On The Gender Divide

That there exists a deep gender divide will be agreed upon by everybody. But majority explain it away thus : “that is natural (i.e. biological and immutable), that it was always so and will be always so.” Many even argue that there is no reason to complain. The woman is as well off as the man. Now, we know that this is not true. A woman occupies an inferior position. She is exploited, burdened with work, subjected to sex harassment and assaults, denied of opportunities to participate, kept invisible. To say that there are no reasons for them to complain show high level of insensitivity. Further this has not been always so. There is ample evidence to show that this gender divide came into existence at some point in history. Of course not at the same time in all societies. There exists, even now, societies where this has not yet set in. There is, also, a sort of a general agreement that the ‘woman’s fall’, the oppressive gender divide began with the evolution of “family and private property.”

The purpose of this note is not to trace the history of woman’s degradation from then to the present but to enquire about the role of family, under present conditions, in inflicting such indignities on her. Even today every discussion on the “liberation of women” ultimately end up in the “family” – whether as girl child or as wife she is subjected to a second position. There are many misconceptions which people take as obvious truth.

Only women conceive and carry babies. Only she has a womb. Only she can deliver and breast feed the child. But what about washing the child, feeding the child after wearing, putting the child to sleep, nursing the child when it is sick? Can’t men do it? Of course, yes, with a few days of training. As well as women. Then why don’t they do it. Can’t men cook, draw water, hew firewood, wash vessels, sweep the floor, wash clothes. Yes, of course they can. Then, why don’t they do it? Today everybody agrees that women can be teachers, doctors, nurses, sales people, advocates and many others. But can’t they climb coconut trees? Plow the field, do black smithy, tinsmithy, carpentery, masonry, concrete work, machine work and so on? There are isolated cases of women doing these jobs. Still they are considered as ‘manly jobs!’ Why? As a girl child what earthly reason is there to discriminate her against boys? Absolutely nothing.

Over a life span of 75 years or so, a woman with two children will have to spend only 3 to 4 years (maximum) to attend to the children in a way which the man cannot. Rest of the life time men and women can do identical jobs. Why cannot one imagine a situation where men take the lion’s share of household responsibilities including cooking, child nursing, washing, cleaning everything? Both the woman (mother) and the man (father) may go out for work. Why not men take carte of children as male nurses? Why nursery and ankanwadi teachers have to be exclusively female? There need be absolutely no differentiation in work. Both man and woman do the same job. Across the society, whatever may be the profession, the ratio of number women to number of men will be approximately same.

In the case of single parent working, the number of homebound fathers could be as much as that of homebound mothers! All these are possible. No theoretical problem. Of course it is a far cry from what is today!

Today the girl child is unwelcome. Why? When it comes of age and becomes a young woman marriage becomes a great “headache”. Both parents and girls share some misconceptions: that the husband should be taller, older, more educated, richer, higher in social position, etc. With such exacting demands, the costs (dowry) are bound to go up! Such “consents” manufactured and ingrained over centuries and millennia die hard. They have become socio-genetic.

Almost every discussion on emancipation of women ultimately crashes on the hard rock of “family”. Often people come to the conclusion that “this oppressive institution called family should be smashed”. It is a highly undemocratic one- oppressing women, oppressing children. Historically, as pointed out earlier, the “fall of woman” started with the formation of this institution- especially with the concept of “fatherhood”. From time immemorial motherhood was known and accepted, but not “fatherhood” which remained diffuse. Engels, in the book “Origin of Family, Private Property and the State” said that, the family of the future will be quite different from what it is today. What form it would take? What are its distinguishing features – it will be impossible to say now. Only after a generation or two of men who had not the necessity to appropriate women, with money, social authority or crookedness and of women who had not been compelled into marriage, but only on the basis of real love, have liven through, the family of the new era will take proper shape. These future generations will not respect present tradition, do’s and dont’s. They will develop their own social tradition.

Engels wrote this more than a century ago. Will we be able to say, today, something more. True, the conditions enumerated by Engels for the evolution of a new family concept, a new basis for man-woman relationship have not been still realised. But over these years, can we say that no change has taken place in the objective environment and the subjective world? Perhaps not. Changes have taken place. One has to hazard certain guesses. It is long understood that ‘love’ between man and women is not to be limited to sex. Sex relations do take place in millions, without any ting of love, both within the family and much more outside the family. Parental affection towards children are not corelatable to the mutual sexual attraction between father and mother. Family affection, towards brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, uncles, aunts- none of them have got any direct sexual basis. When one looks at the entire gamut of family relations we find that sexual relationship between father and mother has practically no relevance. Still ‘sex’ is the greatest taboo. “Fidelity” is the highest virtue (of course not for the man!). One can se this as the starting point for almost all ‘dos and don’ts’ to the woman. “Private property” or “family property” plays a very important ole in this. Men want to preserve their property for their ‘children’. Woman may give birth to somebody else’s child! But today sex can be totally divorced from progeny. The sexual relationship between even husband and wife is now separated from the question of progeny. That is the purpose of “family planning”. In other words even within the family, sex is totally separated from “species expansion” or progeny. In fact ‘sex’ is a simple biological instinct. It is not in any way different from thirst, hunger or other biological feelings. The only difference was that of conception and child bearing that may result from sexual relationship. Now things have changed. When they want children they plan the sexual relations accordingly.

A new social ethos, a new way of looking at sex can to evolve. Just the way family planning and nirodh were once taboo words to be uttered in hushed voices have now become free words that can be used in sitting room conversation, one can imagine a situation where the concept of biological sex being liberated or freed from ‘family’ too can become acceptable. Once ‘sex’ is displaced from the family throne, the multitude of taboos on the girl child and the women will start dissolving. The words like promisanity, chastity, virginity, etc. will lose their present day meaning. Most of the problems associated with woman’s participation in economic and social activities will either disappear or become less restrictive. Men will cease to look at women only as objects of sexual gratification. Both women and men can enjoy that gratification without any social taboo. Hence forth men and women will see each other as just fellow human beings and not as sexual opposites.

Many fear that such a society will be primiscous and will lead to rapid spread of STD especially AIDS. This is wrong. In a free society since there is no taboo and that sexual relations will be open and not secretive chances of contracting STD will be less. In fact what is being advocated in this: things that are done secretively and with a feeling of guilt and stigma, but done none the less, can be done openly and without any feeling of guilt. It will remove such absurdities like: the President of USA can be impeached for immorality, meaning thereby that he had extramarital sex relationship, but will be praised as a hero for killing millions and millions of childrens, Salvadonians, Vietnamese and now Iraqies, to take control of their oil wealth for the gratification of the American citizens.

CHICKS AND CHILDREN

There are many (post-modernists?) who go even further. The institution of family is oppressive any way, and hence has to be dispensed with. They argue for an Ovvellian society: Women are freed from even child bearing and delivering. Fertilization, incubation and delivery will be done in industrial units, children will be brought up by the ‘society’ in special farms, just like chicks are hatched and looked after.... this is not exaggeration. Logical extension of the argument “abolish the family” – not the present family but any family – will lead to this. This is not acceptable. Humans are different from other animals. We value many things that are human: mothers love to children, parental, brotherly sisterly, family relationships, music, fine arts, creativity, sports, research, production. We love them all and enjoy them. To divest humans from all these ‘joys’ and to rear them up as ‘broiler chicken’ may be possible but not desirable because soon their behaviour will become that of animals whose prime concern is self preservation. In a crisis situation this instinct of mere self preservation leads to the destruction of the entire species. Humans, even though weaker than many other animals survive only because of its ability to sacrifice self for the collective and the ability to cooperate. Children brought up with out family care are likely to become more and more individualistic, aggressive and destructive within two or three generations the species will be lost. We can see symptoms of this in USA.

So, the idea of a family where father and mother love each other, love their children, their own parents, sisters, brothers, etc. where mutual affection is an all pervading emotion. Where the word sex is not a taboo, where sexual act is not considered as something essentially different from eating and shitting or drinking and pissing, the ideas of such a family seems to be worthy of being discussed widely.