Women's Education

These are a set of thoughts that I had after reading the book “Educated” by Tara Westover. The next two books I happened to read were “I am Malala” and “Agnisakshi” by Lalithambika Antharjanam. Some of the comparisons I have made here are a result of reading the books around the same time - it seemed to me that they were all detailing the same patterns.


Tara Westover’s book details how the author was raised without attending school with parents who considered anything that the government did as undermining their very existence. What struck me was how the author was unable to see through the things that her father taught her - such as what was considered modest and what was not; what religious observances were required etc - until she had left the household in pursuit of an education. As she progressed with her education, she became increasingly at odds with the values and beliefs that her family held; at some point it becomes clear that the family expects her to choose either them or her education.


Regardless of the choice she actually made, I think the sequence of events described in the book provide a useful framework with which to understand the status of women in many parts of the world. Take for example, Kerala before Indian independence: The more popular prevailing wisdom about women in Kerala states that the status of women in Kerala was exceptionally good - the example that is upheld as proof is the tradition of “marumakkathayam”, which is a custom where the family property of Nair (a caste within Hindus in Kerala) households were always inherited by the daughter’s children rather than the son. The word “marumakkathayam” literally translates into “the custom of inheritance by nieces and nephews”. If one looked at the custom from the outside, it appears amazing that the Nair households had established such a custom where the male heads of the Nair households decided to give their property to their sister’s children disinheriting their own. This is the popular version of the story; one that is fed to uphold the view that the Hindu women of Kerala enjoyed special status and rights when compared to the rest of India.


Painting a picture of “everything was great” by showing isolated pieces out of a mosaic is not only misleading; it is also a disservice to the suffering that many women had to go through at the time because of strict social laws that were imposed on them.


I believed much of what I had heard about Nair women to be true, and was always a little disappointed with the sharp contrast in treatment that the women belonging to the other religions faced - Christian and Muslim women (which came to roughly 30% of the total population when combined) had very different lives - they inherited nothing, and their status was tied solidly to their husbands. They had little say in anything, including who they got married to and where they lived. Compared to that, clearly, the Nair women seemed to be liberated until I took a closer look at the roots of this custom that is supposed to be illustrative of the high status they enjoyed.


The matrilinear system came into place because most Bhramin men had relationships in which their children could not inherit property - only the eldest Brahmin son was allowed to actually marry a Brahmin woman and have children who could inherit property. His younger siblings were only allowed to have “Sambandhams” (translates into “relationships”) - instead of the more specific term marriage - with Nair women. The Nair women with whom they had sambandhams did not come up to the status of a wife; the children born out of these relationships could not inherit anything from the father, including his caste; they inherited their mother’s caste. In order to make sure the children got some type of inheritance, the Bhramin men brought in the system of “marumakkathayam” or matrilineal heritage, whereby they ensured that the Nair women and their children inherited property from their families, rather than the Brahmins having to provide for them. All of this was done to make sure that whatever wealth the Brahmins had was not divided among too many descendents. It is pretty easy to see that the entire system was set up to ensure that the Brahmins remained an exclusive and small community who were wealthy and powerful. That they did so at the cost of disinheriting their own children seems extreme - but such was their thinking at the time, and it eventually led to their downfall as a community.


Even though marumakkathayam is now touted as a system in which women were allowed inheritances, I think it is important to also see the background by which it came into existence.


In sharp contrast to the supposed well being of the Nair women, the Brahmin and lower caste women were treated with horrifying contempt. The Brahmin women were called “Antarjanam”, which literally translates into “those who live inside”, and that was what they were expected to do - stay inside. They were not allowed to leave their homes, and the sun’s rays were not supposed to touch their bodies. They were not allowed to go to school or learn to read. Also, because only the eldest son of a Brahmin family was allowed to marry a Brahmin girl, the number of Brahmin women who got married were few. Many of them led a life of hard labor inside their “illams”. And these were high caste, privileged women who belonged to families with wealth and power.


On the other side of the spectrum are the lower caste women, who were not allowed to cover their upper bodies. They were forced to walk around topless and ordered to show their upper bodies to upper caste men as a show of “respect”. They also had to pay a tax for having breasts!


It is clear when you put all the facts together that most of these laws were brought in by upper caste men for perpetrating their intentions on the other communities. Why no one else opposed these laws or fought against them until the 1950s is surprising to me.


Perhaps the answer to all that is that most people did not question the rules that they grew up with - asking questions requires one to be curious - and I am beginning to realize that most traditional societies discouraged questioning, because some or the other form of social order on which the social order rested would not be able to withstand questioning. Most of the time people start questioning things when they become educated - and that is when they start to see through the hollowness of some of the beliefs they have upheld until then.


This is readily observable in Tara Westover’s case - she went to university, saw people who were Mormon but who lived more normal lives than she did and then she learned to question the wisdom of her father’s viewpoints. She eventually came to the conclusion that her father had a mental disorder. The thing that really allowed her parents to make her stick to their form of life was by suppressing information about any other possibility. Once she had access to more information, it was only a matter of time before she saw through the holes in their reasoning and started establishing her own truths. And the same is observable in Lalithambika Antharjanam’s Teetikutty too. She becomes educated and starts to question the framework in which she was brought up, leading to her eventually abandoning the customs that defined her existence.


In nearly all cases where some sections of society are disadvantaged, there is a severe lack of awareness and education that comes into play. This can be seen in the case of the Hindus in Kerala. The Brahmins were the only caste that was allowed to learn anything. Even among them, only men could learn, effectively sealing the fate of Brahmin women. This allowed the Brahmins to establish the rules they wanted and to bend social structure to their liking.


So the key here is this - suppressing education to a specific segment of people can facilitate their systematic suppression. Worse, the people will start treating the suppression as a normal way of life, and will not know to question it until they are educated.


Now it becomes clear why some societies try hard to prevent women from being educated - it helps to prevent progress and maintain status quo, which are advantageous to some of the parties in such societies. And in that lies the ray of hope - education seems like the answer to all the ills that can befall society.


Just yesterday I was reading about minors who are trafficked into brothels from Bangladesh and West Bengal - more than 50,000 minors are thought to go missing each year, and they end up in the red light areas in various cities in India as well as the rest of the region. Many of these girls have similar stories - they “fall in love” with someone who offers them gifts - phones, clothes, makeup and the like. They eventually make a decision to run away from home, and their boyfriends smuggle them into India where they are illegal immigrants. They are afraid to go to the police, and they find that their “boyfriend” has sold them. They find themselves held captive and forced into slavery in a brothel all too often.


What is common among these girls? They are almost always poor and uneducated. Many of them are from families where the parents cannot afford education for their girl children. They drop out of school early, and either work to make more money


Where does education come in? Narrate such stories to other girls in such groups. They incidence of this happening is much higher in some states, so hearing stories in itself can be a good warning. India is a society that functions a lot around shame - shame for the victim prevents them from speaking about their experiences. Not speaking up however can result in others falling prey to the same type of devious behavior, perhaps from the same people.