Gender Sensitisation

By: Salil Saroj

History is moving fast at the start of the 21st century. The new information and communication technologies have unleashed waves of change and given rise to new threats to human security and freedom.

Feminist issues have risen due to the recognition of the fact that sex is biological and gender is socially and culturally constructed in the context of specific histories. Gender oppression of women is common and runs across different cultures. Subordination of women under patriarchy needs special attention; the strategies for liberation require specific consideration of class, religion, race and ethnicity.

Certain aspects of patriarchy attracted the social reformists. The reform campaign focused on widow remarriage, polygamy, women’s property rights, and education, abolition of sati and child marriage. The constituents of patriarchy corresponding to ideology and institutional practices (Kosambi, 1991) were as follows:-

1. The most important goal of life of woman is to act as vehicle for procreation of sons. The seed (male) has primacy over soil (female)
2. The religious sacraments lead to spiritual excellence but woman is entitled to only one of them i.e. marriage.
3. Women could be owners of property but they could not dispose of it, not even their stridhan (bridal wealth).
4. Woman was also excluded from public life as she was alleged to have uncontrolled sexuality.
5. Man is the insider in kinship relations whereas woman is the outsider having loyalty only to her husband. The current gender discrimination and sexual assault finds its roots in these patriarchal values.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Young India in 1918, “Woman is the companion of man gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to participate in the minutest details of activities of man and that she has the same right of freedom and liberty as he… By sheer force of a vicious custom, even the most ignorant and worthless men have been enjoying a superiority over women which they do not deserve and ought not to have.”

The contribution of women is well documented by Jawaharlal Nehru in his book ‘Discovery of India’. Nehru writes, “Our women came to the forefront and took charge of the struggle. Women had always been there of course, but now there was an avalanche of them, which took the British Government and our own men folk by surprise. There were these women, women from the middle classes and of the upper class, leading sheltered lives in their homes, peasant women, working class women, rich women pouring out in their tens and thousands in defiance of government orders and police lathis. It was not only the display of courage and daring but what was even more surprising was the organizational power they had.” Such being the contribution of women yet they are considered weak and inferior.

The Constitution of India not only guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of law to all men and women, but also lays down that a citizen shall not be subjected to any disability, restriction or condition on the ground of sex.

There is a wide range of violations that women face in everyday life right from the day she is born to the last day. In a number of cases, it is the question of human rights that are being violated but the violation is based on her womanhood.

The fact that a woman does not enjoy many human rights because of being a woman is a serious social problem. There are rights, which are specifically women’s rights. One of the important roles that a woman plays is that of child bearing, a service that is indispensable for procreation of human kind. Any definition of human rights needs to take cognizance of the requirement that society needs to provide all those necessary conditions for women to perform this service in the most healthy and civilized manner.

Rebecca Cook points out that CEDAW “progresses beyond the earlier human rights convention by addressing the pervasive and systemic nature of discrimination against women, and identifies the need to confront the social causes of women’s equality by addressing all forms of discrimination that w omen suffer”.

Article I prohibits discrimination that has the effect of “imparting or nullifying duty to promote and fulfill rights”, requires positive action to ensure that everyone has access to economic and social rules. The obligations imposed in this regard can be of an immediate nature, requiring States to achieve a certain result. States are required, as expeditiously as possible, to adopt effective and well targeted legislative and other measures to advance and improve access to socio-economic rights.

One of the most difficult tasks ahead in addressing this problem is the lack of a universally accepted definition of “rights of women”. If human rights are something that are of crucial importance for human life and mandatory in compliances, then the question arises: why do we still need to look out for “right of women” as a separate entity. This is because; rights are made subject to interpretations of moral, religious, political and social values. Thus, it is being argued that there are no universal standard of human rights because different societies are in different states of development.

It is a threat that looms large over the heads of millions of women in India. The right to walk on the street with no threat of physical assault is a human right. The demand for conditions that allow human beings to live as human beings and the right of women as the bearers of the labour power, brain power is suppressed under the existing official authority, and this authority breeds violence. This is an issue not for women alone but the society at large.