Sharanya Vairam

WRITING SAMPLE: EXCERPT FROM RESPONSE PAPER TO Swaminathan, Padmini. "Women's education in colonial Tamil Nadu,-: the coalescence of patriarchy and colonialism." Indian journal of gender studies 6, no. 1 (1999): 21. The Intersection and Interaction of Patriarchy and Colonialism The entire debate surrounding the education of girls in Madras Presidency as Swaminathan points out focuses narrowly on the access question. It is like the liberal agenda as far as India was concerned, to ensure that education is accessible to women of particular classes and castes. Education itself was part of the colonial civilising mission to assert their racial superiority and through their various policies did the same. The education policy stressed upon the backwardness of the Indians, their culture and values, and seclusion of women was looked down upon. The Indians, in turn, identified with the inferior identity that was imposed upon them and wanted to break it to accessing the English education and in bringing in women into the education system. So, women came into the public sphere, accessed education but not on equal terms. Of course, as has been mentioned earlier, there were casteclass-religion based differences even among women; mostly, Brahmin and Hindu upper caste-class women could access education. Women did not have a say in what was the kind of education they were seeking or the reasons why they wished to get educated. The education was meant to make them better wives, mothers and homemakers rather than help them seek jobs or take up education for its intrinsic value. Later when career/job-oriented college education was provided to women it was not equally and uniformly available in all fields and streams but mostly in teaching and nursing, which were feminised professions. There was a greater stress on moral and spiritual education for women, and their basic gender socialisation was strictly not to be altered. This assertion of racial superiority also had a gendered tone. Patriarchal attitudes and certain patriarchal ideologies were also imported from England to India. For example, the colonial policy with regards to Indian women in education service held that Indian women should retire at 50 years of age because it was held that Indian women entered service much earlier due to the tropical climate and hence, should also retire early. Similarly, while discussing curriculum for women, it was often mentioned how difficult and strenuous it would be for women to process education due to the climatic conditions and hence, education provided to them should be flexible and ‘light’, that even compulsory subjects like Mathematics and English needed to be made lighter as compared to the curriculum for boys. Another important thing that one needs to note here is that since women were entering the public sphere, the form of patriarchy also diversified and now manifested also as public patriarchy that controlled women in the public sphere through various means. One major way was the feminisation of teaching profession and especially teaching primary children. The reason given was that women’s maternal ability made them better teachers for younger children. Another way in which public patriarchy worked was in the provision of unequal wages for equal work to women. There was a vast wage differential between men and women as well as a lower retirement age for Indian women. The segregationist attitude in provision of different forms of education and employment for women which was down-graded is another way in which public patriarchy manifests itself. The growth of sex segregated schools and colleges was a fallout of middle class, upper caste values which sought to control women’s sexuality due to the anxiety related to it and to keep intact caste purity and class values. There was a strong will against the opening of co-ed schools and colleges by these privileged sections and this was what was taken into account by the colonial administration.