Time to colour outside the lines

Author, Nilanjana Bhowmick mixes the personal and anecdotal with data and survey reports to build a more accessible narrative around women's rights, feminist values and patriarchal structures

Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman's Burden

Author: Nilanjana Bhowmick

Publisher: Aleph

Pages: 243

Price: Rs 699

Gender inequality is not a new story. It has been playing out in a million abhorrent ways, over hundreds of years; and its insidious hold on our lives, is well documented. It is a story that never grows old, nor does its influence wane.

Why are unfair practices and patently unjust belief systems so difficult to dismantle? Why do women, even those who take on strong roles outside the home as cops or chief executive officers of large conglomerates or teachers and journalists and even those who run their homes with an iron hand, accept and normalise such behaviour? These are some of the questions that this book asks. To be fair, it is not the first book to do so and neither is it unique in its quest for answers. But the book manages to find a fresh voice and new ways to look at an old, seemingly intractable, problem.

Author, Nilanjana Bhowmick, writes with a sense of urgency. She mixes the personal and anecdotal with data and survey reports to build a more accessible narrative around women’s rights, feminist values and patriarchal structures. By digging into the mundane minutiae of life and by exposing the fault lines within family systems, she makes the problem real. Her anger at the systemic injustices that she calls out, helps sharpen the narrative and makes the reader uncomfortable.

All attempts at creating a level playing field have been half-hearted and, more importantly, designed within a patriarchal mindset, the book contends. Hence, despite the proliferation of schemes and policies for women and increased political attention towards women’s issues, little has changed.

The time and money that corporations spend talking about empowerment and advertising their feminist credentials ought to have created more equitable conditions at the workplace. But women still hold a minuscule percentage of board seats in corporate India, and most seats go to wives, mothers and daughters of the patriarch-owner of the business. Women make up just 5 per cent of the total CEOs in the country, according to a report from Deloitte that is quoted in the book.

Gender roles at the workplace mirror and deepen the fissures that exist within the home. Paying lip service while perpetuating regressive roles for women does not help the cause. No woman in India is not a housewife, Ms Bhowmick writes. Because no matter how long a day she has at work, family meals are her responsibility. Child care is her burden and, in most cases, so is the care for elderly parents. She writes, “The idea of having it all is at odds with the demands of male dominated patriarchal societies where gender roles are rigid. We do not have it all because while women have become co-breadwinners, Indian men have still to become co-carers.”

Women are on a permanent double-shift. Be it the author’s policewoman mother or those that she spoke to in the course of her research; balancing the two is a daily tightrope walk for all. This is how women fall prey to the superwoman syndrome, endangering their physical and mental health.

The fight ought to have got easier, but unless everyone chips in, it cannot.

Ms Bhowmick writes, “I thought my mother had it all. It was a lie. She made me believe the world would be a fairer, more equal place for women when I grew up—she told me I could have it all. That was a lie, too,” Ms Bhowmick writes.

The book’s core argument is that without overhauling the way society views women, change will be incremental and cosmetic. No amount of sloganeering can keep girls in school, if we are unable to weed out child marriage or, offer help with household care and chores. Two stories in the book, one from a small town and another from a metro to show how lack of safe, affordable childcare facilities forces girls to drop out and throws women out of the workplace.

Mindsets have to tumble before policies can make the impact they are meant to, too. Smart cities are being designed to make streets safer for women we are told. More CCTV cameras, more policing and more lights—all good ideas. But what about clean toilets for women? That would bring more women out on the streets, while the others are just meant to protect them until they are back inside their homes. Used to viewing women through the patriarchal lens, policies fail to bring about gender equality. They may protect women better, but they do not empower.

The book argues that keeping things this way—changing the shell without touching the core—is a win-win for everyone. It lets the government of the day claim that it has done its bit for the cause and companies get to build their brands around a cause. Nothing changes.

The book is a powerful indictment of social structures that have led us to this point. And Ms Bhowmick uses her personal life-story alongside those of the women and men she interviewed for the book, to make her case. This works well most of the time, but it also leads to repetition (of anecdotes and ideas), which is the only quibble one has with what is otherwise a compelling read.