To explain India to someone who has never been there is definitely a challenging task, but to describe the situation of women in this country is even harder. We spent over three months in South India and got a small insight into the role of women in the southern part of India. We will try to give our insight and idea after these three months.
Sam grew up in South India so we thought looking at women's role from his point of view might be a bit biased. So Kathi tried to independently make her observations and share them here.
First of all I would like to write about professions. Considering there are women in all castes, this means there are women in all sorts of professions. India even has had a female prime minister called Indira Gandhi from 1966-1977 and again from 1980-1984. And a female president from 2007-2012 - Pratibha Patil. In many places in the west, including Austria and the U.S. this has not happened yet. There are further female politicians that have become quite known and been heads of different states.
We have seen female bus conductors, shop vendors, store owners, doctors amongst others. Some professions are definitely male dominated, like in the transportation sector. But all the other sectors we have been in touch with are definitely mixed.
Home work is mostly female, as in most or all other cultures we have come across and there was and still is the idea of a woman staying at home with their children. And then you meet women having their kids at work with them or women whose kids are in kindergarten or their relatives/grandparents take care of them and they are working full time. So in brief there are some tendencies but there is definitely no clear and straight answer, like with everything in India. There is no one way for anything.
When we entered Kerala, we noticed that on public transportation buses women had a section in the back, where there are no men supposed to sit and men generally would get on in the front of the bus. Women are allowed to sit in the male section, however not the other way round. There is some sense of freedom for women to demand their right, to have the right to not sit next to a man and also the possibility of touches while passing are definitely reduced.
You can also find compartments for women only on trains and metros all over India, and we have seen the separation in buses also in other states in India.
Not having experienced anything like this before I first felt surprised and reminded of the separation of black people who had to sit in the back of the bus in the U.S, but there is a big difference. In the case of separate women's compartments women are given the chance to travel freely and alone without having to worry about harassment and who might be sitting next to them. In my opinion the ideal world would not need a separation, however it gives all women the chance to not have to worry for some part of their journey.
So to sum it up, in our brief experience in South India, women hold various positions in society irrespective of their caste. Women are not as a whole suppressed, as it is portrayed and seen from outside. However transgressions in public still exist, but there are measures being taken to reduce the likelihood of them happening.
Sam grew up in South India so we thought looking at women's role from his point of view might be a bit biased. So Kathi tried to independently make her observations and share them here.
First of all I would like to write about professions. Considering there are women in all castes, this means there are women in all sorts of professions. India even has had a female prime minister called Indira Gandhi from 1966-1977 and again from 1980-1984. And a female president from 2007-2012 - Pratibha Patil. In many places in the west, including Austria and the U.S. this has not happened yet. There are further female politicians that have become quite known and been heads of different states.
We have seen female bus conductors, shop vendors, store owners, doctors amongst others. Some professions are definitely male dominated, like in the transportation sector. But all the other sectors we have been in touch with are definitely mixed.
Home work is mostly female, as in most or all other cultures we have come across and there was and still is the idea of a woman staying at home with their children. And then you meet women having their kids at work with them or women whose kids are in kindergarten or their relatives/grandparents take care of them and they are working full time. So in brief there are some tendencies but there is definitely no clear and straight answer, like with everything in India. There is no one way for anything.
When we entered Kerala, we noticed that on public transportation buses women had a section in the back, where there are no men supposed to sit and men generally would get on in the front of the bus. Women are allowed to sit in the male section, however not the other way round. There is some sense of freedom for women to demand their right, to have the right to not sit next to a man and also the possibility of touches while passing are definitely reduced.
You can also find compartments for women only on trains and metros all over India, and we have seen the separation in buses also in other states in India.
Not having experienced anything like this before I first felt surprised and reminded of the separation of black people who had to sit in the back of the bus in the U.S, but there is a big difference. In the case of separate women's compartments women are given the chance to travel freely and alone without having to worry about harassment and who might be sitting next to them. In my opinion the ideal world would not need a separation, however it gives all women the chance to not have to worry for some part of their journey.
So to sum it up, in our brief experience in South India, women hold various positions in society irrespective of their caste. Women are not as a whole suppressed, as it is portrayed and seen from outside. However transgressions in public still exist, but there are measures being taken to reduce the likelihood of them happening.
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