POLICY CENTRE AND GENDER LAB

Alimony and Dowry: Legal Support vs Social Exploitation by Manvi " Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home."                                                                                                                       — Eleanor Roosevelt Alimony, in general terms, refers to the financial assistance that one spouse provides to the other after divorce or separation. It ensures that the spouse who is in the weaker financial position can maintain a minimum standard of living following the separation. Commonly, the husband is required to pay alimony to the wife, considering the high number of housewives or unemployed wives in India. However, if the hus...

What does it actually mean when a woman owns the house but not the decisions made inside it? Having recently watched a series of videos about Meghalaya’s matrilineal system, I found myself questioning a common belief: does tracing heritage through women really mean that a society is free from patriarchal norms? Meghalaya is frequently recognised as an anomaly in India, a region where surnames, clan affiliations and inherited properties are passed down through mothers. However as I delved deeper , it became increasingly clear that matriliny and matriarchy are not synonymous. Indian society is largely patriarchal but there are also some matrilineal societies that are sometimes mistaken for matriarchy. Matriliny is a system of kinship where descent and inheritance are traced through the female line, from mother to child whereas in a matriarchy women hold the primary authority and power, and descent need not necessarily be traced down the female line. Meghalaya is the epito...

  WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE   (with emphasis on marital stereotypes) By Maryam Chauhan "There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind." - Virginia Woolf Robbing a human of his potential is the worst of all thefts. Butchering someone’s dreams is a murder par the heights of brutuality, it demands apathy akin to that of a seasoned assassin. Sucking the  ‘marrow of life’  out of a living being and condemning him to a life of utter monotony and choking boundaries is similar to slow, cold torture that is meant to bleed a human dry of his very essence of being alive. Ancient India used to perceive  ‘steya’  (theft) and  ‘hinsa’  (violence) as the worst of all sins and here we are, living in an India where these injustices are the norm. Now I request my readers to kindly switch all the pronouns used in the above paragraph from ‘him’ to ‘her’. I used male pronouns in the dim hope that it might make a difference, it might stir...

Tracing the Adventures of Gender in History - By Astha Yadav  “The roots will, now, narrate the stories of some detrimental trees of truths.”   The wider scope of history and its base being anonymous with the present provides us with  ample information on various aspects of modern life. Everything we see today is an imprint of  yesterday’s life. Likewise, every social issue we face today has its roots in the past. Where did it all  start from? What caused it? Why is it still respiring in the society? Nivedita Menon, introduces her  book, ‘Seeing Like a Feminist’ by drawing a parallel between ‘nude makeup’ and the ‘socialization of  girls and boys’. The way we apply nude makeup to look good but don’t necessarily want to reveal that  makeup has been done, likewise, the way our society assigns the roles to respective genders has been  accustomed to a ‘normal’ way of living where the changes made...

                      Book Review of 'Seeing like a Feminist' BY SANIYA SHEKH “…the maintaining of social order is like no makeup, makeup look. It requires faithful performance of prescribed rituals over and over again throughout one’s lifetime. Complex networks of cultural reproduction are dedicated to this purpose. But the ultimate goal is to produce the effect of untouched naturalness.” I had come to read ‘seeing like a feminist’ by Niveditha Menon, one of the finest works on feminism recently, which compelled me to question the so-called social life which is assumed to be the “normal” under the deeply patriarchal society where  “in whichever ways women are different… their difference is considered to be an inferior difference, not just a difference, or not a superior difference.”  The book is a critical and thought-provoking exploration of femin...