Mobiles and Moral Policing: UP Women’s Commission Member’s Comment On Rape Cases Is Patriarchal Censorship
The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified pre-existing gender gaps across India’s socio-economic determinants. Be it in getting vaccinated, testing for the virus or availing critical healthcare, reports reveal how India’s women are being left far behind. At a time when women’s rights to their bodily autonomy is weakened, a member of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) State Women’s Commission was in news for a controversial comment on rising rape cases in the state.
A reportedly purported video clip featuring commission member Meena Kumari’s sexist remarks that she made when asked about the increasing number of rape cases reported in the state was widely shared online last week. Kumari was in Aligarh on Wednesday to review the special vaccination booths for women in the district. She said that “daughters should not be given mobile phones,” adding, “(daughters) end up in such situations because of their mothers’ carelessness.”
In the video, Kumari tells reporters, “I would like to appeal to people to not give mobile phones to daughters, and if they do, they should keep an eye on them. Firstly, I would like to say to mothers that they should take care of their daughters.”
“People will have to watch their daughters. Where are they going… Which boys are they sitting with, and there is a need to watch their mobile phone too. I would like to say that they talk on mobile phones and the matter reaches this point that they elope with someone and get married.”
Kumari’s comment is not standalone. A few months earlier, a member of the National Commission for Women, Chandramukhi Devi, commented that the gangrape and murder of a 50-year-old woman in UP’s Budaun could have been avoided if she had not gone out in the evening. In a patriarchal society, even older women are subject to victim blaming and shaming. The sexist narrative coerces women in believing in their own shame and limitations.
When Kumari asks mothers to “watch” over their daughters, one can’t help thinking of the patriarchal big daddy watch that restricts women’s mobility. At a time when mobile revolution has penetrated India’s grassroots sections, a mobile phone is not just a device but agency in the hands of a young girl in any part of India.
Gender divide in technology
India has the world’s highest data usage per smartphone at an average of 9.8GB per month, according to a 2019 report by Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson. While on one hand, the rise in the consumption of smartphones and data is attributed to a burgeoning population of youth, mainly millennials, a deep gender divide indicates a disproportionate lack of access to technology.
If access to technology is a socio-economic marker, a 2018 Harvard Kennedy School study estimated that in India, while 71% men use mobile phones, only 38% of women do so, making for a case in gender divide.
Mobile or digital literacy is significant too. First, most women and girls, especially in suburban and rural areas, do not own but borrow devices from their brothers/husbands and that in itself reduces their independence and diversification of mobile use. Second, even those, and this includes both young married women and adolescent girls, with ownership are under surveillance that permits them to use mobiles only within homes or access “permissible” sites. Fathers or other patriarchal figureheads reportedly fear that daughters will use the mobile to chat with boys and run away with one of them. A fear that was espoused by Kumari in her comment.
Also read: Training To Fight COVID-19 Leads Tribal Women In Gujarat To Digital Inclusion
Sexist surveillance of women’s sexuality
Kumari’s comment is rooted in the unwritten surveillance of women’s bodies by the State or state-appointed bodies. It’s a system that feeds off internalized patriarchal codes.
Gatekeepers of such moral propositions — both men and women — see it only fitting that girls should act responsibly and not transgress ‘appropriate boundaries’. The question is who decides what is appropriate? And, why do girls need to be thus schooled in dressing, talking and behaving appropriately?
Adolescent sexuality is sneered at by institutionalized patriarchy as it potentially endangers its fault lines of control and coercion. Romantic imagination, sexual curiosity, teenage love, romance and sex itself is antithetical to concepts of provincial patriarchy. Such patriarchy has its roots in an archaic feudal system that prides itself on caste-prescribed kinship ties.
In fact, the notion of a good girl is ingrained in patriarchal imagination. The typical image of a ‘good girl’ is one who obeys, not defies; who listens, not talks. At the heart of the image of a good girl is the notion of virginal purity. Patriarchy demands chastity.
When Kumari implies that mobiles can ‘corrupt’ girls, leading them to elope with boys, she is only pandering to the underlying sexist assumption of girls being delicate and requiring patriarchal protection. The psychology is to punish young girls who violate the code of ‘honor’ — an archaic value that sanctions the monitoring of their sexuality.
If one looks at the bois locker room controversy last year where a group of privileged, school-going, teenage Delhi boys shared morphed, obscene images of girls and made objectionable comments on Instagram, it makes it evident how toxic masculinity is hardwired into boys right from a young age. The culture of toxic masculinity thrives at homes, schools, community playgrounds, family gatherings, and now on family WhatsApp groups. So, the problem is not the mobile phone — a window to the world outside — but the culture that informs and controls such communication and a lack of adequate sexuality education.
Also read: Gender Disparity: How COVID-19 Threatens Girls' Education And Their Future
The mobile revolution can only be effective when it is able to impact the lives of girls and women in communities where their decision-making power is low. Through information and access, technology can lead girls to socio-economic empowerment and shape a more gender equitable society. Today, when the mobile phone is set to liberate girls from being passive or mute, it shouldn't be seized once again by patriarchal censorship.
(Edited by Amrita Ghosh)
