Women, the elderly, privilege and responsibility

They seem willing to wear the cap of ignominy – many Indian women at work, I mean. Men roll their eyes when asked about these colleagues not without reason. If the personal preferences of these representatives in the workplace are the traditional gender roles, how can the women’s group as a whole even hope to have a viable organizational presence?

 

 

They project vibes of martyrdom, as if as good women, they wouldn’t step outside the home, except for the economics. They tend to take no pride in their work, and to treat the workplace as an extension of the home, oblivious to the fact that the organizational position is not meant to confer privilege or power, but responsibility first and foremost. By avoiding job responsibilities, these women hold the total group up to ridicule. 

The public comes to the organization with issues that need redressal, and organizational employees are designated to address them – this is the job they are paid for. No, it is not their fault that work-related issues arise. But surely they must be faulted when, although they can help resolve the issues, they do not. An incident report illustrates the point: 

My mother is in her eighties, and she receives a family pension through a national Bank. They have a rule, which she has quite diligently followed for the last two decades. It is to present herself at the local branch before the end of the calendar year to furnish life certificates to keep alive her pension accounts. Despite this, the pension payments have been withheld on occasion and her accounts sealed, for no reason other than that the life certificates submitted to them have been lost or misplaced.  Now she has been told to furnish her pension pay order (PPO) book to verify her authenticity. There should be at least two copies of the book – one at the Bank that collects pension on her behalf and one with the pensioner. These are created when the order is first received from the disbursing government authority. Now, although so directed to do so by the disbursing authority at the start of the family pension nearly twenty years ago, the Bank is yet to forward her copy of the PPO book. So how is the octogenarian pensioner to produce something she has not received in the first place? Whilst attempting to resurrect her pension, we found a new omission. According to the latest government circular about pension revisions, she is being underpaid - receiving each month several thousand rupees less than is her due.

With the hope of settling the issues at local level, we make our way to the pension cell at the local head office of this prominent national Bank. The women there, both the young and the middle-aged, are grim and unsmiling. I presume their presence is intended to reassure the pensioners, and help them over the sticky points, but they neither greet people, nor respond to greetings. Rather, they seem resentful to be called upon to do their jobs. We are directed to a particular desk. The incumbent’s chair is empty, and we are told we can get ourselves cups of tea whilst we wait. Eventually, the lady appears. She walks into the room with a mobile phone clasped to her ear, in earnest conversation with somebody about exchanging gift calendars for the New Year. Her joviality ends with the call, and she settles herself on the chair, and fiddles with some papers on the desk. Finally, ‘What?’ she asks abruptly without looking up. We begin our story, but her interest disengages. It is clear that she is not about to help in any way. She declares the government circulars of no consequence, and says the Bank will not change what they were already paying unless the pensioner brings a fresh order in her name from the original disbursing authority. And by the way, she is not there to receive letters/complaints from the public. 

Imagine for a moment the Government having to send out millions of individual letters every time there is a revision of pay and pension income scales at any level!  National Banks were given mandates for the convenience of reaching the monies to retirees and pensioners through their networks. Theirs is no charity; they are paid for the service. Pension cells, somebody said, are punishment assignments. It seems the people transferred there are those the organization would rather not have handle more important tasks!

However, it is disheartening to think that as a result, hundreds upon hundreds of hapless pensioners may be thus harassed. In a blogpost sometime ago, I pointed out that an important factor in the rise of multinational organizations in investment banking was the failure of national organizations to value their retirees and family pension holders. National Banks are still playing catch up in this industry, and the lack of customer-relationship skills within the system is evident. 

 

  

Some women in organizations strive for equality, but many others actually retard the group progress. Perhaps because job security tends to be high in Indian organizations, to many employees, the job means only what they can take home for themselves. Plagued by low self-esteem, they yearn for the privilege and power of the chair, and then actively avoid the associated responsibility.  Managements and unions should come together to ensure that those in service actually serve.  Quality of work should be the criterion in organizations, not reservations, even of gender. Especially in the pension cells, the incompetence foist upon elderly pensioners delays, even deprives them of their just rewards. They certainly deserve better for their years of dedicated service.

Need to know temple culture

The sight of naked figures on temple architecture is disconcerting for a foreign traveler to India. She asks, in her blog, why these compromising positions should display at a temple. Obviously, at Western places of worship, nothing unprepossessing like them exists. The apparent social indiscipline upsets her organized mind, and the expectation of what should be. Clearly, there is a clash of cultures.

Organization gives meaning to everyday life in the West, a social control apparently missing in more organic cultures on the other side of the world. In the temple arts of India, erotic compositions in full view are usual. Male and female figures may be bejeweled, bedecked with flowers, but otherwise naked. 

Why? One thing for sure, the social context differs – certain artworks are dated around 6-2 millennium BCE. However, since paper trails documenting this remote past are inadequate, the conceptual reasons for the artworks must be left to conjecture. Numerous include have arisen in attempts to explain the practice. 

These include: 

• Sign of happiness, auspiciousness and prosperity: that the figures are motifs to bring good fortune.
• Mock the ascetics: that the intent is to ridicule the esoteric practices of the extreme sects. 
• Code language: that the compositions carry a deeper spiritual meaning. The figures are not about the humans but symbolic representations of attributes of Nature. 
• Conceal the magico-propitiory yantra: that the figures are a distraction, used to conceal the important points of specific ritualistic designs. 
• Non-duality: that the male and female elements are opposing forces that complement each other, and ultimately become One. 

It is known, however, that there were restrictions on the dissemination of knowledge. It was strictly on need to know basis, in the sense that only worthy receptacles could receive knowledge. Not segregation by birth, but by ability. Truth to be revealed to a person depended upon their level of spiritual preparedness for it. Seats of education were the gurukul, the ashram or temple home of the teachers, who were priests and also householders. Knowledge was not open to the uninitiated, neither was entry to the temples. 

For instance, the Rig Veda, the oldest of the written scriptures, which dates around six millennia BCE, is an epic poem with over ten thousand verses. The verses can be chanted in three different meters that change their interpretation of divine truths.  Students would be allowed a particular meter only after they were deemed fit and ready for it. Else, the hidden meanings would be kept secret. 

The Hindu temple arts of India were created over several millennia, from ancient to medieval times. They are often carved or painted in intricate designs on solid rock. In some places, they are within caves in the mountainside. Unknown artists laboured over them, with rudimentary chisels and hammers, and organic colours of the time, to create sculptures and murals that have survived the ages. Their models were not live humans, but products of their imagination.

Objectification of gender is not the purpose in temple art. The lack of clothing on the figures signifies divinity, when the light of complete self-awareness renders external coverings redundant. The gods and goddesses depicted are meant to be numerous forms of One Supreme Being - the one that becomes many. The figures and their relationships are heavy with symbolism; male and female elements complement each other in their representative powers.
 
Stephen Knapp writes:

In the Vedic tradition it is common to see the pairing of the Vedic male Gods with a female counterpart, thus combining both sets of powers and qualities that each would have. We can easily see this in Radha-Krishna, Sita-Rama, Lakshmi-Vishnu, Durga-Shiva, Sarasvati-Brahma, Indrani-Indra, etc. Thus, we have the combination of male and female Divinities that make the complete balance in the divine spiritual powers.

Fact is Hinduism started out as a philosophy, not as a religion. Neither in ancient society was a woman barred from intellectual pursuits. Women as a group held high positions in society. The verses of the Rig Veda (the oldest of the scriptures written down about six millennia BCE, but likely composed far earlier) extol the prowess of over thirty women sages that were held in the highest esteem. 

The temple compositions retell stories from the mythology, the scriptures and other ancient texts. The multiply arms, heads, or animal parts in the portrayals also have symbolic meaning. The female elements in the compositions are not subordinate to the gods. The goddesses ache instead for victory in battles against male elements! In their pose, prototype and expression, they exude power. 

For instance, the image of Durga, the warrior goddess is shown to have eight arms. This means that she is able to combat in eight directions simultaneously that the male gods cannot! The ‘battle’ signifies the conflict of good and evil. Actually, ‘gods’ and ‘demons’ represent the strengths and weaknesses of a person, and the conflicts between them, rife moral dilemmas. 

In subsequent ages, Hinduism transformed to an orthodox religion with deity worship and ritualistic practices. Changes wrought by invasions, conquests, annexations and colonization of the country buried the gender equality of ancient India deep into the sands of time. The roles of sages, apostles, prophets and avatars became the prerogative of men in subsequent ages of patriarchy. The feminine gender was made to believe that they are the secondary sex, and thus their objectification justified. 

The point is the ancient temple arts communicate imagery of a bygone social context different from that today. Artefacts still standing, are possible testimony to the different reality. There and then, the female was at least equal to the male. Walls and architecture bear proof of the pride and power of female sexuality. Over time thereafter, women's groups appear to have lost sight of their identity, their social power, and, in the words of present day thinkers, their erotic territory. The pilgrimage for the modern woman should be to rediscover their social worth and value through relevant lessons from the past. They need to find power within their self, to chart for the future, the culture of enlightened gender roles. 

Why naked and ashamed

Mention ‘modern art’, and many of us might think vaguely of abstract sculptures and paintings that make little sense. Mention ‘erotic art’, and we immediately tune in to expect nude or semi-nude studies. The association of this branch of art with sexuality is strong. In the context of male and female identity development, the imagery could play an important socializing role. However, the focus of the artworks seems to be majorly on the sexual domination of gender instead.

A person’s sexuality would depend on their acceptance of the self, and their coming to terms with feelings and emotions generated in growing up. Knowledge about gender orientations, and acceptance of related social roles and responsibilities are a crucial part of the developmental process. The understanding helps young people become balanced, well-adjusted members of society. Thence, all of creation may be perceived living, breathing works of art. Male and female elements of Nature interact with the environment, secure in their own type of sexuality.

Erotic art imagery exalts nakedness. Nothing wrong with that really, since eroticism relates to arousing or being affected by sexual love or desire. The word originates in Eros, the name of the Greek god of love. Hence, the expression of desire should of course include love. In the present age, however, cynicism has crept in, and love is forgotten. Modernity seems to jump straight into sex instead. 

Erotic art has been made the product of male sexual fantasy. The function of the female form is the sexual service of men. Sculptures and paintings, developed in the West from the nineteenth century onwards, draw attention to the female anatomy thus sexualized.  Women are defined by the 3 b’s – breasts, buttocks, and belly. The artworks build upon the presumption that the modern fertility goddess aches to be touched.

To all intentions, they may as well be mindless and faceless objects. In the essay, Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Art, Linda Nochlin writes: 

Whether the erotic object be breast or buttocks, shoes or corsets, a matter of pose or of prototype, the imagery of sexual delight or provocation has always been created about women for men’s enjoyment, by men.

The art seems replete with the subtle derogation of gender. In their imagery, women are props, devoid of individual identity. Consequently, active word associations with them are weak, passive, and sexually available. The exploitation of women within the composition and beyond are just part of the process culture created.

The point of erotic art is ownership – by men, of women. John Berger (quoted in Nochlin's essay) explains the trend that originated in Europe:

She is painted with extreme sensuous emphasis. Yet her sexuality is only superficially manifest in her actions or her own expression … The painting’s sexuality is manifest not in what it shows but in the owner-spectator’s (mine in this case) right to see her naked. Her nakedness is not a function of her sexuality but of the sexuality of those who have access to the picture. In the majority of European nudes there is a close parallel with the passivity which is endemic to prostitution.

Women’s personas are preyed upon, as willing or unwilling actors in the ongoing fantastical narrative of male sexual liberties. Men as a group have the power to enjoy the woman’s innocence, her vulnerability and her inability to protest her plight. Almost in the same vein, women artists themselves are deprecated. They are better known for their external relationships than their intrinsic talent. Naked and ashamed might sum up women’s social subordination in erotic art, and underscore their now characteristic low esteem. 

Nochlin however, appears to blame women rather than men for the situation. She writes:

This is, of course, not the result of some calculated plot on the part of men, but merely a reflection in the realm of art of woman’s lack of her own erotic territory on the map of nineteenth-century reality. Man is not only the subject of all erotic predicates, but the customer for all erotic products as well, and the customer is always right. Controlling both sex ad art, he and his fantasies conditioned the world of erotic imagination as well. Thus there seems to be no conceivable outlet for the expression of women’s viewpoint in nineteenth-century art, even in the realm of pure fantasy.  

No calculated plot? I would beg to differ. Patriarchy has been a social imposition all around the world from an earlier time no longer in memory. Not a bloody revolution, this was a slow, cultural assimilation that wiped off all trace of gender equality. The women's erotic territory that existed, suffered hostile takeover. 

The invasion of the social psyche has been insidious. The organization of community life institutionalized the dominance, and further, conditioned women into becoming the carriers of the culture. The projection of shame has been the most effective weapon to keep them in line and off-balanced, since the days of Eve. Individual men may distance from the perspective, but as a group, they do precious little to fix what, from the male viewpoint, does not seem broken. It is far more expedient to patronize the victim. 

The imagery used carries forward the culture. Which would women viewers identify with - the male perspective, or the low self-esteem? Either way, the patriarchal dominance continues. Women need to find new inspiration, to build a new perspective for the future free of objectification. Perhaps women artists could set a new trend to break the patriarchal stranglehold on their group. Naked is fine in erotic art – as long as the representative women own their sexuality with pride, not in shame, nor in service. 

Reference for this post:

Nochlin, Linda. “Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays”. ISBN 0-06-430183-4 (pbk.) Icon Editions. Westview Press, USA & UK. 1989.

Blessed to be born female?

Georgia O’Keefe’s early twentieth century paintings of the Black Iris flower are more readily perceived as her metaphoric preoccupation with female genitalia. It seems to me that the Nature worshipping era of the remote past would have instead perceived spirituality in her artworks. They would have definitely been taken to denote the awesome fertility powers of the Mother Goddess. However, since Freudian interpretations of sexuality impacted social knowledge, connotative associations appear to be grasped first in the global forum.   

Remnant artifacts of Nature worship have been found from the Indus Valley civilization of ancient India dated thousands of years before Christ. Several nations of the Asian sub-continent, independent in present day, share this common heritage. Excavations ongoing mainly in two countries, India and Pakistan, at Mohenjodaro, Harappa and other places, have so far uncovered only a small percentage of the buried cultural wealth. But, although the hieroglyphics of the time have not yet been deciphered, surely the art forms discovered there can tell a story of the time! They could give us an inkling of the stark social differences of mindset and value regarding gender, past to present.  

Various objects made and used by the people have been discovered. Many figurines of the artwork found have accentuated breasts and pelvis. Does this mean women were objectified then as now? No, say the fact-finders, the exaggerations are symbolic. They represent divinity, not humans - the cult of the Mother Goddess, the Earth Mother or Nature – and invoke attributes of bounty of the deity. Made of clay or terracotta, they show kinship with Earth. 

A website collecting historical information about deities explains the point:

As significant and suggestive is her iconography - the large breasts filled with milk, uncovered genital organs, beautifully dressed hair and a good number of bangles on her wrists. This is the iconic perception of the Being who bears, feeds, takes all calamities on her head and covers the born one under her protective umbrella and, at the same time, defines in the modeling of her form an absolute aesthetic beauty. As suggest her bangles, the traditional emblem of marital state, besides a mother she is also a consort. Thus, in her material manifestation, She represents, with absolute motherhood, also the absolute womanhood. She causes life and sustains it, and is also the cause of life, its inspiration and aspiration, and the reason to live.

Social demarcations would thus have dual levels to span the universe – the gods that live in the heavens, and humans on earth, descendent from them or fallen, stripped of powers. A saying in India, that what is fine for the gods is not fine for mortals, reminds the humans of their ultimate fallibility. And that the all-powerful divine beings need to be worshipped for appeasement and blessings, because the humans are too puny to manage on their own against harsh reality.

In this ancient Indian context, the female form has spiritual and religious significance. Because of the association with divine functions, women most likely enjoyed a high position in society. Perhaps to be born female was to be blessed! It is a distinct possibility that matriarchy, which now exists in pockets around the country, was far more pervasive. A ritual originating in fertility rites that to this day  initiates Hindu image worship, is the ghot puja. It is an earthenware pot filled with water and inscribed with a figure in vermilion, which symbolizes the pregnant womb. It invokes the Mother Goddess. The traditional Indian reverence for the mother figure may have its roots therein as well. 

By the third millennium BCE, the people of Indus Valley had learned to cast in metal. The bronze Dancing Girl is the most famous amongst the human and animal artifacts found. The difference from the Mother Goddess is immediately apparent - she lacks the physical exaggerations. Perhaps a little crude in face and limb technically, the statuette nevertheless indicates the status of women of the time. A quote from British archaeologist, Mortimer Wheeler, describes its form and feature:

There is her little Baluchi-style face with pouting lips and insolent look in the eye. She's about fifteen years old I should think, not more, but she stands there with bangles all the way up her arm and nothing else on. A girl perfectly, for the moment, perfectly confident of herself and the world. There's nothing like her, I think, in the world.  

Indeed, attitude is immediately apparent in the body language. The pose – the hand on hip, the cocked stance, the lifted chin, the half-closed eyes, and the slanted look exude the impudence and comfort in skin hard to find amongst women today. Some writers suggest that the figurine is transgender. It is interesting to think, in extension, that gender may not have always been the divisive social issue it is at present. Identifying as female, in the image of the divine, may well have been totally acceptable in society.

Her nudity makes no difference to our appreciation of the artwork. Perhaps we notice it only because we belong to a different era, socialized into a different value system. Maybe in the early times, women were unused to suffering body issues! In remote regions of India, in tribes isolated from the mainstream to preserve their ancient culture, nakedness is their way of life. Jarawa women, for instance, may be more comfortable in the natural than many more civilized others might be fully clothed!

During the age of Nature worship, the people lived in awe of the environment. The power of the Goddess was perceived in every creation in the environment, and they bowed in reverence. Their imagery has been in celebration of the Divine. Against the spiritual backdrop, it is no surprise that temple art - rock carvings and cave paintings - are pretty explicit on the bountiful attributes of Nature.  

From there and then to here and now, how the perspective has changed! We expect that we control the environment today; hence we patronize the past. In the process, we tend to lose awareness of the sociocultural context of the age - and the artistic intent. Women, as a group, are habitually objectified. I remember overhearing some tourists a while ago. Eyes gleaming, the young men conversed raucously about the full figure displays of chicks in the temple artworks. It is not the fault of the artists but of particular sociocultural learning that perceptions of gender channel as they do. 

Must they be ugly?

I never really considered a social context to art before.  Artists idealize gods or royalty, create something incomprehensible or objectify sexuality. At least, it so seemed in my experience. A friend recently passed on to me Linda Nochlin’s collection of essays that I initially looked at only to be polite. But then some insights caught attention - the social power of gender portrayed in and through art.

Nochlin’s focus is the social status of women - or rather the lack of it - depicted in the structure and theme of the artworks. She investigates images painted by both male and female artists in the West, between 18-20^th centuries. It is interesting to note that in the art world as in any other organization, for female workers, the glass ceiling is imminent, among other things. Their being out of sight, so to speak, makes no difference!

In the essay Women, Art and Power, Nochlin writes:

… representations of women in art are founded upon and serve to reproduce indisputably accepted assumptions held by society in general, artists in particular and some artists more than others about men’s power over, superiority to, difference from, and necessary control of women, assumptions which are manifested in the visual structures as well as the thematic choices of the pictures in question.

Her sentences sometimes feel a sea of words, and I cannot claim to have understood all pronouncements of the book, but some perceptions make absolute sense. She points out how prevailing social contexts have strongly influenced the artists. Their works reflect the thought and guidelines of behaviour in the society of the times. These notions appear as subtext in the pictures about women and by women.

 

 

In the eighteenth century, assumptions about women being the secondary sex were clearly stronger than they are now. Women were conditioned to prefer death to defying conventions. Gender was objectified in art as in all aspects of everyday life, and so was class and race. The hierarchical divisions were rigid, immovable. For instance, a painting of honourable British women in colonial India during the sepoy mutiny, entitled In Memoriam, portrays them heroic in the face of danger. How so? The women do nothing at all to survive, but properly await their fate.

Nochlin explains:

Now there are at least two discourses articulated in this image. One is the overt story of heroic British ladies and their children during the Sepoy mutiny, fortifying themselves with prayer as they are about to be assaulted by savage, and presumably lustful, natives. The other discourse, less obvious, is the patriarchal and class-defined one which stipulates the appropriate behaviour for the lady, and it implies that no lady will ever unsex herself by going so far as to raise a hand in physical violence, even in defense of her children.

She says that the original image, considered too graphic for the delicate sensibilities of the upper crust Victorian society, had to be painted over with the Scottish rescuers appearing at left replacing the “presumably lustful” Indian rebels! 

For eons, respectability for women has meant the confines of home and family. Women are honourable in the community as long as they are weak, passive, nurturing and domesticated, available for the needs of their husbands, and with no real needs of their own except to be of service to preserve the social order. Women artists have been hard-pressed to find acceptability and self-expression outside the entrenched social rules. They have had to be subtle in their approach; else risk caricature. Case in point, Nameless and Friendless by Emily Mary Osborn in the nineteenth century that describes in more than a thousand words the plight of women in the harsh reality of the time.

The young woman artist/model, stepping outside the home, possibly facing hard times yet unwilling to lose her dignity, is nevertheless subject to keen male scrutiny and condescension, both for her person and her work. It is surprising that, despite this painting of 1857 being created by woman herself, it was described in a 1970 art publication as Gentlewoman reduced to dependence upon her brother’s art. Perhaps the standard received wisdom carried forward is that women are incapable of creativity. The female artist too must adhere to that social norm and deny talent to her female model...but does she?

The slightest aggression amongst women or other signs of being unsexed would banish them from the respectable class, and put them beyond the pale of ‘normal’ or ‘human’. Women social activists have thus been portrayed as poor, ugly, demonic rabble-rousers, destroyers of the social fabric. It would seem that these social have-nots strive, in frustration rage, to reverse proper power equations. Apparently, the mere attempt at being a change agent renders a woman certifiably insane! 

Some women artists of earlier times have adhered to the popular myth in their creations. Perhaps, riding the traditional bandwagon has been the only way for them to survive in the man’s world. Sadly in the process, they do themselves and their own representative group no service, because the association renders capable women untouchable - poor, mad and ugly – and open to derision. 

 

Many closet feminists suffer emotional pain in private at their own public obeisance to gender inequality. Unable to cross the invisible social barrier, they confess cloying the deception to the pages of their personal journals. In an essay on the works of Florine Stettheimer, Nochlin quotes a telling poem written by the artist and poet, but published only after her death:

Occasionally

A human being

Saw my light

Rushed in

Got singed

Got scared

Rushed out

Called fire

Or it happened

He tried to extinguish it

Never did a friend

Enjoy it

The way it was

So I learned to

Turn it low

Turn it out

When I meet a stranger---

Out of courtesy

I turn on a soft

Pink light

Which is found modest

Even charming

It is a protection

Against wear

And tears

And when

I am rid of

The-Always-To-Be-Stranger

I turn on my light

And become myself. 

Ah, yes, on the other side of the world in India as well, feminine initiative is traditionally discouraged. This image of assertive women being dark and disorderly has endured through mythological epics created over two and a half millennia ago. Durga, the sylvan deity, is the epitome of beauty and grace as wife and mother. But in her role as the warrior goddess Kali, she is depicted as so frighteningly bloodthirsty and uncontrollable that few women would want to identify with her fearsome (outcast) image or be inspired to action. Of course, only the intervention of husband Shiva, shames her into remembering her place, and brings the Kali fighting evil outside back home to her senses!

The at best patronizing attitudes to women and women’s work have resisted change in many parts of the world. Women must think, feel and act exactly as males at home or in society decide for them, or else. In social fundamentalism even today, women and girls seeking education or employment have been brutalized, defaced by acid, shot, raped and murdered; punished for transgressing some gender role or dress code dreamed up by men to reiterate authoritarianism. 

It is more than time to rectify this demeaning outlook. Many women artists have used deconstruction techniques to make their point, to expose and deny the standard received concepts of beauty. Hannah Hoch’s Pretty Girl is an intriguing photo-collage from, I believe, the 1920s. This woman artist was earlier considered marginal, but it seems to me that her bold perspective and courageous rejection of the pervasive patriarchal order puts her far ahead of her time.

Nochlin writes:

Pretty Girl is in part a savagely funny attack on mass-produced standards of beauty, the narcissism stimulated by the media to keep women unproblematically self-focused. At the same time, the collage allegorizes the arbitrarily constructed quality of all representations of beauty: the “pretty girl” of the title is clearly a product assembled from products …

I must confess that as a very ordinary spectator, my unconscious search has been for aesthetic harmony in art images. I remember once visiting a photo-art exhibition in USA in the late 1990s. I forget both theme and name of artist, but it seemed an ugly, unabashedly cynical display of larger-than-life male genitalia. Possibly I was both naïve and prudish that I found the pictures off-putting, although other viewers appeared unfazed. I thought it a deliberate intent to elicit reaction, which I found repugnant. Was it necessary to assault the senses to draw attention? I took it as narcissism hidden behind the right to freedom of expression, laziness in actually harnessing creativity, and a banking on gender to carry the work.

Nochlin’s essays push me, the reader, to rethink my own premises. Definitely there are thought-provoking aspects to art I overlooked before. I wonder today if I did that phallic photographer a disservice in my negativity. There might have been a social comment in the work that escaped me. Perhaps the artist attempted to shock viewers into a conscious awareness of the effects of overindulgence. The graphic images might actually have highlighted the increasing social preoccupation with the pursuit of pleasure in developed society. That technology scales new heights, but the minds of men remain entrenched in overt, self-absorbed and even deviant sexuality… I don’t know, maybe…  


Reference for this post:

Nochlin, Linda. "Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays". ISBN 0-06-430183-4 (pbk.) Icon Editions. Westview Press USA & UK. 1989.

Blue helmets: come home

In 2007, the United Nations broke new ground. A contingent of 103 peacekeepers reached the capital of Monrovia in Liberia. Immaculate in blue, these 103 peacekeepers were all women. Indian women. Known as the "Blue Helmets", these women guarded the President office by day and patrolled crime-ridden areas by night. Their presence marked significant change. Trained in sophisticated weaponry and combat tactics amongst other skills, the Blue Helmets' foot patrolling by night reduced armed robbery by as much as 65 per cent. Local women felt safer; children felt safer; and men who were not involved in crime, felt safer. 

In India, we tout traditions of respect and equality for all mankind. In fact, that is how we explain namaste or namashkar, the traditional greeting with folded hands, which impresses the world. But it shames us as a people that, to protect our own women and children at home, the collective in this country fail. As a New Year’s wish, ordinary citizens in India would wish for the blue helmets to come home as soon as possible to work their magic on mounting gender-based crimes.  

Respect and equality for all seems to disappear rapidly in the case of females. Gang rape and murder of innocent women and girls is on the rise, not only in regions in conflict. It has naught to do with genetics, rather the social learning of gender inequality.  Assumptions of the old adage boys will be boys simply gloss over their loutish behaviour. Around the world, men club with the perpetrators to apportion blame onto the victims. Some women rape easy says a senate hopeful in US. In India, men in respectable positions wonder why, if they are “respectable”, the females are out at night with male companions not their relatives. 

A local politician declares: There's only one word – Limit. If you cross the limit, you face the same treatment that Sita faced in the Ramayan. If you cross the Laxman-rekha (i.e., boundary), Ravan will kidnap you like Sita. A godman advises women to address the predators as “brothers” and beg for their lives. The son of the highest incumbent of the land rubbishes the spontaneous demonstrations in New Delhi over the gang-rape and murder of a young paramedic trainee with: What's basically happening in Delhi is something like the pink revolution, which has very little connection with ground realities. Women who are beautiful, painted, dented, go to discos, give interviews, are not particularly serious about the protests for which they have come out on the streets.
 

The idea of masculine identity is testosterone fueled. Women’s education, women employment that become an affront to male dominance must be put down, and this aggression is rationalized as right. The continued practice of blaming provocation onto victims is shocking to the freedom loving sections. But shock we feel for all of a few minutes before things return to the way they have always been – to the status quo of powerlessness before learned patriarchal dominance.

An opinion in The Hindu explains the point in India:

It has become commonplace to understand certain spaces and institutions (say, the street and Parliament) as public, and others (say, the home) as private. The terms “public” and “private” have, in turn, become linked to ideas about the “proper” realms for men and women. Women are tolerated in public spaces and within public institutions but are expected to behave “properly.” Otherwise they suffer ridicule and violence. The media quite often provides accounts of public women (say parliamentarians) through describing what they wear, or, how many children they have; women’s primary identity continues to be defined through an implicit understanding that public institutions possess (and should possess) a masculine identity.

Fundamentalists point fingers at “decadent” urban culture brought on by the “depraving” influence of the West, which generally refers to women aspiring to equality. Others blame it on the traditions of male dominance formed with usurpation the position of women in an earlier era. Thus creates the legacy of confusion between progressiveness and orthodoxy that fragments society also on gender issues. But no, nothing and no one else is to blame for the ways things are today. The fault is ours; we who are global citizens of the structure that, on the one hand, unquestioningly carry forward ignorance and animosity of the past that festers gender roles, and on the other, takes freedom to the extreme of demolishing the very concept of family.

An opinion on the Daily Mail says of the West:

  

Our generation, who started to grow up ‘between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP’ got it all so horribly wrong. We ignored the obvious fact that moral conventions develop in human societies for a reason. We may have thought it was ‘hypocritical’ to condemn any form of sexual behaviour, and we may have dismissed the undoubted happiness felt by married people as stuffy, repressed and old hat. But we were wrong, wrong, wrong. Two generations have grown up — comprising children of selfish grown-ups who put their own momentary emotional needs and impulses before family stability and the needs of their children. 

We have been unable yet to find common ground between antagonistic perspectives. In the resulting confusion, perhaps the collective stops thinking, as individuals and as groups. Our evolution then is measured on technological advancements and not the minds of people. India and Pakistan for instance are said to be traditional rivals. Not really, since the two were part and parcel of the same nation for thousands of years before the Partition tore them apart. Vested political interests have kept the animosity alive, and even six decades after their separation as two different national identities in the sub-continent, both countries bleed attitude. When their citizens meet in neutral settings, they relate as mature adults. However, there appears to be something in the sub-continent that keeps the same people sprouting vitriol from opposite sides of the fence, whichever that is. 

And thus follows the stress of paranoia, the fear of being overwhelmed by others. These make for self-centredness, pushing the conservation of resources, and protection of identity. The creativity in problem solving is lost, because the intent is to control by any means, rather than adapt to new realities.  It is time to change stagnative structures. Patriarchal hierarchy needs to give way to democratic spheres of influence. It is perhaps more than time for the women peacekeepers to make their presence felt back home.

 

In a blogpost about these warrior women, Kohli says of their effectiveness: 

Far from being "soft" which is what many expected an all women's contingent to be, the Blue Helmets endeared themselves to the local community. Their message was simple - you can trust us. They were perceived as polite and forthcoming in help, and did what they were meant to do - keep the peace.

In India, this we need today: the return of traditions of respect and equality in this new avatar – women in the role of protectors of the sisterhood of mothers, wives and daughters.

Women on guard

The research institute I visit on occasion is a massive structure. Its wings stretch out in long corridors to accommodate the rooms after rooms required for research, replete with state-of-the-art machinery each priced at lakhs, if not crores of rupees. At the entrance to the premises a bunch of uniformed sentinels are constantly present. They are the undifferentiated security buffer to the outside world, and few know them as individuals.

The institution was born decades ago, when a small group of doctors mooted the idea of ongoing research and development. The founders had to fund the projects themselves, initially. Today it has grown prestigious, and money is no longer an object. The institution is showered with scholarships, fellowships and grants. New sections are added or renovated at will. But rather like within a beehive, roles are preordained. The building buzzes with activity with hundreds of personnel. Scientists and research scholars scurry about in their lab coats and latex gloves, focused unwaveringly on making new discoveries. Each such member hardly has the time to look around at their surroundings, much less to interact with people unrelated to their technical universe.

The security staff is meant to facilitate the institutional preoccupations, to ensure the safety of the institutional members and their magic machines. A small security complex is built right beside the gates. It has a tiny office for the security supervisor, a chair or two to rest on by turns and little else in terms of facilities. The security cell is not air-conditioned, and one large standing fan is in operation at the height of summer. Ineffectual at keeping out the heat beating down on the low roof of the structure, it serves to merely move the hot air around.

I notice a woman there on guard duty. She is tall, of athletic build, attractive and still young. She looks smart in her uniform of shirt with epaulets and security insignia and starched white sari. Her employment is probably a result of the increasing percentage of women being employed. Yes, she nods; her duty is to interact with the women, so that they do not face handling by men. Since she is the only female in the cell, her services are invaluable. During conventions and other important meets she must be in attendance for all the lady visitors. That means, rain, hail, shine or personal illness, she cannot be absent.

We spend a few moments in girly conversation, about fashion accessories that I might wear but she is not allowed to by the regulations. There does not seem to be any separate facility either for her as a woman although she has been at work for a couple of years. I ask why she took this job. She has a ready smile and pleasant manner. Surely there are other avenues of front-office employment open? She gets many offers, pips up one of her colleagues, but she does not take them up. Everybody wants her and nobody here will let her go. I smile at the extravagant words. The woman blushes pink and shushes him.

She tells me she comes from a police family. Father, brother and sister, are all in the force. That was the life she had wanted too. Her application was being processed, but then marriage happened, and the regulations immediately rendered her ineligible. The touch of vermillion in her hair signals her marital status. I ask how she balances between her work and her home. She looks away momentarily, and shakes her head. Her child is being raised by the extended family, and she barely gets to see them. The job demands her time and all she can do for family is pay the costs. The emotional conflict is tangible.

Walking out from the institution, I spot a policewoman at work on the street. She is on traffic duty dressed in the khaki service shirt of the police force and sari, though, as she tells me later, they must wear trousers too. I stop by the side of the road. She motions me to stand near her as she waves her arms to regulate pedestrian crossings. I shake my head and say I stopped to see her. She looks a little perplexed. I suppose she too is used to being seen as a role rather than a person. She is middle-aged, looks drawn and seems to favour a limp. She is unsmiling, her tone strident as if used to encountering intransigence. And, true to “regulations”, she has never married. She tells me she has been ill for some days, but her leave application was not sanctioned.

It is her duty to serve. I watch her tackle jaywalkers. See, she says, as she points to offenders that can see the lights are green for traffic, yet run across dodging the oncoming vehicles. She stops several and gives them a stern talking to, but the habit is ingrained. It seems a thankless job to speak about public safety because the people she stops argue in return. Unfortunately, she is powerless to issue deterrents like spot fines. She threatens that should an accident occur, she will not book the driver, because it would be the victim’s own fault for getting in the way. 

I wonder how long she has been a traffic cop. She says she is not. She has thirty-one years of police service but the assignment here is only for the day because of shortage of women personnel.  Their job is to follow the orders that come and she was told to report here only two hours before. Earlier, she was engaged in crowd control at the sports stadium. I ask her why she chose the force. What jobs are there for us, she counters, thousands are trying to get this one now. She looks around her, comments that the streetlights are inadequate for such a busy intersection and then limps away to stop a few more defaulters.

I am surprised that to this day and age in India, the archaic service conditions for women carry forward unquestioned. It seems the men in any organization may have family but women in uniform must sacrifice for service. Not all women though - I remember a high-profile female police commissioner portrayed in the media as the ideal, efficiently managing both work and family, so there must be regulations and regulations. Equality, it seems, is for men or else, for those at the top of the heap. Why so? The obvious issue is biological – the bearing and rearing of children. Those remain the woman’s personal works in this region, while elsewhere in the world, campaigns run for paternity benefits!

Under these regulations, the discrimination of gender and class in bureaucratic employment continue, leaving many of these women vulnerable, open to exploitation. It is hard for those ensconced in ivory towers to think beyond themselves. Their tunneled vision of the world makes social conversations with others difficult, or even to relate to them as people. I called on the institutional director some years ago, to suggest people development programmes with personnel across levels. In my perception, many could do with some training of social skills, understanding the reality of others through feedback, especially of those below them in the hierarchy. The man sitting in the plush chair, dwarfed by the massive desk and protective detail, was incensed by the implication. We are an HRD institution, he shouted, it is our job to teach! 

Women are comparatively new to employment and work conditions. Guard duty, for instance, is not a common choice of work for women brought up with marriage as their goal. They seek employment for economic needs. But when required to sacrifice home-life for work-life, they are being force to pay a price for being women. Social activism attacks poverty or corruption, but there seems none to fight for the rights of women putting life and limb on the line to keep others safe. Their work conditions are pathetic, and urgently require revision. It is more than time to address the pervading standard received wisdom of keeping them disadvantaged. The powers-that-be of institutions need to learn a little empathy, a little humility before they teach.