On January 6th our class travelled about an hour and a half outside of Chennai to visit villages along the shore of Pulicat Lagoon. The men in these villages predominantly make their living through fishing, though these activities have been negatively impacted by the effects of climate change and pollution. The night before, everyone in our class read an article detailing the social, economic, political, and environmental issues in that area. However, this article only told us about the issues facing the men in the community, and did not touch on the situation of the women. During our excursion, the class split into two groups, and I was in the group that focused on women’s issues for the Pulicat villagers. This experience enabled our group to gain a more complete understanding of the complex issues within the region.
We were joined by a group of about ten village women, who sat cross-legged in the sand across from us. Our guide, a local social worker who does extensive activism for women’s rights in India, translated our questions to the women as well as their responses to us. It was amazing to be able to listen to the women and hear what they had to say about their lives, and how they would change things if they could.
One of the most striking aspects of life in the village discussed by the women was the system of local governance. This was not governance through the state or by elected officials, but instead a kind of village council called a panchyat, which was made up of the male heads of household. All of the villagers were discouraged from reporting crimes to the police, and instead those issues between villagers were worked out by the council. Because no women were allowed on the council this left them at a serious disadvantage in disputes, and made them vulnerable to oppressive treatment.
The women told us hesitantly about how the panchyat had mistreated single-women headed households in the village. They shared that widows had no representation on the council, and because of this when the widow’s pension was paid by the government to the panchyat, which was apparently a regular practice, It was distributed among all of the families in the village, instead of being given to her in full. The women we spoke to that day said that if they had a voice on the panchyat, they would have protected the rights of widows and taken care of vulnerable families in their community.
Many studies have shown that the surest way to increase the economic growth of a developing country is to better the status of women in a society,but in this village the women felt that they were stuck in a world that would not be better for their children, and that even cultural advancements were not bettering their situations. These women had no power in their local government, were not allowed to fish as their husbands did and thus wielded very little economic influence, and were largely dominated by their husbands and their husbands families within their households. But the women expressed a hope that things were changing for the better, commenting that the young men in their community were beginning to see that the only way forward was through the elevation of women. Perhaps in the coming decades the status of these women will change and they will be able to live more fulfilling and empowered lives within their villages.
