Subtle forms of sexism are very common even in brown households where women are encouraged to be professional women. On the surface, these households may appear progressive and equality-oriented: if you see a woman with a pHD, her own job, her own car that she drives, you may think woohoo, this is a world apart from the oppressive patriarchy so associated with brown cultures, but to assess the equality dynamic you have to look deeper.
In this blog-post, I’ll discuss the subtle ways in which men still believe they own and should control women and how they underestimate a woman’s autonomy and free will. I’m writing with Indian households in mind and using Indian household examples, but I know many people can relate to these phenomena — they exist in all human cultures to varying degrees. I will compare some of the dynamics of brown households to western white households — not to suggest that western white households are the universally “perfect” state of female empowerment by any means (all “cultural” groups have tons of diversity within them of course!), but because generally speaking, on average, I have seen significant differences in some of the ways girls are raised and treated.
Autonomy: a key feature of being human that is so often denied to brown women
Generally, white girls are talked about as individuals, with their own desires, aspirations, free will, autonomy. This means they can be held responsible for their achievements and mistakes. If they do well in school, they are congratulated. For many brown girls, if we did well in school, our parents were congratulated. Our achievements were to furnish our parent’s reputations, not our own. If we did well, it was a reflection on them, not on us. Sure, we got pats on the back for achievements — but the central force behind these pats were how good we made our parents look.
If a white girl made a mistake, it was her mistake to own. If we made mistakes, my father would blame my mother and himself for our “upbringing”. In some sense, many brown girls are assumed to be like computers or animals — everything is about the training and the programming. There is very little consideration that we may be autonomous and have come up with our own ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ideas. Even if our parents try to be progressive, they are often held back by relatives: the uncles and aunties who love to perpetuate patriarchal mindsets through their thoughtless commentary to other parents. It’s common for relatives to criticize and appreciate parents for their children’s behavior – which may make sense for children who are 5 years old or under (and even then children have their own personalities!), but when this carries on until you’re 45, it’s absurd.
I trace these afflictions back to the patriarchal “ownership mindset” in India, whereby men feel like they own women. This is why they are so offended by a woman defecting against their wishes – it’s not the same as discord between two equal individuals disagreeing (which itself can be distressing in any relationship), but a deep threat to the man’s position as the Master of the household. Many men are verbally or physically abusive when their sense of ownership is challenged by a woman – the domestic violence statistics for India are very bad. An estimated 1 in 3 women have faced domestic violence in India, and among women that are married, 83% reported their husband as the perpetrator in a 2018 National Family Health Survey.
Another way to observe this mindset is through the language many Indian men use in reference to their female relatives. You’ll often hear language like “I allowed her to work” or “What are you going to tell her to do?” about a wife or daughter. Or comments such as: “They have made one of their daughter’s a doctor and the other one an accountant” as if they were molding a professional out of inanimate clay. I’ll admit here that another big mindset problem is parents thinking they own their children — so this type of language is often used for sons too, though it’s intensity tends to be less for sons vs. daughters and may diminish more over time for sons vs. daughters.
Choice, recognition and influence: a 3 part recipe for true empowerment
The fundamental difference between patriarchal societies and equal societies are not the superficial manifestations that people assume like bikinis versus burkas, or staying at home versus working. It’s about who makes the choice, and is it recognized as their choice to make? and then more nuance: what factors are affecting their choice? On the first level, an empowered woman is one who can make her own choice, which may be to wear a hijab or to wear a miniskirt, and is recognized as making her own choice.
A deeply empowered woman is one who is making those choices in a society that isn’t punishing her for exercising her autonomy and can make her choices relatively free of outside pressures (such as the pressure to please others). I don’t think any culture, including Western cultures which are more progressive generally, have figured this out fully yet. If you’re under pressure to wear a bikini for being judged as “boring” or “frigid” if you don’t, how empowered are you really? When you look around a beach and see that women, on average, are wearing so much less than men (except for Italy, I hear about those speedos in Italy), part of it may be due to the sexual objectification of women, and the pressure to be “sexy” at all times to gain the approval of men, which isn’t the most empowered reason to choose an outfit. You might be making a choice, but if you’re making it with a heavy weight attached to seeking the approval or attention of others, your empowerment is limited.
Judging empowerment through behavior is flawed, motivations are where you need to look, and the truth about empowerment is complicated: it is a spectrum rather than a binary, and requires a lot of self-reflection to understand why you do the things you do.
When I see a brown woman who is highly successful in her career and on good terms with her parents, I don’t jump to the conclusion that they’re from a progressive equality-oriented household. It’s so easy to get along with one’s parents when they’ve changed the script for success (refreshed it from the 1920s) and it happens to align with what you wanted – if you wanted to be a doctor and marry an Indian guy when you were 25, what a happy coincidence that was! That says nothing about your standing in the household. You may still be owned, just coveted and owned, like a rose in a crystal vase.
True deep empowerment comes when you act and are acknowledged as an autonomous being. I wish I could say it’s all in your hands, but it can’t and never will be — the paradox of empowerment for any group of people is it’s both taken and given. You say “I want to make this choice” and they say “We recognize your right to make this choice”. Sometimes the best we can do is just snatch the piece that we can take for ourselves and hope someday the rest of the world will recognize our autonomy too.
References
Domestic violence statistics from: https://www.news18.com/news/india/the-elephant-in-the-room-every-third-woman-in-india-faces-domestic-violence-1654193.html
