As more women become empowered, is the Indian family letting them down?
The second phase of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) findings was released a few weeks ago. Media coverage focused on the finding that seven out of 10 women in 11 states and one Union Territory surveyed did not report violence, and furthermore, many did not think it was a big deal.
According to the key indicators of the survey, women’s situation in India overall seems to have improved since the last Survey in 2015-16. This is good news. For example, in rural and urban areas, women have more access to drinking water, clean cooking fuel and sanitation. The percentage of women between 15-24 years who use hygienic protection during menstruation has increased. The number of married women participating in household decisions has increased; more women own a home or have joint titles, a bank or savings account in their name, and a mobile phone that they use.
In the category of gender-based violence, for married women between the ages of 18 and 49, in urban and rural areas, there has been a drop in spousal and physical violence during pregnancy. For women between the ages of 18 and 29 who experienced sexual violence before 18 years, the figures are the same in rural areas but have fallen in urban areas.
However, there are worrying indicators. In many states, there is a high incidence of domestic violence. When asked if women faced violence due to going out without informing the husband, arguing with him, neglecting the house or children, refusing sexual intercourse with him, not cooking properly, or over the suspicion of her being unfaithful, or perception that she is disrespectful towards the in-laws, women in 10 of the 18 states surveyed said this was indeed the case. Worse, they agreed that a husband is justified in beating his wife because of these reasons. These women are afraid of their husbands of the time, and most of them never sought help or told anyone about the violence.
In the last two decades, legislation and awareness building by the State and civil society groups on the dangers of violence in the home have made a difference.
But is it possible, as women become empowered, as the data suggests, that there is a backlash?
In 1991, Susan Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote a book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. She argued that “the anti-feminist backlash has been set off not by women’s achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finish line.”
“The backlash is not a conspiracy,” she writes, “with a council dispatching agents from some central control room, nor are the people who serve its ends often aware of their role ... for the most part its workings are encoded and internalised, diffuse and chameleonic.”
In India, these workings are embedded in our socialisation, or the way we are raised. Boys and girls model themselves after their parents or adults around them. Girls learn to obey, please and be domesticated. Boys are expected to be outgoing, getting ready for the external world. Children grow up in and around violence, physical and emotional. Speaking about incest and child abuse is forbidden; they are often not believed, punished for disclosure and experience shame if they speak out. As they age, they have little or no tools to process and handle the violence in their lives. And often, as adults, they perpetuate this violence, not knowing any better.
Boys and men, often equally unempowered as girls and women, use violence as a catharsis and a mechanism to control women, who, in turn, internalise it, keeping quiet and suffering. Both men and women pay a high price in physical and emotional wellbeing because of this violence.
A good start to counteract the violence is to talk about it — in families, schools, universities, community groups, religious institutions.
The pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finish line that Faludi writes about starts in the family. It is the family, the most revered institution in India, which has let its women down.