Narsapur vs. America
This Women’s Studies Senior Seminar class has provided the opportunity to read about many cross-cultural issues pertaining to women. In the article, “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity” by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, issues of “poor women worker in the global capitalist arena” (3) are addressed. Mohanty focuses on the plight of exploited, poor Third-World women. She illuminates specific issues that relate to the transformation of developing countries to capitalism. Mohanty’s article is split up into sections, the section that I want to focus on in order to compare key issues between Narsapur and America is called “Housewives and Homework: The Lacemakers of Narsapur."
In this specific article Mohanty illuminates the effects that capitalism has on areas that are being developed, she portrays its effects on women as well as men. In Narsapur the lace making industry skyrocketed between the years 1970 and 1978. As a result of the increased demand, the process of making lace and the final product, which is lace, has been feminized while the trade or exportation of the lace is viewed as business, as a masculinize activity. Women working outside the home in this culture are defined as housewives, hence the job of being a lacemaker is defined as housework. Mohanty argues that the “definition of women as housewives also suggests the heterosexualization of women’s work - women are always defined in relation to men and conjugal marriage” (12). As a result of the heterosexualization of women’s work plus the feminization of the process and product and the masculinization of the trade “men sell women’s products and live on profits from women’s labor” (12).
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.
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The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
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Hancock, Peter J. "Women, work and empowerment: A portrait of women workers in two of Sri Lanka's Export Processing Zones." Norwegian Journal of Geography 60.3 (2006): 227-239. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 30 Apr. 2011
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The oppression of women commonly occurs in Patricia McCormick’s novel Sold. Lakshmi, the protagonist, and many other women are impacted by the cultural beliefs in India. Lakshmi is a thirteen-year- old girl from Nepal who loses everything she knows because of her stepfather’s greed. She lived in a small village with her mother who does housework and takes care of her little brother while her stepfather gambles at the tea shop. Desperate for money, Lakshmi is sold into prostitution by her stepfather with her believing she is going to work as a maid. Lakshmi moves to India and reaches the prostitution house, known as “Happiness House”. There are many women and young girls close to her age at the house who got trapped like Lakshmi. Mumtaz is the head of the Happiness House and the one who paid for the girls, so their debt to her is the price that they got bought for. They earn their money as sex slaves and some girls spend years trying to pay off the debt. Lakshmi does the same for months and realizes that it is a common practice in India and because it is a norm, many women and young girls are affected by this. In “Sold”, the Indian culture discriminates against women when looking at gender roles,
In this text Mohanty argues that contemporary western feminist writing on Third World women contributes to the reproduction of colonial discourses where women in the South are represented as an undifferentiated “other”. Mohanty examines how liberal and socialist feminist scholarship use analytics strategies that creates an essentialist construction of the category woman, universalist assumptions of sexist oppression and how this contributes to the perpetuation of colonialist relations between the north and south(Mohanty 1991:55). She criticises Western feminist discourse for constructing “the third world woman” as a homogeneous “powerless” and vulnerable group, while women in the North still represent the modern and liberated woman (Mohanty 1991:56).
Domestic labour consists of labour for physical as well as emotional maintenance, childbirth, cleaning, cooking etc. This labour in turn results in the reproduction of labour power. Women, in almost all societies are responsible and obligated to do this labour. According to Marxist framework, domestic labour which is aimed at labour power can also be seen as a source of surplus value. So according to this conceptual framework, family under capitalism is a site of social production. In contemporary Indian these activities performed in the domestic sphere as well as the informal sector because of their distance from the realm of exchange and market, are not recognised and remain undervalued. Caste hierarchies also play an imperative role in devaluation of labours. Domestic labour forms a part of labours which are the most forlorn and exploited, done by the most marginalised women of society, despite being socially necessary. Domestic labour is incorporated in the realm of obligation within the household- domestic ideologies playing the major role in allocating different roles to men an...
The biggest transformation in economic terms was the introduction of producing goods not for the local community, but for exports. Women were placed in the textile industry due to previously conceived notions of gendered labor. As a result, in order to pay the tributes that the Spanish forced men to pay, women had no other choice but to enter the workforce where the only jobs available were in the textile industry . So now, women were made to perform specific, gendered labor not for the household, but for the Spanish market economy. These examples are just a few from a plethora that demonstrate how colonialism impacted gender norms and roles through the extension of the Spanish political economy, and the ways in which women’s lives were predominantly negatively impacted, as opposed to men. While Andean men were afforded some rights, they still were forced into a new political regime that drastically affect their gendered sphere, but that were granted more autonomy due to their gender and the preexisting Spanish gendered norms that were brought in during
The title of Divakaruni’s book is the result of an aggressive marketing strategy. It is an attempt to carve a market segment in the western societies. Divakaruni looks back at India and its culture from the colonizer’s point of view. Husne Jahan points out “In demonstrating her indebtedness to western feminist notions and in voicing criticism of women’s subjugation in India, Divakaruni repeatedly maligns far too many facets of Indian society and culture” (43).
Throughout history there has always been a consistent trend, that of women not having a place in outside society. Women had always been confined to their homes to do the cooking and cleaning. In the early 1800s this changed however, as women started to ease themselves into the workplace. Women were brought into factories and were then called factory girls. This was a huge step in women’s rights as a whole. So, this paper argues that industrialization changed gender roles, specifically women’s, by giving them economic independence.
Sengari, Kumkum and Vaid, Sudesh (eds). Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. Kali for women: New Delhi. 1989. 17.
This is not the first time India has concentrated on focusing the subject of women’s equality and empowerment. The Indian women’s movement has a gratified and lively past promoting on issues of family law, employment, education, female infanticide and reproductive health, widowhood, domestic violence and political representation amongst other issues. Indian civil society, through the movements of hundreds of non-government organizations spread across the country, has been keenly involved in encouraging the importance of women for decades. The Indian state has also prepared some important judicial changes to provision women’s employment and political rights most recen...