Sunday, March 4, 2001		Article

FOR ages, the human psyche has been beset with notions of male superiority accruing into a world-wide practice of domination and control on the part of man and the propagation of a patriarchal ideology which attempts to relegate and demean the strength of womanhood. Subservience and subordination is considered to be an irrevocable ‘given’ of women’s condition, just as timidity and docility are deemed to be essentialistic components of the female conduct.

It is at the behest of monolithic patriarchal precedents prevalent since Adam is believed to have crafted the existence of Eve as an ‘appendage’ from his rib cage, that woman is supposed to be an illegitimate claimant to modes of personal freedom and socio-cultural activism. Women’s ‘aspirations’ and ‘expectations’, in this regard, are implicated in blasphemous terms by many an enlightened and intellectual men around us.

Independence, in association with the woman, whether mental or monetary, is cast in a deprecatory light by those who believe that it is not compatible with dutifulness, whether domestic or professional, a sense of caring and sharing and an equal partnership in the vagaries and challenges of human relationship, specifically that of matrimony. It is the pernicious double standard in matters of convention and morality, sex-role socialisation and the nexus between sexism and chauvinism which purports to exclude women from the meaning-giving process of life, while resorting to a codification of their conduct and character.

While man stations himself with obdurate pride on the position of being a creator and a provider, woman is supposed to lap up the ‘crumbs’ of his ego as the grains for her survival. In case she does not fit into the stereotypical role models of a chattel or a doormat, a wallflower or a ministering angel, she will be considered as ‘unwomanly’ at her best and a monstrous feminist at her worst. The pre-conceived determinism inherent to the categorisation of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ would indict such a woman for being ‘unfeminine’ and mistake her assertiveness for aggression, her self-awareness for her rabble-rousing worthlessness.

It is mandatory for Woman to derive an appropriate wo(man)ly substance, not from what is integral to her thoughts and deeds in the nature of fortitude, sensitivity, compassion, nurturance and perseverance, but from the pseudo-moral dictates on ‘how’ she ‘ought’ to think and act in a fashion ‘becoming’ of her as a woman. The glorification of self-denial and stoicism is invested with an aura of mystic idealism in association with the image of women and this kind of "feminine mystique" (Betty Frieden) is a corollary of society’s reluctance to consider women as complete human beings. The station of subjugation and self-sacrifice is considered almost natural and intrinsic to the ‘feminine’ sensibility.

The masculine definition of the ideals and images of women accrues from the timeless relevance of patriarchal values and is regulated and remodeled vicariously by many a section of society, including men and women, in different degrees. An eminent male sociologist like J.S. Mill points out, "All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men, not self-will and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others."

To come from the universal to the particular, if one were to envisage the position of women in context of the Indian society, one cannot help citing the opinion of Manu, often deemed a great law-giver, "Let her continue till death forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practicing the incomparable rules of virtue, which have been followed by such women, as were devoted to one only husband ... Yes, by this course of life it is, that a woman, whose mind, speech and body are kept in subjection, acquires high renown in this world, and in the next, the same abode with her husband".

Herein, perhaps, is revealed the eternal paradox inherent to the psyche of the ‘devout’ Indian male. Enshrined on a pedestal and invested with attributes of manifested divinity as Devi or Shakti, she is often discouraged from charting out a course of affirmative and proactive life ungoverned by debilitating strictures. She may even be slighted as a ‘fallen’ woman in lieu of her self-assertion and is likely to be rewarded for self-abnegation. The Sita-Sati-Savitri syndrome which idealises the embodiment of certain virtues of womanly conduct, including a consistent adherence to the norms of pativrityam set by impossibly audacious masculinist standards, meant to be emulated by women at large, should actually issue a warning to us.

By and large, the traditional bifurcation of role-fulfilment in the Indian society gives the privilege of economic productivity, political leadership, social eminence and religious sanctity to men, while women are supposed to be relegated to the sphere of domestic and inconsequential concerns. Girls are tutored to play the role of acquiescent daughters, dutiful housewives and beneficent mothers to perfection even if it entails a submerged and shadowy existence deeply embedded in the matrix of relationships which involve their commitment to the entire family, caste and community.

A woman is expected to inculcate the spirit of all-absorbing devotion to a set of ‘feminine’ attributes, even if it is at the cost of smothering her own individuality, extinguishing her desire for self-development, negating her freedom of choice, and rejecting her own credibility as a person with a mind of her own.

In spite of glaring problems, Indian women have attempted to surmount the varying levels of discrimination and disadvantage through respective phases of the drive for equality, emancipation and empowerment.

Undoubtedly, the pejorative ramifications of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ defined in terms of tailor-made requirements of the ‘sex-gender’ system which configures more often than not, a position of advantage for men and that of constriction for women, needs to be questioned and proved wrong. The gender-bias inherent to the interpretation of ‘masculinity’ as a synonym for reason, logic, intelligence, power, domination and that of ‘femininity’ as a component of emotion, weakness, passivity, subservience and propriety, accrues from the psychological, sociological, and historical offshoots of the patriarchal ideology.

It is a demand of reason, sanity and justice, therefore, that one should abstain from getting entangled in the morass of an argument which place the male and the female at two irreconcilable junctures of antagonism in mythical proportions of "the battle of the sexes". Rather, one has to pay credence to the irrevocable interdependence and compatibility of the two sexes wherein each of them is meant to derive from the other a sense of mutual enhancement conducive to an expansion of individual and collective well-being and fulfilment.