Female Autonomy in India: Empiricism, Structuralism and Humanism in Social Science

Culture, marriage rules and science

Along the Narmada River and the Vindha Mountains, there is a distinct cultural divide between Northern and Southern India. It is a divide between East Asia and West Asia. It is not based on Islam - it is not religious at all. It is not linguistic, nor is it based on the mode of production. It is cultural.   

 

Female autonomy is lower in the North than in the South. It is, in general, lower West of the Vindha-Narmada line stretching back to the Middle East and all across Northern Africa than it is East of the line stretching into South East Asia and Indonesia. 

What do I mean by the term autonomy ? Self determination. I mean control over one's life. What are the differences between north and south? Mostly they have to do with marriage rules—Who your preferred partner is and where you live after marriage and how you determine who your relatives are. This is a kind of structural rule. It is the kind of thing that is studied by social anthropologists.

exogamous — marriage outside the group 

endogamous — marriage inside the group

hypergamy — marriage up the social ladder 

patrilocal — the married couple lives with (or near) the groom's family

matrilocal — the married couple lives with (or near) the bride's family

matrilineal — family relations traced through the mother's brother

patrilineal — family relations traced through the father

 

In the north, marriage is patrilocal. Traditionally when women married, they left their birth homes, went to live with their husbands, and transmitted wealth in the form of a dowry which was brought to the husband’s family.  Dowries are illegal in India today but they a still quite common.

Historically women are valued as bearers of children. Women did not work as agricultural laborers in Northern India. This is very different from a place like sub Saharan Africa where it is mainly women that are agricultural laborers.

In the North marriage is exogamous - that is, a woman leaves her home to get married. She will have little contact with her parental family for the rest of her life. After she is gone, she has little value for her birth family - or her value may only be as a link or alliance between two families.

Marriage is ideally up the social ladder - this is called hypergamy. People don’t marry outside their caste, but within castes there is significant social stratification. (castes are not officially recognized but they still play an important social role in India.)

Much is made of the marriage match. A perfect match is important. Virginity is not just prized, it is necessary and complete faithfulness within marriage is very important. These two factors led to seclusion of women before and during marriage. This seclusion is called Purdah. The word Purdah comes from Persian (Iranian) and means veil or screen or secluded.  It was originally practiced by the Byzantine Christians and adopted by Moslems, Hindus, and others. Many girls are secluded before and after marriage. They said to be “in purdah”.  

 

Purdah is the practice of secluding women from public observation by wearing concealing clothing from head to toe, sometimes including veils and the use of high walls, curtains, and screens erected within the home to screen women from view. When women leave home, the are covered, sometimes veiled, and usually chaperoned, preferably by a male from the family. 

 Purdah in India is practiced by Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. The limits imposed by this practice vary according to different countries and class levels. Generally, those women in the upper and middle class are more likely to practice all aspects of Purdah because they can afford to not work outside the home.

 

Critics see Purdah as an evil influence that has suffocated the rights of women and perpetuated male chauvinism. They point out that the practice shuts off women from the outside world in order to make them ignorant of the practicalities of life. It has deprived woman of economic independence and forces these females to produce chauvinistic boys and submissive girls. In order to keep females submissive, women know only what their fathers, husbands, and sons want them to know. Critics see women who practice Purdah as having no voice or free will.

Supporters, see Purdah as a very positive and respectful practice that actually liberates women. It is viewed as liberating because it brings about an aura of respect. Women are looked at as individuals who are judged not by their physical beauty but by their inner beauty and mind. By covering themselves, women are not looked at as sex objects that can be dominated. Purdah is an act of religious faith that entails honor, respect, and dignity. When a woman covers herself she places herself on a higher level and allows others to see and respect her for her intellect, faith, and personality. The physical person is to play no role in social interaction.

Therefore, girls are expensive for a family to raise: they take lots of energy and care, they can’t be allowed to work because that would force them out of Purdah - out of seclusion, and run the risk that they will be taken advantage of by boys, so they cost the families lots of time, money, attention and affection and then the family looses them around age 15. Not only does it take money to raise them, when they do get married they take wealth with them away from their birth family to their marriage family in the form of a dowry. Therefore girls are very expensive.  

This situation reinforces what is called son preference. The sons will be around after marriage. Marriage is patrilocal - the new couple lives with the groom's family and money is brought into the groom's family with the dowry.

The tradition of Purdah creates problems in getting medical help for women. Women should not be seen by male doctors. Permission to see doctors may be given for sons but not for daughters.

High fertility is encouraged by the groom’s family — that is, they want lots of sons. A bride wants lots of sons too because they are her salvation.

Think about her situation. She’s put into a foreign environment, traditionally, most girls don’t know their husbands before marriage, and they often marry someone far from home. A bride is regarded by her mother and sisters-in-law as inferior until she has been socialized into the family. She has no status until she bears sons. Most women are also delighted to have sons as they will be her primary friends and protectors through life. The emotional bond is traditionally weak between husband and wife. So despite the fact that bearing lots of children is physically hard, a woman in these circumstances wants children. There are powerful social and personal reasons for keeping fertility high. This combination of factors contributes to low female autonomy.

Contrast that with the situation of women in the south.

In the South, many societies are matrilineal. This does not mean that women have power. This means that family ties are passed on through the maternal uncle. The power person in the family is your mother’s brother - not your father.

Marriage in the south is often endogamous. i.e. it is within the extended family or clan. The ideal match is maternal cross cousin. The ideal marriage for a man is the daughter of his mother’s brother. (In the Main Islamic realm especially in Saudi Arabia it is paternal parallel cousin - here too its also endogamous).

Look at the differences that this situation would create between north and south India:

• In the south, the dowry is often not paid. Money stays within the family. A bride knows her husband since childhood. The ideal cross cousin marriage is often not possible but marriages are usually endogamous.
  

• Marriage locality varies but it is usually local so a bride stays in touch with her natal home. Traditionally the couple would live with the bride's parents. 
  
  The result is higher female autonomy. Women are better educated in the South especially in the state of Kerala.
  

• There is not the same value place on virginity at marriage. There is little female seclusion. The pressure on women to have lots of children is lower.

The Northern Indian pattern with some important modifications, extends across the Middle East and North Africa.

The Southern  pattern extends through South East Asia.

Agriculture

 Regional Differences in Female Autonomy

Ratios

What is the sex ratio? It is the proportion of males to females in a given population, usually expressed as the number of males per 1000 females.  

Why isn't it 50/50? half males, half females? That’s because boys are weaker than girls. At every age slightly more boys die than girls— normally. So in humans, it normal for the sex ratio for children ages 0 to 9, to be 1005. That is, for every 1000 girls there should be 1005 boys. That's what we would expect on average, genetically.  

What do we actually see?  

The sex ratio in Kerala state is 1005, just as we would expect. In Tamil Nadu, which is in the south, it is 1028 which shows more boys than girls than we would expect. This is evidence of son preference—that is, preference for sons over daughters. But in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, the sex ratio is 1069 and 1063 —that is, far more boys than girls - Many more than we would expect to see genetically. This is an example of very strong son preference.

Where   are   the    missing     girls?  

Historically, throughout the world, societies that have son preference  have practiced female infanticide. Some girl babies were killed or allowed to die.  

After children are born, boys get preferential treatment. They see doctors more often and they get better care. They may get more food. 

It is not clear from the statistics what is causing these numbers, but something is skewing the ratio we would expect to see. And the sex ratio of the north is much higher than south. Son preference in the north is much higher than in the south, and the empirical numbers bear that out.  

By the time children are 10 to 14, this is very clear. Sex ratios of 1016 and 1025 in our two representative southern states—Kerala and Tamil Nadu. And in the north, in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, 1099 and 1109. So, far more boys are surviving that we would expect.

Because girls are expensive to raise and they require dowries to be married, it makes sense that families would try to get their daughters married off quickly. So its not surprising that girls are married off early. It interesting to look at the numbers for the percent of girls ages 10 to 14 who are married. The percentages are much lower in the south than the north. Over 30% of the girls in the north are married by age 14. Whereas in the south, only 1 to 2 % are married by age 14.

The average age of first marriage is 15 or 16 in the north and 20 to 21 in the south. Age at first marriage has a very strong influence on how many children a woman has during her life. If you defer marriage, then far fewer children are born over the course of a woman’s life time. One way of lowering population growth rates is to delay marriage. So its not surprising to see that in south, where marriage is delayed five years or so, the total fertility rate is much lower.

What do we mean by total fertility rate? number of children born to an average woman in a population during her entire reproductive life.

In the south women typically have 3 to 3.5 children. In the north the rates are much higher at 5.5 to 5.7 children.

It is also significant whether childbirth is medically attended. The numbers again are quite different in the north and in the south— 22 to 26 % in the South and 2.5 to 4 % in the north.

As I said before, Purdah —the seclusion of women is much higher in the north than the south—less than 5 % in the South and 50% or more in the north. That's nearly 25% of the population that can’t work or be productive. It strains society.

Finally, female literacy — 51 and 86 % in the south and 20 and 25% the north for 1991.[note: 2002 data much improved]

 These stats are indicative of low female autonomy. And female autonomy has an important influence on population growth rates. Where women have a choice they usually do not have children as early or as many children.

Now remember I said that in the north women might very well want to have as many children as they can to insure that they have many sons to take care of them and to be close to them.

But clearly their situation constrains them and they might do things differently if they had a choice.

The point of this is not to condemn people but to understand them. And it is my intent that you get some insight into how small changes in the structure of society can have a huge impact on people’s lives. We are not talking about religion. We are not talking about ethnicity, these are practices of different religions and different cultural groups. A small little thing like marriage rules. Who you should marry and where you should live after you are married are the primary structural reasons for differences between north and south. But these have tremendous implications for quality of life.

Religion

Muslim Population

Languages

Female Literacy

Questions

Which elements of the above discussion are empirical, structural or humanistic?

Compare and contrast the different approaches to the problem.

Which is best at getting at the underlying of meaning in people's lives?

Which do you prefer and why?

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