Daily Times

It happened in the outdoor ward of a hospital some years ago. A family was there to visit some relatives. There was the husband, the wife and two children, a boy possibly of six and a girl a year or two younger. It was a sweltering June evening in a hall sans air conditioning. There was a lot of perspiration. The mother carried a water bottle that both toddlers vied for. The girl was hopping about to wrest the bottle from her mother when the mother asked her to stay put, “Pehle bhai, pehle bhai” (your brother first) she said and proceeded to let the boy take his fill. There was something in the woman’s tone that suggested it was somehow mandatory for the girl to surrender in favour of her bhai. The little girl resigned, as girls are supposed to in situations where they share an equal claim with the males. It was a sight that amply reflects two things: one, that discrimination begins at home and, two, that it requires the active collusion of the marginalised — womenfolk — for male ascendency to endure. But then, the question remains: why would a woman in her right mind promote disparity between her own children?

There is the common sense answer. The mother favours the son ostensibly because he will grow up to enter a profession, earn for the family and tend to the parents when they are old. The girl, on the other hand, will be married and sent off to live with her husband/in-laws for the remainder of her life. In this way, favouring the son over the daughter is approaching the issue with a long-term view. The view taken here is partial for a number of reasons but even if the long-term idea is entertained for a moment, it fails to consider that not all sons become breadwinners. If they do, they do not always support aging, ailing parents. Despite the lack of any concrete data, it can be assumed that a fair number of married women support one or both parents even after they have ritualistically left them.

Then there is the beyond-common-sense answer. Patriarchy is a grand narrative that provides relevance to the otherwise pretty ordinary lives some (most?) of our women live. The ‘order’ provides them with something to look up to. It is a grand structure that has existed for centuries. It is a visible hegemon that regulates most of the things we do. Some semblance of meaning is to be gained from associating with a place from where such power and prestige flow. It is like working for the colonial master. The brown-skinned munchi used to work for the fair-skinned babu. In its crude form, this relationship was that of master and slave but it was also a kind of settlement in which the slave would imbibe a fraction of the babu’s superior being. As he interacted with the master who personified the ‘order of things’, some of what defined the master would eventually rub off. The relationship gained a degree of mutuality. It gave the slave something to look forward to. In this way, the relationship did not remain a static instrument of oppression. At its most transformational moment, it made servility a vehicle for attaining power, or a semblance of it thereof.

At home, the munchis would become the babus and the women pushed to the periphery. In this colonisation of the domestic space, the whole process was to be replayed. The women would gain agency by playing patsy, like the eager domestic who sits close to the Chaudhry as a situational prop the Chaudhry needs for ‘yes-sirring’ and the occasional anecdote. For all his efforts, the domestic gets to take a pew close to the Chaudhry on public occasions. Visibility is an important factor. The domestic gets to share the regent’s space and benefits from the proximity value of this seating arrangement. It is symbolic enfranchisement. Submitting to the male order can be seen to work in the same way for some women, like the mother at the hospital.

For an oppressive structure to prevail, it needs to co-opt members from among those it practices its oppression upon. Taking up the cause of the male order might offer a sense of being part of something ‘big’, like the stone masons and labourers of yore who constructed towering edifices for their masters without being truly aware that they were building the structures of their own oppression (not like they had a choice in the matter). After a day’s toil they would sit in the shade of the same buildings, partaking some of their majesty. It may sound odd but patriarchy needs women to survive and thrive. Women like the mother at the hospital do just that.

If women are to gain agency, they have to lay claim to it from the figurative ‘outside’. At the margins, according to the bards of inspiration, lie the greatest opportunities for initiating change. Those at the periphery, by virtue of being there, might actually have a better view of things. Being ‘outside’ can sometimes be used as a vantage to build a bridge between the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’. The first order of business for us all, men and women — especially women — should be to condemn the approach adopted by people like the mother at the hospital, so as to bring them to see the folly of endorsing and hence perpetuating an oppressive order. Discrimination, after all, begins at home, and cannot flourish without the consent of women. For those who have been blessed with children, perhaps it is time to celebrate daughters for a change.

The writer is a lecturer in English Literature at Government College University, Lahore. He may be reached at sameeropinion@gmail.com