that precisely often leads to a complacence, if you do not know what it is to lack and have to strive for you do not value it. Also often the whole society does not progress together in practice and those that do go ahead consider themselves special by virtue of quality rather than privileged and deserving just as much as those who lag behind. 

I don't mean those ahead do not deserve it - only that those behind do not necessarily consist of the undeserving, certainly not in entirety. And so, often those ahead disdain the question of rights of those that are left behind not due to their own faults. It is easier to distance oneself from the victims or those that are fighting for rights, since it is far more aristocratic a stance to pretend one did nothing at all to get where one did, it was as natural as breathing. 

 Not that everyone is required to fight for everyone else's rights - to go on marches and so forth - but even admitting the right in principle is not convenient to some. Often this admission is the very first big step needed, and helps to bring about greater transformations more smoothly.

..................................... x .....................................

 All this is clearer than one factor that is perhaps new for me but clearer to most women who actually are speaking their minds when they distance themselves from liberation or rights or equality. 

 On one hand is the system whereby all men are superior by definition and all women are an underclass, with looks and money being the only criteria of being one up - of which looks are obvious and undeniable and old, old, criterion of superiority for women, and money being either of birth or of earnings of a male (father, husband) it is a matter of luck for a woman, who is never in need of making it and proving it - so when it is a rich woman meeting a poor one in old frame of mind, both know that essentially they are equal, and it is a matter of luck of each one. 

 This brings about a system of dominance and power in female world that is consisting of an intricate code, with both those in the power due to not their own merit and those in lower rungs that would rather believe it is all a matter of luck equally unwilling to change to a system where they are as equal to each other as women as men are equal to each other as men, much less have the stress of competing with men in the world of work and prove themselves qualitatively, even if there was a fair world out there (which there is not) that would give equal opportunity and equal returns irrespective of gender. They would much rather form power cliques a la prep boarding schools and torture the new outsider for the fun of feeling superior, and so on ad infinitum variety of games. 

 That really would explain all that resentment of some for the achievers, and hastening to distance themselves from any concept of liberation, choosing rather an equality of all women qua women. For this is not a belief of equality of all humans even in two groups - male and female - with one a notch above the other. Most of these women who attack anyone different with accusations of her attitude of superiority would be horrified if they were asked to equate their men with all other men - realising promptly that this would not bring about an equality of those men with their superiors in earning or inheritance or achievements, but only with those in lowest rungs. 

If your husband is equal to all men he is first and foremost equal to every man who is the most lazy, poorest, illiterate and disfranchised, the unwashed and drunken stinking man lurking around the corner. NO! That is out of the question, of course - since that would lose all the privileges of the women that were "luck" in the first place.

.....................................x..................................... 

 So - a two tiered system it is, for those who would rather not step out and take responsibilities that come with rights. All women are equal so your achievements are nothing, who do you think you are - but I am superior because I have a husband who is richer or more powerful or in existence at all, unlike yours who is clearly lesser. So - you work for me, and smile only when I am benevolent and cry desolately when I frown.

…………………………………………………

…………………………………………………