Image: details from painting by Bharpur Singh
People
Why We Are Feminists
HERPREET KAUR GREWAL
When you hear the words 'Sikh feminist', what images does it bring to mind?
Perhaps it evokes a general image of women holding placards and angrily protesting? Or maybe it reminds one of a grand saint-warrior like Mai Bhago riding her horse into battle? Or possibly a more contemporary incident comes to mind ... like the one of Balpreet Kaur who last year deflected taunts from an Internet troll by eloquently explaining why she decides to keep her facial hair in a society where women are largely pressured to be perfectly formed and hairless.
Or maybe it evokes none of these images.
Here at the Sikh Feminist Research Institute (of which I am a member of the editorial board), we feel compelled to express our philosophy as a proactive and empowered one. All of us look to the Sikh (and non-Sikh) values of equality, honesty and strength (among many others), to anchor our lives in an everyday spirituality.
But that doesn't mean our motivation has always rooted from a positive place.
One of us on the board was sexually assaulted which absolutely shattered a personal notion that being strong, assertive and smart can keep you insulated from an attack. If anything, it laid bare the vulnerability that exists if you happen to be born a woman in a world that can devalue one so extremely and how that devaluation is integrated into the culture and system we live with. A culture and system which many men and women internalise - sometimes, to a massive extent.
Others on our editorial board have seen the way prejudices have been laced into our and our families' day-to-day lives and this has made feminism a requisite to our existence. A big question that has run through all of our minds as we grew up: if Sikhism advocates equality, then why do women take a backseat in so many areas of life? Why are women not always allowed to go where they want to go or to speak up truly about what they feel? Why, in some Sikh families is a male baby still celebrated more than a female baby? If we are truly equal and free, why are we sometimes told that these questions should not even allowed to be asked?
We believe feminism is at the core of the Sikh religious philosophy, which is actually quite a mystical one that encourages peeling back the layers of man-made conventions that society has imposed over history and time. We believe this includes the gender labels that have become entrenched and accepted without question, in our daily lives over aeons. Unravelling these layers will lead to a greater recognition of each other as equal but different souls, all of whom deserve to sing their unique song.
Others may say Sikhism has a more universal and humanistic core.
But we argue that to get to the universal and humanistic, you have to go through the feminism. If we have a vision of universal equality, that is great; but for women to be a part of that, they must be treated equal to men and in many, many instances, like some of our personal experiences have shown, they are not. But not only that, men must see how their roles as men can be much, much more than patriarchy and culture has led them to believe.
This is where feminism comes in. It requires women and men to reflect on how they may or may not be contributing to this idea of equality between the sexes. It is not an aggressive stand-off, it is an honest listening, exchange and collaboration.
As we usher in this new year after the Sikh celebration of Vaisakhi, we hope the spring that approaches is not just one that will affect the weather but also a new beginning for the way we interpret women's role in Sikhism, Asian culture and the world. We must continue to fight against violence and blatant degradation against women (and men).
But let us highlight the empowering traits and roles of women in Sikhism (and other cultures and religions), past, present and future, as inspiration to move towards a truer equality.
[Courtesy: The F Word. Edited for sikhchic.com]
April 18, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), April 18, 2013, 9:51 AM.
The true Sikh - male or female - who follows Guru Nanak and Sikhi is, by definition, a feminist.
2: I Grewal (USA), April 18, 2013, 10:28 AM.
A fine and timely focus, I agree. Gender-based violence and equality are and must be the focus of the present. I agree that at the heart of Sikhi is equality between the sexes, and the expectation is that women will be treated with respect and equality. It is in the daily practices that we have lost sight of this essential tenet. Issues of gender inequality are so deeply embedded in our daily life practices that they have become invisible through their widespread acceptance as 'tradition.' I remember being really upset at how differently members of my family were treated based on their gender and vowed to make a difference. I am now working on writing my dissertation which focuses on the intersection of gender, poverty and education - based on research done in Punjab. I am also making a documentary on the lives of six of the girls I worked with, highlighting their status within their community. Please keep the conversation going because it is ordinary citizens such as us who have the ability and opportunity to make a difference.
3: Raj (Canada), April 18, 2013, 11:35 PM.
I thought Sikhs are supposed to be colour, creed, caste and gender blind. Why promote any such designation when we are in it together? We need to understand gurbani on a deeper level.
4: Gurpreet (Surrey, British Columbia, Canada), April 19, 2013, 12:26 AM.
Western feminism is an economic strategy for the advancement implemented by liberal, white middle class women, and in a perverse way, it contributes to tremendous social inequality in order to benefit the owners of capital in our societies. It is the ideology that arose in the US when it moved into the post-industrial age and office work began to rise as a component of the economy. Under hunting and gathering, agriculture and industrial society, when we lived close to nature, we implemented a division of labor -- men took the physically arduous work, while women the tasks of nurturing. The gender roles developed over centuries to reflect this basic underlying factor. When we moved into a post-industrial economy, physical power became redundant and the only point of importance became cognitive skills. This transformation brought increasing number of women into the labor force and this is reflected in the rise of the second wave of feminism. But because feminism is so liberal, it is so open to exploitation by capitalists. The increasing presence of women in the workplace increased labor supply and drove down wages. This, along with the outsourcing of work overseas, has devastated the men in our societies. As both men and women competed for economic recompense of a shrinking economic pie, and as capital became hegemonic in the 1970s onwards, all our social relations became unstable. What happened in the domestic sphere? Where previously one salary -- a man's -- was enough to run a family, now both needed to work as the real wages, inflation adjusted, were going down. And they kept on going down from 1970s in the 'real' sense. In the domestic sphere, this increasing need to work more for less money has produced broken families. Divorce rates skyrocketed and N. America began experiencing a demographic decline. The only thing keeping the N. American society going is the ponzi scheme that keeps on bringing immigrants to fill the declining no. of children that couples are having. Women's happiness has, rather than going up, gone down in N. America (look up study by Justin Wolfers and his wife from Wharton on this) since the rise of feminism. The upwardly mobile children of Sikh immigrants brought up in N. America are taught to see domestic relationships through feminist lenses. And quite naturally, given their comfort in the more more affluent classes, they begin to subscribe to feminism. But the reality of the world is that they are reflecting their own self-interest in an economic and social sense. What in fact does end up happening to the women who call themselves feminist (and they are all professional women; tell me when you see someone who has to struggle cleaning other people's homes who think a job is a great thing) try to find mates who are themselves feminine (and thus these women become very dissatisfied with them as they cannot fulfill the need of polarity) or more commonly, these professional women remain unmarried. By the time they wake up, it is too late. Feminists are working themselves out of the gene pool and they don't even know it.
5: I Grewal (USA), April 19, 2013, 9:55 AM.
I see some merit in your argument, Gurpreet, but strongly disagree with your implication that feminism is a Western conception or that it is driven by capitalistic greed. At the heart of feminism, a very large word with many meanings associated with it, for me is empowering women with the ability to make their own choices and to be treated equally (not similarly) as men. I agree that neo-liberal forces have created greed in our society that has had a critical impact on family structure and individual and family well-being ... I do not think it is feminism that is responsible for this. Feminism is as much a Western concept as it is an Eastern concept. Take for example the Gulabi Gang - women (most of whom are illiterate) in rural central India who wear pink saris and have taken up the responsibility to protect and speak up against violence against women. Practices of female infanticide, dowry, child marriage, high rates of female illiteracy, female genital mutilation, dowry deaths, gang rapes (the list could go on and on) have not been shaped by capitalistic forces but by patriarchy which traditionally dis-empowers women.
6: Charandeep Singh (Chandigarh, Punjab), April 19, 2013, 10:08 AM.
It is true that there is no gender bias in Sikhi but at the same time the role of the fairer sex cannot be underestimated. I personally think that the women have a great role to play in Sikhi. The first tutor of a child is his/her mother. A lot depends upon her whether she passes on the tradition and faith that the family follows, to the child. Bedtime stories told by a grandmother will not be forgotten by a man/woman even when he/she become older. And if the tales happen to be of the Sahibzaadey, Banda Singh Bahadar or Mai Bhaago, the child will definitely feel drawn to our great faith. I live in Punjab and when I see around, I see so many Sikhs boys and girls giving up 'bani' and 'bana' both. I greatly feel that if the mothers of these young boys and girls had introduced them to their traditions, culture and faith, they would not have strayed.
7: Manish Bhatia (Delhi, India), April 19, 2013, 12:02 PM.
Gurpreet, you have some original insights. Can you recommend further reading that expand on the ideas you discuss?
8: Gurpreet (Surrey, British Columbia, Canada), April 19, 2013, 4:12 PM.
In regards to feminism being an Eastern thing, well, not really. Feminism is a thoroughbred western idea and therefore women from Eastern cultures have struggled with it. What feminists in the west see as development, is not the same in the East. In the East, where most people still live on farms, you have a social order built around the importance of men's physical power needed for farming. Unless you have women who can do agriculture, you have to live with patriarchy, which itself was a reflection of our ancestors' need to survive in relation to nature. Nature was unpredictable and we needed to organize ourselves to survive, thus, given the better physical power of males, certain tasks became the domain of men, and certain others of women. Also, the reason women specialized in nurture was because they bring children into this world. All the new age feminists who want men to play an equal role in raising children never think that men are not naturally shaped by thousands of years of evolution to be nurturing. There is a reason women have breasts and men do not. Women's role is very important in human societies and we need to establish that, but the western feminists are short-sighted and they are themselves laying the foundation for the destruction of their societies.
9: Gurpreet (Surrey, Canada), April 20, 2013, 2:39 AM.
Dear Manish Bhatia: I suggest "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness", by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. Some of the ideas above are present in common debates about feminism, but the historical development of feminism and post industrial economy are my ideas and I am working on putting an article together.