I was born in Sidhpura, Kasganj, a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Every community lives in harmony in this town, but most of the population is inhabited by the Baniya community. According to the Varna System, Hindu society is divided into four varnas that are, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Shudra, and those who do not come under these four varnas, who are avarnas. The Baniya community falls under the Vaisya community.
I grew up in this societal setup. I have been privileged that my parents are well-read and have great respect in town. My mother nurtured me, she tried to give me the best values, but due to the social structure of my small town, I got patriarchal values, which eventually created my “Habitus” (Dispositions we get in our behavior and preferences through structure) (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). These notions eventually broke down when I entered a different social setting.
Patriarchy as “Field”
Bourdieu gives the idea of field, for Bourdieu field has its rules, regulations, and is independent of other fields (if we consider academics as a field, then it has its own rules and does not depend on other fields).
In this article, I compare “patriarchy” as a field, which has its own rules, regulations, but patriarchy as a field is not autonomous. It produces its effect in other structures also. This is a gap in my study, but for this article, let’s consider patriarchy as a field.
Role of patriarchy in women’s lives in a semi-rural space
Savita tried to challenge patriarchy with her unique ways, but I want to show how she changed the “Field”. The field is defined as a network, or configuration, of objective relations between positions (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.97). We can compare a field with a game, where different stakeholders come and play the game according to their capital. If you have more capital, then you can also change the rules of the game. It is important how we interact with the field according to our “Habitus” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).
Social structure plays a big role in my life, ingrained in the ideology of patriarchy. When I was a child, I used to sweep and clean the floor of my house, and I enjoyed those day-to-day chores. Slowly, when I grew up, the structures of patriarchy made sure to build an idea of sexual division of work in my ideas and practice. The fact that the things I used to like doing one day became work that needs to be done by women and only women.
My illusion of this idea of the need for division of labor in and among sexes also broke when I saw my father cooking in my mother’s absence. I don’t understand if my father knows how to cook, so why does he not help my mother? I figured out this is all due to the structures of patriarchy that we accept and internalize and later practice in our lives. He has enough time after his job, but he never helps my mother prepare food. Now I realize that “field” is important in deciding the dominant norms of that society.
In small towns like Sidhpura, we have norms that are decided by patriarchy, like every woman does purdah (a veil, women use to cover their faces in front of male members of her home). They are bound in their homes; her mobility is controlled by patriarchy. Women did not go outside their homes unless they had work, and they did not enjoy public places like men. Always confined in a house like a pet animal. Prem Chaudhary also talks about this in her article “Popular traditions of masculinity in rural north Indian oral traditions”, that men told women are not good for taking advice. Even villagers told Prem that his wife is always in full control, whether she is educated or earning or not earning (Chowdhary,2015).
Negotiations with patriarchy in semi-rural space.
Savita has one habit from her childhood, she used to exercise in the morning. She does exercise at home, but slowly she goes along with my father for a walk. Slowly, she went alone for a walk, but things were not easy for her. One day, a person told my father, “Aap bhabhi ji ko tahalne ke liye akela kyu jaane dete ho?” (Why do you let Bhabhiji go for a walk alone?). My father had a conversation with my mother, to which she replied that you should tell that person that if you are here to protect my wife, that’s why she can walk alone.
Phadke, Khan, and Ranade (2011) argue that the notion of safety is created to restrict women’s mobility and exclude them from public spaces. They do not enjoy public spaces like men. Loitering is the act of resistance to patriarchy. Savita shows an act of resistance through this small act. Slowly, many women started doing exercise and going for a walk early. One small step taken by the mother helped to empower other women also.
This thing shows how Bourdieu’s framework of that Structure is important, but the individual also shapes the structure of society. Bourdieu said that the dynamics of a field lie in the form of its structure. Asymmetries between the various specific forces that confront one another (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.101). Different actors confront each other in the field and play the game; everybody has in their mind that they should gain more capital for their influence in the field. In this case, actors confront each other to gain influence in the field.
Savita negotiates in the field with different actors because of the capital she possesses in the form of her education. That gives her an advantage to negotiate with different stakeholders and change the rules of the game to her advantage.
Negotiations with patriarchy in Urban space.
Space changed when my mother shifted to an Urban area; now she has more liberation and choice in comparison to my hometown. She does not do purdah. In my case, in the close community, everyone is related to each other, so mostly women also do purdah when they are in public places in my hometown. In the Urban area, different rules are followed in the game. Patriarchy also exists here, but in a different form.
Walby (1990) in her article “Theorising patriarchy” discusses public and private forms of patriarchy. Private patriarchy is rooted in the relative exclusion of women from social spheres, whereas in public patriarchy, women enter public spaces but remain subordinated.
When my mother entered the urban space, she encountered both forms of patriarchy, but things are different here than in my town. In my town, private patriarchy has a greater influence than public patriarchy because male members also watch over women’s behavior in public.
In urban space, private patriarchy has less influence on her, and she deals with private patriarchy. She negotiates private patriarchy by showing small resistance. She slowly changes their behavior. Negotiating with my father for more equality has not shifted the whole work to my father, but slowly, she backs off through gendered work, like she does not wash the clothes of every person in our home. Everyone washed their clothes by themselves; she did not press the clothes. I saw my father now do press for his clothes, which not need to be glorified as this is merely a work and can be done by anyone, however the fact that as a man from a dominant caste, he with all the indoctrination on patriarchy in his very old age is trying to transform, is a matter of appreciation.
Space changes, but this time, my mother bargains with patriarchy due to her change of social and cultural capital (Agarwal, 1997). She bargained for an urban area due to her age; she got a lot of capital over the years, which is not possible for young women who came to the city after marriage.
Conclusion
We can say that the capital of women decides how she will negotiate with patriarchy. Changing of space can change the forms of patriarchy; women use different strategies to subvert the structure. In this article, I show how my mother negotiates with patriarchy in changing space. Private patriarchy has so much influence in town, and male relatives also monitor women’s behavior in public. My mother deals with them because she has that amount of capital that negotiate in the game and also can change the rules of the game. The notion of the safety of women is used to restrict the mobility of women. Patriarchy decides every aspect of life of women. Women do not accept the structure silently, and there is also a resistance that I show in this article. Strategies shift when spaces change and forms of patriarchy evolve. We need an endless number of these negotiations to challenge patriarchy. Patriarchy ensures that the capital of women does not increase, so it restricts every aspect of women, access to education, kinship relations, to holding property, etc. We try to increase every type of capital for women to challenge patriarchy.
References:
Agarwal, B. (1997). ‘Bargaining’ and gender relations: Within and beyond the household. Feminist Economics, 3(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/135457097338799
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago Press.
Chowdhry, P. (2015). Popular perceptions of masculinity in rural North Indian oral traditions. Asian Ethnology, 74(1), 5–36. https://doi.org/10.18874/ae.74.1.02
Phadke, S., Khan, S., & Ranade, S. (2011). Why loiter? Women and risk on Mumbai streets. Penguin Books India.
Walby, S. (1990). Theorising patriarchy. Basil Blackwell.
I am Utkarsh. I recently finished my master’s in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics. My research interests are Gender, Development, and Kinship. Now I am a research intern at the NCPEDP organisation.