Women's Equality
Unfortunately, the field trip that we had rushed back for today ended up being cancelled. This at least gave an opportunity to catch up on some uni work.
I feel as though I say I do a lot of uni work, so I do want to describe some of the difficulties. There is not always a good enough internet connection to access the lecture recordings for INDH7107, so I'm currently still behind on those. I'm also never going to be able to get caught up on all of the lecture material as much of it is inaudible on the recordings. I can't download or stream any of the longer videos that are part of the module work, because there is not sufficient data allowance for that kind of thing. It can take a long time to download the readings I need to complete. I do the readings, but I'm not able to print anything so the reading is not so easy for me as reading from hard-copy is. I am behind on the assessment items, I think a big part of the reason is that not being part of the tutorials and lectures, I don't have the confidence that I have all the information that I need and I'm struggling to formulate my assessment piece. Time is also an issue, as a day that doesn't have specific work responsibilities is also an opportunity to catch up on laundry, cleaning (all done by hand to very time consuming!), and to help out with odd jobs. I also hate working in my room as the chair there makes my back ache if I sit for long, but if I work in the office then there are interruptions and distractions.
I realise this sounds like I'm whinging, and that's not my intention. I know that at home other people will also have things that limit their ability to do uni work, and I'm just trying to describe the limitations I'm finding and the things that I'm finding more difficult - I'm very much more comfortable with attending uni rather than trying to keep up without access to all the materials and without seeing people face-to-face!
In the evening some more visitors arrived. George is a long-time friend of Rajan's, they have been good friends since their college days. Kannegi is George's friend, she met him through a friend of hers who happens to be George's sister. George owns a holiday resort in Bangalore, and while Kannegi is from Tamil Nadu, she had been in Bangalore for an international symposium on Women's Rights, so George had brought her with him to visit at the farm.
It turned out that Kannegi is the chairperson for the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Women, which I thought was fascinating. We had a good talk about the problems of child marriage and subsequent child pregnancies and childbirth, violence against women, and oppression of and discrimination against women in various areas of life.
I found it very interesting to discover that although Kannegi is very feisty, was headhunted and asked to come out of retirement to fulfil this role, and although she seems passionate about her role, she still had some very conservative ideas about gender roles. It was interesting to see that she defended ideas of women being 'naturally' better at certain things and worse at others, and her feelings that women shouldn't really be doing things that are not naturally womens things. She had also 'gotten [her daughter] married' so that she wouldn't have to worry about her. I feel that these attitudes that women should be defined, limited, protected, and viewed as incompetent and incomplete beings is part of the root of all the inequalities that Kannegi's department is supposed to address. Manil and I had a bit of a debate with Kannegi about this, and Manil extolled the virtues of educating and freeing women to make their own choices, rather than trying to keep controlling them. She explained that locally, child marriage is almost unheard of now because the girls can go to school and stay longer in school than in the past.
Kannegi is also very religious, and spent a fair amount of time trying to convert Alex to Christianity - I kept quiet for this part as I am atheist and didn't want to get drawn into more debate.
Another thing that came up was discussion of race, because Kannegi is 'Chindian'. Kannegi was born in Malaysia to an ethincally Chinese mother and Indian father. Her mother was not wanted as a baby and her family were going to abandon her, but their Indian neighbours asked if they could have her instead. I thought this sounded quite a good news situation at first, but it turned out that the adoptive family had seem her as an investment and sold her into child marriage. She gave birth to 2 children, the first when she was aged 12 and the second when she was 13 years old. A horrific situation for a young child to be forced into, and a situation that is disturbingly common around the world even now. Race in India seems to be discussed in a very different way to the way it is discussed within Australia, particularly in relation to Indigenous Australians. While Indigenous Australian people generally report finding a suggestion of quantifying their indigineity to be enormously offensive, here people often discuss being, for example, "1 quarter Tamil, 1 quarter Sinhalese, and half Karnatakan" - or 'Chindian' if they have mixed Chinese and Indian ethnic heritage.
Although very different to the Australian, this is an equally valid take on ethnic identity and expressing your ethnic background. It acknowledges the diverse backgrounds of parents and grandparents and the journeys made by them which brought them together, and pays homage to the foods, customs, religions, and languages that exist within the family.
From my perspective as a future social worker, it also serves to highlight how important it is that people are able to self-define their ethnicity, and not have others tell them how they should consider their own identities. An Australian with Irish, Italian, Afghan, and Aboriginal heritage might wish to identify as 'Aboriginal', and we must respect that. An immigrant to Australia with Tamil, Malay, Goan, and Portuguese heritage might wish to label each of these ethnicities in their identity, and that should also be be respected.
I didn't stay up late after dinner as I was starting to get a sore throat and feel a bit ill. I also didn't take any photos today, so here is another Scooby picture :)
I feel as though I say I do a lot of uni work, so I do want to describe some of the difficulties. There is not always a good enough internet connection to access the lecture recordings for INDH7107, so I'm currently still behind on those. I'm also never going to be able to get caught up on all of the lecture material as much of it is inaudible on the recordings. I can't download or stream any of the longer videos that are part of the module work, because there is not sufficient data allowance for that kind of thing. It can take a long time to download the readings I need to complete. I do the readings, but I'm not able to print anything so the reading is not so easy for me as reading from hard-copy is. I am behind on the assessment items, I think a big part of the reason is that not being part of the tutorials and lectures, I don't have the confidence that I have all the information that I need and I'm struggling to formulate my assessment piece. Time is also an issue, as a day that doesn't have specific work responsibilities is also an opportunity to catch up on laundry, cleaning (all done by hand to very time consuming!), and to help out with odd jobs. I also hate working in my room as the chair there makes my back ache if I sit for long, but if I work in the office then there are interruptions and distractions.
I realise this sounds like I'm whinging, and that's not my intention. I know that at home other people will also have things that limit their ability to do uni work, and I'm just trying to describe the limitations I'm finding and the things that I'm finding more difficult - I'm very much more comfortable with attending uni rather than trying to keep up without access to all the materials and without seeing people face-to-face!
In the evening some more visitors arrived. George is a long-time friend of Rajan's, they have been good friends since their college days. Kannegi is George's friend, she met him through a friend of hers who happens to be George's sister. George owns a holiday resort in Bangalore, and while Kannegi is from Tamil Nadu, she had been in Bangalore for an international symposium on Women's Rights, so George had brought her with him to visit at the farm.
It turned out that Kannegi is the chairperson for the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Women, which I thought was fascinating. We had a good talk about the problems of child marriage and subsequent child pregnancies and childbirth, violence against women, and oppression of and discrimination against women in various areas of life.
I found it very interesting to discover that although Kannegi is very feisty, was headhunted and asked to come out of retirement to fulfil this role, and although she seems passionate about her role, she still had some very conservative ideas about gender roles. It was interesting to see that she defended ideas of women being 'naturally' better at certain things and worse at others, and her feelings that women shouldn't really be doing things that are not naturally womens things. She had also 'gotten [her daughter] married' so that she wouldn't have to worry about her. I feel that these attitudes that women should be defined, limited, protected, and viewed as incompetent and incomplete beings is part of the root of all the inequalities that Kannegi's department is supposed to address. Manil and I had a bit of a debate with Kannegi about this, and Manil extolled the virtues of educating and freeing women to make their own choices, rather than trying to keep controlling them. She explained that locally, child marriage is almost unheard of now because the girls can go to school and stay longer in school than in the past.
Kannegi is also very religious, and spent a fair amount of time trying to convert Alex to Christianity - I kept quiet for this part as I am atheist and didn't want to get drawn into more debate.
Another thing that came up was discussion of race, because Kannegi is 'Chindian'. Kannegi was born in Malaysia to an ethincally Chinese mother and Indian father. Her mother was not wanted as a baby and her family were going to abandon her, but their Indian neighbours asked if they could have her instead. I thought this sounded quite a good news situation at first, but it turned out that the adoptive family had seem her as an investment and sold her into child marriage. She gave birth to 2 children, the first when she was aged 12 and the second when she was 13 years old. A horrific situation for a young child to be forced into, and a situation that is disturbingly common around the world even now. Race in India seems to be discussed in a very different way to the way it is discussed within Australia, particularly in relation to Indigenous Australians. While Indigenous Australian people generally report finding a suggestion of quantifying their indigineity to be enormously offensive, here people often discuss being, for example, "1 quarter Tamil, 1 quarter Sinhalese, and half Karnatakan" - or 'Chindian' if they have mixed Chinese and Indian ethnic heritage.
Although very different to the Australian, this is an equally valid take on ethnic identity and expressing your ethnic background. It acknowledges the diverse backgrounds of parents and grandparents and the journeys made by them which brought them together, and pays homage to the foods, customs, religions, and languages that exist within the family.
From my perspective as a future social worker, it also serves to highlight how important it is that people are able to self-define their ethnicity, and not have others tell them how they should consider their own identities. An Australian with Irish, Italian, Afghan, and Aboriginal heritage might wish to identify as 'Aboriginal', and we must respect that. An immigrant to Australia with Tamil, Malay, Goan, and Portuguese heritage might wish to label each of these ethnicities in their identity, and that should also be be respected.
I didn't stay up late after dinner as I was starting to get a sore throat and feel a bit ill. I also didn't take any photos today, so here is another Scooby picture :)
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