Still the Second Sex? Exploring Gender Discrimination and Exploitation of Indian Women as seen in Girls by Mrinal Pande and Chauthi Ka Joda by Ismat Chugtai
Abstract
For ages now, the Indian woman, the highly glorified “bharatiya naari”, has continuously been taken for granted by the patriarchal society of India. She has always been considered as the insignificant ‘other’, ‘the Second Sex’, the weaker, unimportant one and has persistently been looked upon as a slave to serve man and an object to satisfy him. It is because of this, that her emotions, feelings, necessities and desires have never been given enough importance. Her standards of living are defined by the society and almost all the other decisions of her life, which are only supposed to be taken by her, are fixed by the “men” in her life. She has either been elevated or worshipped like a goddess or she has been degraded and shunned like an outcast, but she has never been thought of as what she actually is – a human being.
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References
• Holmstrom, Lakshmi, Inner Courtyard: Stories by Indian Women. South Asia books, 1998.
• Beauvoir, Simone de, The Second Sex. Vintage, 1989.
• Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Trans. Robert Hurley. Penguin Books, 1990.
• Haslanger, Sally. and Sally Anne Haslanger. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print
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