It Starts Early: How a Girl Child is Told to Mind ‘Ghar Ki Izzat’

Restrictions on what girls are and are not allowed to do start from a young age.

They are told that public spaces are unsafe for them, and hence, they’d best stay at home. The reason that public spaces are so unsafe for women seem to be rooted in the very idea that a woman’s place is within the household, rather than the other way around.

This cycle is further fuelled by the attitude that making women feel unsafe, or verbally and physically assaulting them, takes away some aspect of their worth, and thus crimes against women are often used as tools to punish, humiliate or disparage her, her family, and/or her community.

In this context, and a relatively less rational reason for keeping women at home, is the need to protect the “honour” of women and, in consequence, of her people. Girl children quickly become responsible for upholding “ghar ki izzat” (i.e. honour) and as a result girls, their behaviour, and their freedom come under scrutiny from everyone around them.

These attitudes lend girls to be controlled by various members of her family and community from the time she hits puberty.

Two Disadvantages a Girl Child Faces

While female disadvantage during early childhood can be identified by parents investing fewer resources in their daughters compared to their sons, from the time a girl hits adolescence she is disadvantaged in two ways:

1. The first is by the aforementioned son preference that carries over from her childhood. For example, a girl who was fed less than her brother as an infant is likely to face several health issues as she grows. Similarly, if her parents did not invest in her education in primary school, they are probably not going to invest much more in her secondary schooling.
2. The second way in which she is disadvantaged is by her loss of freedom over her physical being. A girl’s body is objectified, sexualised and even politicised throughout her life. Girls are taught how to dress, speak, and behave in ways that show society they are “from good families”. Girls are also taught how to move about in public spaces or even in their own homes in the presence of male members. For example, women in some communities follow the practice of purdah/ burkah/ gunghat, where they must hide their faces in public and/ or in front of men (even from their own family). All these practices speak to the idea that spaces are owned by men, and women must only find ways to traverse through them.

The Need to ‘Take Permission’

Studies over the years have found that women even use public spaces differently from men, rarely using them for leisure, but rather only functionally - to get from point A to B.

Even women who do venture out into public spaces might find themselves self – censoring their own presence in these spaces to avoid attracting “unwanted attention” only because, if they were to fall victim to a crime, society would blame them for making a victim out of themselves, rather than the criminal.

For this reason, we find that women might choose to study in only specific colleges or take up such jobs that involve travelling safer routes, or are within their home city. In all these cases, women end up compromising on the quality of, or forgoing entire experiences so as to remain out of harm’s way.

While a boy’s need to take permission reduces and fades away after a certain age, for girls the need to take permission to venture outside the household does not change but rather changes hands from one permission giver to the next, where the baton is passed on from her parents, to her in-laws and husbands post marriage, and sometimes even to the court (read: Hadiya’s case).

Much of this seems to be rooted in the idea that a woman’s honour is precious and needs protection. What else can explain the fact that the very law made to protect women against certain crimes is described as “outraging the modesty of women”?

Lack of Access to Public Spaces

Finally, it is pertinent to note that such restrictions and seemingly outdated practices are not a thing of the past, and are definitely not a trait of only the poor, rural or “backward” groups (a rather smugly held belief by us elite).

For example, according to nationally representative data (Indian Human Development Survey) from 2012, women in urban India face greater risk of harassment than women in rural India. Further, women from poorer households, and those from Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SC/Ts) are more likely to be “allowed to work” by their husbands and in-laws than wealthier women from upper caste Hindu households.

A woman’s lack of access to basic public spaces such as education or good jobs ensures that the cycle disadvantage she faced since childhood continues, by seeping into various other aspects of her life. This might include her ability to become independent, or her ability to maintain a healthy sense of self-worth.

This is important as a large body of work discusses how the ability to be free to take part in activities that one values (especially activities involving social interaction and contributing to society) has a huge part to play in improving a person’s overall happiness. Further, for women to have such freedom and agency is not only socially desirable and beneficial for their families, but also contributes to overall economic growth and prosperity.

(Nisha Vernekar is an economics graduate student at SOAS, University of London. Karan Singhal works at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. This is the second part of articles discussing female disadvantage in various stages of a woman’s life (Read the first part on early childhood female disadvantage here)