Male dominated society

As I visit people living here at Uttarakhand, one of the questions I frequently get asked is, “How many siblings do you have?”. When I reply by saying that I have one sister, the instant reaction is, “You don’t have a brother?”. When I say that I don’t have a brother, most of the women cringe. Some of the bolder women even say, “Those poor parents. They didn’t even get the comfort of having a son and have been cursed with daughters”. At this I explain to them that in cities both men and women work and earn and both sons and daughters are expected to take care of parents. They then look at me and say, “That is true. The people of cities are a lot more advanced”.

One of the things I see here is that people do not want to have a lot of kids. Most of them are happy with just one or two children. This might be a result of the acute food and water shortage in the region. But what I see is that parents here understand that each child comes with a lot of expenses and that the smaller a family, the easier it is to manage. I found them to be a lot more advanced in this respect than people from most other places, including Bangalore.

However, here the emphasis on having a son is very strong and people tend to have children until a son is finally born. This is the reason why some families here are large, including the ones in whose house I am staying here (they have 3 daughters and 1 son).

I find this strange because this region is dominated by women who earn for their families. The region has very few employment/entrepreneurial opportunities and so men mostly cannot find work here unless they decide to work at the city. But due to the bad living and working conditions, most men return soon after which they stay unemployed indefinitely. Men then often give in to alcohol and gambling. This is when the women of the house (mother and daugthers) stand up and fend for the family. Women here take up jobs in knitting and jobs related to manual labour.

I have met so many women here who are the sole bread winners of the family which makes me really question why they still give so much of an importance to a boy child and think of a girl child as a curse. I really wish they themselves would be able to see what happens in their own community.