Supreme Court and Gender stereotyping

While SC handbook of gender neutral terminology is a welcome initiative, deep seated patriarchal biases will take much more than that to pave way for gender equality. — Dr. Jaya Kakkar

India has a patriarchal mindset. Majority members, and this unfortunately includes women as well, believe that all women want to have children; women are overly emotional; they cannot take decisions; women ought to be submissive or subordinate to men; wives should do all household chores; they should look after husband’s parents; working women do not care about their children well the list is endless. What does it mean in practice? Well, let’s take only select examples since space here is limited.
In India women are less likely to be taught to read and work, not to talk of securing employment. A majority of them don’t use internet. There is a huge gender gap between men and women in terms of economic independence, equal wages, equal opportunity, social status, employment possibilities, indeed the respectful existence in the society. In engineering and technology courses; these are only 1.1 million women (2.6 million men), and in the emerging and promising area of IT and computer science, as against 5 lakh men there are 3 lakh women. Why? Because women don’t have a suitable mindset for STEM courses, it is believed (but untrue).
Infact, fewer than 10% of women were literate in India in earlier time. Appreciably this number has risen to 71.5% (2019-21). But the figure for men is 84.4%. Women have fewer opportunities than men if one includes all forms of employment. The women labour force participation rate is merely 24%. Only 37% women, out of a total of 100%, have PAN cards, as against the remaining 63% for men. Only 33% women use internet. 
Not only economic deprivation, other statistics are equally telling. India’s top publicly traded companies saw a 70% surge in sexual harassment complaints during FY23 from the previous year. Gender justice is a far cry indeed for most India women, married or unmarried, employed or not, young or old. In this background every step taken, howsoever, small, to ameliorate the situation is welcome indeed. So the Supreme Court’s initiative to combat gender stereo types is laudable. When in America smoking was more a socially acceptable practice (showing how cool one was) than a serious health hazard, a cigarette company ran an ad campaign aimed at women which featured a slogan: You have come a long way baby. Nobody objected to the use of the word baby, as none had objection to equating gander liberation with adopting smoking as a habit. Women always have been the ‘second sex’. Indira Gandhi was called a gungi gudiya (dumb doll) by the Indian patriarchy when she became the first (and the only, so far) women PM of India. Words used for and thought about women, are indeed pernicious; they need to change. But more importantly gendered attitudes need to change. The problem of course is not just words; rather it is the mindset and thinking behind them. The problem arises when the judges counsel rape survivors to marry their rapists or see the dereliction of household duties by wives as grounds for divorce. Women need the language of autonomy and equal rights; words must see these women as citizens not daughters dependent on the protective umbrella of any sort. 
Women are often seen as wily, unscrupulous, and promiscuous; if the ‘no’ is ‘feeble’ to attempts of a rapist then convictions become hard. Likewise women who are accustomed to intercourse then sex with them may not be a big issue. However, this is not to say that words don’t matter. Supreme Court has taken a significant step by unveiling a handbook which combats stereotypes based on gender.
In the quest for equal rights for all, it has released guidelines to take on harmful gender stereotypes that promote inequalities between gender – of all kinds, economic, social, personal ….. As a first step the judges identify language that promotes archaic and false notions about women; then they offer alternative words and phrases. Thus a lady is no more adulteress but one who has engaged in sexual relation outside of marriage. A housewife is a home maker. Stereotypes (a stereotype incidentally is a fixated idea that people have about someone or something, especially an incorrect idea) which lead to exclusion and discrimination are sought to be demolished since these lead to common presumptions about the way sexual harassment, rape, assault, and other crimes which are skewed against women. Hopefully, no more judgments like the one by the Madhya Pradesh High Court which asked a sexual harassment accused to get the victim to tie him a rakhi and vow to protect her.
The Supreme Court, rightly, suggests that courts should take social realities (such as the fact that women who are sexually assaulted may not be able to immediately report the traumatic incident) and other challenges facing women seriously. It emphasizes that it is wrong to assume that women are overly emotional, illogical and are incapable of taking a decision. It admits that Indian women faces considerable hardships in deciding for herself as to what they should do in life (say, to have a child or not; ofcourse court demolishes the view that all women want a child). In a largely patriarchal society, a girl may be forced to get married to avoid a social stigma; what she may have really wanted could be decent education and financially secure career. 
To be sure, things we changing; the pace, however, is agonizingly slow. To achieve gender equality, fundamental changes need to be administered in the society to kill all stereotypes. That women (housewife who is a loving mother) are more nurturing and better suited to core for others, and should do all household chores are abhorrent notions and need to be discarded. The hand book issued by the highest court may have the express purpose of guiding the lawyers and judges to be gender neutral sensitive, but we must look at it from a larger perspective of it being a catalyst for change at the societal level. Not that it has not happened earlier.
Courts in India have contributed significantly towards a gender just social order even when deep rooted patriarchal values oppose such ‘correction’. Thus it has decriminilised adultery and homosexually. It has framed guidelines to prevent sexual harassment at workplace. This is not to suggest that the society has shed its biases against ‘second sex’ or that majority of courts have unshackled themselves from having a patriarchal mindset. Yet, a begging has been made. 
An insistence on using the appropriate expression is not merely rhetorical or an engagement with semantics. Rather it is a significant step in building a new mindset that is more inclined towards a nuanced gendered attitude towards women and the issues afflicting them. The path is strewn with hurdles but the steps need to be taken, firmly and swiftly.           qq
 

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