A
new book provides a broad spectrum investigation into
the socio-economic status of Muslim women in India,
and delves into the roots of their disadvantaged conditions
of life.
Stereotyping
is usually a necessary precondition for social discrimination,
and all the more so when various social and cultural
realities are sought to be hardened into ''identities''.
That is probably why, over the past decade especially,
certain stereotypes have been systematically developed
about minority communities (especially Muslims abut
also Christians).
So Muslim society, for example, is presented as having
a monolithic and undifferentiated character, and Muslim
personal law is seen as the defining feature of the
lives of Muslims in India. Such typecasting is especially
prevalent with respect to Muslim women, who are usually
presented as forming a homogenous, undifferentiated
group that is so oppressed by the combined effect of
polygamy, purdah and triple talaq that it is rendered
almost invisible.
In such a context, it is refreshing to come across a
study that seeks to go beyond the sociological veil
spread by a focus on purdah, and actually examines the
conditions faced by different categories of Muslim women
in the country. A new book by Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon
(''Unequal Citizens: Muslim women in India'', New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2004) presents the results
of a national survey covering around 10,000 Muslim and
Hindu women.
This is the first such survey of this magnitude, covering
the whole country, and obviously therefore the findings
deserve attention. But perhaps even more interesting
than the results themselves, are the insights that are
drawn into the interplay of various factors that determine
the conditions of Muslim women’s lives.
Of course there are some easily predictable conclusions,
especially with respect to economic status. The low
socio-economic status of Muslims is now well-known;
like Scheduled Castes, they are disproportionately represented
among the poor and have the lowest per capita income
indicators. This is ascribed not only to lack of access
to asset ownership, but also to poor educational attainment
and occupational patterns which show clustering in low-paid
activities, as well as the concentration of the Muslim
population in the economically backward regions of the
country.
This economic differentiation constitutes probably the
primary source of differentiation in status between
Muslim and Hindu women in the aggregate, since the household’s
level of assets ownership, occupation and income possibilities
critically determine the basic conditions of life of
the women. However, there are significant regional differences
in this: Muslims are generally poor in the north (especially
rural areas) and east, but less so in the south.
But other findings of the study are much less predictable,
and do much to demolish the damaging stereotypes that
are so widely purveyed about Muslim women.
One of the standard assumptions about Muslim women is
that religion prevents them from getting more equal
access to education. It is certainly true that Muslim
women are more likely to be illiterate than Hindu women
(in the survey, 59 per cent had never attended school
and less than 10 per cent had completed school). However,
the study shows that this is essentially the result
of low socio-economic status, rather than religion.
Across the survey, among all communities and caste groups,
financial constraints and gender bias dominate over
other factors in determining levels of education. Indeed,
in those regions where Muslims are better off (as in
the south and to a lesser extent in the west), there
Muslim women also have higher levels of education.
However, two other features which are more specific
to the Muslim community may have operated to devalue
continuing education for girls. The first is that Muslim
men also have very low educational attainment in general.
The study found that 26 per cent of educated Muslim
women had illiterate husbands. This low male education
level would create further pressures to impose ceilings
on girls’ education, so as not to render them ''unmarriageable''.
In addition, the low age of marriage is a major inhibiting
factor. For All-India, the mean age of marriage of Muslim
girls is very low at 15.6 years, and in the rural north
it falls to an appalling 13.9 years.
Low marriage age has a number of other adverse implications:
it is usually associated with high early fertility,
which affects women’s nutrition and health status; it
tends to reduce women’s autonomy and agency in the marital
home and to create conditions of patriarchal subservience
that get perpetuated through life, and it thereby often
reduces self-worth.
This in turn may affect women’s work participation in
direct and indirect ways. It is well known that the
work participation of Muslim women is very low, but
the study indicates that this may be less due to the
force of religion per se than to the patriarchal structures
and patterns as well as low mobility and lack of opportunity
that define their lives. It is worth noting the work
participation rate of women across communities tends
to be low in certain regions, in the north and east
especially.
Some of this is due to straightforward control over
women’s agency by male members of the household. 75
per cent of the women in the survey (both Hindu and
Muslim) reported that they need permission from their
husbands to work outside the home. Interestingly, the
study revealed that across the board women in India
tend to have relatively less autonomy of decision-making
within the household. Less than 10 per cent of the respondents
took any decisions on their own in major or minor matters,
and among the 30 per cent who took decisions jointly
with their husbands, Muslim women reported greater consultation
than Hindus for all categories of decisions. Clearly,
however, patriarchal control remains one important constraint
upon the outside work of women, among Muslims as well
as certain other social categories.
But in addition, most of the outside work that the representative
Muslim woman has access to falls in the lowest paid
and most exploited categories of labour. Such activities
- self-employed in low-productivity activities in the
informal sector, as casual labourers and domestic servants
- imply poor working conditions and low wages. It is
therefore possible that Muslim women are kept out of
the paid workforce not only by religious or purdah type
motivations, but perhaps more significantly by low education,
lack of opportunity, low mobility and the inability
to delegate domestic responsibilities.
In terms of domestic violence - which is widely recognised
to be increasing in India - the incidence cuts across
caste, class and community. The survey finds that over
50 per cent of the reported violence (which may of course
be different from the actual incidence of violence)
is among Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes households,
who also happen to be the poorest of the poor. Muslim
women come in third (after Other Backward Castes) at
18 per cent. What is possibly more significant is that
husbands were identified as the primary perpetrators
in more than 80 per cent of cases.
Effectively, what this study shows is that Hindu-Muslim
differences in patterns of marriage, autonomy, mobility
and domestic violence are insignificant. There is no
apparent community-wise variation in women’s decision-making,
mobility and access to public spaces. Rather, what the
survey indicates is that most women in India - across
communities and regions - have very little autonomy
and control over their own lives. Of course, such constraints
are not felt equally by all women, but the distinctions
are more determined by class and geographical location
than by community. Indeed, regional development appears
to be a better predictor of the status of women than
''Muslimness'' or religion per se.
These are obviously extremely important results, which
point to a different direction for public policy as
well. There are clear indications of the need for a
new, less predetermined conception of community and
especially of the status of women within a community.
This would go beyond the patterns of special group recognition,
in which notions of ''identity'' (however patriarchal)
are maintained at all cost. It would also have to avoid
getting bogged down by controversies over minority claims
of enhanced representation in government jobs and the
like.
Rather, the social and economic processes that confront
marginal groups in general need to be addressed - enable
greater real democracy both across different social
groups and across gender within social groups. |
