Self: 4. The crossed culture of women

The world likes to have heroes, to reward excellence, to appreciate bravery above and beyond the call of duty. Institutions and people are esteemed for works in various fields - social, political, religious, moral, intellectual and artistic. And yet social esteem is often carried by gender. Most veterans of private wars receive the short shrift because they happen to be women.

Many men advocating the upliftment of the masses may be party to bonded labour within the murky confines of home. The personal battles fought by faceless women in the everyday world escape social notice. Where religious and backward communities have supportive lobbies, gender discrimination remains invisible.

In India, for example, the Women’s Reservation Bill, providing for a fixed quota of 33 percent of all legislative and parliamentary seats, was only recently adopted by Parliament, six decades after independence from colonial rule. Men united across party lines to stall the progress of the Bill, citing “grave reservations” to the presence of women in governance.

As one seasoned politician voiced the collective prejudice, parkati mahila jo mahila hi nahi (short-haired women are not even women). Long hair thus identifies the good woman, the sati (virtuous), who conforms to patriarchal traditions.

With the sacrilegious snip of the shears, the modern woman renounces social impositions. In conservative acceptability, she is now a fallen angel, portrayed on Indian celluloid for decades as the vampish home-breaker. Many a Berlin Wall must collapse before allergic reactions to women are rooted out of the social psyche.

Essentially, men fear the implications of equality. First, they would have to compete for power. Second, modern women usurping their positions may resist domination. As a result, their social esteem would plummet.

The male bastion backs women finding place in the sun only insofar as they are family members or malleable disciples. Whether in politics or the corporate industry, women generally make it to the top solely on the basis of family affiliations. This ensures the continuation by proxy, of the masculine calling of shots.

This dominant outlook came in with the Aryan invasion millennia ago, to infiltrate and assimilate the other existing cultures. With the insidious takeover, patriarchy became the bedrock of almost all religions that followed and the societies that were fed on them.

The projection holds till today that the fact of being woman means to have a dubious integrity. Literate, modernized, independent women are suspect to the majority. The reason is the strong internalisation from traditional thought that women are lesser by birth itself. From custom established in ages gone by, their salvation lies only in being controlled, and thus rescued from their base natures.

The French authorities presume to remove this “darkness” within the Muslim immigrant community with the legislative ban on the burqa. Langley writes:

Secularism is taken seriously in French society – a legacy of revolutionary anti-clericalism that was further enshrined in the landmark 1905 law that prohibits the state from recognising, funding or favouring any religion.

The act is termed a “victory for tolerance”. I would however, question the cultural assumptions, because legislation hardly changes distinct cultural attitudes, although Langley writes:

Approval runs right across the spectrum, with Fadela Amara, the Algerian-born former housing minister in Sarkozy’s government, calling the burka “a kind of tomb, a horror for those trapped within it”, and André Gerin, the Communist MP who headed the commission investigating the grounds for a ban, describing it as “the tip of an iceberg of oppression”.

Moreover, the social attitudes of differing cultures are not quite at the same stage of development. Western societies boast of “post-feminism” whereby women may be aggressive in social behaviour. Revealing clothing is symbolic of the feminine gender being in control of their bodies and their choices.

Women with origins steeped in conservatism, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc., are far more preoccupied with ongoing conflicts over education, employment and relationships. The immigrant communities are also not ready to accept the independence and individualism of Western-styled post-feminism.

For instance, in her bid at liberation from constraining traditions, a German-Turkish model marked her personal rebellion against conservatism with a revealing photo-shoot for Playboy magazine in Germany. As Sila Sahin explains the bold step in a news report:

'I did it because I wanted to be free at last… These photographs are a liberation from the restrictions of my childhood. I have always abided by what men say. As a result I developed an extreme desire for freedom. I feel like Che Guevara. I have to do everything I want, otherwise I feel like I may as well be dead.'

Although her action has been praised by some friends and fans, the Turkish community is alienated. Her haste to jump the cultural divide has come a cropper. Sahin may be perceived a stooge of Western interests in the ethnic circles. She faces social ostracism within the Turkish community, and now begs her family to allow her to “come home”.

Attempts by states or individuals to compel acceptance on minority groups may backfire to actually harden their stances instead. In some quarters, the French ban on the burqa is thought to be the forerunner of forcible Christianising of minority groups.

Can woman really be accepted as an individual in her own right? As long as attitudes remain they way they are, woman will discover, with a disturbing sense of déjà vu that new advancements are just further burdens she must bear. In the cultural tug-of-war for domination over women, education or employment become new weapons to force their adherence to standards established by men.

O’Neill argues that assumptions that the veil only represents radical Islam are fallacious. He writes:

…the adoption of the veil is a fashion statement more than a religious one; it is the Islamic equivalent of becoming a goth … by putting a veil on your head and instantly becoming mysterious. It is not modesty or chastity that drives the fashionable wearing of the veil in Western Europe… they were effectively saying “Look at us!”, not “Look away”.

Perhaps a better idea for social integration is to allow change to evolve, as it will, without riding roughshod over sentiments based on traditions or religious practice. Just as organisms must change to adapt to their new environments as a matter of course, new generations of immigrants should be trusted to be doing likewise. 


References for this post:

1.  Arthurs, Deborah. “'I wanted to be free': Muslim model upsets family by posing nude for Playboy cover” dailymail.co.uk MailOnline. 19 April 2011. 

2.  Langley, William. “France’s burka ban is a victory for tolerance” telegraph.co.uk The Telegraph. 11 Apr 2011 

3.  O’Neill, Brendan. “Chill out – veiled women are only the Islamic equivalent of Young Fogeys” telegraph.co.uk The Telegraph. April 11th, 2011