Abstract
This chapter foregrounds the main thrust of this work, that is, women addressing and challenging patriarchy that has a persistent character in their lives. Taking cognizance of the fact that Catholic Syrian Christian women function within gendered boundaries which are physical as well as ideological, the art of negotiating or subverting patriarchy is seen in terms of their ability to exercise power, claim their space and function from a critical consciousness. We can identify three levels of assertions of power, which can be termed as simulative bargains, tactical bargains and agensic bargains. This chapter also brings in the stories of Syrian Christian foremothers who went beyond patriarchal ‘negotiations’ to challenge the patriarchal confines of domestication in their attempts to reclaim their space and freedom. Their stories pose a challenge to women today, to dare and push the patriarchal boundaries of the present times.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Greenblatt Stephen, “Culture” in Frank Lentrichia and Thomas Mc Laughlin (eds), Critical Terms for Literary Studies 1990, 225–227, cited in Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India, xvii.
- 2.
Anindita Ghosh speaks of Indian women in the colonial period using these terms, and this applies to CSC women as well. See Anindita Ghosh (ed), Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the Everyday in Colonial South Asia, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2002, 2.
- 3.
Ghosh, Behind the Veil…, 14.
- 4.
Nita Kumar (ed) Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories, Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1994, 20.
- 5.
This idea of paying attention to everyday negotiations of power has been brought out in Haynes and Prakash, Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, Berkeley and LA: University of California Press, 1992.
- 6.
Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994, supra note 1, 5.
- 7.
This FGD was held at a rural catholic parish in Kerala with 18 women who are housewives.
- 8.
I borrow this expression from Naila Kabeer, Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Developmental Thought, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995, 224.
- 9.
For a detailed study on public and hidden transcripts, see James C Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990.
- 10.
Emille Guillamin, The life of a simple man ed. Eugen Weber rev., trans. Margaret Crosland, 82, cited in Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, 2.
- 11.
See Steven Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents, 15.
- 12.
This FGD was held with a group of lower-middle-class CSC women who are housewives and daily wage earners from a rural setting.
- 13.
See James C Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance, 3.
- 14.
Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds) Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, Berkeley and LA: University of California Press, 1992, 27.
- 15.
Uma Chakravarthy, Gendering Caste, 144.
- 16.
Romila Thapar, “To Question or Not to Question? That Is the Question,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLIX, No. 50, December 13, 2014, 33–39.
- 17.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xvii.
- 18.
Anindita Ghosh, Behind the Veil, 7.
- 19.
Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, xiii.
- 20.
Anindita Ghosh, Behind the Veil, 8.
- 21.
David Parkin, ‘The Creativity of Abuse’, Man, vol. 15, 1980, 62 cited by Anindita Ghosh, Behind the Veil, 13.
- 22.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xxviii.
- 23.
See Edgar and Sedgwick, Key Concepts in Cultural Theory, London and New York: Routledge 2004, 117.
- 24.
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Writings 1972–1977, ed. C. Gordon New York: Pantheon, 1980, 142.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Steven Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents, 17.
- 27.
See Nita Kumar (ed), Women as Subjects, 21; Anindita Ghosh, Behind the Veil, 14–15.
- 28.
Naila Kabeer, “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment”, Development and Change 30, 435–464, 438.
- 29.
Giddens A. The Constitution of Society, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984, 14.
- 30.
Barbara Hermann, “Agency, Attachment and Difference”, Ethics, 101(4): 1991, 775–797, 795.
- 31.
It is ironic that she has to pay her own dowry from her hard-earned money when the present custom of paying the dowry to the groom’s family is justified in the Syrian Christian community as a share of what she has to receive of her father’s property.
- 32.
Anindita Ghosh, Behind the Veil, 3.
- 33.
Ibid., 20.
- 34.
Dileep Raj (ed) Thantedangal: Kerala Samoha Bhoopadam Muthnga Samarathinushesham, Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2003, 8.
- 35.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xxv.
- 36.
Ibid., xxvii.
- 37.
Geraldine Forbes, “Small Acts of Rebellion: Women Tell Their Photographs” in Anindita Ghosh (eds) Behind the Veil…, 62, 80.
- 38.
Ghosh, Behind the Veil…, 11.
- 39.
Steven Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents, 11.
- 40.
Ibid., 13.
- 41.
Anindita Ghosh, Behind the Veil, 9.
- 42.
The scriptural injunction ‘Wives submit to your husband’s as to the Lord’ (Eph 5:22) is deeply internalized by many CSC women as in the case of Beena’s grandmother, and this has served as a tool that legitimizes the sexual hegemony of husbands over their wives.
- 43.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xl.
- 44.
Siji’s experience reflects a common practice in Kerala. As per a central government report, while 1545 vasectomies were conducted in Kerala during 2000–01, 149,498 tubectomies were done during 1999–2000, the corresponding figures were 653 and 153, 515. (Government of India 2003: Tables c3.2 and C3.3) as cited by Devika, “Bodies Gone Awry…”, 22–23.
- 45.
See Susan Visvanathan, “The status of Christian women in Kerala” in Aravind Sharma (ed), Women in Indian Religions, New Delhi: Oxford University Press 2002,192.
- 46.
Naila Kabeer, “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment”, 438.
- 47.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xlvii.
- 48.
The Kamasutra is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment in life.
- 49.
Cf. Radha Chakaravarty, Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers: Rethinking Subjectivity, New Delhi: Routledge 2008, 189.
- 50.
Deniz Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy”, Gender and Society, Vol. 2, No. 3, (1988), 274–290, supra note 1.
- 51.
See Joy Deshmukh Space for Power, 58–79. The Syrian Christian women also occupy these spaces, save for the political space as no one of the research universe (identified through random sampling) have any active political involvement. Their lack of engagement in active politics is in itself revealing of the domestic–public power dynamics that characterize the community.
- 52.
bell hooks, “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness” in Women, Knowledge and Reality Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (eds.), New York and London: Routledge, 1996, 48–55.
- 53.
Naila Kabeer, Reversed Realities, 6.
- 54.
I borrow this expression from bell hooks, see her “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness”, 52.
- 55.
Ibid.
- 56.
Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh, The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, ix.
- 57.
bell hooks, “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness”, 52.
- 58.
Kumkum Sangari, “Gendered Violence, National Boundaries and Culture” in Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, 304–340.
- 59.
Sheba Mariam George, When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration, California: University of California Press, 2005, 115–117.
- 60.
The Travancore Christian Succession Act had been in force since 1916, as the operative law of intestate succession among Syrian Christians, in Kerala.
- 61.
On February 23, 1986, the Supreme Court of India struck down the Travancore Christian Succession Act, South India, notwithstanding legislative changes during the British rule in India and after India’s independence in 1947. For a greater elaboration of the Mary Roy case, see Amali Philips, “Stridhanam: Rethinking Dowry, Inheritance and Women’s Resistance among the Syrian Christians of Kerala” in Anthropologica 45 (2003).
- 62.
K. Mary Thomas, originally published as “Streeswathantryam” (Women’s Independence) in Vanitakusumam, 1,6, ME 1103 (August-September 1927) 250–251, cited in J. Devika, Herself: Gender and early Writings of Malayalee Women, 106–108.
- 63.
Ibid., 107.
- 64.
Her Speech ‘On Women’s Liberation’ was a critical response to another speech made by Sadasyatilakam T. K. Velu Pillai, who was an eminent intellectual, legislator and writer of Travancore, well known for his revision of the Travancore State Manual. He insisted on making a woman’s marital status the basis for determining her access to employment. For a full translation of her speech Streeswatantryatte Patti (On Women’s Liberation) taken from Sahodaran (Special Number, ME 1929: 133–146), see Devika, Herself, 113–129.
- 65.
See Proceedings of the Cochin Legislative Council, vol. 8, 22 Nov. 1940, 407–408 as cited by Devika in Her Self, 105.
- 66.
From a speech given by Mrs I. C. Chacko originally published in Malayalam as ‘Nammude Streekal’ meaning ‘Our Women’ in Vanitakusumam, 1,6, ME 1102 Karkatam (July–August 1927): 193–199.
- 67.
Mrs I. C. Chacko was married off at a tender age of 17 to a well-known scholar Mr I.C. Chacko, who supported her in her campaigns. See J. Devika (ed), Herself: Gender and early Writings of Malayalee Women, 96–105.
- 68.
See Robin Jeffrey, “Akkamma Cherian Varkey (1909–1982)” in Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a Model, 146–149.
- 69.
Ibid., 124–125. The autobiography of Akkamma Cherian Varkey, is titled 1114ente Katha (The story of Malayalam year 1114), Kottayam D.C. Books 1977. See 1114ente Katha 102–113.
- 70.
Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents, 10.
- 71.
Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy”, 275.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Abraham, K. (2019). The Politics of Negotiating and Subverting Patriarchy. In: Persisting Patriarchy. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21488-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21488-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21487-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21488-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)