Culture, gender and resistance: Perspectives from India

Abstract

Every person plays multiple roles in a lifetime, and a sense of self is guided by the dialogical nature of relationships. Shared meanings and interpersonal interactions are the substance from which the sense of self is constructed. Gender can be approached from several perspectives in order to understand the social representations of women and men, femininity and masculinity. Within patriarchal communities, the status of women is a matter of concern. Movement away from essentialist notions of sex differences evolved into the feminist movement towards equality. Much ground has been covered in this regard. Womanhood remains a complex, contested domain as traditional notions of patriarchy persist in different ways in many parts of the world. This chapter deals with the lives of women in India, highlighting a range of phenomena that are relevant to the study of gender. The positions and counter-positions that are created in social interactions provide evidence for active meaning-making by individuals, who are not simply passive recipients of culture, but active agents who strategically choose compliance, resistance, renewal or rupture during their life course. Through stories of specific women, we provide illustrations of resistance to traditional forms of family life, sometimes from within the system and sometimes in confrontation with it.