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Steinem, 79, recognised as feminism’s
most influential voice, is not new to India. Aged 22, she came to
India to escape marriage. Instead, she found herself involved with
Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement and with M N Roy’s Radical
Humanists, for which she worked as a volunteer in Tamil Nadu’s
riot-affected areas, travelling in third–class compartments of the
Indian Railways. Her interest in tribal cultures of India grew and
later her association with Kamla Devi Chattopadhyay influenced her
feminist ideology. Founder of Ms magazine, Women’s Action
Alliance and a range of other organisations, including the latest
Women’s Media Centre, Steinem struggled as a freelance writer in New
York, finding a footing with the "girl reporter’s
assignment" of profiling celebrities. She had to go through the
arduous grind of organisational work, before she was able to break
gender-related stereotypes through her writings and organisations.
She recently participated in Zee Jaipur Literature Festival. Apart
from being a well-known feminist, activist Steinem has authored
several best-selling books, including Revolution from Within: A Book
of Self-Esteem. For the first time in human history, she says, women
do not constitute half the human race. The world sex ratio has
dwindled to 100 women for 101.3 men due to different forms of femicide.
More girls have been killed in the last 50 years because they were
girls than men have been killed in all the battles of the 20th century
combined. The violence that one witnesses in the battlefields is bred
in homes, where gender violence is normalised through cultural
sanction. Excerpts from an interview:
Gender inequality is cultural
Oppression of women also dehumanises men in their limited roles. Men
didn’t invent violence against women, they inherited it as a
cultural legacy. That is why it is hard to fight domestic violence
which has come to be associated with masculinity. Since violence
against women enjoys cultural acceptance against nations, races and
castes it becomes more desirable. A man has often not seen a woman in
authority beyond the age of eight. This man feels baffled seeing a
woman in authority, and takes it as an encroachment of his space. In
most cases, gender inequality is experienced first as children at home
among people we love, that’s why, we’ll accept it anywhere. We
have begun to raise our daughters as sons, but we don’t raise our
sons as daughters, which inadvertently re-affirms the same old gender
notions.
Violence and oppression If you add up the women who’ve
been murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in America since 9/11—
and then add up all the Americans killed in 9/11, in Iraq and in
Afghanistan combined, more women have lost their lives to domestic
terrorism. And this is happening in a country the world views to be
liberal to its women. Sex and World Peace - a 2012 book by
Valerie Hudson and three other scholars has documented current rates
of violence against females in 100 countries. They believe the best
predictor of violence within a country and also a country’s
willingness to use violence against another country is none of the
usual suspects of poverty, natural resources, religion or democracy.
If the society has norms of violence rooted in gender inequality, it
is more likely to use force when in a conflict situation rather than
states that foster gender equality through laws and enforce those
laws.
India is not the rape capital of the world The rate of
sexual assault is not higher in India compared to the other developed
countries like the US and the UK, which report a much higher rate of
sexual violence against women. In India, women have now started to
report sexual assault. You have to keep the cultural context in mind,
as Churchill said, "A Dalit woman can’t be raped," the
social factors need to be looked at with sensitivity. Some progress
has been made in making the victimiser accountable rather than the
victim under the new rape laws. The Nirbhaya case changed the entire
viewpoint because the girl was absolutely blameless, so it became the
match for the dry tinder which was already there. Empathy for such
crimes is hard to come by from men, except in such rare cases. I came
across a rape convict in Nevada state who was sexually assaulted in
jail. He told me, "Now I understand what physical violation is
all about". We need to humanise the masculine role to humanise
this world.
Indian roots of feminism In India, the feminist movement
has been far more strong and has been linked to grass- root level
work. The perception that feminism came from the West is a result of
the colonial mindset. I learnt my first lessons from Kamla Devi
Chattopadhyay, founder of All-India Women’s Conference, who believed
feminism was not separable from socialism. Ela Bhatt, should have been
given the Nobel. She pioneered micro-financing and offered employment
to 1.9 million women through SEWA. In India, feminism moves in cycles
— it comes and goes. Traditional history doesn’t tell us the role
played by women. Women fought against Sati and child marriage, people
were already radicalised, thanks to these million small movements in
the hinterland when the legal reforms came about. Apne Aap Women’s
collective has 80 thousand women-commissioned work. Whatever happens
to men is political what happens to women is cultural. So, it doesn’t
make news. Also, women’s economic movement remained confined to
feminist academics, but India has experienced a lot more change than
being documented in academia. Political empowerment has come through
Panchayati Raj institutions. Women got many benefits, thanks to the
silent work of these feminists — abortions were legalised and family
planning was first introduced in India, you had political leadership
from a woman prime minister. I wonder if Indira Gandhi had a brother,
could she be the PM? Because of their fertility, women were divided
into two groups — a section of them was to be kept ‘pure’ for
the purpose of protecting caste and race, the other section was to be
used for sex, as prostitutes, or to produce slaves. Both can change
only when women have more options. In the first case, there is
complete right over fertility and in the second, more openings for
work, other options for economic activity.
Existence of matrlineal
cultures When no gender is deprived of realising full potential of
human quality. The closest humanity came to realising this was in the
matrilineal societies, not matriarchal because that would be reversing
the patriarchal. In the US, among the Native Americans, 500 or so
matrilineal cultures existed where women participated in decision
making. Treaties to give up their lands to the Europeans were signed
by clan mothers. These were the cultures of balance where the paradigm
was the circle. In India, matrilineal cultures existed from Kerala to
Himalayas before colonialism and Christianity arrived. Patriarchy
arrived between 500 to 5,000 years back. Patriarchy makes only five
per cent of the human history. And it has caused tremendous damage to
the balance of nature.
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