Roots And Shadow Shashi Despande Analysis

Women in India are looked as housewives, who have to please her family especially her husband, therefore education is rarely an option for girls in India. Neeraj who is fifteen years old lives in India with her father, mother, sister and other relatives. She does many chores, as well as grazing goats, and farming. Just like in Afghanistan, the boys never do house work, so while she helps her mother with the house work her brothers play outside. Neeraj dreams of becoming a teacher, and building a school for her students. Since she has to help with the house work, she attends school at night, by the time she gets back her family members have already gone to bed. To make things worse for Neeraj, a drought occurred in the year of 2006; her parents took her out of school, so that she could find green pasture. While she was gone she did not study, making her fall behind in school. When she returned four months later, she worked hard to get caught up again but it was hard. Since, many parents began enrolling their kids in public schools during the day, the night school was closed down. Neeraj’s teacher did his best to help her get into the public school, but because Neeraj had forgotten so much information, she was placed in second grade. All the younger kids made fun of her since she was so big, and did not know anything. Neeraj ended up dropping out of school; her teacher says that “is up to her family to decide what it will be like for Neeraj.” Neeraj’s parents plan to marry her to a young educated man. With this in mind, Neeraj is not planning on returning to school, instead she is waiting to be married, and to form a family of her own. Therefore, if Neeraj does not marry an educated wealthy man, she will not live a prosperous life. Moving on, there is one last kid, whose name is Ken, who as well has great dreams of completing

Gender refers to the socially constructed categories of feminine and masculine. It is one of the major factors in social difference and inequality in today’s society. Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals based on their gender. It arises from differences in socially constructed gender roles. Using a paragraph based approach I intend to individually analyse various aspects of gender differences referencing to the theory of socialisation and also making links to the works of Marx, Durkham and Goffman. My essay will cover different aspects of gender inequalities still present in today’s contemporary society.

The textbook Sociological Footprints points out, “it is through the ways in which we present ourselves in our daily encounters with others that gender is created and recreated.” Agents of socialization start within

In the typical Indian family, gender construction manifests itself especially in the roles of men and women in the household. As Judith Lorber so aptly put, “gender is a process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities” which in turn, creates the social differences that define a “man” and “woman” (Lorber). It is these differences that are used to construct and maintain an established gender order within the family. In the conventional Indian family, the order is such that the roles of the women in the household revolve around the roles of the men. This structure was something that I saw from an early age in my parents’ marriage. Though my parents defied the Indian norm of the arranged marriage, they still represented the quintessential model of an Indian couple in many other ways. My mother left her job to become a stay-at-home mom when I was about six years old. However, even before she left her job, she was implicitly expected by my father to shoulder most of the housework including cooking, cleaning, and caring for my older brother

She is a born storyteller who proved her sustained creativity with the novel form. She is one of the widely read post–independence Indian English writers who write consciously of the issues that concern the educated middle class woman in Indian society. She attempts to closely analyze man-woman relationship within the perimeters of family and the contemporary social set-up. She primarily focuses on the captivating problems and the suffocating environs of her heroines, who struggle hard in this malicious and callous male-dominated world to discover their true identity. Shashi Deshpande's first book was The Legacy, a collection of short stories, and since then she has published dozens of stories. The authentic recreation of India, the outstanding feature of her stories, is a distinct feature of her novels also. There is nothing sensational or exotic about her India—no Maharajahs or snake charmers. She does not write about the grinding poverty of the Indian masses; she describes another kind of deprivation—emotional. The woman deprived of love, understanding, and companionship is the center of her work. She shows how traditional Indian society is biased against woman, but she recognizes that it is very often women who oppress their sisters, though their values are the result of centuries of

Johnsons define Patriarchy is a kind of society in which women participate and it is more Male dominated , male identified and male centered with an obsession with male control and it involves as an aspect with oppression of women. In Patriarchy the society is so dominated by males you will only see any positions of authority such as political, economic , legal ,religious, educational, military, domestic which are also severed by men. It can be Heads of the state or Head of the household in any position could be at corporate level or senior most jobs for example all are male dominant and in any situation if a women ever steps up to a position against a male, she would be questioned and her work will be devalued or can be treated sarcastically.

This film shows how the gender roles are created by society instead of the individuals. As per society, the women’s primary role should be taking care of the family while the men’s primary role should be taking care of financial work. After marriage, women’s interest and passions slowly fade out as she gets busy in taking care of children and the husband. For instance, Ayesha’s (Mr. Mehra’s daughter) mother-in-law often disapproves

It can be seen from several aspects that are highlighted in the story. Firstly, society emphasizes the importance of education only for boys but not for girls. Nirupama does not receive high education and is soon married off. During those time, girls do not have the privilege to pursue higher education. Instead, they would be married off as soon as they reach the right age which is still quite young. This is because women are viewed as a fickle being. People during this time argued that education has the potential to bring harm for women as their mind is easily corrupted. Even so, women's education should not be stopped completely. Instead, education for women should exist and has to be properly controlled so that women would not be easily swayed by bad or extreme form of knowledge, if their idea about women being fickle is true. This illustrates how society generally regards women to be in a lower position than

Hierarchy has a big role in India, men outrank women of similar age, and women are predetermined on beforehand as if they need to learn about their cultures dishes and how a proper women should behave compared to the boys that can do as they want. In the film “Bent It Like Beckham” we see how the hierarchy plays a role for Jess, her only dream is to become an professional football player, but her parents won’t allow it, especially her mom because she thinks that football is a manly thing and girls shouldn’t engage in such activities, but as for Jules parents they support her choices as becoming an professional footballer. Without socialization we do not become “human” socialization is defined by “the extent to which people try to control their

According to Michael Messner, our society practices the act of gender socialization by ignoring “group and contextual factors while overemphasizing ‘the constitutional and unfolding of individuals as boys or girls’” (312). Additionally, gender socialization is defining and executing actions that are masculine versus feminine. We have seen with extensive research that, through generations, the definition of gender socialization is conformed and practiced differently. As an example, I have interviewed two people from different generations and asked questions about their experiences and beliefs about masculinity and femininity role. Although there were similar answers, it is evident that gender is socialized differently between generations. The understanding of gender socialization is manipulated differently; however, there are similar beliefs throughout different ages of life.

Individuals learn gender norms of their society and come to develop an internal gender identity. They learn sets of rules for what is appropriate masculine and feminine behavior in a given culture. For these Bangladeshi women then, it is appropriate in their minor ethnic community to never leave their house (Kabeer 293). It is the women’s job to cook, clean, bear-children, and serve her husband (Kabeer 293). Thus, it is their cultural identity that shapes this gender segregation (Kabeer

Many women face discrimination throughout all stages of their life, beginning at (or even before) birth continuing as an infant, child, adolescent, and adult. While in the educated, urban middle class women’s rights continue to improve, there remains a strong bias against gender equality in those societal parts of India, where patriarchal traditions prevail; her self-image was torn into shreds by the patriarchal family which denied her basic freedom. Indian womanhood was mercilessly locked in the echo

An analysis of example can be derived from the aforementioned discriminatory sexist roles in India that prior to globalization highly favored the male population verses the female population. The female population in India has previously been less than second class citizens. Indian women's cultural roles have been previously defined by traditional customs that are centuries old and no longer apply in this day and age. Previous to globalization, Indian women were to take total domestic responsibility. They were not allowed formal education as the majority of teachers and pupils were male, and the chances of a female remaining chaste was slim in those settings, and related to tradition, females

Gender stratification is the cuts across all aspects of social life and social classes. It refers to the inequality distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women at the basis of their sex. The world has been divided and organized by gender, which are the behavioural differences between men and women that are culturally learnt (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218). The society is in fact historically shaped by males and the issue regarding the fact has been publicly reverberating through society for decades and now is still a debatably hot topic. Men and women have different roles and these sex roles, defined to be the set of behaviour’s and characteristics that are standard for each gender in a society (Singleton, 1987) are

Shashi Deshpande is a known name in the world of Literature today. She writes about the Indian soil, spreading its fragrance all over the world. Writing on Indian womanhood, she does not personalise incidents or situations. Her aim is to enlighten women folk to stand for their own rights.