Gender Norms

Blog Post 17

5/24/2023

13O30’11” S 72O1’45” W

The gender norms in India are a fascinating and sad topic, but I have to start off by saying this is a very difficult blog post for me to write for a number of reasons. Two reasons are most prevalent, the first is the rabbit hole that is cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is, at its simplest, the principle that our cultures frame our perceptions and morality, meaning that some action in one culture could be totally morally acceptable, but in another cultural setting the action could be deeply immoral. I am not saying that I believe cultural relativism necessarily defines true morality, but it certainly makes what I am going to talk about much more complicated. The second issue I face is the fact that I am on but a brief journey in a land I am not familiar with, making me unqualified to talk about the issue of gender norms in India with any substantial cultural backing. Nonetheless, I will do my best to open this can of worms.

The first visible symptom that something is going on when you enter India is the dress code in major cities. I can still vividly recall seeing construction workers digging holes wearing dress pants with collared shirts and slick comb-overs. No matter what job you had, that is what you wore. In stark contrast were thousands of beautiful patterned and multi-colored saris that festooned every woman in sight. Later on in the trip I would see that no matter what women did (whether that be working on a field or in a cubicle) the sari would be worn. That is not to say that there aren't exceptions to every rule and in certain progressive places clothing was more fluid. On the whole, however, the rule held true.

So why are these saris so important? They instill an immediate difference between men and women which is crucial to the social hierarchy of India. The silken saris act as an immediate identifier but also harken back to some kind of nostalgia for how women should be. It is not uncommon to find sentiments like this in the US. The control and exploitation of women’s sexuality taps into the same ideal that saris bring: ‘good’ women behave a certain way and wear certain clothes, and women who do not do that are not acceptable.

The most informative way I got to interact with gender dynamics was through our local contacts. In the beginning of our time in Rajasthan, for example, we interacted mainly with our friend, but soon, we met his family and were able to spend time with his wife and children. I had many delicious meals at their house, went on trips with them, and spent a night there. I noticed that our hostess was more soft spoken, not quick to speak. As time passed however, I built up a rapport with her, and by the end of my time I found that she was a fascinating person with a great sense of humor and many interests. Initially, I simply thought that she was shy, but as I toured other traditional regions, I realized it was a pattern.

Maybe the trend was in some part caused by our presence. Hospitality is deemed one of the most important values. It is also fairly rare to see foreigners in most of India, and I think the novelty of our presence combined with hospitality's importance within the culture could have made people behave differently around us. I know that when being a host, the best way to relate to the guest is to show them you’re not crazy because you have acceptable ideals. This may lead you to reinforce propriety and be on your best behavior. Since we elicited shyness from our female host, it reveals that a meek or shy woman is an important part of traditional (thus mainstream) Indian culture. In one instance, after our hostess finished a long cooking session for dinner, rather than sit with us at the table, she tried to eat at a bench against the wall without anywhere to put her food. We insisted she join us, but I couldn’t tell what she and her husband thought of our request.

I visited multiple households in India, and nearly every time there was a brutally stark divide between the role of the man and the role of the women. The man would walk us in, sit down to talk to us, and generally be fairly outgoing. On the other hand, the woman would be completely out of sight for most of the time except to offer us chai tea or some sort of snack. Initially, I resisted the urge to take the offering because I felt that I would be in some way validating or feeding into this system that I despised. But I slowly noticed that there was something more complex going on. I couldn't help but realize that when we were offered something and we accepted, It seemed to elicit some amount of joy from our host and the opposite when we did not accept. It was extremely hard for me to understand that even though my action of accepting the chai made more work for our host, and potentially in some small way fed into the system, the acceptance of the chai could also give the person in question some amount of validation or empowerment in a small way.

However, my simply accepting a chai tea didn’t seem like the right way to combat the systemic problem. As I traveled further in India, I met multiple empowered women who worked tirelessly to bring education and means of self-sufficiency to women all across India. Initially there ‘might’ have been an argument that under cultural relativism, the roles within Indian society are acceptable. But as soon as someone within the system feels the need to rebel, cultural relativism or no, the system is oppressive. So while I have some reservations about prescribing my moral view on other cultures, after careful thought, India most certainly is not protected under cultural relativism.

That being said, the problem in India is so systemic and far-reaching that it will be a hard fight. India is a huge country, and so much of it is populated by villages of people totally unconnected to the rest of the world. This means they have limited means of sharing those perspectives to make change within their systems. It will take huge amounts of time and effort to educate and empower all the women across the country. And I only worry that the rising surge of Hindu nationalism will make this empowerment more difficult day by day.

Long Hair

Blog Post 16

5/15/2023

38O6’49” N108O1’19” W

There were a number of interesting things that happened in India from the perspective of being an outsider. But the most shocking effect was half the length of my hair automatically classified me as a woman in the eyes of most. Walking down the crowd of the streets of Delhi, seeing thousands of people pass by, never once did I see someone dressed traditionally as a man have long hair. It seems as though there’s a strict dress code for all men in India: whether you were digging trenches on a construction site or working in an office, you would wear a collared shirt, dress pants and short-cut hair. These rules became more lax in the countryside, but in the highly populated cities, I saw zero deviation from this trend. I not only had long hair, but my hair is red.

In India 15 years ago, a brutal terrorist attack happened to a hotel that killed 31 people and left over 300 injured, and after that attack, every single hotel and museum set up a rigorous check involving metal detectors and a mandatory pat down. At each one of these checks, there are two lines, one line for men, and one line for women, and every single time I went down one of these lines, even though I was wearing perfectly masculine clothes and the only “off” thing about me is the length of my hair, I was yelled at in Hindi by multiple people saying that I was in the wrong line. I even kept track, and the record was five times in one airport. My hair is fairly long, but in America, I’m treated no differently than anyone else. So it was shocking to enter India and have the paradigm completely change from the very beginning of our travels.

At first, I took it personally. I felt uncomfortable. It felt almost as though the world revolved around me, but it was the worst way possible where all the people are judging you. It was also shocking to be treated suddenly completely differently than I had been treated my whole life. In the beginning I had a very strong feeling of people constantly staring at me. At points I even considered cutting my hair, but slowly, I stopped blaming those around me. I realized that I was judging all these people myself because I had no window into their culture. How would I act if I saw someone with long red hair if I grew up in a place where everybody's hair is brown? I would probably be a little curious too. As it was happening, I did feel as though I gained some value from the experience. I have experienced my life predominantly from a place of privilege, so while I would never claim to understand the experience of marginalized people and victims of systemic oppression, it was teaching to be in the position of someone who was judged for their physical characteristics.

It still is of course sad that gender norms are so strong in India. I wish I could go there and not worry about being judged by the way I look, but instead by the way I act. That is the goal that I hope we are all striving for. But until then I need to remember not to blame those influenced by the system. I instead need to blame the system itself.

Cows

Blog Post 14

4/26 /2023

37O41’47” N 108O2’2” E

The cows in India are one of those things that you can conceptualize but never truly understand until you witness them yourself. And when you go to India it is impossible not to witness them. The cows crowded every street easily mingling with the automobiles and pedestrians, they have a sort of wise but weary look, as though they have seen it all (which they have). Once I asked ‘who takes care of all the cows?’ and my guide said that the cows each have a home and they are let out in the morning to wander over the cities and in the evening they slowly graze back.

When I first arrived, I thought them livestock that people lived off. But then I learne in most of India It is illegal to eat beef. So what was the true purpose of these cows? As I traveled across India, I asked people this question, and initially I was told they were simply used for milk, but I as I moved farther and farther away from Delhi all the way down to Kolkata (which was historically more progressive than Rajasthan), I learned a more interesting reason which clues in to a political struggle raging in India.

First you need to know a little bit about Modi, the current Prime Minister of India. Modi has been serving as the Prime Minister since 2014 and in the beginning he was fantastic for the Indiana economy, pushing infrastructural advancements and expansion of the economy. But when Trump became the president of America, he showed to the world a new form of political domination, and Modi appears to be following in his footsteps.

I didn’t have any of these perspectives coming into India. All I knew was that Modi was the very popular Indian Prime Minister, who I saw smiling down at me from advertisements at every single bus stop and billboard.

But how does this relate to the cows? Well, cows are extremely important to Hinduism. Every God has a particular animal that appears in paintings with them. For Ganesh, this animal is a mouse, and for Shiva, one of the most popular gods, this animal is the cow. So cows represent Hinduism for the nearly 79% of Indians that are Hindu. Thus whenever you see a cow, it’s similar to seeing a cross or a Jewish star. And this is a symptom of Modi Hindu nationalism. It was even mentioned to me that before Modi there were not so many cows. He pushes Hindu values to bring attention to conflict between Hindus and Muslims and always sides with the Hindus to ensure he has a loyal base of supporters. He uses religious nationalism to ensure he has the majority of the votes, which he does, at 49%. You may think that’s not a lot if you’re reading this from America, which has a two party system, but in a parliamentary system, that is a landslide vote. But all of this is just from the few conversations I have had and that is because it is difficult to do online research because India has some of the worst press freedom in the world.

But every situation is nuanced, and it’s difficult to know if even what I just said about Modi being a nationalist is true, especially as someone who is briefly entering a different culture. We heard alternatively from many people how fantastic Modi is for the country. And of course I wish I could have had perspectives from Muslim people as well as Hindu people. And whether or not cows are a symptom of Modi’s Hindu nationalism, it is fascinating to see animals mingle so casually and4 peacefully with us.