Browsing by Subject "Patriarchy"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Open Access
Behind Closed Doors: Is the ‘Personal’ Political?
(University of North Bengal, 2013-10) Gonsalves, Trijita; Gonsalves, Sushmita
From time immemorial, Indian society is patriarchal. Women have found it impossible to go beyond the field of patriarchal power. But, since Indian independence, efforts were made to make our society more egalitarian vis-a-vis women. In this paper, we identify two areas where the Indian State has dismally failed to protect women - female foeticide and marital rape. They constitute two of the most intimate concerns of a married woman’s life, through which a husband assumes power over the most private part of her life – her body and it becomes a site of violence. This paper concludes by arguing that laws in themselves are not enough. It is time that we women fought our battles ourselves.
Open Access
Deserted women in patriarchal sikkim and Darjeeling hills
(University of North Bengal, 2015-03) Roy, Sanjay K.; Khawas, Babika
In patriarchal social orders in Sikkim and Darjeeling Hills, which also have kept into practice many elements of feudal social order, the women are subjected to various forms of discrimination and violence; one manifestation of such a social situation is desertion of women in their 40s and 50s. This is a form of cruelty done on women across classes and communities in rural as well as urban areas, despite the fact that they have served their husbands and in-laws with all sincerity and played their role as mothers. The victim women do not get much support either from the society or from the state or the institutions (including the law against domestic violence) and live with a lot of hardship. In Sikkim the Family Court, State Women’s’ Commission, and NGOs come forward with some support but in Darjeeling Hills there is no presence of any institution that could come forward in defense of the deserted women.
Open Access
Discourse formation and praxis in everyday life
(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2017) Roy, Sanjay K.
In sociology, and in other social sciences, we generally talk about others, while keeping absolutely mum about ourselves. The result is so called “objective” (in most cases manipulated) “scientific” dispassionate “texts”1 which obscure the reality and do not help enriching our collective wisdom. Subjective knowledge (in Weberian sense), drawn by applying reflexive or autobiographical method, which is usually given no respect in the so-called scientific tradition, could be an alternative mode of doing sociology. Discourses in sociology and other social sciences could be drawn from lived experiences, with high degree of embeddedness, which would help understand the dynamics of everyday life social praxis better.
Open Access
Gender Roles and the Quest for Identity: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence
(University of North Bengal, 2021) Akram, Wasim
Women in all ages remain the object of suppression. They often neither have any voice nor an independent identity of their own. Men become the deciding factor about how a woman should behave and act. They have always been taught to be docile, submissive, and conventional to be accepted by the society. They are made to behave in a certain stereotypical way to maintain the male supremacy. They are given a position inferior to men in a hierarchical social structure, controlled and dominated by men and they merely serve as objects of this control and rule. The whole purpose of their existence revolves around serving in the family as someone’s daughter, wife, sister or mother. These stereotypical gender roles assigned to them by the society keep them confined within the four walls of familial entanglement where they do not have any voice or agency. Shashi Deshpande in her novel, That Long Silence captures this traumatized and painful existence of women in a middle-class Indian family. The novelist portrays the ever-suffering existence and the quest for independent identity of women through the presentation of the character of Jaya who has to maintain silence throughout her married life for the fear of disrupting familial comfort and security. I, in my paper, will attempt to address this crisis raised by the author and also show how the society creates a boundary for women to delimit their capabilities and stifle their voice and agency in a constrictive social structure that does not allow women to speak.
Open Access
NGOs Working on Women Issues: Some Findings from Nanded District of Maharashtra
(University of North Bengal, 2017) Jadhav, Baburao Sambhaji
In recent times the number of NGOs working on women related issues has increased. NGOs are emerging as an alternative agent for social change and development. Therefore, NGOs are considered as agents and mediators between governmental agencies and communities. Governmental agencies also develop partnership with the NGOs and thus, they are called the third sector in the field of development. The study finds that these NGOs are negotiating with the community leaders, rural elites, caste and patriarchy when they are working over issues of women. Women’s mobility is still controlled by these socio-cultural forces and the NGOs adopt and profess a liberal ideology and perspective to negotiate with the societal structure.