It does but
1. Things are changing very rapidly. Patriarchy is weaker than it was 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.
2. The situation is much MUCH more complex than feminism makes it out to be. While lower class men are more likely to perpetuate sexism than upper class men, lower class men also have their own issues which leave them unable to benefit from patriarchy. And this isn’t to say upper class men are inherently progressive, because they perpetuate sexism too but are much better at hiding it.
3. Upper class women have the means to cancel out a lot of the negative effects of patriarchy. They can go to private schools, go to university, and have a career which will allow them to put off marriage until they’re ready, and will make them more likely to marry a progressive man.
So basically the only men who benefit from patriarchy are wealthy and/or powerful men, and most Indian men are neither.
This is actually super interesting. What’s it like, generally speaking, for say middle class women in India on a day to day basis?
To be honest I can’t really speak on that because I’m not middle class. However I can speak about my classmates who are.
Middle class women have more rights than lower class women, but they still have to deal with issues especially when they get older.
Most of them feel like they can’t sustain themselves economically if they’re single, and are getting married only for that reason. They’ve told me that I’m lucky I come from a place of economic privilege and thus have the choice of whether to marry or stay single.
I’d prefer to not enter a relationship because of messy personal reasons, but this is an example of patriarchy getting cancelled out by economic status. My middle class classmates, who may have had even worse family situations than I did, will still have to get married regardless of their personal beliefs because otherwise they can’t be financially secure.
I think I can elaborate a bit more since my family was lower middle class until we moved to a city. I live in the west, near mumbai city, so the customs here might be a bit different from other regions. and I’m mostly talking about lower economical strata since economical independence really does cancel out a lot of struggles women have. like shadow says most things are changing rapidally. all the things I am gonna note here are also observations from last 10 years.
women here have to get married and that too until 26-28 at most. the age lowers the more you go towards lower classes, because girls are still seen as a burden. girls’ family also has to take responsibility for all of the marriage ceremony expenses, so the parents without much money tend to marry off daughters as soon as they get extra money. child marriages and female foeticides are still a thing despite being illegal (sex determination tests of any kind are illegal in India but people find ways). dowry system is also still a thing, depends on how progressive a family is.
most women have to take permission for both taking education and/or a job from either parents or the husband. it really depends what the man thinks here. if he’s progressive enough (or values income more in case of the wife) he’ll let them. higher education can be too expensive sometimes tho so most families let their sons go to college instead of daughters, which kind of explains why most poor women can’t be independent financially.
tho the thing that has changed the most is that women who wanted to take jobs in male dominated fields, like be an engineer, a doctor or work in IT, were either denied because it’s a man’s job, or looked down on because she might pick up a lifestyle of partying and drinking/ smoking which suits a man more. this has definitely changed but there are a few instances I have seen this happened.
I’m glad despite having a few issues, my parents let me take education as I liked and have permitted me to work overseas
tho I’m def gonna take heat for notwanting children lol.
Also again as the above person said it really depends on the region. Patriarchy is much weaker in the South than it is in the North.
Like some of my North Indian classmates have told me that in their houses, their brothers have to be served food first and they only get the leftovers. These girls were from the same economic background as me, upper class. So I was appalled when I heard this, because in South Indian families that level of patriarchy is practically unheard of in urban and affluent environments.
I’ve also had Jain classmates talking about how their parents won’t allow them to work, and will most likely marry them off to men with the same mindset. It would be one thing if they tried to challenge this, my college has the means to as they offer entrepreneurship classes disguised as domestic skills classes in order to stick it to dumbass sexist parents, however they don’t. Most of them even take pride in wanting to sit at home without doing any work, and when I asked them “oh okay so you’re going to keep house and raise the children?” they said, “No, the maid and my mother in law will do that.”
In my college this is very evident, majority of the girls going on to higher studies are South Indian, majority of the girls in STEM type degrees are South Indian, and majority of the girls who drop out to get married are North Indian.
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