My body is not your playground!

When I faced civil service interview in 2017, I was asked to give suggestions as to how would I see women workforce participation improve in our economy? What immediate and long term actions would help add our other half to the larger productivity of our country? My answer was very much direct and clichéd as I see it now. I could have pondered a bit as to what exactly the board wanted from me. I could have paused and reflected that the fact there was only one lady board member in my interview panel mirrored so much of the society I live in. the fact that it needs rules framed by male centric bureaucracy to enforce such necessary actions is in itself a mockery of how we see gender equality. Also the varied and insensitive experiences I had during my mock interviews showed the sickening male misogyny that surrounds me right from male dominance to implicit sexual harassment from stalking, staring to asking favors from various female candidates. For this, I had hinted and brought some instances in my previous article.

So coming back to my interview details, I went on to speak about the social aspect and about safety of women in public, the increasing crime rate, the deep patriarchal and biased attitude we share, the lack of implementations of our laws in general and women centric laws in particular, the time it takes to get justice and the like. However I failed to bring out the sexual harassment at workplace as an every day phenomena, where women perhaps struggle the most! To the point we would want to quit rather than stay in the job. But why restrict ourselves to formal sector, when we know 90% (of the total 25% in rural and 15% in urban) are employed in informal sector. These are the daily wage workers, construction laboureres, the maids, the cooks who live in our nearby slums. It is neither that they have the security of livelihood (often being thrown out of work in instances, with no insurance coverage or minimum wage policy), nor a formal way to redress their grievances (lack of unionization). In fact the one-sided Maternity Benefit Act that the President assented to, did much damage than good in my opinion and failed to even consider their existence. Apart from non-recognition of informal sector, the Act failed to be gender neutral too, considering child rearing and upbringing as solely woman’s duty.  This, time and again reflects the male misogyny practiced in state policy right from the time we had Population control program (this program considered women as mothers first and citizens later, to focus on their health for upbringing of a healthy child). Mind it, we live in times where we are considered technologically advanced, politically liberated and socially open. Yet we are far from giving women at workplace a sense of security.

Another serious issue we face is that of dropping women labour force participation in the economy. According to an article published in the Indian Express, women in India are less likely to work than their counterparts in any other G20 country except for Saudi Arabia. Now that should be no comparison at all, Saudi Arabia being a fundamentalist monarchy while India a republican democracy. Women contribute just 1/6 to the GDP of the country, the lowest amongst the countries in the world. Some consider it, a good sign, since it reflects that perhaps more number of women are going for higher education, therefore lesser drop-out rates and hence low participation in workforce. This might be partly true. Should one stop here, will amount to dismissing the debate quite casually, and will only do, just not the women but, the whole of society more harm.  

This trend is highly disturbing particularly for two reasons firstly when we talk of failing LFPR in rural areas, the agrarian distress, lack of proper implementation of inheritance laws, improper and unmindful mechanization of agriculture are few of things to consider. Besides these, the lack of educational opportunities straight away cuts off any hope for a girl child to pursue higher education and further formal employment. Can we neglect the biases, when the meager few of them, when are sent to a minimum amount of schooling, are merely reflecting a parental ploy to fetch a better prospect in an arranged marriage market? The MGNREGA that is considered to be one of the major milestones in bringing women to the forefront and rightly so, do deserve credit. But one must not forget that the kind of jobs available here are again informal and failing a sense of long term security and empowerment for this section.

Secondly in urban areas, one gets to notice all perverse kind of behavior. With India, as per World Bank, emerging to be the 6^th largest economy, overtaking France, one should be witnessing a positive egalitarian trend. Defying any such path, what instead is happening is severe and alarming fall in women employment and LFPR (tumbled from an already low 35% in 2005 to 26% in 2018). What could be the possible reasons, one may ask? One, definitely is the rigid labour laws that segregate women work and fails to suck women in jobs en mass. It will be myopic to hide behind the cloak of urbanization which superficially is considered as a liberator of women. City dwelling women are half as unlikely as rural ones to find a job.

Today, women are fed so that they can be healthy mothers and educated so that the upper middle class consider it as a status symbol. To have studied from a renowned institute firstly- fetches a higher earning husband and two gives a pseudo sense of empowerment. I might sound too cynical but the reality is always scary. 84% women in India argued that men have more right to work than women. Does this ring any bell? Does this anywhere make our conscience question us the efficacy of education? I haven’t even touched the topics which are equally serious and important in distinguishing in why India is failing its women? From different pay based salaries we adhere to as a rule, to the fact that our so called nuclear, urbanized, educated families still consider child rearing and homemaking as the primary job of the women, the fact that we have inflexible and unreformed labour markets, hampering our manufacturing, is a point to be noted.  It makes my answer out rightly narrow if I don’t mention artificial segregation of work that we have institutionalized from the very beginning of the human history. And the saddest thing is we take pride in such institutionalization.

Not that I was wrong but my answer made my argument only partially correct.  The answer to such questions is never easy if one understand the dimensions and complexities involved. If one decides to dig  a little deeper one would realize that the above are the mere consequences of the sickness we breed in our society, that they are a mere reflections of the state policy that we mindfully accept as legitimate, that it is actually how society mirrors its biases that are implemented in our economic policy. This, I think, was what I was hinting at when I pointed out that firstly women no longer feel the need to get out and secondly and importantly, women are forced to not get out.

How? Here lies the debate. The word is sexuality. The hint is female body. The idea is subjugation and domination. Since the prehistoric times women have always been divided artificially in sexual division of labor, the hunting and gathering community chose them as gatherers. And since hunting came to be looked upon as superior form of work in advanced societies, gathering was considered as a weak’s profession. The feudal societies termed them homemakers, sacrificing them at alters of institutions like marriage, caste and in recent times class. They become the adherents of all that was good, pure and chaste. The burden of societal stability was for them to bear. They were the epitome of morality. They were satis, sitas, ahilyas and draupadis. They were fragile, so they needed protection. They were child bearers, so needed to be confined. They were above all the honour and prestige, and hence needed husbands to carry on their legacy.

And oh my god!! Can one believe that we have been living with this sickness not for decades or centuries but for millenniums? Does a patriarchal, powerful man in a room ever think what it was to be like women? That, what it was to have the fear of stepping out in a society filled with public spaces by opposite gender, only to be objectified and looked in a lustful way? That, what it was to use one’s body as mere mechanism for reproduction? Capitalist society engaged them as the carriers of beauty products, advertised them as dutiful caretakers, only to result in mass consumption. They could suppress the debate and have successfully done so, over a century.

If one ever refutes my arguments and decides to counter me here I only want to ask them, ‘how do they see rape culture and its alarming rise?’ because for me rape is the biggest exhibition of man’s power over a woman’s body. Not to forget, equally marginalized in the name of sexuality are also transgenders, lesbians to gay and bisexuals. Manifestation of power is just not in politics but it is ‘body’ politics. The core of all power lies here. Adultery is still an offence and biasedly telling us that women are the chattels men take pride in. Marital rape shamefully confined in the sacredness of marriage.  How are we to debate when larger society still holds such views in 21^st century? May be it is for this sole reason, this creeping reality and unsettling questions, one should take forward the debate more vigorously than ever.  Thankfully the recent ruling on S.377 was a respite and a shiny ray of hope for the times to come.

My desperation in wanting to state that we have come far from sati, child marriage, female feticide fails me miserably. How? Why not talk with certain facts? As per Socio-Economic Statistics 2017, the rape as crime in India has risen by almost 162% in 2009 to 2015. There are 1.5million girls who are married off before they turn 18, the highest number in the world as per UNICEF data; the child sex ratio has been dwindling at mere 918 as per Census Survey 2011, a threatening drop, hinting at female feticide. I have already spoken of women LFPR which meagerly stands at 25% for rural and 15% for urban women. More than 90% of women in India invariably do household chores. What’s more sickening is the brutality of crime, from Delhi gang rape to Kathu and Unnao incident, has time and again exposed the cruelness and domination over a woman’s body. Still it hardly stirs the conscience of our leaders. Still our silences overpower our actions. And still we miserably fail to acknowledge the reality that surrounds us. We live in Padmavat glorification, sidelining our arguments for the false hope we nurture, that things are getting better. But let me tell you that they are not! And if you observe closely perhaps you might see the glimpse of it. You might see that we, as a society, have failed terribly!

To conclude, idea was to argue better economic future for women. But it remains a pretense if not equally reflected in social, cultural and political sphere. Women become powerless because they are taken away from economic activity through different means of social control. To empower them economically, make them concrete decision makers, runs beyond the realm of giving them employment.  This is what I meant when I used attitudinal change in my answer.  This was the safety I wanted, in a world, I live. The idea is not to be cynical but critical, in a time that needs desperate change.