Societal Role of Women Response-Baccus

Over the past few weeks, we have read about and discussed an array of issues faced by women in the developing world including beatings, female infanticide, honor killings, war rape, forced prostitution, and their lack of property rights, which are heavily spurred by how each particular developing culture perceives women and moreover their role in society. Whenever one talks of a culture’s perception of women, it is important to remember that cultural perceptions include both men’s views and women’s views, which are often more similar than many might first assume. In Half the Sky, when Kristof discusses the persistence of female infanticide in many countries, he notes that it is often mothers who continue to kill their daughters. In addition, men and women in many cultures believe a woman who is disobedient to her husband deserves to be beaten. As we discovered from our readings, Zoya a young bride from Afghanistan who was brutally beaten by her husband and his entire family serves as testimony to this fact. Despite her own tragic experience, she maintained that she “should not have been beaten, because [she] was always obedient and did what [her] husband said. But if the wife is truly disobedient, then of course her husband has to beat her.” Thus, it is important to remember that women as well as men perpetuate the culturally appropriate role of women and the value placed on women in their societies.

However, sometimes cultural appropriateness can have its own grey areas. Honor killings and virginity tests in Muslim societies are often culturally justified by supposedly Islamic beliefs. As Ilkkarracan notes, the Qur’an does forbid adultery, but it also specifically requires 4 witnesses of an adulterous act and otherwise specifies that the woman’s word should be taken. In fact, the Qur’an calls for both men and women who commit adultery to be punished, not just women. This brings up an important question: how can something be culturally or religiously justified when its basis is questionable? Women’s movements in Muslim countries protesting practices against women supposedly based in Islam seem to be asking that very question and I think they illustrates an important aspect of women’s roles in societies: they can change. Moreover, considering the ever-globalizing nature of our world today and the exposure to other cultures and knowledge that this nature yields, women’s roles in the developing countries of the 21st century have the propensity to be incredibly dynamic and this could have drastic impacts on what is deemed culturally appropriate in these societies in the future.

This section’s readings also spurred many conversations about judgments of right and wrong during our weekly meetings. Can we as a group judge wife beatings or even honor killings in developing countries as wrong? Based on the perceptions of our society, wife beatings and honor killings are obviously perceived as wrong, but it is important to remember that these acts are not occurring in our society. However, what is the limit of context? Should some values really be universal? These seemed to be more difficult questions that none of us really could answer, but that continue to perplex me.

Last summer, I participated in a basic training program at the Grameen Bank, a microfinance institute in Bangladesh which targets women borrowers. While I was there, I was told many times by Grameen Bank staff and women village borrowers that one of the biggest impediments to the Grameen Bank in its initial stages was the perceived culturally appropriate role of women in Bangladesh. As noted previously, this cultural perception was propagated by Bengali women as well as men, which made convincing both men and women to allow women to take micro-loans extremely difficult. Previously in Bangladesh, a man only had to say “I divorce you,” three times to leave his wife, which often left women and children in extremely vulnerable positions. Additionally, since Bangladesh is a majority Muslim country, the practice of purdah was widespread, which meant that the women were often confined to the home, the woman’s domain. Moreover, poor women would often be the ones to go hungry when food was scarce, which ultimately says something about the value being placed on women. Initiatives like the Grameen Bank helped to change the culturally appropriate role for women in Bangladesh, but I am interested to what extent the role of women changed. Acid attacks against women, albeit at a reduced rate, still occur in Bangladesh today. There are even some claims that many women’s microcredit loans are really controlled by men and that wife beatings for some female borrowers have actually increased as men attempt to reassert their control over women. Thus, I believe analyzing the current lives of women in Bangladesh will prove to be an incredibly interesting and enlightening topic for further research throughout the semester.