Violence. Slavery. Sickness. Harassment. Discrimination. Basically most of the things that all types of societies want to keep at bay. Yet if women, against whom they’re specifically directed, ask for freedom from these factors are quickly termed psychotic or chaotic.
If in denial of how deeply rooted discrimination against women is, read this conversation:
They: Do you have siblings?
Me: Yes. A sister.
They: No brother?! Oh…
Raise this to the power of 1000 (ok, 100) and you’ve got the number of times, in 2 months, I’ve been put through it with a sad rock of the head. How do my grief-stricken parents manage, they wonder, without a boy to mollify the injustice? To these observers my parents must come across as the modern day 1 percent variant of the Delphians of 200 BC Greece, where among 6000 families only 1 percent had two daughters. The rest of the female infants were put to rest, with government sanction and help. In another century, being the urban middle class dowry-disbelieving god-fearing opportunity-giving ambitious freedom lovers that my parents and many of their counterparts are, having only girls is a boon (they will deny this if you ask them about the time I ran away from school).
There’s little need for me to highlight the debate and discourse on discrimination against the un/born female as the issue made it to the headlines this year after more than a dozen female fetuses were found in a garbage dump in Bihar few months ago. I mean, even without the headline attention, we know of the socio-cultural baggage that women in India or China have to carry. But even elsewhere, it’s not just death but the mere prospect of life that is a nightmare for women, in disadvantaged societies and advantaged hierarchies.
Yet I can almost see those nods coming to the ‘rescue’ of Naga women from such discourse, men claiming instantly, “that’s not the Naga case—we don’t give or take dowries, our women aren’t discriminated against, don’t try to break our families and peace processes.” I have not much to offer to these idiots but Eve Ensler’s stirring poem ‘Leaving my father’s house’ that I cannot quote here due to its length but hope that everyone reads its reference to structures that are the creation of men, patriarchal sheds that reduce women to silence and shadows of their existence.
I have two other arguments to offer. One of the urban Naga women who say, “just because we wear western clothes without being teased doesn’t mean we’re not bent backward by patriarchal domination.” Women journalists are still looked at strangely when they do a crime story or visit the morgue. Even their girl friends are heard saying, “how unfair to send you for such a thing!” Of course unfair in the absence of security infrastructure for women (look at the dark insecurity-instilling streets of Kohima and Dimapur, who wouldn’t be scared of abduction and rape?) in the lack of political representation to bring in development sensitive to women’s security. And unfair because with the same education, same upbringing, same food, water and air, women are expected to opt for ‘soft jobs’. Apparently women are being chaotic when there are more important things to think about like the peace process, historical and political rights. Apparently women, who’ve played the most integral role in restoring peace at the micro level in Nagaland, don’t need to be considered at this hour of great rights and correcting wrongs except for ‘consultation’.
Despite that, women in the cities have traversed these odds, a resounding example of which I see every day at the Morung Express office- beautiful, intelligent, well heeled, gutsy women whose work the paper has more than to thank for. I know of two dailies in Nagaland which are edited by women, both considered extremely brave by all standards. These are mere samples of the whole set of what women here are up to, single-handedly managing enterprises they set up on their own shoulders, whether representation or not.
The other argument entails those Naga women who have silently cultivated Naga fields all their lives and been care givers, peace negotiators, lovers, providers, washing machines, cookers and entertainers—most of which has been swept under the ‘invisible work’ chart. Due to their position as obedient sideliners and fulltime labourers, the audacity to keep rural Naga women from ownership and representation seems starker. I was in a training workshop the week before last where 15-20 women from various villages of Phek gathered to understand gender (organized by North East Network & Centre For Integral Development). They filled out charts themselves explaining how they do 80-100% of agricultural work (except slash and burn), and contribute almost wholly to the caring of children, providing food for them, washing, making fire, collecting water and wood, weaving, education and healthcare. Yet they considered themselves ‘weaker’ and out of pity attributed 10-20% of the work to men so they wouldn’t ‘lose face’.
When the time came to fill up the decision-making and ownership chart, however, men fared much better. Nearly 100% of all decisions in the household and community are made by men who, not surprisingly, own 100% of nearly everything in these spaces. No pity quotas for women here. On the contrary, the hills are rife with tales of tired women creeping silently into bed at night after their (at times drunk) husbands have nodded off. And this is one of the smaller instances in a long list of forms of violence against women, not to mention the list of health problems faced due to over work and abuse.
Be it in the city or villages, women’s struggles have kept this war torn society intact. With regards to land, they have not been able to affect any policies, planning, debates or pricing as they own and decide nothing even though they’re the most ideal to indicate what will work or not. Heck, some don’t even know there are separate bodies in their village for development, law, education, healthcare which mandate their representation. With the amount of donkey work piled on them, how can they? Thus, equal division of labour between men and women within the household and without, and changing ownership patterns to value the girl child’s contribution, their education and empowerment should be the stance, which could lead to women claiming their rightful place in deciding the future of their community.
As for brokering peace between warring men and political representation at the highest level, a scholar from Clark Theological College, Mokokchung, put it way better than I could, “the point at which the Naga conflict had arrived, if not for women, we would’ve been completely torn apart. If we hand over the entire peace and reconciliation process to our women, they will sort it all out in a year.” Going by historical narratives of women as peacemakers in Nagaland, I have no doubt.
If in denial of how deeply rooted discrimination against women is, read this conversation:
They: Do you have siblings?
Me: Yes. A sister.
They: No brother?! Oh…
Raise this to the power of 1000 (ok, 100) and you’ve got the number of times, in 2 months, I’ve been put through it with a sad rock of the head. How do my grief-stricken parents manage, they wonder, without a boy to mollify the injustice? To these observers my parents must come across as the modern day 1 percent variant of the Delphians of 200 BC Greece, where among 6000 families only 1 percent had two daughters. The rest of the female infants were put to rest, with government sanction and help. In another century, being the urban middle class dowry-disbelieving god-fearing opportunity-giving ambitious freedom lovers that my parents and many of their counterparts are, having only girls is a boon (they will deny this if you ask them about the time I ran away from school).
There’s little need for me to highlight the debate and discourse on discrimination against the un/born female as the issue made it to the headlines this year after more than a dozen female fetuses were found in a garbage dump in Bihar few months ago. I mean, even without the headline attention, we know of the socio-cultural baggage that women in India or China have to carry. But even elsewhere, it’s not just death but the mere prospect of life that is a nightmare for women, in disadvantaged societies and advantaged hierarchies.
Yet I can almost see those nods coming to the ‘rescue’ of Naga women from such discourse, men claiming instantly, “that’s not the Naga case—we don’t give or take dowries, our women aren’t discriminated against, don’t try to break our families and peace processes.” I have not much to offer to these idiots but Eve Ensler’s stirring poem ‘Leaving my father’s house’ that I cannot quote here due to its length but hope that everyone reads its reference to structures that are the creation of men, patriarchal sheds that reduce women to silence and shadows of their existence.
I have two other arguments to offer. One of the urban Naga women who say, “just because we wear western clothes without being teased doesn’t mean we’re not bent backward by patriarchal domination.” Women journalists are still looked at strangely when they do a crime story or visit the morgue. Even their girl friends are heard saying, “how unfair to send you for such a thing!” Of course unfair in the absence of security infrastructure for women (look at the dark insecurity-instilling streets of Kohima and Dimapur, who wouldn’t be scared of abduction and rape?) in the lack of political representation to bring in development sensitive to women’s security. And unfair because with the same education, same upbringing, same food, water and air, women are expected to opt for ‘soft jobs’. Apparently women are being chaotic when there are more important things to think about like the peace process, historical and political rights. Apparently women, who’ve played the most integral role in restoring peace at the micro level in Nagaland, don’t need to be considered at this hour of great rights and correcting wrongs except for ‘consultation’.
Despite that, women in the cities have traversed these odds, a resounding example of which I see every day at the Morung Express office- beautiful, intelligent, well heeled, gutsy women whose work the paper has more than to thank for. I know of two dailies in Nagaland which are edited by women, both considered extremely brave by all standards. These are mere samples of the whole set of what women here are up to, single-handedly managing enterprises they set up on their own shoulders, whether representation or not.
The other argument entails those Naga women who have silently cultivated Naga fields all their lives and been care givers, peace negotiators, lovers, providers, washing machines, cookers and entertainers—most of which has been swept under the ‘invisible work’ chart. Due to their position as obedient sideliners and fulltime labourers, the audacity to keep rural Naga women from ownership and representation seems starker. I was in a training workshop the week before last where 15-20 women from various villages of Phek gathered to understand gender (organized by North East Network & Centre For Integral Development). They filled out charts themselves explaining how they do 80-100% of agricultural work (except slash and burn), and contribute almost wholly to the caring of children, providing food for them, washing, making fire, collecting water and wood, weaving, education and healthcare. Yet they considered themselves ‘weaker’ and out of pity attributed 10-20% of the work to men so they wouldn’t ‘lose face’.
When the time came to fill up the decision-making and ownership chart, however, men fared much better. Nearly 100% of all decisions in the household and community are made by men who, not surprisingly, own 100% of nearly everything in these spaces. No pity quotas for women here. On the contrary, the hills are rife with tales of tired women creeping silently into bed at night after their (at times drunk) husbands have nodded off. And this is one of the smaller instances in a long list of forms of violence against women, not to mention the list of health problems faced due to over work and abuse.
Be it in the city or villages, women’s struggles have kept this war torn society intact. With regards to land, they have not been able to affect any policies, planning, debates or pricing as they own and decide nothing even though they’re the most ideal to indicate what will work or not. Heck, some don’t even know there are separate bodies in their village for development, law, education, healthcare which mandate their representation. With the amount of donkey work piled on them, how can they? Thus, equal division of labour between men and women within the household and without, and changing ownership patterns to value the girl child’s contribution, their education and empowerment should be the stance, which could lead to women claiming their rightful place in deciding the future of their community.
As for brokering peace between warring men and political representation at the highest level, a scholar from Clark Theological College, Mokokchung, put it way better than I could, “the point at which the Naga conflict had arrived, if not for women, we would’ve been completely torn apart. If we hand over the entire peace and reconciliation process to our women, they will sort it all out in a year.” Going by historical narratives of women as peacemakers in Nagaland, I have no doubt.
