In the Public Health Centre of Jabhol village in Amritsar district, 14 M T Ps [abortions] were performed on Scheduled Caste women between July 1992 and March 1993. These women had been raped by militants. However, the victims were not in favour of abortion and wanted to give birth to terrorists’ children. They felt that this "act" would not only uplift their status from the ranks of Scheduled Castes but also glorify them as mothers of militants’ offsprings. It was only at the insistence of their parents that these M T P s were performed. According to a study, many more women gave birth to militants’ children for the same reason, even though they had been brutally traumatised. Vandana Shukla analyses the strange shapes that the desire for upward social mobility takes and how reservations and quotas will fail to meet their so-called noble objectives.

Snakes and ladders

In a study titled "Women and violent conflict: Reconstruction of Identities", conducted by the Institute for Development And Communication, it was found that in the Public Health Centre of Jabhol village in Amritsar district, 14 M T Ps [abortions] were performed on Scheduled Caste women between July 1992 and March 1993. According to the study, these women had been raped by militants. However, the victims were not in favour of abortion and wanted to give birth to terrorists’ children. They felt that this "act"would not only uplift their status from the ranks of Scheduled Castes but also glorify them as mothers of militants’ offsprings. It was only at the insistence of their parents that these M T P s were performed. The study claims that many more women gave birth to militants’ children for the same reason, even though they had been raped.

It is clear from the findings of this study that when societal changes are aimed towards better justice and equality, new equations emerge as social equalisers.

Upward mobility acquires strange shapes and patterns pronouncing inequalities in a louder manner. Many regulations, both social and legal, laws and amendments notwithstanding, the concept of gender equality still remains elusive for our society.

Under a male sociological order, where supremacy is defined in terms of money and muscle power, women are striving for an equal status with a different biology and psychology. In an economically backward society, a woman’s role of an economic contributor demands certain changes in the domestic and social set up, which have not come about. Unlike western societies, where, with the advent of industrialisation, a parallel structure of day care centres, crèches, semi prepared or ready made food industry grew, a system of professionally managed crèches or cooked food remains a desired dream in India so far.

For most women, even getting washed and chopped vegetables is a distant reality. As the combined pressures of domestic work, vocation and consumerism grow, they complicate gender roles and females are burdened with dual roles whereas the males enjoy the benefits of this dual role.

When social realities change, people need to be prepared and educated about their changed roles. They need to be helped to cope with new realities. Unfortunately, our obsolete mindset cannot think beyond providing reservations as the only tool of social equality. We have not learnt lessons from our previous experiments with reservations, which divided us further on caste lines. A democratic set-up should instil confidence in the system and people with potential should look up to it as a redeemer. It should not weaken them through reservations and subsidies, which may also breed resentment in other sections who are not the beneficiaries of reservation.

We missed the opportunity at the advent of industrialisation when social realities were changing dramatically. There was a need to re-interpret our gender roles through the education system, literature, and the media. But, till very recently, our primers showed mothers as eternal cooks who washed and cleaned and fathers who worked in office and earned money. A woman’s contribution in nation-building was undermined at all fronts. In literature, the emergence of the "new woman" did not go unnoticed, but the non-emergence of the "new man" was almost overlooked. Popular media kept on portraying gender prototypes in black and white. And our so-called intelligentsia continues to suffer from the worst kind of double standards vis-à-vis women.

Most men remain prototypes of their grandfathers in terms of attitudes towards women, whereas the second or third generation educated woman bears no resemblance with her grandmother in terms of her role towards family and society, which is not gender-specific. In the changed scenario, men find no role models to turn to either in literature, media or real life, even if they try to cope with a system being usurped by the so- called weaker sex. Their responses towards women remain either protective or offensive. They find it difficult to treat them as equals.

The cover- up of the false sense of male superiority, nurtured through social systems of male preference, results in a unique hypocritical Asian reality. It refuses to change despite high standards of education among women. In rural areas, where women contribute in terms of labour in the agricultural sector, the practice of obtaining information from the males results in under-reporting of the activity of women. The traditional social value of male pride does not allow a man to admit his dependency on the woman’s contribution. Among the urban educated, it continues to be termed as ‘earning her pocket money’. It is a different matter altogether that the husband may buy a flat in his name from her ‘pocket money.’

Against this background, when a woman tries to assert her role, demands more of her share in social as well as domestic arena -- defying stereotyped guidelines – there is a backlash. This needs to be understood in the unique reality of gender discord emerging domestically and getting politicised.

Today, there are more women in the ‘visible jobs’ of media, fashion, glamour, advertising and marketing that attract more attention and money and at the same time require better mobility and more time. Unlike teaching and nursing, the job requirement of these areas are forcing the society to change their expectations from the women or be left out.

The assault of women in these areas is also sending red signals to the male quarters in an age of job scarcity. With more money at their disposal, women also love to flaunt their womanhood.

The macho self- image of a man suffers a sense of defeat in this scenario. He is used to controlling a woman as a commodity. In post Independence Bengali literature, authors like Bimal Mitra dealt with these problems extensively in novels like Ikai Dahai Sankra and Chalo Calcutta . This sense of defeat finds expression in gender superiority similar to that of an armchair hunter who likes to decorate his walls with stuffed species of all kinds to boost his image. Such a person seeks fulfilment of his defeated self- image by hounding the weak.

The rising crime rate against women, sexual harassment at work place, domestic violence etc. result from this psyche. Women, who remain a few steps behind in the social hierarchy for various reasons but are ambitious, often tend to become victims of such harassment at home and at work. Some succumb under pressure, some keep quiet, only a few dare to resist. These reactions are controlled by purely personal circumstances, not on the strength of the system.

In a study conducted by Neelu Kang on ‘Indian women activists’, it was found that of the 80 respondents, 59 have had personal experience of sexual harassment -- a whopping 73.75 per cent. These women mostly belonged to the urban educated class. Such trends are not much talked about because of social hypocrisy but are strong indicators of how and why a class of women chooses to become commodities and thus making their arduous journey smooth as well as slippery. Do such trends emerge in a just system?

Secondly, there is need to have a closer look at the women who manage to get powerful positions in this male-dominated society. Often these women wait till their male counterparts vacate a place for them to guard the left-over crumbs of power. Once again, it is by the force of circumstances that these women acquire power. It is a matter of chance, not the strength of the system. One wonders if Rabri Devi could have become the Chief Minister of Bihar had Laloo Prasad Yadav not been in troubled waters. Or, if Sonia Gandhi could have emerged had she not been widowed?

Are women defining a role for themselves in a society that recognises achievements spelt out in a male parlance? Often, a woman has to acquire masculine traits to be recognised as either a Jhansi Ki Rani and an Indira Gandhi or get herself commodified as Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen etc. There is also a class of women who climb up the ladder because of a male mentor – a la Jayalalitha and Mayawati . The terms of so- called social equality are not yet well-defined. They are also not just . The objectives of this equality remains hazy even in the minds of the women. Before we jump onto another bandwagon of social equality on the old tracks of reservation, it would be better to know if this old rattling steam engine is taking women back to a society which defines masculine roles for women. Are we heading back to a male dominated society in the name of equality?