Independent Women: Economics v/s Society
By Ragini Pant
26 June, 2013
Countercurrents.org
This paper seeks to understand the duality of the Indian society where despite of rampant and hard-core economic race, women are still marginalized and how economic independence plays a futile role in upliftment of level of social relevance to the women in the society.
My urgency to write on independent women emerges from the instances where I have witnessed that women always belong to a structure which regulates her, irrespective of her economic credibility even today when India boasts of its Modern and Globalized way of life. The irrefutable demeaning plight of the women in the Modern world, and in lieu of the modernization, is not just in one concentrated region but the whole South Asia at large. This statement in itself shows that there is something intrinsically wrong in the perception of women which makes it a Global suffering. Society, by defining the gender roles has created a parable which works in a linear fashion or what we, in Literature, call ‘flat characters’. In this essay I am taking in, the account of Independent women, who are economically sound but why despite of it, are not socially accepted. This essay talks about the on-going challenge between economics and society, where economics decides the power control, its principles rather seems to be hazy when then subject is women.
Men form the structure and women an agency. Conception starts from your imagination of single self, confined in a set of rules intruded by others, home and stretches to community, state and nation at large, till reaching this far it starts to engulf us that we start to believe it to be a fact or every-day reality and very much embedded in us and our everyday lives. It makes us rigid and prone to change or alteration. Using the traditions of dominations as a cloak to maintain the power relations men have been able to defend their stand and freedom. So what happens when the subject changes? I have taken in consideration four women, two are widows and one separated and one married. Women are given identity incentives like being morally right after being ‘alone’ or confine to domestic life rather than outright, and to become the ‘Ideal’ in every sense of the term, which they toil for throughout their lives. Economics has been ridiculed for reducing people into utility function variables but it is an exception when we talk of women.
All these gender roles are part of the larger structure. This structure is stipulated as concrete, absolute and stagnant. Any transgression is socially ostracized and denounced. Structure in my sense is the community we strive in, and is never an end product rather it is always in the phase of structuring, as Giddens mentions in his structuration theory (Giddens, 1986). Unfortunately men have been able to rule the structure and govern its course. They have formed the norms, social categories through which identities are formed, which are precise and finely tailored to suit their ends. They have allocated the economic sector to their own self to form a monopoly by creating or defining gender roles. This monopoly helps to control the market and help in keeping intact the domination of men over money. Ideals attributed to women then becomes a source through which hegemony is maintained and power is concentrated within the parameters. Therefore the Structure is fragmented but represented as a whole. We have been nurtured to evaluate people around in monetary terms. When we judge a woman we forget we are applying contemporary norms of behaviour which are freshly baked by proponents of patriarchy, but we don’t tend to question anything which falls outside the system. Patriarchal zone have set ideals for women which states what they ‘should be’. As George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton in their book Identity and economics state that norms are powerful sources of motivation (Akerlof and Kranton, 2010). Ideals are the new form of motivations and women contest for it, an ideal is one who falls fit in every form and women compete to ‘become’ ideals to fit in the society which is governed by norms formulated by patriarchs. Consequently women are deprived of an autonomous identity, but a social category which is not only for females but also for males who are fragile, meek and submissive beings. Why do workers obey the norm in the first place? Because they believe that they will be punished if they do not (Akerlof and Kranton, 2010:58). Effective management (men) encourages workers (women) to be insiders, who identify with the goals of the firm (Akerlof and Kranton, 2010:48). By identifying with the goal of patriarchy women unknowingly succumbs to its manifestations. Just as Marx postulated that workers are given basic wages to ‘keep’ them in to the vicious cycle of production, these ideals works in the same fashion for women .This is why Simone de Beauvoir says ‘one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one.’ (Beauvoir, 1998).
A Single woman when married (even before) belongs to a structure which mediates her and her every-day behaviour. Her autonomy and right to decision in family earlier was completely negated as she was/is not a profit/income producing entity (which opportunity she might never had) or if at all she does, she has to depend on some or the other ‘man’. When she manages to be forced out of it through widowhood or independently ‘chooses’ to be out of it, she enters another structure, ready to be embraced. She goes under another domain of patriarchy where not a foreign but domestic game is at play. Social recognition is attributed, through society’s construction, to a woman through her domestic credibility. But the moment of her going out of it marks the fragmented composition of the structure. But in India where a single woman is not ever given an autonomous status or thought of as an autonomous being, she has to take refuge under any man, be it her father, brother, or male in-laws to protect her because it is there moral duty to ‘shield’ her. Her very existence within the paradigm of market is questioned in the first place. Social recognition in the circle becomes the only way of her identity.
Social actors follow norms, internalize them, then they adhere to them out of social constraints and later start to believe in them. Manifold increase in percent of women working in different sectors is suffice to ascertain that given equal opportunity and resources they are competent enough or better but are never made to realize their economic potential. For instance it is found that men enjoy smoking more with friends but what about women who are not even given a choice. You first need to make them equal in every respect and then only can you judge on their productivity or relevance in the society. Relevance is given more importance as it guides your cognitive capability to identify a person as powerful or powerless. Women have been portrayed as not being relevant to the society but somewhere facilitator for economic productivity of the men in the family.
Women before their marriage are made to feel through different mediums that the investment in their education is futile and unproductive for the parents as they are destined to leave. Everything provided to them is shown to be a favour or what in business terms known as a ‘bad Investment’ which will reap no benefits. Therefore any inputs wasted on them is a favour to them
Anita Bhandari (name changed) is a professor in Delhi University aged 48, lives with her brother and father after being divorced six years ago. She is a ‘modern’ woman who manages to take care of her 3 children and her social life. She is highly appreciated for her academic ventures. Her economic position in the society is quite formidable and one might take her as an independent woman. Reality strikes hard as she entered from one zone to another zone where torch bearers of protection are men and no economic credibility is taken into account when the subject is a woman. They still cannot make decisions pertaining to their life changing events or even to be trusted enough for buying a car or a house but can be trusted with nurturing children which is much more a complex job. She said, today she is free from domination and exploitation from her husband and enjoys a stable life because she is the bread earner and does not have to be held accountable for anything. When I asked her if she made the decision of shifting to the new location and buying the house, she said her brother knows the place quite well and dynamics involved in estate buying, so they bought it. Later on she did give her nod. Woman have always been taking shelter which they believe to be men, like higher beings, who can handle the outside world and its brutal forces filled with malicious relations. Here comes the debate of home and the world.
I could encounter an event where her daughter was talking to her friend and she told them that her mother is a University professor. He asked her about her father saying ‘if your mother earns this much then your dad must be rich’ and she had no answer, this is the second sex which Simone De Beauvoir postulates. Despite her being rich enough she falls below the men who might otherwise be standing nowhere close to her in any means. ‘People’s identity defines who they are- their social category. Their identities will influence their decisions, because different norms for behaviour are associated with different social categories (Akerlof & Kranton 2010:13). She has been socialized in a fashion which teaches them that even after being able to earn they can never be intelligible enough like men.
Laxmi Pant and Satya Dhyani are two widows who are sole bread earners of their families. Former teaches at home and latter in a government school. They are not rich but have been able to run their families quite fairly. Satya Dhyani is in her late fifties and bores a ‘Boy-cut’. Her struggle of trying to be a man can be very well witnessed. When I asked them ‘Do you feel you are viewed as different in society and how do you cope up with it considering you earn just like men?’ they answered affirmative and said that they try and become ‘manly’ and ‘strong’ in front of people so they don’t take them as fragile and meek. I arrived at a conclusion that economics which helps in creating class differences has no role to play here in creating new identities for women it firmly stands against the society. They might be earning and doing household chores simultaneously but their social categories and not economic strata defines them and their actions. Men despite their economic incredibility, stand tall and feel embarrassed to work at home because it is not their ‘domain’. Another question emerged as to why women strive to become men and in dilemma to be strong like men. Through this they have exalted the position of man and set them as benchmarks in the society to which women strive for.
Rajni Kotiyal was a housewife in a joint family for years and has only for the last 6 years been working in ‘Oriflame’. It is not a proper business but a chain where you make clients and earn points by selling products and earn money. She today earns on an average 30-40 thousand. She moved to business to avoid family tussles where her husband never listened to her and the environment became, as she mentions, ‘dark’ at home. She says that the road was not easy as she belonged to an orthodox family where her husband with her family resisted her move on the grounds that her husband is earning quite enough to keep you all well. The free choice one gives to an individual is not even thought of to be a woman’s alternative, which seems to be quite antithetical to the very idea of our highly revered constitution, rather an excuse for her to step out and be ‘modern’ like other free woman. When we attribute female character to money i.e. Laxmi, an Indian Goddess, we try to attach some form of personal force or restrictions to make it stick to home and not travel outside our dominion, as money is supposed to be inside the house. And that is why we have Laxmi puja’s at home during Diwali, to keep the laxmi intact in its place where it should ideally belong, home.
Structure is community based and represented as concrete. Therefore women identify their identity with goals of the structure. “Power structures inevitably ‘produces’ what it claims merely to represent” (Judith butler, 2006:3). Men have monopolised the structure in such a fashion that any deviation from social categories, norms which are created by them or pose a threat to their own identities calls for an emergent action to restore the structure but even small resistance is a part of structuring because it is an on-going process.
Economics states that people’s decisions are described as maximizing their individual utility functions (Akerlof and Kranton, 2010:21) but what about women who are physically and mentally barred from the same? To this they never had or have an answer.
We cannot stop our little or huge resistance in a naïve presumption that structure is concrete because it is not. If it is a process then even our mild resistance is intrinsic part of it and is helping in deconstructing these identities and social categories because Social structures limits an individual’s choice. The war must start from within and then can it have manifestations desired. A drive within to change the things, meaning when she herself- wishes to get rid of it.
REFERENCE
1. Akerlof, G. and Kranton, R. (2010): Identity Economics (United States: Princeton university press.)
2. Beauvoir, S. (1998): Second the Sex (Manchester: Manchester University press.)
3. Butler, j. (2006): Gender trouble (New York: Routledge.)
4. Giddens, A. (1986): The Constitution of Society (California: University of California Press.)
Ragini pant, pursuing my M.A in sociology from South Asian University. She did her bachelors in English literature from delhi univers Her area of interest is gender
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