Posts Tagged ‘South Delhi’
The ‘good Indian girl’ – defining a normative concept
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Gender, India on augusti 24th, 2009
Johanna: Is there a norm to be a good Indian girl and in that case, which are her
qualities?
Yasmin: In India girls are expected to be silent, demure and sacrificial. It’s not ok to
challenge norms, or argue back with people. You are expected to be subservient and
humble, and excessively helpful.
*
One day at Lady Shri Ram College, in South Delhi, the students were gathered in the
assembly room for a screening of a documentary on women’s issues. Yasmin and Preity
were present in the hall to see the Jagori documentary, they described the documentary
content to me. The documentary makers were filming with a hidden camera at an upper class market in south Delhi at 9 PM.
Various men were asked about their views on women who were outside after 9 PM and the voices in the documentary were unequivocal: “the women who are out at night are not good women – they are obviously not from respected families”, “women who were out at night were not respectable”. And the underlying attitude in a sense justified that the women outside after 9 PM could be blamed if they were caught up in dangerous situations at night. This is one of the many stories on gender and space that my Delhi informants shared with me during research in India. I also found out that the girls are highly aware of the normative behaviour that is ascribed to females and on which ways they negotiate and challenge these norms.
I think the normative gendered public behaviour that is expected out of women is a really interesting topic for research. Hopefully this is what I am researching in the future.
The “we can do it” approach
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Gender, India on juni 23rd, 2009
India is interesting on so many levels. And I am fascinated by the strong “we can do it” approach that is present among the young women. “It” in this sense refers to meeting equality, meeting the men half-way on many levels of society. I have a deep interest in India and gender, therefore, for my master thesis in Anthropology I choose to conduct research in the vibrant globalized sphere of South Delhi - where gender roles are constantly being negotiated in the capital city which is moving with a high speed towards the future.
I am especially interested in the gender perspective in India today. Marriage has been and still is an important social institution in India. “A good marriage” is essential and to be a good wife is a desirable goal for many women in India. The young women I met in Delhi are well aware of what is considered desired female behaviour and they in many ways try to live up to this norm and to follow the social unwritten rules of what is considered desirable female behaviour. But even though they do have room for negotiating their role within the marriage institution.
I am fascinated by the strong “we can do it” approach – meaning match up to the men, become their equals within the society as such and specifically within the marriage institution. According to my informants, many Indian marriages are based on inequality, the man is often considered to be in charge of decisions. When the family units are becoming nuclear, breaking free from the extended family setting then new rules are negotiated between the spouses with no external power involved. With every generation comes change, and with every generation small changes are being made, my Delhi informants can see these changes in their parents and grandparents attitudes that differs on many levels from their own. Delhi women are moving at a high speed.
Even if the young women are restricted on many areas of the society – especially when it comes to moving freely in their own city after night falls. I admire their spirit! I wish them all the best in their struggle fuelled by their ‘we can do it’ approach. I am grateful that I had the privilege to meet some of these young women during my stay in Delhi at the end of year 2008.
Female space in Delhi
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Gender, India on juni 22nd, 2009
This is as extract from my fieldswork in Delhi; One day at Lady Shri Ram College, in South Delhi, the students were gathered in the assembly room for a screening of a documentary on women’s issues. Two of my informants, Yasmin and Preity, were present in the hall to see the Jagori1 documentary. The documentary makers were filming with a hidden camera at upper class market Saket in south Delhi at 9 PM. Various men were asked about their views on women who were outside after 9 PM and the voices in the documentary were unequivocal: “the women who are out at night are not good women – they are obviously not from respected families”, “women who were out at night were not respectable”. And the underlying attitude in a sense justified that the women outside after 9 PM could be blamed if they were caught up in dangerous situations at night.
This is one of the many stories on gender and space that my informants shared with me. In my thesis I show how my informants are aware of the normative behaviour that is ascribed to females and how they negotiate and challenge these norms on several levels. The data I have gathered during participant observation in Delhi is about being an upper middle-class girl. Based on what my informants told me, I would say that the Delhi society they describe in their experience is, to a large extent, gender segregated. Among my informants there is a cultural code of normative femininity; the good Indian girl. According to this cultural code women are among other things expected to stay indoors after night falls; an exception being if they are accompanied by a man. The street is to be considered safe in male company; the man defines the safe space for my informants.
Alternative discourses on Indian Womanhood
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Gender, India on juni 6th, 2009
The normative femininity among Delhi girls is the “good Indian girl” who is silent, demure and sacrificial, obeys her parents and behaves “good” this apply to Indian females according to my informants, all Delhi girls age 18-20 years. A good Indian wife obeys her husband, that is the normative gender relation after marriage, my informants argue. Even so there are alternative discourses on Indian womanhood, as described in the Indian media in my last blog entry, and these are mirrored in the lives of the Bollywood celebrities in India. During one discussion with my Delhi informant, 19 year old Preity, I used my Bollywood card (discussed in a previous blog entry “the Bollywood card”) discussing the issue of several Bollywood stars that have cross-religious marriages. Since it is not commonly accepted in the public eye, I was curious to hear what Preity had to say about the norm-breaking fashion that the Bollywood celebrities make up. When I asked the Hindu Preity about these matches, she answered that if a Muslim man marries a non-Muslim woman it equals five pilgrimages. So the Muslim man, in the eyes of the public religious conventions, is gaining religious capital in connection with the union. And all the Bollywood cross-religion couples I could think of involved a Muslim man and a Hindu woman.
Another controversial topic I discussed with my Delhi informants involved so called live-in-relationships, when an unmarried couple live together as sambo; this is featured in an interview with a newcomer actress in Bollywood: Mugdha Godse who debuted in the film Fashion in 2008. The journalist Chandran from Indian film magazine Stardust, is asking Godse if she believes in live-in-relationships. It is obviously a question of interest for the potential readers, since it is number two out of 18 questions. She answers that she believes it is a good idea, but in her own case she does not think her parents would agree, she would not go against their wishes. Godse is interviewed pictured as a sex symbol, the questions and the pictures in the interview are daring, but analysing the material discursively, I can see her normative good Indian girl discourse in the text, the example of not going against the parents’ wishes for example.
It is a paradox to maintain feminitinty, regarding the normative, the expected and the personal private issues in one’s life. This dilemma is further problematised in my Master Thesis, Desi Girls -a study of urban middle class girls’ expressions and negotiations of gender, which will be published on my blog shortly.
The Abstract
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Gender, India on maj 14th, 2009
Today, May 14, I am handing in my Master Thesis, in Anthropology that has craven my attention for the past months. This is the abstract;
This thesis attempts to understand how gender is expressed and negotiated in the everyday lives of young urban girls in South Delhi. To approach the topic of gender I engaged in participant observation including semi-structured interviews and spending time with young middle-class girls during two months in Delhi at the end of 2008. The girls I encountered in the field are all college students in a phase of transition; being young, educated and of marriageable age.
In constructing a body of knowledge with a foundation in the theoretical framework of discourse analysis, I illustrate how institutions like marriage, family, societal norms, space, and relations between the sexes are juxtaposed in the area of gender. This thesis reveals how gender identity is constructed not as individual accounts, but as juxtapositions of perspectives of individual agency and manifestations of discourses.
Marriage in Delhi is commonly arranged by the parents and is considered a union in which gender needs to be re-negotiated. Aware of the patriarchal ethos imbuing their society, the informants are preparing for the after-marriage talk. After marriage their individual freedom lies in the hands of their husbands, therefore they intend to negotiate with their husbands-to-be to have a marriage based on equality.
Being a Desi girl is a paradox: on one hand they want to be good girls – subservient, humble and obedient – but on the other hand they are negotiating and challenging the normative behaviour when it comes to issues like marriage, go out pubing, or to talking back to their parents. In this thesis, I investigate the societal femininity discourse and the possible discrepancy between the discourse and the actual behaviour. I have concluded that the concept of negotiation plays a key role in the Delhi girls’ constructions of gender.
Key words: Delhi, Gender, Girls, Middle class, Discourse analysis
Being a Desi Girl part#2
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, India on maj 8th, 2009
The Desi girls bring a male friend when going shopping with her girlfriends, to be left alone away from wolf whistling and rude comments from man and boys and if she is out late with girlfriends (later than 8 PM) a male cousin picks her up so she can reach home safely. The Desi Girl calls her mom everyday and always informs the parents where she is (when she has not snuck out). The Desi girl mostly wear branded jeans and t-shirt, a branded purse and colourful low-heel shoes. She can wear uncomfortable shoes since she does not walk a lot during her day, the rickshaw driver takes her from college to the café or market or friends’ houses. The Desi girl gives her old clothes and make-up to the maid who is the same age as the Desi girl. The maid’s mother before her have served the family, they are illiterate and from a low caste. The Desi girl has never cleaned the house, done dishes or washed laundry, the ’servant culture’ is making life comfortable for the middle-classes in Delhi. The rickshaw drivers are mostly illiterate too and spends their day in the heavily polluted traffic-jams on the Delhi roads. The differences in social status is easy to acknowledge for an outsider.
