By: Somdatta Mitra
Elizabethan England was a fiercely patriarchal society with laws that heavily restricted what women could and could not do. Women were not allowed in to attend school or university, whereby they couldn’t work in professions like law and medicine. The only trades legally available to women were those that could be mastered and practiced in the home. Women were also barred from voting and though they could not inherit property from their father or their husband, they could not themselves purchase property.
Marriage too was dependent on the norms of the society’s patriarchal structure. Women often had no say at all in whom they married and at what age they were married. Women on the contrary enjoyed a relatively high status in society in the Early Vedic Period whereby they had freedom in family matters but could not participate in religious ceremonies.
They were encouraged to pursue education and intellectual standards with many women becoming rishis (saints). In the later Vedic period the status of women began to decline with the rise of patriarchal norms and restrictions. Restrictions were imposed on women’s rights, particularly in education and religious participation.
The concept of “Purdah (veiling) restricted her existence to completely outcast as an equal to their male counterparts. The caste system in India divided society into different groups, impacted their status, while women in lower castes facing more restrictions. The two great epics of The Ramayana and The Mahabharata depicted women as the root of dharma, pleasure and prosperity. Despite the idealized portrayals the status of women continued to decline with restrictions on their freedom and rights becoming more common.
They were expected in increasingly to focus on domestic roles and motherhood with their education and intellectual pursuits being discouraged. The pious admirance in the past that women were considered as Janani (mother) and Devi (goddess) and Ardhangini (better half) and cradling their potent in spiritual activities perhaps faded with times when the patriarchal society enveloped these ideologies into a conflagration of restrictions.
The concept of Sati (where a wife would immolate herself in the funeral pyre of her dead husband) and in the medieval period where through the custom of Jauhar where Rajput women sacrificed their lives for their husbands when they were about to loose a battle. At that time the birth of a girl child was a matter of shame for the parents, considering them to be a burden in our society. Treating women as a material was common in the medieval period.
Widows were considered cursed. It was a superstition that when a woman becomes a widow she inflects depredation and brings ill luck. She was cornered and abandoned and was deprived to attend any holy or sacred rituals or place. With the fight for women empowerment many social reformers like Raja Rammohan Roy, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Swami Dayanand Saraswat and Swami Vivekananda helped women to receive backs their dignity and status in the society. In the contemporary society today, since the medieval period, there could be no quantitative expansion of female education or freedom of their absolute rights.
The only thing perhaps emerged from the awareness was the qualitative excellence. The activities of the British rulers and missionaries who came from England and other parts of Europe made some changes in the social and cultural life of Indians. They were in favour of women’s education and they had set up several schools for girls. The battle against the patriarchal norms raised widespread alarm in the awareness in the 19 th century, to demand for women’s education.
Despite the increased access to education, employment, political participation, legal protections against discriminations and violence over the past 75 years of India’s Independence, there are several challenges and tragic incidents that have created lapses on the progress and security of women ‘s rights, individuality and respecting their dignity today.
Gender inequality persists in areas of politics, the judiciary, and leadership positions and even in domestic survival. Over their individuality, even after getting education, many families still don’t want to respect their qualities, never encourage their decisions to take initiatives and promoting the participation in work force. It’s like their existence is a rampart puppet that under the definition of commitment is compelled to sacrifice everything, even her own dignity at the cost of her devotion to the family and society. Instead she receives abuses and tormentations and deprivations over a dominant force of their spouse or in laws.
Despite the legal measures and ban dowry practices, including sex selective abortions, female infanticide, child marriages, dowry murder, still provokes the senstivity of the society to completely erase these malpractices from our society as these remain hopelessly ineffective. An acknowledgement over the regular cases of divorce occurring due to lack of compatibility and perhaps competitive expectations from a marriage, the women in our contemporary society suffers extensively to rise for their rights as scaffolds for their own empowerment.
Even in middle class and upper middle class families where educated individuals neglect to respect the dignity of the women within the family, where their individuality confronts a suppression over a strong domination. As a loner and victim, women submerge in the vicissitudes of life. There are women whose spouses leave them and remarry or engage in some extra – marital or illicit affairs, trampling their dignity and years of devotion. From there vociferations augment like conflagrations to fight for their injustices and secure their individuality. Rabindranath Tagore wrote ” Where the mind is without fear and the head held high….. ” Today it seems to have been a theory which gives a feeling of refreshing vibes while we recite the poem. The practicality is yet to be adopted and accepted by the society.
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