(skeleton of TP3, Strat)

Gendered stratification has existed since as early as the conception of time itself, a gendered
division of labour that has persisted with being equated to men's space in the domain of culture,
while women would be seen as equivalent to nature. But here we shall look at it through the Indian
Hinduised lens, beginning with the diktats enumerated in the Manusmriti. Further on, this paper will
examine first the position of widows overall in the course of history, the plight of widows as
compared to widowers and non-widows when examined within the fold of gendered discrimination.

A slew of reforms came up in the 19th century towards the overall upliftment and improvement of
women.

Such a rigid understanding of widowhood has come to evolve over the years, where we shall now
trace, from developments in the 19th century onwards till the present, the state of widows within a
caste-class paradigm

Simone de Beauvoir, in her seminal text "The Second Sex" fights the case of woman, beginning with
the assertion that women are not equal to men, simply because they are individuals in their own
right.

Beauvoir talks primarily of the process of "Other"ing then in relation to the One, where she carves
out a chronology of texts that speak of women in terms of "that which is not man".

She says that to accept the existence of the human beings in their individuality without categorizing
them in would also mean to completely deny the existence and as such the discrimination (the
stratification) that is meted out to "Jews, Negroes, women".

She brings in Levi-Strauss' concept of binary opposition in these situations saying that a heterosexual
pair would then identify fundamental unity in "a totality of which the two components are necessary
to one another

This then, is compared to a master-slave relationship where the slave is never freed due to his/her
economic dependency on the former. What is the source of emancipation here then? To reject this
Other'ing, Beauvoir says.

Overall, Beauvoir calls out the double standards that men and women are projected to -
economically, socially, culturally, physically and mentally.

The industrial revolution becomes a key point of departure where women enter the domain of paid
work, which brings out competition amongst the sexes, as women are already accustomed to
working for lower wages and hence if looked at within the ambit of capitalism, are the ones whose
labour would be far more utilitarian.

How is it then that this master-slave dynamic came to play in the first place?
This kind of literature then, the one that Beauvoir points out as key constructionists of sexist
knowledge, has had its equivalents in the Indian context as well.

In India, the status of women has been equated with a lot of things but not women's individuality.

A step further and one even finds caste defaming, female pronouns being hurled at people. In the
Indian context, women of a lower class, of a lower caste, of being a woman in itself is a
disadvantage.

Gender roles constrict women to the domestic sphere, as even religious texts confirm this.

As the caste system is founded on economic grounds, it finds space for women too, on economic
grounds.

Pandita Ramabai writes in her essay titled "The High Caste Hindu Woman" of the deplorable state of
women in India.

Ramabai talks of the state of Indian widows in length, when she goes into depth about the state of
those whose condition is prescribed since childhood - child widows who would have lost their
husbands before attaining puberty and thus entering the groom's household just yet.
Regardless of what strata they belonged to, widowhood came from Manu in harsh tones.

All of this came as diktats from the very literature that decided caste behaviour and occupation.
The Hindu Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 changed all of this, ensuring that widows could remarry
again on the condition that they would forsake any property inherited from a former husband.

This change was fought for by reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, where the act of sati had also
been abolished through the efforts of Raja Ram Mohun Roy.

Widows have thus been shunned and demarcated even after laws like the remarriage and property
acts, the Hindu Succession Act etc had been executed.

The economic stability of widows depends on the kind of household they have facilitated - whether
it has been a single household (where there is at least one widow), nuclear household (widows with
unmarried children) and extended (where a widow lives with extended members of the deceased
husband's or her own family). (Dreze and Srinivasan. `1996).

In a way, the restraints of caste affect the economic viability of a widow as well since the pressure of
jobs, of working for herself is paramount and yet she is socially shunned from such ventures.

Many of the women who come here do so because the city is reputed on its claims of being
generous, or of being a kind of spiritual destination for women after their husband's death.
Thus, the spectacle of ill treating a widow is considered right, even justified from what we have seen
here. As old as these rules are, even with attempts at getting rid of them or even improving upon
them, the trenches of caste discrimination, of religious marginalization stand strong even today. The
maltreatment of widows cut through economic and caste dimensions, it is by virtue of gender that
these hardships prevail.