Smita Poudel
In orthodox Hindu societies women usually wear the sari or the salwar kameej, which is generally regarded as respectable. In conservative Hindu cultures a woman seen wearing pants or a T-shirt instead of a sari is stigmatized as “shameless.”
A married woman in our village in Nepal was once seen wearing pants, and a wave of disapproval soon spread throughout the settlement. “See, Tara is wearing pants, what a shameless girl,” whispered the other women.
The village women don’t mind if they see Western women wearing pants, their attitude is that women in the West, while still being women, are not like us. The villagers think that because the Western world is so unlike ours, the older generation there don’t disapprove of a daughter-in-law wearing clothes other than the sari, and that the women are free to choose.
But the village women in no way identify with the West. They would not share any confidences with a female interviewer wearing pants, because they would not consider her to be the same kind of woman as them.
A recent interview published in a Nepali newspaper about two British women who work in the community and wear saris proved popular with readers. According to the British women, their only reason for wearing saris is that women will not open up to them otherwise.
Whenever a foreign group visited our village, everyone would stand in the courtyard and regard them as if they were aliens. Women in pants, carrying heavy bags or wearing male-style shoes struck us as bizarre. Many of the less-educated village women identified the very notion of liberty with these outfits.
By way of proving that women can do everything that men can do, we point to women in the U.S. and Britain, and if our grandmothers need more convincing we say: “Look – women in faraway countries now have the same positions as men.”
Grandmothers insist that women should not raise their voices and should walk lightly and noiselessly, because these are some of the signs of female perfection. Currently, Western women are the role models, as they exemplify female effectiveness. But pointing out women in bikinis at the beach they will also say: “See those shameless girls – they appear before men fully naked.”
So it would seem that, to them, freedom has encouraged shamelessness. I find it difficult to explain that freedom has benefited their standard of living significantly as well as boosting the economy of the whole country.
One could easily assert that the more liberal Western view does not treat women more harshly. Women here in Nepal, then, hardly identify with the West, because the concept of women’s liberation here is countercultural.
In Eastern, mostly Hindu, societies many gods are female, but woman is not God, nor does female divinity have anything to do with discrimination against women. Goddesses as well are generally the consorts of, or subservient wives to, the male deities.
We are proud of our goddesses, and every single male bows his head at the feet of some feminine deity. It’s an utter contradiction, however, that goddesses are superwomen – enlightened, remote and sophisticated. This is why Hindu women are reluctant to identify with the goddesses. A tradition of humiliation and an inferiority complex have overtaken their hopes and desires.
After studying how women are portrayed in Hindu scriptures, I turned to Christianity. In Hindu scriptures like the Bhagwat Mahapuran the female is regarded as the gateway to hell. She is instructed to be a loyal wife and to serve the husband. Making him happy is said to open her way to heaven.
Society is structured around these precepts, and no one has ever dared modify these words of God even in the slightest.
What about Western society? Is liberation there the result of a liberal attitude in the Christian religion towards the female? The answer would have to be “no.”
I went through the Genesis section of the Bible from the creation of the world to the fall of man, and it doesn’t look good for women. In fact the stories in this section of the Bible seem to justify man’s dominance over women.
It is out of man’s rib that woman was created, hence her name as wo-man. From the beginning she is seen as part of man.
Eve, the first woman in the world, is held responsible for the fall of man, and, basically, her fall is a punishment for her temptation of Adam, the first man.
After the fall of man, God cursed Eve. “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Since then women have been the ones who are ruled over.
Christianity has been largely dominated by men. In the Catholic Church, leadership by women as priests is still being denied, but some people are fighting to change that.
It is said that, although 400 or so of the 3,800 Vatican employees are women, most hold clerical or minor administrative positions, such as secretaries, telephone operators, bookkeepers, and translators. The headquarters of the Catholic Church is dominated by men.
Catholic feminists, however, claim that the orthodox view is gradually changing, and that there may one day be female priests. The reason for this change must be that the education of women has made them more conscious of their right to equality.
After reviewing the effects of religious dogma on the lives of Hindu women and beginning a similar search of Western societies, I discovered a book called A God Who Looks Like Me: Discovering a Woman-Affirming Spirituality by Patricia Lyn Reilly. The book tries to dig deep into the psyche of women who have suffered the humiliation of there not being a feminine face of God.
The writer explains that there is a relationship between the legacy of male-dominated religion and the continuing discrimination faced by women in Western societies today.
Awe-stricken, I actually wondered, “how could this affect Western Women?” But knowing always that God can only be male must have fostered male supremacy and female inferiority, since myth has so much to do with the social norms and values in shaping people’s perceptions.
“Even the most abstract interpretations of religion are rooted in the life experience of those who are doing the interpreting. Since most of these interpreters were men, their explanations have very little to do with the lives of women,” says Reilly in her book.
One can say that the interpretations of religious texts are greatly flawed, be it in Hinduism or Christianity or Islam. But women in the Western world rebelled and are still fighting. The feminist movement, which is said to have started early in the 19th century, has changed things a great deal.
But here in South Asia the battle is yet to begin – we are some two hundred years behind. Women also lag far behind in terms of “fight for your right” mentality because they do not know enough about their rights and regard everything they suffer as their destiny.
Western society, thanks to education, has modified discrimination against women to a great extent.
I originally thought that the greater freedom women experience in the West was the result of special dispensations granted by Christianity. This was not the case. Western women enjoy the freedoms that they do today because they dared to fight to overturn inequality.
Women in countries like Britain and America were once very oppressed. There was a time when they did not even have the right to vote, but because of social activism their lives got a lot better.
After reviewing the process of emancipation in Western societies, if I ever get the chance, I will definitely tell those innocent village women that their sisters everywhere are the same, despite the current differences in liberty and equality.
If those women now are on more of an equal footing with men it is because they battled the discrimination. If they can fight, so can we.
