Friday, December 13, 2002
Veil of a stereotype
Praful Bidwai December 12
Nothing dominates the popular view of Muslim women in India as strongly as the purdah-polygamy-(instant) talaq stereotype.
This unholy trinity, coupled with illiteracy and cultural backwardness, is assumed to prevent the Muslim woman’s social advancement and condemn her forever to be a chattel-slave.
This ‘unchanging’ condition means that, unlike her Hindu counterpart, she has no say in decisions over the control of income, mobility or political participation. She is a passive object dominated and violated at will by the male.
This stereotype has shaped most approaches to improving Muslim women’s status. More important, it has bestowed credibility upon Hindutva majoritarianism’s feigned concern about that status, over which crocodile tears are regularly shed. For instance, the Shah Bano issue greatly strengthened the hypocritical argument about ‘Muslim appeasement’. However, a pathbreaking survey of Muslim women (MWS) by political scientist Zoya Hasan and publisher-writer Ritu Menon demolishes that stereotype — and many other misconceptions. The first national level multi-issue exercise of its kind, MWS covers 9,541 women, 80 per cent of them Muslim, 60 per cent urban, spread over 40 districts in 12 states, covering 10 parameters like socio-economic status, education, work, marriage, etc.
MWS shows that Muslim women are not a monolithic category, with their status virtually unvarying across regions or social groups. Nor is that status unchanging and immutable. Muslim women, depending on their income-group, location or work status, may have much more in common with Hindu women than other Muslim women.
Nationally, Muslim women have low socio-economic status, above the Dalits’, but lower than the OBCs’. However, it isn’t religion, or religiously ordained customs, that determine that status. Rather, it is poverty, urban or rural residence and regional location, besides generalised societal gender biases. Muslim women suffer community-specific disadvantages (as do Dalits/low-caste women), but these don’t arise from religion-driven factors. Thirty-four per cent of Muslims belong to the ‘low’ and ‘lower middle’ socio-economic status categories, a proportion nearly double that of upper-caste Hindus (18 per cent). If the ‘middle’ category is added, the percentage rises to 67, only lower than for Dalits. There are major cross-regional variations: southern and western Muslims are much better off than northern/eastern Muslims, although their polarisation is less extreme than the Hindus’.
Poverty is the greatest determinant of Muslim women’s educational status. Their school enrolment is 40.7 per cent, higher than the Dalits’ 30.3 per cent, but much below than the upper castes’ (63.2). There are zonal variations, with the north performing much worse than the rest. But income variations are sharper, indeed decisive. Thus, an impressive three-fourths of high-income Muslim women attend school, but only 16 per cent of the poor do. The overall dropout rate is high. But ‘financial constraints’ outweigh ‘parental objections’ as its cause.
Contrary to popular belief, Muslim women do not get divorced significantly more frequently than Hindus, the respective rates being 0.47 and 0.41 per cent. Common to both is the shockingly low age of marriage, which is 15.6 years — well below the legal minimum 18. Here, there are no significant Hindu-Muslim differences, although the mean age for marriage for upper-caste rural Hindu women is lower than for Muslim women.
Although the north is generally socially backward, its urban areas report the highest percentage of ‘never-married’ Muslim women — 10.0 per cent (as against 6.9 for Hindus). Only 2.9 per cent of the poorest Muslim women report a second marriage. (Polygamy is independently known to be more prevalent among non-Muslims.)
Muslim women’s participation in work is lower (14 per cent) than Dalits’ and OBCs’ (30 and 22 per cent) and the Hindu average (18). On reasons for not working, only 35 per cent furnish an answer. Of these, 11 per cent say there is no reason to work, nine cite family responsibility or marriage, five lack of employment opportunities and only 0.4 per cent cite purdah (religious injunction).
Despite their low status, Muslim women have a higher role in decision-making as regards work, household matters, and expenditure: 26 per cent of them have ‘high’ decision-making ability, compared to 24 per cent of Hindu women. There is greater ‘consultation’ with Muslim women regarding family size, expenditure, marriage, and birth and death ceremonies, and especially major purchases and investments.
Twenty per cent of all married women experience verbal and physical abuse, over 80 per cent of it from husbands. But Hindu women experience greater levels of violence than Muslims in all four zones. Remarkably, 26 per cent of educated Muslim women’s spouses are illiterate. This may make for less asymmetry.
Muslim women’s political participation is higher than Hindus’ and their poll turnout larger (overall, 85 per cent). Despite illiteracy, there is greater awareness among Muslim women of the existence of reservations in panchayats. As for mobility, a high 70 per cent of all women need ‘permission’ to work; a staggering 86 per cent for ‘all activities’. Community differences are negligible. But rural upper-income Muslims are less mobile than their urban sisters. Educational status doesn’t greatly affect freedom of movement. Generally, India’s Muslim women are triply disadvantaged: as members of a minority, as women, and most of all as poor women. Gender discrimination coalesces with class inequalities and pervasive social hierarchies. This situation is dismal, but not unchanging. The age of marriage is rising. Many more younger women favour sending their daughters to co-ed schools than older ones. More Muslim women (35 per cent) than Hindus (31) prefer delayed marriage for their daughters, and 34 per cent for their sons (Hindus 26). Muslim women’s advancement cannot be achieved by promoting ‘special/traditional’ rights, or through reservations in jobs or legislatures. What’s needed is a secular agenda of development and empowerment, with affirmative action short of reservations.
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