Eight important Kinds of Discrimination which are inflicted on women – Essay

At the societal level, besides constitutional provisions for avoiding any discrimination against sex, there are some other disabilities also which are inflicted on women for their being of different biological kind. We discuss below a few of such disabilities:

(i) Paternalistic Dominance:

Gerda Lerner has studied the causes for the rise of women in the dec­ade of the sixties. She says that for nearly 4,000 years women have shaped their lives and acted under the umbrella of patriarchy, or best described as ‘paternalistic dominance’.

The term describes the rela­tionship of a dominant group, considered superior to a subordinate group, in which the dominance is mitigated by mutual obligations and reciprocal rights. “The dominated exchange submission for protec­tion, unpaid labour for maintenance.

In the patriarchal family, responsibilities and obligations are not equally distributed among those to be protected. The male children’s subordination to the fa­ther’s dominance is temporary; it lasts until they themselves become of households.

The subordination of female children and of wives is lifelong.” There is a Sanskrit sloka which says that a woman in her childhood is protected by her father, in adulthood by her hus­band, and in her old age by her son. This paternalistic protection has made her a commodity.

(ii) A Tool of Sexuality and Reproduction:

Human history very comfortably brings out the fact that women have always been a tool of sexuality. She is, therefore, asked to limit her movements within the household. Purdah and burka are imposed on her, for; she is a possession of some male.

Claude Levi-Strauss, to whom we owe the concept of the “exchange of women”, speaks of the reification of women, which occurred as its consequence. But it is not women who are reified and co modified, it is women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity which is so treated.

(iii) State of Unfreedom:

True, women are a source of procreation. But, her power of procrea­tion is controlled by the male. She is vulnerable to the sexuality of man. The decision to cohabit is taken by the male. If she defies it, she is raped. This has put her in a world which does not give her any free­dom. Commenting on women’s state of unfreedom, Lerner writes:

But women always and to this day lived in a relatively greater state of unfreedom than did men. Since their sexuality, an aspect of their body, was controlled by others, women were not only actually the disadvantaged by psychologically being restrained in a special way.

For women, as for men of subordinate and oppressed groups, history consisted of their struggle for emancipation and freedom from neces­sity. But women struggled against different from of operation and dominance than did men, and their struggle, up to this time, has lagged behind that of men.

(iv) Stand-by Wife:

Right from the early periods of history, to the present day, there is a gender defined role of woman as that of a stand-by wife. The Rajas and the Maharajas had a large number of wives.

The elites and the rich also practiced and institutionalized polygyny. Though such women exercised considerable power and privileges, they depended on their attachment to these so-called big men. The gender status of wives thus has been pitiable all through the history.

(v) Sexual Exploitation:

Lower class/caste women have always been exploited by the upper class/caste men. This has been obvious from antiquity in feudalism, in bourgeois households and in colonized countries. In fact, in Marxian phraseology, at any given moment in history, each class is constituted of two distinct classes of men and women.

“The class position of women became consolidated and actualized through their sexual rela­tionships.

It always was expressed within degrees of unfreedom on a spectrum ranging from the slave woman, whose sexual and reproduc­tive capacity was co modified as she herself was; to the slave-concubine, whose sexual performance might elevate her own status or that of her children; then to the ‘free’ wife whose sexual and reproductive services to one man of the upper classes entitled her to property and legal rights.”

On the other hand, the class for men was and is based on their re­lationship to the means of production: those who owned the means of production could dominate those who did not.

The owners of the means of production also acquired the commodity of female sexual services, both from women of their own class and from women of the subordinate classes.

(vi) Economic Oppression:

Women are economically dependent on men. Even in village India where the contribution of women in the household earnings is sub­stantially good, they continue to be dependent.

Exploitation continues as much on the commodification of female sexuality and the appropriation by men of women’s labour power and reproductive power as on the direct economic acquisition of resources and persons.

(vii) Issues Related to Marriage:

The history of women’s subordination reveals that all through the past, women have been made systematically powerless. They have al­ways suffered at the ‘protective’ hands of the man.

This has resulted in several social and cultural handicaps. The evils of child marriage, dowry and the resultant bride-burnings and suicides indicate that women have been victimized just because of their organic structure.

Interestingly, the tribal society that did not practice dowry system in the past has now been experiencing it in the form of bride-price. Obvi­ously, it is the impact of Hindu culture.

(viii) Crimes against Women:

The gender problem is complicated further today when we find an ac­celeration of crime against women. We have enough evidence to infer that many of the crimes against women are because of their biology. She is vulnerable to rape. Several of the cases of rape are committed by those who happen to be close kin or familiar to the women.

The disabilities of women can further be catalogued. Sandra Hard­ing, who has analyzed the gender issues from the Marxian perspective, argues that there is no future for human society as long as women are discriminated against. While concluding the inferiorization of women, Harding writes:

As long as both men and women regard the subordination of half the human race to the other as ‘natural’, it is impossible to envision a so­ciety in which differences do not connote either dominance or subordination.

The feminist critique of the patriarchal edifice of knowledge is laying the ground work for a correct analysis of reality, one which of the very least can distinguish the whole from a part.

Women’s history, the essential tool in creating feminist conscious­ness in women, is providing the body of experience against which new theory can be tested and the ground on which women in vision can stand.