The silent woman syndrome

It is not merely the poor or the illiterate who are the victims of gender discrimination. Women from all strata of society, the world over, experience bias in day-to-day life. Only if present social attitudes change can we make an equitable society, says VISA RAVINDRAN.

WOMEN have been called witches and bitches, cursed for their frailty and frivolity; the fury of a woman scorned and the ornamental quality of her beauty have been the stuff of epics, but rarely has she been assessed as a normal human being. Recently in France, where romance still perfumes the air, in the popular imagination at least, and flirting is often cited as a national pastime, a group of high-profile women, tired of the traditional slurs that colour the evaluation of their achievements, have decided to bite back by forming the ironically-named Chiennes de Guarde (Guard Bitches) which threatens militant action against men who cross the boundaries of political correctness. John Keats spoke of "the generality of women, who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar-plum than my time" and confessed to a tendency to class women in his works "with roses and sweetmeats". Later Oscar Wilde called women "a decorative sex," adding insult to injury by following it up with "they never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly".

Not much seems to have changed in the third millennium if we are to go by some 21st Century happenings and utterings, whether in the recent British elections, in corporate United States or our own sad third world existence. The traditional denigration of women and underestimation of their capacities continue even as tokenism flourishes as a sort of toll payment on the high road of public life, an arduously-wrested and totally inadequate concession at the end of the 20th Century's struggle against gender discrimination.

The Labour Party in Britain had promised women activists a New Deal in the 1997 elections. Hundred and one of the 120 women in the last Parliament (total strength - 659 members) were from the Labour Party. Its website this time round, claimed it was committed to "giving women the support, encouragement, confidence and skills to play a full and equal role in the mainstream of the party". Yet in the run-up to Elections 2001, The Times carried a picture of Tony Blair towering over faded faces of women activists with an accompanying report titled "How Blair Babes have Faded Out of the Picture". Hasan Suroor, in an article in The Hindu (May 29, 2001) reports how this year's campaign had turned into a "women-free zone" and that the director of the Fawcett Society, which works to bring women into mainstream politics, had compared the campaign to a boys' club to which "a few very bright girls have been admitted". She had complained that Labour now had enough experienced women whose skills it had simply ignored and as for the Conservatives, the "only real image of the Conservative woman is Ann Widdecombe and Ffion Hague whose job seems to be to look beautiful and be silent". It is The Guardian that is reported in the article of accusing politicians of encouraging "a silent woman syndrome" in which female Ministers and MPs appear on campaign platforms "but barely speak and never answer media questions". Naturally, women's groups have described this as a step back from the great advance of the 1997 elections. Opinion polls have gone on record as saying women voters are "put off by the sight of men in suits shouting at each other" and that they were not intending to vote. A serious point to note because this is yet another way in which women will be denied what they want to see on the political agenda.

Gender discrimination coupled with racism was highlighted at a multicultural forum organised by the 21st Century Women's Leadership Centre in New York to discuss bias against women in the food industry in America. Lisa Beatrice Jones, named one of the 10 leading chefs by the Women's Forum, said many felt that you can't be a chef if you are coloured or a woman. She also revealed the mindset of men who felt that way when she said women are asked "why can't you have a baby or something?" in a bid to keep them out of the race. Mart Camacho, who founded Exotic Foods Inc., offering Caribbean, Italian, Spanish and Indian delicacies, disclosed that some people confused exotic with erotic while others thought she served rattlesnakes. Talk of globalisation and IT expanding knowledge and experience, let alone bringing understanding or acceptance. In spite of the traditional association of women with cooking and nurturing and their increasing presence as restaurant owners and faculty members in culinary schools, the subject for discussion at the New York forum had to be "Are women cooks and men the chefs?"

And now to move down to our own realities: recent reports have depicted how tribal women in the West Godavari district as owners of land in a matriarchal society are the target of police and non-tribal atrocities. According to an Indian Express report (March 13, 2001), they were beaten and abused as "bitches, and to be more specific, Koya bitches, accused of immoral relations and threatened with molestation if they didn't fall in line" with demands made on them by upper caste men and the police. Tribal women, like women of colour elsewhere, face what sociologists call "double jeopardy," the burden of being tribal and female or female and women of colour. We do not have to repeat here once more all the other obstacles women continue to face not only because of illiteracy or poverty but by the mere fact of being women.

The loss to society as a result of the continued bias against women is often overlooked in the desire to keep them out of the public sphere, denying them opportunity outside the walls of their homes and the worse captivity imposed on them by their gender. Kalpana Sharma, after a visit to Latur, chronicled the advantages of listening to the women of this earthquake ravaged area, whose traditional wisdom solved problems that men following dominant styles of reconstruction could neither envisage nor solve. Construction was seen as a male domain and at first the women were not consulted but expected to "settle" the houses put up by men. The women, writes Sharma, understood the value of the old even as they saw the need to incorporate new strengthening techniques and an NGO found that the women found not only more appropriate but often cheaper techniques for repair of their dysfunctional houses and also acted as crucial bearers of information to other members of the community. "More important," she writes, "the process has resulted in the revival of 300 mahila mandals (once defunct). Today, seven years after the earthquake when the work of reconstruction and repair is over, these groups continue to function and participate at many levels of village development" and have evolved into "a permanent resource that benefits the entire society". Women are neither mere decoration, roses and sweetmeats to be given sugarplums once in a while, nor a permanently silent segment to patiently bear continuous discrimination.

The experiences discussed here also pinpoint the wide prevalence of such bias which is not confined to poor or illiterate communities or nations alone and therefore focus on the deeper social conditioning that has fashioned present attitudes. The sooner these change to a more equitable and inclusive vision, the better for society.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Eye donation - a perspective
Next     : Love and fire