1900-Present Document 5: South Asia & S.E.

Asia
Bentley, Jerry. Traditions and Encounters. 1999.
In the 1980s only 25 percent of Indian women were literate, and women remained largely confined to
the home. The percentage of women in the workforce declined to 12 percent, and the birth rate remained
high despite birth control measures. This condition has ensured a life of domesticity for many Indian
women. The issue that has most dramatically illustrated the perilous status of women in south Asia, though,
is the prevalence of dowry deaths. What makes the birth of girl children in India so burdensome is the
custom of paying dowries (gifts of money or goods) to the husband and his family upon a woman's marriage,
a requirement that is difficult for many Indian families to meet. If the husband and his family perceive the
dowry as inadequate, if the husband wants a new wife without returning his first wife's dowry, or even if
the wife has simply annoyed the husband or her in-laws, the wife is doused with kerosene and set on fireso that her death can be explained as a cooking accident. Some seven hundred official cases of dowry
deaths were reported in Delhi alone in 1983.
This form of domestic abuse has not been restricted to India and Hindu women, but has spread through
south Asia. In Pakistan more than five hundred husbands set fire to their wives between 1994 and 1997.
The motives for burnings go beyond dowry, as husbands have set fire to wives who overcooked or oversalted the men's food. The victims themselves, some of whom survive, voice perhaps the saddest aspect
of this treatment: resignation to their fate. One Pakistani survivor noted, "It's my fate. From childhood, I
have seen nothing but suffering." These attitudes may be changing, though, as Indian and Pakistani women
activists challenge these practices and establish shelters for women threatened with burning.
Around the world most women have the right to vote. They do not, however, exert political power
commensurate with their numbers. Some women have nonetheless attained high political offices or
impressive leadership positions. The same south Asia that revealed so many continued barriers to women's
rights on a day-to-day basis also elevated numerous women to positions of power, breaking down other
political barriers. Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) and Benazir Bhuto (1953-2008) led India and Pakistan as
effective politicians, having been raised by fathers who themselves were prominent in politics. In 1994
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (1945-) became the first female president of Sri Lanka. Both of her
parents had previously served as prime ministers, her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike (1916-) became the
first elected woman prime minister in 1960. As president, Kumaratunga appointed her mother to serve a
third term as prime minister.
In Myanmar (formerly Burma), Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (1945-) has emerged as a leader, again deriving
her political authority from her father Aung San, assassinated in 1947. Assuming the leadership of the
democracy after her return from exile in 1988, Suu Kyi called for a nonviolent revolution against Myanmar's
"fascist government." The government placed her under house arrest from 1989 to 1995, during which time
she created a new political institution, the "gateside meeting," speaking to her followers from behind the
gates of her home. In the 1990 elections Suu Kyi and her party won a landslide victory, but they were not
allowed to come to power. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in 1991, she could not accept the
award personally because she was under house arrest.
Women demonstrated their leadership abilities in a variety of ways. They became highly visible political
figures, as in south Asia, or they more anonymously joined organizations or participated in activities
designed to further the cause of women's rights. The United Nations launched a Decade for Women program
in 1975, and since then global conferences on the status of women have been held regularly, attracting large
crowds. Even in Iran, where the Islamic revolution severely limited opportunities for women, internal forces
could radically transform the image and role of women. Today revolutionary patrols walk the streets of Tehran
making sure that women conform to the society's rule of dress and behavior, but during the war with Iraq, Iranian
women themselves became revolutionary, picking up guns and receiving weapons training. They protected their

national borders while defying gender boundaries.

Drive the American Pigs out of South

Vietnam

India:
Girl babies are good!

India
Stearns, Peter. World Civilizations, 3 rd edition. 2000.

The example of both the Western democracies and the communist republics of eastern Europe, where women had
won the right to vote in the early and mid-20th century, encouraged the founders of the emerging nations to write
female suffrage into their constitutions. The very active part women played in many nationalist struggles was perhaps
even more critical to their earning the right to vote and run for political office. Women's activism also produced some
semblance of equality in legal rights, education, and occupational opportunities under the laws of many new nations.
In India, women who had been exposed to Western education and European ways, such as Tagore's famous
heroine in the novel The Home and the World, came out of seclusion and took up supporting roles, although they
were still usually behind the scenes. Gandhi's campaign to supplant imported, machine-made British cloth with
homespun Indian cloth, for example, owed much of its success to female spinners and weavers. As nationalist leaders
moved their anti-colonial campaigns into the streets, women became involved in mass demonstrations. Throughout
the 1920s arid 1930s, Indian women braved the lathi, or billy club, assaults of the Indian police; suffered the
indignities of imprisonment; and launched their own newspapers and lecture campaigns to mobilize female support
for the nationalist struggle.
Despite the media attention given to women such as Indira Gandhi, Corazon Aquino, and Benazir Bhutto, who
have emerged in the decades since independence as national leaders, political life in most African and Asian countries
continues to be dominated by men. The overwhelming majority of elected officials and government administrators,
particularly at the upper levels of state bureaucracies, are men. Because they usually are less well educated than their

husbands, women in societies where genuine elections are held often do not exercise their right to vote, or they simply
vote for the party and candidates favored by their spouses.
Even the rise to power of individual women such as Indira Gandhi, who proved to be one of the most resolute
and powerful of all Third World leaders, is deceptive. In every case, female heads of state in the Third World entered
politics and initially won political support because they were connected to powerful men. Indira Gandhi was the
daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister; Corazon Aquino's husband was the martyred leader of the
Filipino opposition to Ferdinand Marcos; and Benazir Bhutto's father was a domineering Pakistani prime minister
who had been toppled by a military coup and was executed in the late 1970s. Lacking these sorts of connections,
most women have been at best relegated to peripheral political positions and at worst are allowed no participation in
the political process.
To begin with, early marriage ages for women and large families are still the norm in most Asian societies. This
means that women spend their youthful and middle-age years having children. There is little time to think of higher
education or a. career.
Because of the low level of sanitation in many societies and the scarcity of food in many, all but elite and upper
middle-class women experience chronic anxiety about such basic issues as adequate nutrition for their children and
their susceptibility to disease. The persistence of male-centric customs directly affects the health and life expectancy
of women themselves. For example, the Indian tradition that dictates that women first serve their husbands and
sons and then eat what is left has obvious disadvantages. The quantity and nutritional content of the leftovers is
likely to be lower than of the original meals, and in tropical environments flies and other disease bearing insects are
more likely to have fouled the food.
In the 1970s, for example, it was estimated that as much as 20 percent of the female population of India was
malnourished and that another 30 percent had a diet that was well below acceptable United Nations levels.
Although the highly secular property and divorce laws many new states passed after independence have given
women much greater legal protection, many of these measures are ignored in practice. Very often, African and
Asian women have neither the education nor the resources to exercise their legal rights. The spread of religious
revivalism in many cases has further eroded these rights, even though advocates of a return to tradition often argue
that practices such as veiling and stoning for women (but not men) caught in adultery actually enhance their dignity
and status. Most women continue to be dominated by male family members, are much more limited than men in
their career opportunities, and are likely to be less well fed, educated, and healthy than men at comparable social
levels