On January 1st, 2019 the women of the Indian state of Kerala formed a 385 mile human wall to protesting to be allowed entrance into the Sabarimala Temple. The Supreme Court had ruled that women could not be barred entry, but violent protests by religious groups made it impossible for women to enter. Women in India for centuries have been fighting for their rights for centuries. In today’s podcast episode, I will be discussing why this fight is fundamental to long term development in India. I will be discussing the back story behind temple re-entry at Sabarimala, the gender selective abortion crisis in India, and the positive role women can play as leaders and agents of development.
The caste system in pre-modern Kerala was an absolute madhouse. A servant would force all untouchables off public roads when a Brahmin left the house because it was polluting for the shadow of a Brahmin to touch one of an untouchable. One of the restrictions that rankled most was a ban on low caste women from covering their breasts. From 1813 onwards, low caste women in Kerala began organizing protests and refused to follow old clothing laws. Despite facing beatings and violence from upper caste men, the king of Travancore was forced in 1859 to formally allow women to wear whatever they wanted to. The Channar Revolt was the beginning of a movement to tear down the old social order and the current movement to allow women to enter to Sabarimala temple must be understood in this context. The rules that govern entry into the Sabarimala temple are much more modern in origin. Until 1902, the holy site around the Sabarimala temple was occupied by Adivasi (indigenous) people’s who maintained the shrine with their own rules. However, in 1902 a Brahmin priest was installed. Even then, rules against women entering the temple were only selectively applied. It was only in 1972 that the ban against women’s entry was fully promulgated. Just as with the Channar revolt, the question remains who gets to decide what tradition is, and how tradition is to be enforced.
One of the most damaging ways patriarchy is impacting India is the rise of gender selective abortion. Although female infanticide was common among certain aristocratic communities in northern and western India, massive gender imbalances are a modern phenomenon. In 1981 there were 962 girls for every 1000 boys.. By 2011, this number had dropped to 927 to 1000, suggesting 8% of all female fetuses are aborted. Female abortion is so common in part because it is expected that men will carry on the family business and support parents into their old age. Only a quarter of women are in the labor force (a number that is much lower than it was a decade ago), and are instead expected to marry and take care of the house. Changing norms around marriage are making female infanticide more common. In 1930 only one third of all marriages in India involved a dowry but by 1980 90% of all marriages involved a dowry. Moreover, the nature of dowry payments steadily changed. Dowries were initially bequests to the bride, and solely the woman’s property. However, dowries are increasingly demanded in cash and property of the groom’s family rather than the bride. By some estimates dowries are as large as one fifth a households total wealth. Combined with extravagant weddings whose cost fall primarily on the bride it is easy to see why so many families turn to gender selective abortions. The worsening gender imbalance is already having negative consequences for India. It’s not clear what millions of men who cannot find wives will do. A districts gender ratio is one of the strongest predictors of its homicide rate, and there are fears of severe social conflict due to this.
More important than the violence of men is the potential scientists, artists and leaders that are never born because of gender selective abortions. It is women’s potential as leaders that I want to discuss in the final part of my podcast. Although India has had many powerful politicians such as former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, only 11% of all members of India’s parliament are women. In order to rectify this situation, the Indian government reserved one third of all village council leader positions to women. In addition to massively expanding women’s power at the local level, it created a natural experiment to test the effectiveness of women legislators. Women led village councils consistently prioritized women’s issues, led to more women attending village assemblies and speaking more often. Villages with women leaders consistently had superior heath and education outcomes, and better police response against crimes against women. At higher levels of office, women were one third as likely to have criminal charges lodged against them, substantially less likely to accumulate wealth in office, and more likely to ensure infrastructure projects were completed in their home districts. More broadly, those regions of South Asia with higher levels of sexism and patriarchy have consistently performed worse not only on human development issues such as infant mortality and literacy rate, but also on exports, GDP growth etc. Women clearly can act as powerful agents of development if given the opportunity.
Sources:
Female Infanticide in 19th-Century India: A Genocide? , Pramod Kumar Srivastava
Crime, Gender, and Society in India: Insights from Homicide Data,
Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera
Marriage Markets and the Rise of Dowry in India , Gaurav Chiplunkar , Gaurav Chiplunkar
Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Ether Duflo
Voices of Women: The Impact of Women ‘s Political Reservations on Female Child Mortality in India , Kohsheen Sharma
Women’s Political Reservation, Early Childhood Development and Learning in India , Yuvraj Pathak, Karen Macours
The Power of Political Voice: Women’s Political Representation and Crime in India Lakshmi Iyer Anandi Mani Prachi Mishra Petia Topalova
Women legislators and economic performance Thushyanthan Baskaran Sonia Bhalotra Brian Min Yogesh Uppal
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