The Finance Minister of India, Nirmala Sitharaman, was at a gathering at Bengaluru’s Jain University recently where a student commented on the systemic roadblocks women face in the world at large. Her question to the FM was if she had ever struggled due to patriarchy. The minister’s response?
Since the video went viral, much has been said about Sitharaman’s complete disregard for the challenges women face, be it at home or in the workplace. She brought up false equivalents like Indira Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu’s achievements to reject the existence of patriarchy in India. In a terrifying moment of patriotism, when Sitharaman empathically pronounced that patriarchy is “impossible in a country like India,” she was met with applause.
What Sitharaman said reeks of something the internet calls “pick me energy”. She sounded like that teenage me who was proud to be “not like other girls”. When she asked women to not complain and go out and do it, she essentially asked them to remain silent. Societies often love a silent woman because that gives them the power to maintain the status quo.
Patriarchy, the very idea that Sitharaman rejects, leads to a system of imbalance in power favouring one dominant gender over all others. It has the power to kill. But since Sitharaman believes there is no patriarchy in India, let’s begin with looking at the data on crime against women. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2011, there were more than 2,28,650 reported incidents of crime against women. This number saw a staggering jump to 4,28,278 reported incidents in 2021. An 87 per cent increase.
In India, marriage is considered a sacrosanct institution. It is a $130 billion industry, only the second largest in the world. Personally, I find the structure of the institution to be entirely err… patriarchal, but let’s ignore that for a moment, and look at something that even her government is worried about. Dowry. The first Dowry Prohibition Act was formed in 1961, and has been amended several times since, but it has hardly been a deterrent. Dowry deaths continue to happen in India. In 2022, nearly 6,400 women were killed because of it.
The FM talks about how women shouldn’t be using patriarchy as a garb to hide their unpreparedness and incompetence. Women, she said, are sending rockets to space. This is true. The success of Chandrayan-3 was because of the women, “in saris” as Sitharaman would remind you. At the same time, ISRO does have an impressive gender parity with 20 per cent of its technical staff being women, and nearly 500 women being put in leadership roles. If I had to nitpick, and I will, 20 per cent is far from equal, however ISRO’s “DEI” goals still are praiseworthy.
But the same can’t be said about the rest of the work places in India. As per an Oxfam report, India’s female work participation rate is among the lowest for emerging economies, at a mere 25 per cent in 2021. Oxfam India’s report squarely puts the blame on gender discrimination as the primary cause of inequality faced by women in the job market, with only 2 per cent attributed to factors like education or experience (or incompetence). This discrimination extends to other marginalised groups like Dalits, Adivasis, and religious minorities.
Finally, in response to a point about Indian families not being supportive of women and their ambitions, the FM talked about the support Indian families provide, and how that doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. The point is well taken, my mother was able to work because my grandparents looked after me and my brother. However, my aai never opted for a promotion because she still had to cook and clean and help us with studies and practise all that domesticity demands. My mother worked out of sheer necessity because money was always a problem and her caste privilege allowed her some leeway.
However, that is not something that can be said about most women and most Indian families. The same Oxfam report revealed that a sizeable population of women is unwilling to join the workforce due to the pressures of family responsibilities and societal norms.
If women continue to fall in line, do the things they are allowed to, there is less disturbance in the power structure. This is why in India, Sitharaman wants women not to complain, and not fall for the leftist trappings of words like patriarchy.
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But let’s not forget, a group of complaining women got us the right to vote. A group of complaining women made sure we had the right to work. It is because of these complaining women that women are sending rockets into space.
When women complain, the world changes. Let there be no silence.
Indurkar is a writer, editor, and poet from Jabalpur. She is the author of It’s All in Your Head, M
