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    Article Review, Leela Dubey's Essay

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    Krishnapriya D J
    Leela Dube's essay analyzes how Hindu rituals and practices socialize girls in India to accept subordinate roles and statuses. It describes how rituals beginning at menarche teach girls that marriage and motherhood are inevitable and restrict their autonomy and mobility. Practices like patrilocality, which requires daughters to live with their husband's family after marriage, mean families have less incentive to invest in daughters' education. The essay argues these rituals and traditions are not natural but socially construct gender hierarchies that disadvantage women.

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    Article Review, Leela Dubey's Essay

    Uploaded by

    Krishnapriya D J
    72 views1 page
    Leela Dube's essay analyzes how Hindu rituals and practices socialize girls in India to accept subordinate roles and statuses. It describes how rituals beginning at menarche teach girls that marriage and motherhood are inevitable and restrict their autonomy and mobility. Practices like patrilocality, which requires daughters to live with their husband's family after marriage, mean families have less incentive to invest in daughters' education. The essay argues these rituals and traditions are not natural but socially construct gender hierarchies that disadvantage women.

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    Leela Dube's essay analyzes how Hindu rituals and practices socialize girls in India to accept subordinate roles and statuses. It describes how rituals beginning at menarche teach girls that marriage and motherhood are inevitable and restrict their autonomy and mobility. Practices like patrilocality, which requires daughters to live with their husband's family after marriage, mean families have less incentive to invest in daughters' education. The essay argues these rituals and traditions are not natural but socially construct gender hierarchies that disadvantage women.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    72 views1 page

    Article Review, Leela Dubey's Essay

    Uploaded by

    Krishnapriya D J
    Leela Dube's essay analyzes how Hindu rituals and practices socialize girls in India to accept subordinate roles and statuses. It describes how rituals beginning at menarche teach girls that marriage and motherhood are inevitable and restrict their autonomy and mobility. Practices like patrilocality, which requires daughters to live with their husband's family after marriage, mean families have less incentive to invest in daughters' education. The essay argues these rituals and traditions are not natural but socially construct gender hierarchies that disadvantage women.

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    Leela Dube's essay named ‘ On The Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls in Patrilineal India' was an

    eye opener into the process through which women in India acquires notions on their duties, roles
    and values ;the role played by rituals in imbibing these ideas; how practice of patriliny and patrilocal
    residence affects women's status in the family etc. It is a fine portrayal of this “cultural imprinting” or
    conditioning that women in India go through. Dube, being an anthropologist have milked diverse
    sources and regions and used data and insights to substantiate her arguments. In addition to that
    her personal experiences are often cited which makes the essay even more interesting. It is to be
    noted that, in her essay she says the specification of “Hindu Girls” is because she herself belong to a
    Hindu household.

    Patriliny often try to ascribe women with a secondary role in the ‘perpetuation of the group’. She
    points out that practicing patrilocal residence has serious implications such as pricing the son rather
    than daughter and having less incentive to invest in daughter’s education as the son is supposed to
    support his parents in their old age. Dube clearly depicts how as they grow up, women imbibe
    through rituals such as Durga Puja and Gauri Puja, the idea that leaving the natal home after
    marriage and marriage by itself is inevitable and that they have hardly have any autonomy in visiting
    their natal home after marriage. Hindu rituals ascribe purity to pre – pubertal phase of a girl. But
    once they hit their puberty, they are faced with ritual seclusions, restrictions on mobility, and on
    interaction with males and thus projecting the idea of their “vulnerability”. Rituals associated with
    menarche are often eager to control their sexuality and emphasize the notion of motherhood as
    inevitable and fulfilling. Several practices that we take for granted in fact perpetuates notions that
    marriage is inescapable, the married state of a women is ‘auspicious' and widowhood is
    ‘inauspicious'. Women are constantly conditioned to speak in a ‘proper' mode, shape the
    ‘acceptable’ demeanor and behavior and safeguard their ‘purity'. Imposing space and time
    constraints on women are in fact attempts to control their sexuality. But this in turn pull back
    women from choosing a college or career which would defy these ‘unwritten rules'. A point that
    struck my mind was that assigning male and female children with tasks of different nature, and
    providing them different toys to play with asserts the sexual division of labour within the family. In
    addition to this, girl children are conditioned to ‘bear pain and deprival'. It is important to note how
    ideas of sacrifice and self denial are projected as obligations on women.

    After reading this essay, I became more keen on observing what every day practices, religious rituals
    etc try to teach each individual in terms of values duties, and the right behavior. I realized that these
    would turn problematic and oppressive to female population and places them in a disadvantaged
    position. Likewise a reader of this article might refrain from considering any of these as the ‘ natural
    order of things', but as socially constructed.

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