A Range of Activities: Kaia's Life in the World: My Host Family: an Example of Modern Patriarchy

I just finished my final paper for Social Justice class. Yay! Now I just have my Contemporary India paper on tribes for Monday. My film paper won't be due until the end of April which is absolutely wonderful because this way I'll have time to make it good. =D

Hope you enjoy my paper. Hopefully my professor will feel as good about it as I do. =p

My Host Family: an Example of Modern Patriarchy

I live with a small host family of two people who are very different from each other. My host mother, Amma, as I call her is 64, already with dentures, and spends most of her time at home cooking for my host brother and I, and watching TV. She wears saris every day, speaks very broken English, goes to temple daily, and prays to the gods in her kitchen shrine at least twice a day. My host brother on the other hand is almost 40, never got married, lived and worked in the US for a year, always has his cell phone on hand, and spends most of his free time on Facebook. He wears shorts around the house, speaks fluent English, is not religious, and does social activism as a hobby. They are two very different people: one very traditional and one very modern.

What surprises me about my host family is that though the differences between my host mom and host brother are somewhat to be expected (my host brother is younger so he would be more tech-savvy, etc and the older generations are known to be more traditional), my host mother seems to be more liberal while my host brother is very patriarchal. Despite the modern gadgets and Western appearance, my host brother is the perfect example of the patriarchy of modern Indian society.

I know that using my host family as proof of modern patriarchy in India is not completely fair. I recognize that not all Indian men are like my host brother, nor that all women are like my host mother. However, from other experiences here in India and conversations with my fellow students and other Indians, alike, I have heard only accounts that affirm my own conclusions from my host family.

My host father died in 1995 and though I cannot understand Marathi (and therefore miss out on the dialogues between my host mom and brother), I can tell that my host brother is the man of the house. He does whatever he wants and does not seem to listen to my host mother. He is still unmarried, likes to party a lot, and usually sleeps in until 10 am or so (sometimes later).

I have also felt his patriarchal presence from my own interactions with him. He is very good at using persuasion and earlier in my semester here would constantly try to pressure me into going somewhere or doing something with him. One time he convinced me to go to the movies with him but absolutely refused to help me choose a movie. Though it was his idea he told me to choose a movie and a time. When I finally managed to find a movie and locate the time he promptly told me that he would not be able to be ready to see a movie by 6:30 pm (2 hours to get ready apparently was not enough). I grudgingly found the 8:30 pm showing. Of course, because of him we didn't leave the house until 8:20 pm so we were 15 minutes late to the movie. Thus, even when he insists that I make decisions, it is only a façade as he is ultimately going to do whatever he wants on his timeline.

Again, I understand that some of these qualities in my host brother may be personal traits, but they are also traits that I have found in other men as well, including my grandfather in the USA. But in regards to my grandfather, we attributed his sexism to his age and the difference between generations. What surprises me most is that my host brother is patriarchal regardless of his age and his modernity. This seems to be a reoccurring theme in India: modernity does not mean gender equality. Despite the laws that state women are equal, that abolish gender-based discrimination in the workplace, and even India's efforts to modernize and westernize (actions that I associate with gender-equal societies), Indian society is still very patriarchal.

When the British first came to India, the lack of women's rights was one of their first observations. They used the "degraded condition of Indian women… as an indicator of India's inferior status in the hierarchy of civilizations" (Bandopadhyey 381). To them, the lack of gender justice was due to India's backwardness and lack of modernity. Modernity therefore was associated with gender justice and equal rights for women.

Because of the British's judgments, the new and independent India did their best to prove themselves to Britain and the world, and "the status of women became the main focus of the reforming agenda for the modernizing Indian intellectuals of the nineteenth century" (Bandohpadhyey 381). As part of this agenda Articles 14 and 15 were added to the Constitution, which made the discrimination of women unconstitutional (Iyer). Since then, several other laws have been passed on multiple levels of government (such as Reservations for women), but patriarchy still prevails.

In 2009, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer wrote an article in The Hindu about a case he presided over which acknowledges this sad fact. In 1979 there was a Supreme Court case in which Mrs. C.B. Muthamma argued that she had not been promoted as ambassador by the Indian Foreign Service because of her gender. She was an excellent Foreign Service employee and had received top scores in her Foreign Service exam, and yet she was still denied ambassadorship. The first judge to view the case had sided with the Indian Foreign Service, saying that "the chances of leakage of confidential information of strategic significance was a dangerous risk, and so Muthamma's case to be made an ambassador was rightly rejected" (Iyer).

The Foreign Service had no legitimate reason to doubt Muthamma's confidentiality. In fact, as Justice Iyer (who was the Supreme Court judge of the case ) pointed out, if gender gave reason for doubting one's confidentiality then why were the wives of ambassadors free of this discrimination? Because of Justice Iyer's ruling, Muthamma won the case and became India's first woman ambassador. In his article, Justice Iyer points out that laws that discriminate against gender still exist even after the establishment of its unconstitutionality because government workers neglect to challenge them. Justice Iyer calls this "a sad reflection of the distance between Constitution in the book and Law in Action."

I completely agree with Justice Iyer but will take his interpretation one step further by pointing out the reasons behind this apparent gap between laws and actions. It is quite simple: the laws are not enacted because those who have the power to do so do not believe in them. No one challenges their actions so they continue neglecting the law. As Ratna Kapur says, "law is a necessary but insufficient part of a more general strategy of bringing about social change" and therefore, "public opinion has to be moulded to accept these rights" (Kapur 122). Law puts women on legally equal footing as men but it takes acceptance of this change on a societal level to ensure equal treatment and justice for women.

India has changed quite quickly over the past few decades so why hasn't Indian society changed? This returns us to the subject of my host brother and his modernity. He is walking, breathing proof that though India for all visual purposes has "changed", the social change from patriarchy has not happened.

India is high-tech, familiar with the international arena, and has made bigger jumps politically in electing women than most countries. India has already had a female Prime Minister and many women governors, representatives and congress members. But as Gary Younges points out, "there is no absolute causal link between gender representation and gender equality. Six of the countries that rank in the top 20 for women's representation are also in the top 20 for per capita rapes." Representation, modernity, and laws are therefore "more likely to be the product of progressive social change than a precursor to it" and should not be taken as reasons to assume gender equality extends into society (Younges).

This assumption is one that is all too often made, all over the world. Even in the US, where we pride ourselves on protecting the individual rights of all, we still have not elected a woman for president, and gender discrimination, sexism and gender stereotypes abound. As I mentioned earlier, they even exist in my family. And in high school I switched out of a gym class because my male gym teacher was sexist and yelled at me when I respectfully expressed my non-sexist views. Women (and men) everywhere continually struggle with society's inability to change. So what is the answer? How do we create change? I believe the first step is to recognize that gender justice is still a problem, and to stop assuming that modernity will create immediate equality. We need to start in our own families, schools, and communities to start the change ourselves. Only then will we be able to achieve gender justice. And only then will we maybe be able to associate modernity with gender justice.