September 7, 2016

What are women doing in India?

If you were to fully depend on Western media for information, you’d think they were all busy being sexually harassed or sex-trafficked or raped.

Or at least being forced into arranged marriages.

You might think they are busy being uneducated, unhealthy, and not only unmodern but positively uncivilized, bearing ten children, wearing ancient-style saris, and balancing huge bundles of sticks or baskets of cow dung patties on their heads.

Or, you might think they are all busy trying to be glamorous movie stars in the world-wide cinematic phenomenon of Bollywood.

Since India is half a world away, and since most of us have not traveled to India, we most likely get these ideas about the lives of Indian women from the mainstream media.

A quick survey of articles published about Indian women in The New York Times reveals that, in 2016, articles on safety (4), sexual purity (4), reproductive issues (2), activism (1), and one in-depth article about women’s struggle to work in a rural village, have been the sum total of our insider’s view of the lives of women in India from this prestigious publication.

And none on female Bollywood stars.

You have to go to People magazine for that. Since the beginning of the year, as many as three articles feature Priyanka Chopra—likely because she’s acted in an American television series, Quantico.

Not only has there been a dearth of Western news articles about Indian women, those that do inform us of their lives focus on their “exotic” differences.

You’d think that all women in India think about and worry about is whether or not they are safe, sexually pure, reproducing (or not), or taking action to change what the West might perceive as backward cultural mores.

But, of course on all counts you would be only partly right.

Because Indian women, like all women everywhere, are busy leading individual, complicated lives balancing education, family, work, leisure, health, and spiritual practices, while dealing, as do all women everywhere, with a world that at best minimizes who they are and what they do, and at the worst, views them as expendable if they don’t fulfill certain prescribed roles.

When I was in India for 5 ½ months, I observed women who appeared to be living without basic necessities, such as shelter or food, particularly noticeable in urban areas. I observed rural women working in their homes and fields without modern conveniences.

But that’s not the whole story of women in India.

Not all women in India are cooking over cow dung fires and scrubbing their families’ clothes in a river, the stereotypical image almost everyone has of them.

During my travels, I had the privilege of meeting and volunteering with young women, in college or recently graduated.

A young enthusiastic volunteer at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

I also met a lawyer, a professor, a retired professor, a doctor, a journalist, a language instructor, a dance instructor, a bureaucrat, an artist, a few in the service sector, a few in the hospitality industry, Catholic nuns, and nurses-in-training.

At a conference at a women’s college in Delhi.

I rode the Delhi Metro in the “women only” car with many women of different ages and modes of dress (traditional and Western) who were likely riding to or from work while staring at their smartphones.

I went to a few malls where

A bride.

women were shopping with friends or with their partners.

I explored numerous notable sites all over the country and observed many women being tourists with their families or friends, apparently intrigued, as I was, by the rich, impressive history of their country.

In a mosque garden near Aurangabad.

Women in India are raising children, teaching, fighting for justice and equality, advocating for sexual, gender, and human rights, creating, volunteering, governing, learning, working, worshipping, and caregiving.

My hostess, the owner of my bed & breakfast in Jaipur.

There is not “one” representative Indian women.

My dance instructor.

But you don’t often hear about women who don’t fit the stereotype.

When I was living in India for nearly six months, I noticed this gap. I noticed that the voices and lives of women who didn’t fit the stereotype were missing in various Western media reports, when women in India were reported on at all.

I became concerned about how Indian women might be perceived back home, when I could clearly see that there was much more to understand.

For half a year, I traveled all over the India; I visited more tourist sites than most people, including Indians, ever will. But in retrospect I realize I only saw the surface of the culture. I saw the side of India that is, in some ways, exploited by the tourist trade, the side that we find different, even exotic, and therefore are encouraged to appreciate as more “interesting.”

If I were to go back to India, and I will, someday, I would like to talk to women, especially women who don’t fit the stereotype.

Some of the questions I’d ask would be: Tell me about your childhood. What were the turning points in your life? How do you feel about your life as a woman in India? What are your hopes and dreams? What do you worry about? What do you like to do for fun? What do you think about politics? Religion? Women’s issues? Family relationships? Work? Education? Where do you see yourself in five years? In ten? In old age? What do you think about the West and Western influences on your culture? If you think things are changing in your country, what do you think about those changes? How are you balancing the pressure for change with the pressure of tradition? What aspects of your culture are you following and what aspects are you working against? What are the most important aspects about India you would like the world to know?

I might even want to speak to women who do fit the stereotype, because, of course, all people are more than their stereotypes.

An elderly rural woman trying to secretly smoke a beedi at the Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur.

It’s not my job to speak for the women of India. They are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. I think of my desire to hear their stories, and perhaps to share them with a larger audience, as a way of opening up the conversation, since obviously we can’t depend on the media to do it for us.

Why is it so important to understand, you may ask?

It’s not because India is the world’s largest democracy. Nor is it because India is a rising economic power. It’s not even because India is our best friend against China. It’s because women’s voices matter. All women’s voices. And the more we try to get to know those who may initially seem different from us, the more we appreciate similarities and differences, and the more we are able to develop a circle of mutual respect that includes all of us and our many cultures. This can only do good things for our world.

As for women in India: What are they doing? They are busy. Busy negotiating the challenges of a complex world.

Let’s invite them to sit down with us for a few minutes and talk.