Gender studies

june 18, 2010





editorial



The Janani Suraksha Yojana, a path-breaking conditional cash transfer initiative launched in 2005 to encourage deliveries at government health care facilities, has achieved some of its goals. It was launched at a time when India accounted for 20 per cent of maternal and 31 per cent of neonatal deaths in the world. Benefits started accruing a year after the scheme came into operation — the number of deliveries in government health facilities shot up by 36 per cent in Rajasthan and 53 per cent in Madhya Pradesh. A study based on survey data put out by the government for the period between late 2007 and early 2009 has been published recently in The Lancet (“India's Janani Suraksha Yojana, a conditional cash transfer programme to increase births in health facilities: an impact evaluation,” by Stephen S. Lim et al.). The study revealed that cash payment led to a reduction of about four perinatal deaths per 1,000 pregnancies, and two neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births. The analysis found no reduction in maternal mortality based on the district level data. The uptake of JSY did not vary much between rural and urban areas, despite rates being higher in rural areas. But other parameters, including wealth, age, and education of women, had a bearing across both high-focus and non-high-focus States. For instance, at the national level, the uptake was highest among those who had 1-5 and 6-11 years of education. Women availing of the cash incentive showed a typical pyramid profile, with those who were neither poor nor rich accessing it the most.

With a budget of Rs.1,540 crore and 9.5 million beneficiaries, JSY is the world's largest conditional cash transfer scheme. It has demonstrated that providing an incentive of Rs.600 and Rs.700 to women in urban and rural areas in non-high-focus States, and Rs.1,000 and Rs.1,400 in the case of high-focus States can bring about an overall reduction in the perinatal and neonatal deaths. However, effective measures are required to ensure that the benefits reach the poorest and the least educated women, who are in most need of skilled birth attendance. Although women availing of the cash incentive are required to attend three antenatal care visits, adherence was not good. Earlier studies have shown that quality of care is compromised for various reasons. For instance, early discharge after delivery, as soon as the women availed of the incentives, was reported. A modified system of staggered payments may be one way of ensuring better care. Though it may strain the system further, it can help reduce the number of maternal and neonatal deaths.

source: the hindu

In case you missed it on 60 Minutes, this is what Andy Rooney thinks about women over 40:

60 Minutes Correspondent Andy Rooney (CBS)

As I grow in age, I value women over 40 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:

A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask, 'What are you thinking?' She doesn't care what you think.

If a woman over 40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it's usually more interesting.

Women over 40 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant.. Of course, if you deserve
it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it. Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's
like to be unappreciated.

Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40.

Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don't ever have to wonder where you
stand with her.

Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40,
there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress. Ladies, I apologize.

For all those men who say, 'Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?', here's an update for you... Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage.
Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage!

Andy Rooney is a really smart guy!

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
It's about learning to dance in the rain.

june 17, 2010



Shailaja Chandra



In the absence of whole-hearted steps to implement the provisions effectively, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 is falling short of expectations.






The Delhi High Court ruled recently that a woman can also be held liable under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005. This the court did on the basis of the interpretation that ‘relatives' included not only male but also female members of a family. The absence of such a provision, it felt, could encourage men to instigate women members of a family to commit violence.

The Act came about in response to decade-long pressure from international organisations and activists in India. But five years later, despite noble intentions, it remains an unviable proposition. Little thinking has gone into understanding the context in which spousal abuse overwhelmingly occurs in India. The ground realities have been ignored and the implementation aspects left woolly and unprovided for.

A senior lawyer in the Supreme Court, K.K. Rai, who is conversant with matrimonial cases, says: “The law just does not take into account the realities of the joint family system where female members of the family heap both physical and emotional aggression against a woman. We need guidelines and mechanisms which ensure continuance of the joint family ethos, yet cushion the woman against violence.”

Whereas domestic violence takes place in all social, economic and cultural settings worldwide, in India the difference is that families are conditioned to tolerate, allow, even rationalise domestic violence. Most of the violence takes place inside homes which should offer the woman maximum security. The 2005 law focusses on the prohibition of marital aggression, the issue of protection and maintenance orders against husbands and partners who abuse a woman emotionally, physically or economically. This sounds fine on paper, but a one-size-fits-all approach ignores women who need such protection the most.

The National Family Health Survey-3 (NFHS) shows that the prevalence of violence increases sharply in the absence of education and reduces by half in the case of women who have acquired 10 years of schooling. Both physical and sexual violence are highest among women in the poorest wealth quintile, and it declines steadily with increasing wealth. Given the scarcity of resources, the legislation should have initially focussed on the conditions in which illiterate and uneducated women reside in joint families. Instead, it has painted the subject with one broad brush, seeking to rely on the efficiency of the courts to decide such matters within 60 days.

Administratively, the Act requires each State government to appoint protection officers, register service providers and notify medical facilities for the implementation of the Act. While the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of Home Affairs have issued advisories to State governments, with the exception of West Bengal and Delhi no State is known to have appointed independent protection officers even five years hence. Most States have fobbed off the requirement by giving “additional” responsibility to existing functionaries. Rajasthan, a high-prevalence State for domestic violence, has entrusted the already overburdened anganwadi workers who are striving to ensure the supply of nutrition to infants, children and lactating mothers, with the responsibility.

In Delhi where at least an attempt has been made to recruit independent protection officers, Yasmin Khan, a member of the State Women's Commission, laments that it is just not possible to appoint dedicated staff on a salary of Rs. 15,000 a month. “How can a newly recruited MSW [degree-holder], even if she agrees to join, visit homes, draw up reports, seek protection orders from magistrates, create and maintain legal documentation and pursue court directions when she has no help, no transport, no office and no training?”

Tabling figures regarding protection orders issued so far, Parliament was recently given information only in respect of a handful of States and Union Territories. Even here, nothing is known about what the majority of them are doing. The numbers, which have not crossed four figures in five years, are too sparse to inspire confidence. Looking to the findings of country-wide surveys that have shown that over 40 per cent of all married women had experienced physical or sexual violence, the Act does not touch even the fringe of the problem.

The experience of Rajasthan is vividly described by Kavita Srivastava, who represents the People's Union for Civil Liberties and who has been pursuing women's causes. According to her, while the protection officers are in acute need of legal training, the magistrates before whom the cases are presented also need orientation. She feels that scant regard is paid to the 60-day limit, and domestic violence matters are treated in a most routine manner — thus defeating the purpose for which the Act was made. Every case decided against the husband automatically goes up in appeal, and it becomes an unending story. Lawyers get busy converting practically all domestic violence cases into maintenance matters, in the process missing the point of preventing immediate assault and violence against the woman. In some instances, magistrates have issued contempt orders against the very protection officers who stand as a bridge between the woman and her aggressor. In such a climate, how can women expect immediate and sustained protection?

Unlike in the U.K. and the U.S., domestic violence has not been on the radar of the political executive, politicians in general, the police or the media in India. Such cases would seem to lack the sensationalism or ghoulish appeal of murder or rape cases. Repeated surveys have shown that in Indian society, both men and women believe that domestic violence can be tolerated in certain circumstances. These include being rude to the in-laws, not caring for children, preparing food badly or going out of the house without permission. If the vast majority of people accept that this is cause enough for domestic violence, it is doubtful if even the most rigorous protection officer would ever succeed in making inroads into a battered wife's household, leave alone haul up the husband before a district court.

The 2005 Act is impractical and consequently non-implementable in favour of those that need protection the most. Looking at the size of the country and the problem, it would be better to have a law that targets the poorest and the most uneducated and illiterate among women to start with, at least until the mechanisms to implement this nuclear family-lawyer dominated law are in place, if that is what the legislature wants. Until then, the plight of the poorest women — both rural and urban — who get repeatedly thrown out of their homes in the dead of night should be confronted. In the full knowledge of neighbours, thousands of the really poor and uneducated are repeatedly subjected to slapping, kicking, being dragged by their hair; twisted by the arm, forced to have sexual intercourse, even threatened with knives and household implements, as NFHS-3 surveys have vividly shown.

There is no use having a law that is meant for the whole country when there is no one to implement it. Until full-time and properly oriented protection officers are recruited — which seems to be an unattainable target now — a more practical way would be to prescribe summary disposal of cases through weekly courts organised at the tehsil or ward level. The protection officer's responsibility should be confined to giving a report before a mobile magistrate citing two witnesses from the neighbourhood. For every case where a protection order is issued, the protection officer and the witnesses should be compensated in recognition of having successfully brought forward the case for intervention. At the village level, the panchayats as well as the health, education and social welfare fieldworkers and non-governmental organisations could be permitted to voluntarily take on the role of protection officials, to be compensated for every case that ends in favour of a battered woman.

The U.K. took several years to train its police, its health workers and its judicial magistrates on handling the domestic violence law. Such a process has hardly happened in India. The mindset of those who deal which domestic violence has first to be changed before the law can subserve the interests of those for whom it was primarily intended. Until then, it is essential to protect those who have no voice and whose situation is well known to the entire neighbourhood. If the National Rural Health Mission's Accredited Social Health Activists can be compensated for accompanying a pregnant woman to hospital, why not those who accompany a battered woman and present her case before a magistrate? A separate section in the law that addresses the special needs of the most vulnerable would help change the focus of the Domestic Violence Act in their favour.








(Shailaja Chandra is a former Chief Secretary of Delhi, and Secretary to the Government of India. She was the first Executive Director of the National Population Stabilisation Fund set up by the Government of India.)

source: the hindu

april 04, 2010


One is a bulldozer operator, another a train driver and yet another an ambulance woman, not to mention pipe-fitters, A/C mechanics, senior technicians and even crane operators. Nobody would have thought that these women from a closed society would be inspirations in such male bastions. From being faceless people serving tea and mopping floors, they have become trail-blazers. SHALINI SAKSENA brings you a report

There is an emergency. A worker complains of severe pain in his stomach while on duty. A call is made and an ambulance is on its way. However, once it reaches the site it is not easy to reverse the big van. The road is narrow with a sheer drop on the right. The driver takes stock of the situation and slowly starts to reverse. It is difficult, even the slightest mistake can plunge the van hundreds of feet down below. A turn here and a turn there. A few workers converge to watch. Finally, the van is in position. The driver jumps out and shouts: “Where is the patient.” It is only then that everybody realises that the driver is a woman.

Meet P Gyaneswari — ambulance driver, Equipment Maintenance Services with Tata Steel in Jamshedpur. “I still remember that day. It was my first day on duty when I got the call. It never occurred to me that the road would be so narrow or that it would be extremely difficult for to me turn the van once I reached the spot. But I knew that people were waiting for me to fail and that gave me courage. I think it was due to God’s grace that I was able to do it. Once I had the patient in the ambulance, the other workers started yelling. ‘Aree ladki gaadi chala rahi hai. Accident kar degi, raste se hato,’ they said. However, those who had seen me manoeuvre the van knew better and told them how good a driver I was. They even clapped for me. I was thrilled,” Gyaneswari says.

And, the silver lining is this woman with a difference is not alone. There are more than 40 women who are a part of the Tata Steel initiative ‘Tejaswini’ who have been on jobs that conventionally speak of the need of brawn.

“We gave the project this name because it was about empowering women. The women workers are given jobs on compensatory ground. If the husband dies, the wife or his son gets the job. If he has no son the job goes to the daughter. There are around 500 women working with the Tatas. Unfortunately, they are not very educated. But we wanted them to be able to hold their heads high and work for a better future,” says Urmila Ekka, Sr Manager, Human Resource & Industrial Relations.

When Gyaneswari lost her husband in an accident she was left with three children and no livelihood. She was then a housewife — cooking, cleaning, looking after the in-laws and her children. Her husband’s death changed all that. She was offered a job with the Tatas. Since she had only studied till Class X and had no skilled training she had to take up the job of a reja (labourer).

Her duty, however, was to serve tea and clean the shop floor in the Hot Strip Mill.

“I was around 40 when an opportunity came knocking. The notice board in the mill said that they were looking for women who would be willing to work on heavy vehicles. “Mujhe laga jaise ek bahut bada darwaza khul gaya. I applied and after training was assigned to drive and maintain an ambulance for first-aid at the plant,” Gyaneswari tells you.

From a salary of Rs 8,000 with no career growth, today she earns around Rs 20,000 a month. “I am very grateful that I was given this opportunity. My eldest daughter is now doing her MBA. My son is doing a course in IT and my youngest daughter is pursuing her BBA,” Gyaneswari says.

It was not an easy task to train these women. Not only was their age against them — most being over 35 — their mindsets also acted as a hurdle. “Learning at this age does not come easily. Most were school dropouts working as mazdoors. The challenge for us was not to train them or equip them with skills but, to change their entire lifestyle,” Urmila says.

“During our interview we were told that we would have to wear pant and shirt. At that time I agreed. On my way home I got scared. Gharwale kya kahenge? Meri saas boli ki pati to mar gaya ab tumhe fashion soojh raha hai. Pant-shirt pehen ke bahar niklegi to log kya kahenge? Then I looked at my children and I knew I had to do it for them. From that day, there was no looking back,” Gyaneswari adds.

Take Parwati, a pipeline fitter. “I was 50 when I applied for this job. When my husband died I was only 34. I am not very educated so I was asked to sweep the floor shop and the road outside. I worked like this for 14 years. When the programme came up, I was already a grandmother. I have six grandchildren. But I applied. All my four children were thrilled and told me I could do whatever I wanted. My granddaughter who goes to school could not believe her eyes when she saw me in a pant and shirt,” recounts Parwati. She tells you that her extended family was shocked but her children powered her on.

“These women have had to fight social mores to make a place for themselves. It has not been easy for them to shed the sari for trousers. They work inside the factory under hazardous conditions. They need to understand the symbols and instructions. For heavy vehicle drivers, besides reading the road signs, there is a need to also fill in the log book. They had know how to read and write,” Urmila tells you.

“On my first day on the job all the men around me gave me a lot of encouragement. There were some who made snide remarks but I did not let that bother me. I decided I would let my work speak for me. As time passed, the men started coming up to me to tell me that I was a source of inspiration for them,” Parwati recalls.

And inspirational they have been. Gyaneswari recounts how men who used to fill petrol in her ambulance expressed the desire to better their future like her. Not just that, the entire brigade was invited by the President of India to collect the kudos for their foray into such difficult jobs.

“When we were told that we would be meeting the President of India we could not believe our luck. I had never even imagined I would meet the President. Jab humme bataya gaya ki hum President Pratibha Patil se milne Dilli ja rahen hain mujhe itni khushi hui ki mein bayan nahin kar sakti. Humne unka garden dekha. Usme aise aise phool dekhe jo kabhi nahin dekhe the. Jab hum unse mile to woh khadi ho gayeen. Maine sapne mein bhi nahin socha thha ki ek President ho kar woh humse milne ke liye kadhi theen,” Asha Hansda, a dumper and bulldozer operator, tells you.

Asha, too, was reja. From a poor tribal family, she wanted to make something out of her life. “The thought that I would die as a reja always upset me. I wanted to do something big in life. In 2002, I was offered a part in the Tejaswini project run by the Tatas. I jumped right in. We were 13 in the first batch. When I saw the bulldozer for the first time, I thought it was huge. My worry was not whether I could drive it but how I would get to the driver’s seat — some three feet above the ground,” Asha recalls.

“All the women of the first batch had to learn how to drive heavy vehicles because all the jobs were in that section. So we started training them with a small car — the Maruti. Gradually, they were made to drive bigger and heavier vehicles. They were trained for three months and another three months was an on-the-job training. We saw apprehension in them. So we requested mountaineer

Bachendri Pal (she works with the Tatas) to come a give them a pep talk. She taught them rock climbing and took them trekking,” Urmila says.

“We knew Ms Pal was the first Indian woman to have climbed the Mt Everest. To actually see her and listen to her was inspiring. And then we actually got to go mountain climbing with her. It was on the 100th anniversary of our factory. Thirty people were chosen, five of us were women. Scaling Mt Adi Kailash was an unforgettable experience. It prepared us to face any challenge in life,” says Asha.

“As a reja my work was to load and offload raw material from railway wagons and carry it in a basket on my head. Today, I drive 35-ton dumpers, large capacity frontend loaders and bulldozers. I have two children — one in Class IV and the other in Class VII. My husband is a small-time farmer who stays home most of the time. People tell me I have become the man of my home,” she adds with a laugh.

Asha is the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Shram Devi Award. “This award was initially only given to Government employees. It was in 2004 that they changed the rule to include the private sector. Hansda was the first woman to get it,” Urmila says.

The only woman in this novel project who did not join as a reja was Sefali. She was only 17 when her father died, leaving her to fend for her mother and two younger sisters. She joined as an office peon because she had done her Class XII. At 35 today, Sefali is a locomotive engine operator and the country’s only woman to operate a train.

“When my father died I didn’t know what do to. I knew I had to work in order to support my family. The company offered me a job. Even though I had done my Intermediate, I had to sweep the floor, prepare tea and move papers in the office. I had no skills and my future was bleak. How was I supposed to educate my younger siblings and get them married off? But after I joined the project my life changed. As a child whenever I travelled in a train I used to wonder what it would be like to see the insides of the engine. Today, I not only know what it looks like but also how to operate it. I make four rounds and with 58 rail wagons attached in my shift which starts at 7 am and ends at 4 pm. I now have to look for grooms for my sisters,” says Sefali.

But what about her plans to get married. “Kar lengey. I am open to proposals. First I have to get my sisters married,” she tells you in a sombre tone.

source: dailypioneer.com

While Asia and the Pacific can take pride in the region’s vibrant economic transformation in recent decades, this has not translated into progress on gender equality.

Discrimination and neglect are threatening women’s very survival in the Asia-Pacific region, where women suffer from some of the world’s lowest rates of political representation, employment and property ownership. Their lack of participation is also depressing economic growth. Those were some of the findings of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-sponsored 2010 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report launched on Monday.

“Empowering women is vital for achieving development goals overall, and for boosting economic growth and sustainable development,” said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, in presenting the “Report: Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific,” here on Monday.

“Policy needs to advance gender equality, so that women as well as men can benefit from job creation and investments in social infrastructure,” she said.

The Report focuses on three key areas — economic power, political decision-making and legal rights? To analyse what holds women back, and how policies and attitudes can be changed to foster a climb toward gender equality. Asia, the Report asserts, is standing at a cross-road and by putting the right policies in place now, countries in the region can achieve positive change.

Gender bias in salary

Lack of women’s participation in the workforce costs the region billions of dollars every year. In countries such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia conservative estimates show that GDP would increase by up to 2-4 percent annually if women’s employment rates were raised to 70 percent, closer to the rate of many developed countries.

Fewer women than men are in paid work in every country in the region, with striking contrasts between South Asia and East Asia. Nearly 70 percent of East Asian women are in paid work, well above the global average of 53 percent, in countries such as Cambodia, China, and Vietnam, for example.

In South Asian countries like India and Pakistan fewer than 35 percent of women do paid work. These contrasts in women’s paid work between East and South Asia co-exist in parallel with the higher long-term growth trend of the former.

Despite laws guaranteeing equal pay for equal work, women in this region still earn considerably less than men, with the pay gap ranging from 54 to 90 percent.

Women “consistently end up with some of the worst, most poorly-paid jobs — often the ones that men don’t want to do, or that are assumed to be “naturally” suited to women,” the Report found.

Women representatives in legislature

South Asia often comes in second worst in the world in gender equality measures, just above sub-Saharan Africa, while East Asia often fares better in health, education, and employment.

Asia-Pacific women hold only a handful of legislative seats, fewer than anywhere else in the world except in the Arab region. Women in Asia-Pacific rarely make it to elective office. The Pacific sub-region accounts for four of the world’s six countries without any women lawmakers.

Development level doesn’t necessarily correlate with high political participation for women, either; women in Japan and the Republic of Korea, for example, hold just 10 percent of legislative seats.

Interestingly, countries emerging from conflict appear to offer better political opportunities for women: 33 percent of Nepal’s parliamentarians are women, and nearly 30 percent of Timor-Leste’s.

Missing girls

The problem of “missing girls” in which more boys are born than girls, as girl fetuses are presumably aborted, and women die from health and nutrition neglect — is actually growing. Birth gender disparity is greatest in East Asia, where 119 boys are born for every 100 girls. China and India together account more than 85 million of the nearly 100 million “missing” women estimated to have died from discriminatory treatment in health care, nutrition access or pure neglect or because they were never born in the first place, the report found.

Gender-divide in family

A tenth of women here report being assaulted by their partners, and a majority of women who do work-up to 85 percent of South Asia’s working women are engaged in unstable low-end work in the informal economy. Few women hold property. Although women predominate in agriculture, they head only 7 percent of farms, compared to 20 percent in most other regions of the world.

“Pervasive gender inequality remains a barrier to progress, justice and social stability, and deprives the region of a significant source of human potential,” the report concluded.

Laws aren’t helping much. The region is far behind where it could be on basic issues, such as protecting women from violence, upholding entitlements to property — even allowing people to divorce in an informed and reasonable way.

Few countries have adopted or implemented laws prohibiting violence against women, despite widespread evidence of discrimination and assault. Nearly half of the countries in South Asia, and more than 60 percent of those in the Pacific, have no laws against domestic violence.

Nor are there many provisions against sexual harassment in workplaces, though 30 to 40 percent of working women report experiencing verbal, physical or sexual abuse.

"Too often, customs or religious beliefs have become a rationale for laws and legal systems to ignore or soft—peddle or even, in the worst cases, justify issues such as discriminatory inheritance practices and the multiple forms of violence that specifically target women,” Anuradha Rajivan, leader of the multinational team that prepared the report, said.

Many women are also prevented from accessing justice if it involves challenging their husbands, other family members or the broader status quo, the report concluded.

Recommendations

The report has recommended the following steps for redressing the gender imbalance. They are as follows: >>Removing barriers to women’s ownership of assets, such as land; expanding paid employment; making migration safe and investing in high—quality education and health are some of the main solutions recommended for addressing these problems.

>>Reforming constitutions, training judicial and law enforcement personnel in gender—sensitive practices and progressively .

>>Interpreting religious principles which recognize the equal value of all human beings.

>>Political quotas to increase women’s political participation, with sanctions for non—compliance, could be necessary.

>>More women should also be enfranchised into party politics; and relied upon as brokers of peace in times of emergency.

source: UNDP

KALPANA SHARMA


Why is it that the burden of name change is laid on the shoulders of women alone, when they get married or divorced?




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Perhaps in the long term, it would be simpler for women to hold on to their maiden names...


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Last month, divorced women in India must have been startled to read a news item in a leading English language daily newspaper. It stated that the Bombay High Court had ruled that divorced women could not use their former husbands' surnames. The “ruling”, apparently, was in response to an appeal filed by a woman against a judgment in the Family Court in a case filed by her former husband. The judge had restrained the woman from using her former husband's name stating, “By using the ex-husband's name, or surname, there is always a possibility of people being misled that she is still the wife, when in fact she is not.”

The item caught my eye and I decided to check with a well-known lawyer whether there was any provision in law under which a court could give such a ruling. Did it in fact apply to all divorced women, as the story seemed to suggest, or was it just a judgment in a particular case? I was told that in fact the court had not given a “ruling” and that a single judge had merely upheld the judgment of the lower court in this particular matter. This did not mean that it applied to all divorced women. In fact, she pointed out, there could be no such ruling as people were entitled to take a name of their choice and could at anytime change their names simply by filing an affidavit.

Questioning a convention


The story, despite its inaccuracy, has triggered off a debate on whether women should change their names when they get married, and whether they should revert to their maiden names when they get divorced.

Last year, before the general election, actor Sanjay Dutt kicked off a similar controversy when he suggested that married women should adopt their husbands' surnames. He was clearly peeved that his sister, Congress MP Priya Dutt, continued to use her maiden name — which also established that her father was Sunil Dutt — instead of her married name. He was clearly not so worried about her violating a tradition as the political advantage she gained from maintaining her maiden name.

In India, not only are women automatically expected to adopt their husband's surname when they get married, but in some communities, as in Maharashtra, they are also expected to change their first names. As a result, once married, their identity changes completely. It is almost as if getting married also means wiping off your previous identity and completely subsuming yourself in one chosen by your husband and his family.

Politics of identity


Although the overwhelming majority of Indian women automatically follow the custom of adopting their husband's surname, increasingly some of them are asking why this should be so. What does the institution of marriage have to do with your name? Are you any less married if you adhere to the name you were given by your parents? Are you any less your husband's wife if your surname is that of your father? Is not love and understanding more important than unquestioned tradition? Should the choice not be left to the woman rather than being an imposition, one that she might not want?

Professional women, for instance, who marry after they have already established themselves, much prefer to stick to their maiden names. On the other hand, there are many women who marry young and get established in their professions after marriage. As a result, their professional identity is based on their married name, that is, if they have chosen to take their husband's surname. If such women get divorced, what sense does it make for them to revert to their maiden names? In other words, the issue is not so much whether women take their husband's surnames or not after marriage but that they should have the freedom to decide.

And why is it that the burden of name change is put on the shoulders of women alone? After women get married, if they choose or are compelled to adopt their husband's surname, they have to change all their names on their passports, bank accounts, driving licence, etc. It is not surprising then that only around two per cent of divorced women revert to their maiden names after divorce. This is not because they want to misuse their former position as being married to a particular person, or to appear to be married to him, but because it is just too much trouble. And in any case, they also want to remain connected to their children who have the same surname.

Perhaps in the long term, it would be simpler for women to hold on to their maiden names whether they marry or not, and whether they get divorced or remain married. This is not such a radical suggestion as it might sound. Even in very conservative societies, such as Iran for instance, women do not change their names when they get married.

Markers of belonging


In the past, the issue of surnames has often been subject of debate in many social movements. In the 1970s for instance, many young people who were part of the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, chose to drop their surnames because they felt that these identified them as belonging to a particular caste. As one of their principal struggles was against the institution of caste, they felt they should start the trend of dropping surnames altogether. When they got married, their names remained unchanged. Neither the man nor the woman had to worry about a surname. In South India in any case the issue of surnames often does not arise as people use initials.

Surnames are just an instrument for ascertaining family lineage in a patriarchal society. In modern societies, where marriages are registered and courts rule on divorces, why should the last name of a woman matter on issues of succession? Fortunately, some of the bureaucratic hurdles before married women maintaining their maiden names are now being removed and it is a little easier to get a passport, for instance, with your maiden name even if you are married. Schools in Maharashtra now accept the mother's name as the guardian of a child, something they did not do earlier where only the father's name could be entered.

Such changes in rules are important. But the controversy over surnames essentially illustrates the mindset that lays down that a woman's own identity must be submerged in that of her husband's once she marries. Women, married or unmarried, divorced or widowed, are equal human beings, with the same rights as men. Surely this should be reflected in the institution of marriage.

In today’s developing and developed world, many nations across the world are following the policy “equality before law” in general and “gender equality” in particular; theoretically and practically as well. But, is this what is needed?
Consider. Our own fingers are not equal, yet they perform picturesque tasks. The food preferences differ, the nature or the traits differ. Then, do men and women not differ? When the creation itself has differentiated, why do humans equate?

Of course, in the view point of women’s empowerment and progress, “equality” is emphasised. Various spaces of opportunities have opened even for women. However, just think. Aren’t these spaces already created by the society? That is, aren’t these jobs already been and being performed by men in general and women in special circumstances?
If noticed carefully, the globalised jobs are even opened for women. But, are women satisfied with these? The job opportunities are in competition with men and not exposing individual capacities. Isn’t there a strength based work? Well, until an individual is asked the preference with reference to the choice of career, be it as a home maker or as a public and even private sector worker, one cannot enjoy or expose personal and special traits.

If a woman wishes to be a home maker, she shouldn’t be regarded as traditional, womanly, womanising, womanised woman; but, should be allowed to franchise her choice in this matter. The same applies to either of his/her selection.
If such an opportunity to expose oneself is given, definitely, the manner of work differs, the quality would be improved and the job performance rate rises. Thus, depending on the potency, capability, decision taken and apt opening, one will unquestionably gain momentum. Therefore, shouldn’t we regard both the genders as human beings and give them diverse avenues?
Like the seven colours of a rainbow, let’s collide together and progress accentuating “similarity and equality through diversity”.