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Book Review
Still a long way to go
CAVERY BOPAIAH
THE ENIGMA OF THE KERALA WOMAN — A Failed Promise of Literacy: Swapna Mukhopadhyay — Editor; Social Science Press, New Delhi. Distributed by Orient Longman, 1/24, Asaf Ali Road, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 550.
Women travelling in Kerala are often surprised to find men leering at them and behaving badly at restaurants and watering holes. One wonders if this disrespect of women has its echoes in their homes as well. The behaviour is also at odds with the image one has of women in Kerala being educated and relatively privileged. Literature on development has always asserted that higher literacy rates for women translates into higher work participation rates, greater equality and mo
re decision-making power. According to this study, despite higher educational levels, women in Kerala have a lower status, lower work participation rates and more stressed out lives than women in many other states.
Swapna Mukhopadhyay was perplexed by the disjoint between the relatively higher educational achievements of women in the State, on the one hand, and manifestations of old-fashioned patriarchy on the other, exemplified by higher recorded crime rates against women, high incidence of domestic violence (despite lower reporting rates), increasing female foeticide and a gradual erosion of their property rights. In this book she, along with researchers from the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, and Calcutta University, examines the seeming paradoxes of the Kerala situation, by looking for a possible association between individual life characteristics, including education, and psychological indicators of well being.
Complex story
The shocking result is that education for a woman does not automatically translate to a better life for her. What emerges is a complex story of the subordination of women through unequal power relations and biased societal norms that lead them to greater dependence and powerlessness. It is possible that these women would be worse off without education, but the promise of literacy seems to have delivered much less than was expected.
Mukhopadyay uses these findings to suggest that the use of Amartya Sen’s capability framework (which says that when your capabilities improve, as with education, you have more choices and can lead a better life) places an undue emphasis on literacy as a means of achieving progress. She concedes that education can give some good development outcomes but that this may not always help to change discriminatory practices towards women.
Changing entrenched societal attitudes may not be easy. Even within a state-supported mission for poverty eradication, Kudumbashree, efforts at helping the individuation process in women do not challenge patriarchy at home. Yet, the only spaces where gender issues can be discussed freely are when women are on their own, either as individuals or in groups. This underscores the importance of women-centred approaches such as lending circles and Self-Help Groups in supporting women and helping to reduce gender inequality. Surely, if Bangladeshi women could do this, so can women in Kerala!
Personal histories
Using the research findings as a backdrop, the book concludes with the recorded personal histories of seven women. It is interesting to see how these women, despite experiencing equality in their early years, later adjusted to unequal treatment and discrimination in their natal homes. This was probably accepted as a preparation for the married life that they all wished for. The case studies indicate that while most women overtly accept the traditional gender norms, the ones with a greater ability to act on their own show more optimism. I think these stories would have strengthened the book, if there had been a more explicit drawing out of the connections between the stories and the arguments made earlier.
The International Development Research Centre, Canada, which supports a feminist research agenda, has financed this work. Not being an academic reviewer of this book, I hesitate to ask questions on the design and methodology of the interdisciplinary research, but I wish it had been through a peer review and editorial process with an established journal. This would have made its message more accessible to its academic readers. One hopes that the articles here generate a body of quantitative research in development that gives as much weightage to a woman’s psychological well being, as to her family’s material condition.
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