I was in class III and at my grandparents’ house for summer vacations. After an early dinner, the family would sit before the TV. One day, the phone rang. And we all fell quiet as my grandfather needed absolute silence when he spoke on the phone. The volume was turned down. It was my aunt. After speaking with her, he turned around, and told my grandmother, “Here, she wants to talk to you.” My grandmother took the phone and began to speak.
My grandfather cranked up the volume. In a few seconds, he turned his head around, annoyed, and asked my grandmother to go out of the room with the phone. I remember asking my grandfather why we had to keep quiet when he spoke, but not when my grandmother did. He laughed and said, “Ladies don’t have anything important to talk about!”
As I grew up, I looked around me and found that men claimed charge almost all the time. Whether it was in demanding what was cooked each day or how many children the family would have, men always had a say. The women seldom had a say.
I’ve spoken to women who said they were allowed to use only wood to cook and not a gas stove because their husbands said so. I’ve known women who were expected to give birth as many times as it took till they bore a son. I internalised these notions and came to believe that my identity as a woman was inherently tied to the value ascribed to me from time to time by a man.
It made me realise that knocking the domino of gender inequality can set most other inequities in order. If women were respected, given their due, and were free to enjoy the inherent sovereignty they own over their minds and bodies, no other inequities would hold water. Think about it. It is clear that patriarchy is dominance and manifests as male “ownership” over the female body, mind, and action.
Carefully presented as being religiously or traditionally or culturally taboo, the ways to assert this dominance are a matter of semantics and disguises. If we spend a moment and pull out the gender inequality quotient, the entire rubric could change. If a woman is free to be sovereign over her mind, body and actions, the gender equality balance is restored.
(The author is an Indian Women’s rights activist, a peace activist, artist, lawyer and writer)
