Many women, different voices

Every day is her own day! 

Let me preface my current musing with a question: Could a woman represent another woman’s interests and politics? Should we encourage representational politics?  Such questions have been in the academic groove for a long while now. The thoughtful answer is predominantly not an affirmative one. However, the non-affirmative answer does not lead to the conclusion that the vast “imagined community” of women is constituted by individuals manifesting disconnected priorities; and hence solidarity and sisterhood among today’s women are not to be interpreted as weak moral projects among women having varying interests. Solidarity does not cancel variety and vice versa.

We need a coalition for effective articulations of our agency both in theory and practice, but at the same time, we must recognise the distinct problems each of our sisters is facing on a daily basis. A gesture of encouragement runs deep in carrying forward personal aspirations. Indeed, women coming from different affiliations have varying priorities, none of which could be reduced to occupying a less intense cause. In this manner, a woman occupying a higher position in academia is not to be seen as essentially more powerful than a wife maintaining a household. Let me elaborate on this. Of course, paid job is one of the crucial developments for women, it is also important to include all forms of earning.  We understand the empowerment over one’s personal environment that is consequent upon financial independence/paid employment. But what about a woman who is seen as a housewife. Does such a woman have power over herself? Or how can she empower herself? As a woman, I think that a state of affairs in which only employed women are considered powerful is not very practical. Finance is not the only source of agency and decision making. In our society, a well-earning woman still suffers from many cultural constraints. A housewife might find and exercise power in her world through daily chores, planning a budget with the husband, making decisions for children’s education, a matter of choosing family planning and such. It is not to say that it is easy and natural for housewives to do these tasks. It is also not to say that high earning women do not do things that housewives do. Let us ask if being an employed woman is not inclusive of being a housewife?

Some women deny being called a housewife, while some others see no particular threat to their identity. A senior friend of mine who is an MPSC officer often tells me about the chores she has to çomplete everyday before going to the office, and she has accepted this as a  routine of her life. The various identities a woman simultaneously embodies – wife, daughter, mother, working woman – should be considered in each individual domain. The point is not to valorise one identity over another, not to valorise an employed woman as more powerful than one who is not. In fact, each woman has a personalised priority list. The question is also related to how we see agency unfolding among those who do not fit into the bill of what is called in popular culture as ‘power woman’, a limited construct that tends to give more emphasis on women’s public role, a minister for instance, and earning capacity although it is crucial. I wonder why very effective housewives are not called power women? Mostly, she is just seen as a good wife, not a skilled woman. There is a problematic signal that misreads housewives as a weak state of being and essentially disadvantageous. Many of these housewives have no possibility of getting government employment or such. Moreover, do we have enough job opportunities in Manipur today? Many others have no training to fit in such jobs. What do we do about them? The answer lies in transforming their positions in their respective worlds so that they acquire agency, and this constitutes women’s struggle today. Also within the community of housewives, if I may say it, housewives also belong in different classes – some are wives of ministers, while others are wives of drivers. Sometimes, the latter might become the former’s domestic helper.  Or sometimes, the former might politically influence a high ranking woman employee. Moreover the dynamic here is not only between women, they are placed in relationship with men. Eventually, the dynamic of power among different women is not to be construed as the same or the same power. No two women are the same. It is important to see it in terms of how different women use and access power in their individual space. Thus, coming back to my proposition – the power a college professor has is not as same as that of a housewife, they exercise it in the individual situation differently. Without knowing the individual situation, we cannot compare the two women to determine which is more powerful.

To speak on another example and a personal favourite of mine, a woman wearing a bikini is not always more liberated than a woman wearing a headscarf. Each is situated in a position, and one’s identity and agency are a consequence of how the external forces are processed and applied to the workings of personal autonomy for positive ends.

In Manipur, we have women from various communities, each community having its own cultural processes and corresponding differences in the way women conduct personal values and the demands of the communitarian values. For example, despite rooting in the overall idioms of the Manipuri society, my situation as a Pangal woman has seen a few configurations that are different from that of a Meitei woman, and even within the Pangal community, I do not necessarily share similar struggles and aspirations with many other Pangal women who have been very successful in their own paths. It would be paltry to assert that a Meitei woman or a Pangal woman has a higher inclination and awareness for freedom and agency than the other. 

What is fulfilled as freedom of choice for me might be a form of bondage to others. Let me approach this cautiously. To quote an example, I have been criticised by many men and women for wearing a headscarf, but  I have chosen to wear one. To many of my non-Pangal friends (many others do not care, purdah or non-purdah) a headscarf is a symbol of bondage and suppression of women. For them, I have been inducted in conservative politics.  For me, this decision comes with the freedom to choose, and this stems from the social and familial environment in which I grew up. The religious and cultural aspects are very crucial, additionally, I grew up in Manipur. These factors influence my sartorial practices and let’s keep this for future discussions. Purdah has never been an obstacle to my movements, my education, and the work I do. I am not encouraging or discouraging women vis a vis purdah. Decide for yourself; struggle for liberating circumstances to gain choice. What if I want to wear a veil and the state does not allow it? What if I want to wear a mini skirt and my elders stop me? Do I have the freedom? No.  

 Before hell breaks loose on me, let me say that to say that a false consciousness has prevailed among Pangal women regarding the purdah system is a convenient narrative that needs to be scrutinised. I am aware of the fact that the act of wearing a headscarf is informed by varying forces – choice, imposition, situational requirements, etc. Some women have no choice but to wear purdah, and given a choice they would not. The latter has a shadow of bondage. While some other choose to wear purdah, and before you call it a falsity that needs to be enlightened (much in the way many feminists in America consider it their moral agenda to un-purdah Muslim women, and also a moral justification to bomb people on the part of their government. The bombing of Afghanistan was  also considered an attempt to liberate Afghani women), analyse their positioning. The issue of purdah system among the Muslim women, a veritable hornet’s nest, is closely debated among the Muslim feminists and intersectional feminists. I want to conclude this brief section by asking – how does one say that a particular woman has freedom, or is under bondage? Can there be one freedom for all women? This is a question we will need to explore in the politics of women’s emancipation, keeping in perspective the differences in our individual locations. 

In the coalition of women’s politics today, consciousness-raising should not be read as following from one direction to another linearly, for example from Meitei women to Pangal women or vice versa or any other community, monodirection.  Let us not be beguiled by the deception of a more enlightened Samaritan. Recognising every woman’s individual location in the midst of variety in cultural nodes, genealogies, personal goals and citizenship have facilitated women from varied backgrounds to understand how and why our control over our destiny has been constantly deprived and superseded historically. Agency unfolds over a complex web of meanings, patterns, competing authorities and such, and women must have the power to direct and fulfill the agency. This is easier said than done.  

One of the most damaging expressions of the problematic fiction of homogenising women having disparate contexts is also originating among women themselves. Let me quote the example of marital infidelity (I am specifically referring to the context of blaming the “other woman”, this does not mean that men are not victimised). In these cases, often the “other woman”, which I call the third party woman for the sake of clarity, engaging in the relationship outside of marriage is blamed for destroying the family. Although there are no official statistics being referred to here, many women tend to overlook the conduct of the man involved. Few of the most popular indictments include – “A woman must understand a woman’s feelings”, “She led on other women’s husbands”, “She is a seductress”, and so forth. What do we say about the man involved? Shouldn’t Romeo be punished? That a woman must understand a woman’s suffering is a great solidarity value, but to blame the woman solely for the marriage debacle is misleading the very political need for solidarity. The moral censorship and moral solidarity implied do not benefit the wronged woman (the wife), it encourages the domestic glorification of a husband whose conduct should not be hidden under the mask of a natural man seduced by a woman, or just the consideration that he is a material provider to the family. Such a deceptive explanation further encourages men to propagate their mostly self-supervised thesis – a man is naturally promiscuous. This implies that it is a woman’s duty to fend off men in general. Are women genetically engineered to restore the moral balance of the universe? No, nobody wants to be bothered by such a mission.  Is such a thesis a part of pseudo-evolutionary biology or a postmodern rhizome of desire and loss of centres in a culture that is reluctant to apply sexual morality to men? Why are women exponentially encouraging men to abandon their (men’s) responsibility? No man is born promiscuous, he is encouraged to do so though. Unless we delink solidarity from any misappropriation, women’s daily struggle will be vanished in the realm of “petty fights”. This simple example is not a call to exonerate the third party woman, or any human that causes inconvenience in the life of others. Infidelity in a husband-wife relationship is a painful experience for the parties involved. It would be much better if human connections strive to respect the boundaries and integrity of others, both men and women.  

Another critical effect of essentialising the condition of women in society is coming from the link between women’s sexed-anatomy and the cultural roles of wife and motherhood. The female anatomy is geared towards socially sanctioned intimacy and the destiny of birthing, feeding, and nurturance, and in the process, women become wives and mothers. In the very recent times, there was a controversy regarding women using C-section birthing as a means for maintaining a “leishabi” appearance, if such a concept has gained a legal existence at all, among others. It is questionable if there are anthropological and sociological data on C-section among Manipuri women available, and if available, are we interpreting the data in a responsible manner that does not degrade many women who have to undergo C-section? C-section as a medical procedure does not happen in vacuum. As a dear friend of mine has pointed out to me, the procedure cannot be separated from the market, and this combines with a lot of other factors, the most crucial being women’s health. This is not the first time that emulating leishabi theory has come up among the people. A desire to look like a leishabi was regularly used as a tool for humiliating married women many times in the past, too. While the idioms in the recent time might be new,  the sentiment is much older. As human beings, we all have a penchant for looking young and good; while some people go an extra mile, others do not bother. As a woman leaning towards the late 30s, I find the idea of aligning C-section with the effort to stay in a particular shape just counter-intuitive. The idea seems to derail my cognition. Human bodies change with age, whether we want to see this as a philosophical manifestation of the universe or a scientific conclusion of research on cells and tissues. These days we are saying that lazy people who do not walk and exercise are out of shape. I am lazy, I am out of shape. 

Moreover, the term leishabi itself unfolds very complex ideas. Does it mean a woman who has never been married? Or does it mean a woman who has never been in an intimate relationship with a man?   Whatever the case is, “leishabis” are put under great pressure to be “pure” in this kind of construct. This is very stressful. Women need freedom and agency to decide for their bodies, marriages, finance, and social navigation.  The lens through which different women look at purity differs from culture to culture, person to person. When it comes to the business of purity, I am slightly moving away from the abstract concept here and engaging with how the notion is practised. Also, the attempt here is not to endorse purity, but it is an examination. I am stating here that people have different attitudes towards purity through which endorsement or negation emerges. It is also true that individuals do not break away from traditional concepts and practices easily, and in this context the allocation of cultural and mental resources to do away with the traditional concepts and practices vary greatly among the people across generations. Moreover, the idea does not lie in our biology exclusively now, it is a huge social facade. Our struggle with vigilantes who champion narrow embodiments of ideas to a large extent is concerned with devising effective counter-articulations as these ideas are more enduring than we have convinced in our hearts and brains. We are in a very conservative society and transformation is a long struggle.

 In recent times vigilante groups have insinuated that female sexuality holds culture and family intact, a very enduring narrative indeed. Culture is an essentialising block; in a similar manner personal morality should not be a tool for degrading those who hold different values. If some women want to consider leishabi identity as a marital position exclusively, more power to them. If  some women want to interpret the leishabi identity in terms of intimacy, do not impose it on others, let it remain in the domain of the personal statement. I cannot ask these women to do otherwise. Also do not call asexual women, hugely underrepresented in women’s sexuality, “frigid” and “cold”. Asexual women are beyond your virgin/whore stereotype. Some believe in both marital and sexual constructs. There are some women who have moved away from these understandings, we are called eyata yaba. I invite people to reflect on eyata yaba in this regard as this has a slight hedonistic implication in the Manipuri imaginary. For me moving away from both marital and sexual frameworks helps seeing differences among people, which is a better way of being a human. Personally, I do not protest being called eyata yaba, but some might have a problem.  What we need now is for more women and men to speak up on the importance of choice in the matter of leishabi identity, too. For this, both men and women have to be intellectually sincere.  Many men today do token feminism as much as many women have internalised misogynistic notions. 

However, the predominant thinking is the  conceptualisation of the woman’s body for the purpose of reproduction for the family and the nation. Ultimately a woman is not allowed to own her body. Being a leishabi is like inhabiting Dante’s purgatory! Or leishabis are half-women? Leishabis are empty shell waiting to be inducted in roles and functions. Or in the worst-case scenario, leishabis are the rebels who have not been evolved. Single, unmarried women are highly discouraged from staying single. In the scenarios above, the junction is that a wife and mother should not attempt to be a leishabi, lookwise.

How could a woman who cannot own her body decide for herself? It is resoundingly puzzling to think that many women are not advancing the cause of their fellow women. Rather they go about writing commandments on how women should behave, dress, be accompanied by their male relatives, be loyal to their husbands, and so forth.  

The above monologue is an attempt to understand the different situations women of today face, and each situation demands an ongoing engagement. Solidarity is important for the advocacy of women’s emancipation and empowerment over the self, not over others per se. At the same time, solidarity should not be a basis for erasing differences amongst ourselves as indicated above. We cannot hope to represent the plight of other women, but we can work towards the advocacy of those who need to exercise agency over themselves. Raising consciousness among women is not be a matter of energy and enlightenment flowing from one group of women to another, the flow must be multidimensional and transversal (not universal or locale), this will provide us with a line of action that does not disadvantage those who are different from you and different from me. Sisterhood is not just about acceptance, which I personally feel is patronising the differences rather than deeply engaging with differences. Solidarity is about empowering others in their unique positions. 

As the world celebrates International Women’s Day in the midst of deadly disease and protests, let’s ask a question – How do we make everyday a woman’s own day! We strive to exercise our agency in daily life – in the manner we choose a particular dress, say no to imposition from husbands, brothers, parents, friends, the need to take rest from household chores, the need to work. This is our everyday heroism.