*Dr Anita Kaushal, Ph.D is Dean & Associate Professor in Post Graduate Government College for Girls, Sec 11, Chandigarh. A first class post graduate Gold Medalist in English, her doctoral research “Anticipations of Feminism – Exploration of the Feminine Psyche in the works of Fanny Burney, Jane Austen and George Eliot” lead to award of Doctorate of English Literature by Punjab University in 1995. She has published many research articles.
International Women’s Day – A day of pensive introspection
(Originally Published in Hindustan Times – Chandigarh)
International Women’s Day is a day of pensive introspection. Though women are progressively tearing past their ‘chattel’ status, a complete cure of the societal ailment will depend upon a threadbare comprehension of its genesis.
‘Chattel’ in its dictionary meaning “is an item of tangible movable or immovable property except real estate, freehold, and the things which are parcel of it; a piece of property; slave-bondsman”. The general historical trend through all the ages, though with a few honourable exceptions, has been to treat women as chattel.
The entity of women has in the past oscillated between that of domesticated cattle on the one side, and touching fringes of human dignity on the other. Like cow yielded milk, horse drove chariots; woman reared children and drove the household.
The male prescription of such a role chained women to the four walls of the household, engaged in a lifelong ordeal of producing dozens of children and encountering their mortality; and in addition being a chef and house-keeper for the joint household.
If bullocks and horses were the beasts of burden and a cow a useful source of milk and fuel, women were in the beasts of the household and biological machines for producing progeny.
However, while horses, bullocks and cows like other commodities had a value tag for their acquisition or barter, the status of the woman touched the lowest ebb because society did not attach an economic value tag to the household or child rearing services.
Women were neither a commodity of exchange nor an object of barter in a society where moving outside the household threshold was bad character and loose morals. Conversely, the system of purdah, forced widowhood and sati reduced a woman to one man’s chattel.
With fathers and brothers completely denied her the right to inherit the family property, woman was pushed to face the same treatment by the in- laws. Without any financial means at her command, woman was reduced to the status of a puppet dancing to the tunes of the men-folk who sponsored her very existence. In such a pitiable condition, woman had to seek her entry into her in-laws household through a negotiated dowry.
As woman was purely a recipient of male biological sexual aggression, rearing children with male surnames and managing a male dominated household, she suffered the male instinct of financial, moralistic and dogmatic aggression for overpowering her.
Men of the ancient ages had acquired great expertise in taming wild animals into productive assets. In their mindlessness, they went all out to tame the opposite human gender too. In the process, they not only weakened the social fabric, but also dealt a death blow to the pace of balanced intellectual and socio- economic growth of the mankind for ages.
The process of converting women into chattel found its way through legislation into the laws of the land. There are disgusting examples of chattel like status of women in criminal, inheritance, property laws and democratic rights of women in various legal systems of the world.
Feminism, progressive modernism and globalization has ushered a turn- around in the social values attached to womanhood. It may be a late beginning, and may have taken long to gain momentum, but the process of amelioration of women’s condition is now on strong foundation.
The laws of the land are now helping women to shed their chattel tag and assigning sanctity to women’s social, legal and economic entity which manifested in debilitating social customs like sati, forced widowhood. Denial of inheritance and discrimination in public appointments are now targeted as social evils.
In a turn- around, the new women related laws are pro-active in ensuring a level playfield to the women by punishing domestic violence, dowry seekers, rapists and the discriminators in an exemplary manner. There is a direct attack on femicide, child marriage and other evils. The implementation of laws may still be lackluster, but a strong foundation has been laid.
The main area of concern is a relative lack of economic self dependence of women. The State still has a very low ratio of women in employment at all levels, despite girls outshining boys in higher, technical and medical education. Police remains one of the most gender-insensitive brute force. Women joining the army are still struggling to find a legitimate place within their organization. Private sector seems better, but there are instances of exploitation of women at workplace and also of sexual attacks on women working at odd hours at BPOs and other establishments. State and its enforcement agencies need to be gender sensitized.
The crux of the problem still remains unattended. There is a dire need to provide economic stimulus to women. It is essential to highlight the women per capita incomes and male per capita incomes separately for proper indexing of women’s economic growth leading to their economic self reliance. Financial independence leads to social dignity. State policies should go beyond the cosmetic ‘special components’ and ‘gender- budgets’ aimed at women’s economic growth. Women do not need help or charity. They just need a ladder to get past the high wall of deprivation, discrimination and denial of means of economic growth and decision-making. That ladder is nothing but a systemic correction of kinks in the operation of economic forces to make women self reliant.
