Throughout history, there have been many different aspects that have been looked at in all culture ways . Many researcher’s have studied the history and the lifestyle of the different societies and particular cultural norms. This information is gathered from media, weather be it through internet, newspaper, television or simply history books as educational informers. Although these are the most common bases for societal general knowledge, in the inner truth occurs within the inner realms of particular societal. We as Americans sometimes fund the ways in which many of these cultures do things different, weird, or crazy. They are for us to look forage deeper into these different aspects but sometimes many of us choose to just believe the contrary, the truth that is tainted and not rooted within history. One of these mistakenly miscnceived cultures is the Hindu Culture. Americans may not see things in our cullture the way others do in their own private communities. In our society, women are beginning to get respect for the things they do and they are being looked at in the same way that men are, in various occupations. In the Hindu culture this is quiet the opposite, their society views women the same way a any other society would view those in the lower social aspects. This suppressing and inferorating view has had a large impact on their society, economically, as well as politically.
The women in this culturl are looked upon as being something great, according to their cultural and religious believes. This aspect of Hindu society is the only that has had credit to the respect and value of women, where if compared to the status of women in other societies. Though the women are vied very highly by the gods, they are viewed from a society with a caste system. India like any other society is divided into different classes. The classes are division is marked by wealth and production industries. The adjoining part of the society is ruled by higher authority. Women are a large of this particular society. They are subjected to agricultural and exploitation by the men who rule them. The women in these particular communities have many duties that come with being a part of that society. “ The chief duty of a women is to maintain her Pativrata Dharma. To a women there is no higher duty than service of her husband. She should worship him daily” (Shivanada, 1963). Women...
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...ntirely socialized and restricted to their family-kin community. Tremendous effort has been to ignite, for they have come a long way from the beginning, hoping to see a fair end.
As an American women in a westernized culture, one sometime takes the freedom given for granted, not realizing that there are women out there that have to fight for things that they want in life. True, we do choose to go out and get an education, but we should sometimes stop and think what things would be like if we were not able to even try to get an education. Education is given abundantly, there is equal opportunities in exchange for self enhancement, to think that all these rights can be taken away, not only paints a painful life but gives one a glimpse into the lives of the Hind women who had to endure such mistreatments. The Hindu women have lived under the incubation of powerful men, who have no regard to their equality nor their intelligence and capability. These women have not just fulfilled a dream but have economically, politically, and socially, broken the barrier as well as the stereotype that they may no amount to anything. They have taken that initiative, and made it into something great.
Gender roles have been a predominant factor in our world since the early emergence of human societies whether they are positive or negative. They are based on expectations that societies have over the people in them. The Epic of Sunjata, shows us how men and women are treated almost equally in different forms. Women are praised for their ability to birth leaders, which is similar to the early Greek Society. In most societies, women are treated less equal than men. This was prevalent in the early Indian society. No matter the gender role, it has been shown that any society cannot survive without both men and women.
Within the earliest of civilizations of India, pre-pubescent girls were offered to men as wives, which ultimately lead to the destruction of women’s domestic independence. As said in Document 1, “because girls married before they could finish their education, they were not qualified to perform ritual sacrifices. Furthermore, wives’ legal rights eroded.” Likewise, Indian women became politically subordinate to men. However, by modern standards, women’s social
In the Hindu tradition, women are to be respected and should not be mistreated since they are considered a gift from gods under a pledge. Women are also considered aspects of Nature or the embodiment of Universal Mother in her aspect of pure energy. The tradition prohibits harassment and negligence towards women and states that it is the man’s duty to protect and take care of his wife until the end. Women in the Hindu tradition play a secondary role since Hinduism is a predominantly male dominated religion. It is their duty to help their husband perform obligatory duties and enable him to continue his family tradition. It is also the wife’s duty to give birth to children and to take care of
In early Indian society, only males were allowed to inherit land/property, officiate family rituals, educations was almost only male. The society placed women under the rule of men. The Lawbook of Manu told men to treat women with dignity and respect but that women should still use men as there guides in life and that there purpose was to basically have children and keep the house nice for the family.
Looking over the course of time, women had overcome some abusive and intrusive periods in society to be heard and noticed as an equal to mankind. Woman have struggled for equal rights as early as the 1800’s, which in this time the role of the woman was franchised in every home, to be seen but not heard, to complete what were daily chores such as cleaning, cooking, sewing and motherhood,. Women were in a time warp, and were in need to speak out, be heard and not judged by their mother baring and homemaking skills. Women were force to communicate amongst themselves in society, and also force to discuss amongst themselves political views.
In addition, studying the place of women in the light of spiritual teachings of the western religions, we can convince other women and people around in bringing about a positive change in the modern global village. Studying various religious beliefs and their in-depth analysis proves that there is a fundamental teaching and principle of all spiritual forms that humanity is to be treated as one concrete unit wherein all men and women share similar relationship and identical position in the eyes of the Almighty. The unjust oppression of women is based on false assumptions and preconceived notions by the male-dominating world, has been obvious and responsible for paving the way for serious gender issues to emerge. This caused religious conflicts among the masses. Confined to narrow realms of activity in society, deprived from the essential human rights, restricted to confined educations scope, open to unhealthy criticism and mental and physical abuse, this society has not permitted women to become what they potentially are.
I think there are similarities between the hegemony in Narsapur and in the United States. Our society’s practices and treatment towards women’s work and the treatment of women’s work in Naraspur can be compared. One comparison in the U.S. is the treatment of women’s work outside of the job force. By sheer lack of acknowledgement, women’s work inside the home is overlooked and hence not considered to be work at all. Work that receives no recognition is invisible and invisibility of work carries with it no economic power. American women are still perceived as primarily being housewives first, then they are doctors or lawyers or you can fill in the blank.
In conclusion, women around the globe have come a long way. Societies across the world are recognizing that women are valuable and important to societies. Unfortunately, there are still many societies across the world that wants to keep women down. The women of these societies should not be abandoned and forgotten because they are across the globe. Women from the other countries need to remember how far they have been able to come and reach out to support the oppressed women. As Dr. Martin Luther King would say, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
There are many instances of gender inequality in the dominant religion of Hinduism (Srivastava, 2008). Husbands treat their wives like property, and that is pretty much the root of the issue. A major factor of this subject is the concept of dowry. This concept should be well known before the issue is further dissected. Dowry is an ancient tradition where the husband gains the riches of the wife immediately after they are married (Bedi, 2012). What tends to happen is that the woman’s dowry does not usually satisfy the man, and this leads to devastating violence. Women are then killed in various torturous ways, such as live burning. This also leads to another major element of the problem: female infanticide. This is the unlawful killing of baby girls (BBC, 2014). Women do not want to disappoint their husbands by having a daughter, so they get rid of their unborn or newborn babies. Also, daughters cause a financial burden to the family, so families would want to dispose of them (BBC, 2014). Also, men are far more educated than women in India, and that leads to more problems. Yes, awfully tragic, bu...
Vedic culture seems to have conflicting views regarding its attitude towards women, specifically its attitude towards a woman’s sexuality. This conflict can be seen by contrasting the ways in which women are treated in sacrificing rituals with how they are treated in a more intimate atmosphere, such as lovemaking, which is still often treated as a ritual in and of itself; ritual regarding fertility, love, and childbirth. To represent the roles of women in ritual, Stephanie W. Jamison has written “Sacrificed Wife, Sacrificer’s wife, which is a description and evaluation of women’s roles in ritual and hospitality in ancient India.
From ancient hunter gatherers to the modern-day woman, gender roles have changed drastically over time and they continue to evolve today. Across the world women have had to fight for rights, but it wasn’t always this way. In ancient cultures women had more freedoms than in western societies, furthermore, as history progresses western influence crushes the native way of thinking resulting in male dominated societies. Eventually women suffrage movements would finally appear after industrialization in the 1800-1900’s. Key events throughout history would shift the gender constructions namely war, industrialization, and time. Struggling to understand native cultures western influence would commit genocide on native cultures, leading to cultural
The young Indian female experience in the modern age is characterized by a conflict between Indian tradition and contemporary global culture. Historically the archetype of the ideal Indian woman has been used to build national unity, identity, and pride. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, public imagination equated the ideal woman to ‘mother India.’ This idea was fueled by art, literature, and particularly film. Heroines were characterized as “passive, victimized, sacrificial, submissive, glorified, static, one-dimensional, and resilient” (Virdi, 60). The social expectation of women to exhibit these traits persists in the modern day. Women struggle to reconcile these qualities with contemporary values such as independence, freedom, and gender equality. Therefore young women are still subject to the desires of their fathers, and the unofficial caste system still limits their social mobility; yet simultaneously they dance at nightclubs, and wear short skirts. Conflict between tradition and modernity is exemplified by events like the beer bar girls ban, in which young women who made a living by dancing in bars were banned from their profession on the grounds
The role of women in different civilizations, even though on different spectrums of the world, had many similarities and only a few differences. Women in these four civilizations: Greece, Egypt, China, and India faced many of the same hardships, struggles, and prejudices. Some of this treatment of women didn’t even end until present day (1920’s). In some of these civilizations women were able to rise up somewhat in their communities but it didn’t come without some kind of interference.
“India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration”(Sri Aurobindo). Hindus believe in karma, which means that the actions that are made will affect this life or the lives to come (Fisher 120). Reincarnation is a rebirth in a new life (Fisher 120). In Hinduism the roles that the women play in their society is similar to Rukmani’s in Nectar in a Sieve. Hindu women take care of the children and help the husband with farm work or any other work ("Hindu Beliefs"). The three main themes in the book that connect to the Hindu religion are Humans choose their actions which cause happiness or sadness, suffering purifies for the soul, and truth is the most important moral value to have. Every action made by humans is based on a choice the outcome could be happy or sad.
Today, for the most part, women are seen as equal to men. Women are given the same opportunities as men and an equal chance at getting a job as men. In today’s society, women do not just have one role and that role and that being to have kids, but they can pursue any career they wish. However, it was not always this way. According to feminist theorists, western civilizations were patriarchal which means that the society is dominated by males. The society is set up so that the male is above the female in all cultural aspects including family, religion, politics, economics, art, and the social and legal realms. The patriarchal biases of gender between male and female say that a male must be active, dominating, adventurous, rational, and creative. In the novel, A Passage to India, Forster expresses this male dominance by writing, “He took no notice of them, and with this, which would have passed without comment in feminist England, did harm in a community where the male is expected to be lively and helpful” (Forster 52). They say that to be female is to be passive, agreeable, timid, emotional, and conventional. The feminist theorists’ argument of a male centered society is definitely present in the novel A Passage to India. E.M. Forster reveals cultural, economic, and educational factors within the patriarchal society of India that limit women. In E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India, Forster exposes derogatory stereotypes of women and portrays women as inferior to men to uphold the view of women during the time period.