Topics: Gender
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Gender relations in Arampur are complex. While in many contexts men and women have socially and culturally prescribed roles, it is important to remember that generalizations are not universalizations and that there can be variability and fluidity in the relations among and between men and women in the village of Arampur. One way to present gender relations in Arampur is to discuss how men and women often have different spaces that are their own. For example, among upper-class Hindu and Muslim families, the space inside the home is often controlled by women. Women of families who have economic means stay home to manage household affairs. Their duties include not only cooking and cleaning, but often managing the family finances and, most importantly, having primary responsibility for children. Perhaps because of this latter duty, women are considered commonly to embody the izzat ("pride") of a family and, so, shoulder the most social restrictions. In the interests of izzat, many upper-class Hindu and Muslim families also observe some form of seclusion according to which women usually do not venture outside the home except when exceptional circumstances require it. Economically disadvantaged women, however, must work outside the home, often as either manual laborers or midwives. When employed as agricultural workers, women and men commonly perform different tasks to maintain gender separation. Spaces outside the home are often controlled by men. Men work in their shops or in the fields and often spend their leisure time at neighborhood tea shops with other male friends. Interactions between men and women also assume a variety of forms depending upon context and degree of relationship or affinity. Marriages are arranged by elder family members. Marriages serve not only as a union of individuals but as a joining of families. Most Arampur residents expect love to develop in the context of the marriage, not as a preface to it. In the home, a women might have quite close relationships with her brothers and younger male in-laws. Upon marriage, most women move into their husband's home and assumes his family identity. There, she would be expected to demonstrate more modesty than in her natal home, seldom being on more than cordial terms with the male friends of her husband. A man, however, would generally have only very circumscribed interactions with the wives of his younger brothers. Elder family members, both men and women, are uniformly treated with the greatest respect and reverence. Yet as family members grow older, there are a variety of transitions within their positions within the family. Often a father will move into another room outside the main living quarters once his sons are married and once a woman becomes a widow her position can sometimes become quite tenuous within the joint family. We can also see gender reflected in various presentations of the body. Unmarried women generally wear either a long shirt with baggy pants called a shalwar kameez or a dress which is called a "frock." Married women will wear saris, a single length of cloth that is elegantly folded and wrapped into a garment. Married women also place brightly colored power, called sindhur, in the part in their hair and sometimes place a colored dot, called a bindi, on their foreheads. Some women will also have tatooes on their forearms to protect them from misfortune. Men nowadays quite often wear pants and shirts but also the flowing kurta pajama or waist-wrapped dhoti. While working, men most commonly wear the sarong-like lungi. Many men consider a moustache an important sign of maleness. Shorts are only worn by children or by men during athletic events. Only 47% of nexus residents are female. Yet, among that portion of the population (22.5%) under age seven, 50% are female. Because girls mature into brides who become the daughters of someone else's household, parents not uncommonly value a son more than a daughter as he will mature into their care-giver when they become elderly. As the statistics suggest, some daughters receive less care from their parents than their sons. These are some general, and necessarily limited and partial, observations we can make about gender in Arampur. While this website can in no way represent the nuances and depth of gender roles and relations in Arampur, by attending to the various voices heard in Arampur, we can perhaps sense something of the diversity and complexity of Indian rural life. |