How Social Injustice Is Deeply Engraved In The Society
As I sit down to write this paper, plethora of thoughts cross over my mind. In my twenty-five years of life I have seen myself growing, changing and learning, all, I believe, for the better.
Let me begin by introducing myself, I am Astha Bhandari, a 25-year-old. I belong to a Brahmin, Hinduism practicing family from a small landlocked country, Nepal. This description is not my defining intersecting identities. It is a socially constructed definition of my identity. As an individual I would define myself as a cis-gendered Nepali female, atheist, liberal and radical who has lived most of my life in a pseudo joint family, with my mother and my cousins, for most parts. I completed my schooling in Nepal. Throughout my schooling period I was admitted to five different schools where I met people from different castes, religion, social class and ethnic backgrounds. I mention these different groups particularly because it is integral to Nepalese society and has helped me shape my understanding to different approaches to social theories.
After completing my schooling, my tenth grade, I was enrolled in an all girls’ school, Ashok Hall Girls’ Residential School, in Ranikhet, Uttarakhand (state) in India, to complete my high school, +2 as is known in India and Nepal. Prior to coming to India, I studied in a boarding school in Nepal but it was my first time studying and living in a different country and further away from family.
After the completion of my high school, I joined National Law School of India University in Bangalore, India where I again lived at the hostel. It was a five-year B.A, L.LB. Hons. Course. But without completing the course, I went back to Nepal after three years itself. I lived in Nepal for a year and then came to Morris in the year of 2014 to study Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. For most parts I have lived in Nepal and India, two South Asian countries, equally patriarchal, traditional and religious. I have always loved both of these countries, Nepal being my home country where I grew up and where my entire family and friends live. I have always felt a sense of belonging there and India, home to many of my very good friends and where I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and had access to that ‘freedom’ that I never had in Nepal with family and relatives always posing certain restrictions. Yes, at times it felt very restricted but it was home so as a child and a teenager, I more often than not complied to all that was asked of me to do. But now, having lived so far away from home, here in America, all by self, I learnt to question and contemplate the old practices and traditions that has been carried home back home since years. My own changing identities of the self, made me realize that identities too are fluid and shifts with one’s experiences and understanding as per the social surrounding.
Born and raised in Nepal I have realized how social injustice is deeply engraved in the society. Although Nepal has shown stark statistics, gender discrimination is not very different in many other parts of South Asia. Due to the patriarchal structure of the society and discriminatory traditions, women in most parts are subjected to violence, various forms of abuse, and if nothing else the chastity of woman becomes the prime issue of concern. I also have had early exposure to superstitious traditions, the same traditions that have made women subservient to men. During my high school I realized that the situation of women was even worse than what the media and literature predicted. As I travelled, sometimes from school as a part of field study and later on my own as a volunteer, to remote areas, I witnessed few cases regarding domestic violence and maternal mortality due to lack of proper care. In most of these cases social structure and tradition allowed and even encouraged such discriminatory behavior against women.
As a child, I was very religious, my family is Hindu and I carried their religious views. From an early age, I was taught to respect the authority. This fear of the superiors prevented me from questioning our social practices for a long time. In Hindu religion, if a girl/woman, is menstruating then they are not allowed to visit temples, participate in religious activities and celebrations. I was even told not touch plants, as they would die if somebody “impure” would touch them. I believed, and I followed the same for years. In my early ages, I was prone to getting sick. My growth happened much earlier, and my hormones changed due to my skin diseases. I menstruated for the first time when I was 8 years old. From then on, I was prevented from doing any of the above mentioned activities. But I followed each of them.
Although many a times, the child inside me felt left out as none of my female cousins had to stay inside the room while everyone else celebrated. But my fear of God never let me ask “why” to my mother. But as I grew up, I began wondering why is menstruating seen as a bad thing, why does a female child has to grow up even before her childhood ended. I asked my mother, and she replied “because bleeding is impure”. It was not the answer to my question. Hinduism worships many Goddesses. I began to think if there were days fixed for these Goddesses where they would not be worshipped, as they were females too, and I felt there be a time in the month when they would menstruate too. I much later learnt that considering menstruation as a social taboo is an extension of social inequality, and as a menstruating women makes her an untouchable, the practice has been ongoing to maintain such an inequality.
I began to feel the gender segregation. Although at my house, where my mother raised all of us, she tried to teach all of us to be able to clean, cook, use motors (for water), wash our own clothes, some sort of gender differences became to show up. My brothers would do works such as filling the water bottles, bringing water jars from the shop and I and my other sisters would clean up, cook food, dry clothes on the terrace. On having questioned on the kinds of activities we did, I was told told “they are men, they are more powerful strength wise. But if you want to be so arrogant, go do it on your own”. Genders are products of individuals; however, individuals construct genders in the presence of other people to whom they try to prove their category. From this, know that gender is the outcome of social situations. Such differences were not just limited at homes. To me, I felt this wide gap more in schools and at streets. In schools, there was a clear distinction between feminine and masculine characteristics. Girls with short hairs, and into sports or who were athletic were labelled as “tomboy”, whereas boys who respected women and did not tease them were looked down upon. Whenever such a topic comes up, I always remember an incident that happened with me when I was in seventh grade. I had just changed my school, and was a new student.
At my new school, there was fixed dress codes, trousers for boys and skirts for girls. At that time, as I was suffering from a particular skin disease, partial patching of my skin, I was very conscious of wearing skirts. So, during the time for assemble, I went and joined the girls’ line and students around me, started to talk loudly saying “chakka chakka”, meaning a hermaphrodite has joined the school. When I think about this incident now, it compels me to think how much importance our societies place on the looks of individuals, especially on women, further objectifying them.
When we say privilege, we do not mention only men's economic, moral, social privileges; but also women's privileges. Taking advantage of positive discrimination -which is not actually beyond discrimination, but a part of discrimination, maybe with an ignorant perspective. The common and simple examples of not paying the bill on a date, expecting men to carry heavy stuff, expecting men to be that “gentleman” who opens the door and pulls the doors for their female conterparts. This is an extension of doing gender, expecting people of certain gender to behave in a particular manner. This can be understood through the concept of bargaining with patriarchy. Through this approach, women accept gender roles attributed to them, expecting it to protect them when the time comes.
We all might have witnessed families, telling primarily to a female member how to dress and how not to dress. I believe this underlies property perspective. Female members of the family and their bodies are seen as properties of male members; so, for welfare of the men's honor, the women should be careful about their dresses, gestures and behaviors. As what I have seen in Nepal, it is also particularly true in terms of a woman’s chastity. This again brings to the concepts and the acceptance of the ideas of masculinity and femininity, and how it is engraved to one’s gender, further conforming to gender binary. As individuals we confirm to gender binary and as a society we construct those notions of gender binary and do genders, further legitimizing it. Social institutions base their construction of gender on law, science, cultural values, religion etc. This effort provides them to be unquestionable, undefeatable and dominant structures. This is the result of state's description of gender and placing its perception of gender in certain situations within social framework.
This compels me to think in relation to the sociological theories where power of the dominant authority constructs their ideologies and which again reinforces us to the heteronormative practices. If individuals do not conform to those constructs, they are seen as having deviant behaviors or even an outcast. These social institutions are also the ones to locate gender into bodies of individuals. Be it either through social media, magazines or movies and shows. It tells women to look feminine, by creating complex with representations of women models with a certain figure type, skin tone, and even in the ways in talking and walking. So is true with men, they are expected to have a macho personality, punching and fighting is seen as cool, and if they lack any expected ‘masculine’ characteristics are often ridiculed as either being a ‘girl’ or ‘queer’.
I have many a times witnessed such a pattern at my home in Nepal. When a girl shouts or keeps her nails dirty, I have heard her mother say, “Please clean up yourself, you are not a boy”, and at the same time, when her son, toddler, goes around making mess, she said, “boys are so hard at this age, why are they so inquisitive.” J.S Mill, through his article, The Subjection of Women (2006), has explained how women were subjugated by men for their own benefit and for the benefit of the society. I argue that not just men, even women themselves are doing gender, perpetuating the ever so prevalent gender constructions and maintaining its rigidity. My father’s cousin, my thulo papa, after the death of his wife, remarried again at the age of 60. He has three sons, all of who are married and have children of their own. They were not very happy with this marriage, but do talk to their father and not once have to they talked to his partner. I went to visit them in Denver, in the winter of 2014. I was talking to one of the sister-in- law, regarding this and she said that she agrees with her husband and even commented on what kind of woman would marry at this age. In Nepal, it is okay for a man, no matter what his age be to get married, but not for a woman. We are still doing again, again and again, in everything.
In my Sociology of Ageing class, we learnt about the misconceptions of ageing and how ageing can be understood through cultural perspective and the embedment of the idea of gender in that culture. I believe she gave me a perfect example of this. The centrality of discrimination and oppression is to maintain hierarchy, be it of class race, or gender. The lens of intersectionality provides us with the basis of prejudice, sexism, and racism and also describes the hierarchical nature of power. In Nepal and India, particularly that of gender and class. I recently had a talk with one of my friends. She comes from a very traditional Indian family where love marriages are still frowned upon and is unacceptable. Her family was meeting with prospective brides for their son. So, last week, a proposal came for her brother and the girl’s family had sent her photo to the family. They looked at the girl, and now whether they approve of this marriage or not is solely based on how the girl looks. Some of the members of the family approved of the girl and some of them commented on her being a little chubby and having a crooked smile. They are still debating over what to decide on. When she told me about this the first that came to my mind was how a girl was being treated as mere object, a property that they will own if they like after sight-seeing.
In my Gender in Literature and Culture class we studied about courtly love and the basis of such a love was largely upon looks. Love poems described about the beauty of the woman as enchanting and her voice as sweet as a nightingale and on her gracious movements. In countries like ours, no matter how a guy looks, and of what age he is, families still want a girl beautiful and young, and yes, chaste. Women then are taught to self-objectify.
Amanda Zimmerman and John Dalhberg in the article “The Sexual Objectification of Women in Advertisement” (2008) talked about how advertisements have been increasing, creating an unrealistic approach to women bodies. We often see such objectification as a tactic of selling products and ignore the negative impacts they have on women, through self-objectification. Advertisements have carried on with objectification of women and have made a dominant capitalist industry through these body images of women. I believe any forms of inequalities is a result of power dynamics. This structure inequality is strengthened even more when we comply to such unequal power relations. It is not true that is no resistance from the disadvantaged groups, but the resistance may not always be or have been strong enough, or broad enough to make significant changes in the society, and even when national laws are passed to support the disadvantaged groups, the “elite power,” the ones higher in the power hierarchy do not allow any structural changes, and continue the exploitation. It is true to gender, class, race, ethnic or social, economic and political front. In order to understand the existence of these socially constructed factors we look to look back to history, in sociological approaches, geo-political formations, and gender binary theories in feminism. Feminist theories over time have argued for the need for a holistic inclusion, in terms of gender recognition and equal treatment of men and women at homes and at work, for gender neutrality and against the rigidity of masculinity and femininity.
I believe we as societies can only transform if these changed be made first at individual level, then homes, institutional level and at larger on national level. Today, when I look at myself down even four years before, I have seen myself transforming, rethinking what I speak and correcting myself when I feel I have erred and followed the ways of such social constructs.
