What Does Patriarchy in India Ask of Women?
The day, I guess, that many women in India have been waiting for. This uprising was needed. After years of talking about women’s safety, accountability and the feeling that nothing is being done, it is difficult not to feel that something had to give. And honestly, it makes me incredibly angry that women still have to fight so hard to be heard, to feel safe and to have their basic rights recognised in a country where patriarchal attitudes remain so deeply ingrained.
This isn't something that's weighed on me for a few months. It's been a grave issue on my mind for as long as I can remember. But today, I can't contain my anger anymore, after reading about the current events back home. We women in India navigate our lives in small, quiet ways, so ingrained in the patriarchal structures society built for us that we rarely stop to question any of it. Since becoming a mother to a daughter, these thoughts have become more urgent. I don't want her to grow up scared, forced into patriarchal boxes, or always having to watch her back for her own safety. While some navigate their lives quietly, there are also those like my mother, my sister, my closest friends, and me, who speak out. And I hope that by doing so, I'm helping build a future where she can simply be herself, without fear.
There are many things about India that frustrate me, but women’s safety and the lack of accountability around it have always been very high on that list. And the more I think about it, the more I feel that we cannot separate the issue of women’s safety from the much bigger issue of how we raise women and men, and the very different expectations we place on them from the time they are children.
What do we expect to change when girls are still taught from a young age that they need to constantly modify themselves?
"Don’t go to the toilet alone. Always take a friend with you."
"Don’t be too loud."
"Don’t get drunk."
"Don’t stay out too late."
"Don’t wear that. It doesn’t look good."
"Think about what people will say."
"Be careful."
We teach girls how to anticipate danger, how to avoid danger and how to make themselves less vulnerable to danger.
And then we raise boys with a completely different set of messages.
"Don’t be so delicate. Are you a girl?"
"Don’t cry like a woman."
"Be a man."
"Boys will be boys."
We teach them what it means to be masculine, but I sometimes wonder how much we actually teach them, with the same urgency, about responsibility, boundaries, respect and the consequences their behavior can have on other people.
That difference has always bothered me. Girls are taught how not to become victims, but are boys being taught with the same urgency not to become perpetrators? And patriarchy doesn’t only show up in the most obvious ways. It can be much quieter than that. It can exist in the assumptions we barely question because they have been passed down for generations.
I have experienced this in small ways throughout my own life. There have been moments where I have looked at something that seemed completely normal and wondered why the expectation was different simply because I was a woman.
Even in my own home, when my husband and I were doing the rituals around moving into our new house, the priest conducting the ceremony was clear that the man of the house was the one who was expected to formally perform the rituals. But my husband was very clear that I should be there because the house was mine too and that I should participate too. I remember thinking about that distinction because it felt so revealing. The home belonged to both of us, but the formal responsibility was still automatically assigned to the man.
I have experienced similar assumptions around family responsibilities and identity. When my father died, I performed his last rites, and my family stood by me. That was important to me because it made me realize how many things we simply assume have to be done by men, until someone questions it. Nowhere is it actually written that daughters are forbidden from this. It's custom, not rule, and it's custom that gets actively chosen, again and again, even when the alternative is right there.
I kept my maiden name after I got married too. I didn’t take my husband’s surname. That might seem like a very small thing, but I have always felt that getting married did not erase the person I was before it. I was still my parents’ daughter. I still had my own name, my own history and my own identity. Yet the expectation that a woman should change her name after marriage is so normalized that choosing not to can itself feel like a statement.
Then there are the visible expectations placed on women after marriage. Women may be expected to wear certain things or display certain signs of being married, while men generally aren’t subjected to the same level of scrutiny. A woman who swears or uses abusive language can quickly be called characterless, while a man using exactly the same language can be dismissed as just being a man, or boys being boys. Women are expected to protect the family’s reputation, maintain its honor and constantly think about how their behavior will be perceived.
And that is where, for me, all of these things connect.
It is not that a particular piece of clothing, a name, a ritual or a tradition is inherently oppressive. That is not what I am saying. What I find difficult is the larger pattern of women being given rules about how they should behave, what they should wear, how they should look, how they should speak, how they should represent their families and how they should protect themselves, while men are often given considerably more freedom to simply exist without the same level of scrutiny.
Women are constantly being asked to manage themselves.
Manage your clothes.
Manage your voice.
Manage your drinking.
Manage your sexuality.
Manage your reputation.
Manage your safety.
Manage how men might perceive you.
Manage how society might perceive you.
At what point do we stop and ask why so much of the responsibility is being placed on women in the first place?
This is also why I struggle when conversations about women’s safety become narrowly focused on punishment. Of course punishment has to exist within the law. Due process matters. Harsher sentences alone are not going to solve every problem. But when women are demanding greater safety and accountability, I find it frustrating when the conversation immediately turns towards what cannot be done instead of asking what we actually can do.
What can we do about prevention? What can we do about education? What can we do about policing and accountability? What can we do about how we raise boys? What can we do about the attitudes that allow harassment and violence to be minimised, excused or normalised?
Because this isn’t an abstract issue for me.
When I visit India, I literally have to plan my travel around the time of day. I have to think twice about whether it will be too late to take an Uber home alone. Think about that. I’m on holiday. I should be deciding where I want to go for dinner. I should be deciding which part of the city I want to explore or what I want to see. I shouldn’t have to calculate whether it will be safe to get home afterwards.
And this is what frustrates me most. Women are constantly told how to behave, where to go, what to wear, when to come home, whether to drink, whether to travel alone and how to protect themselves. We have become so accustomed to giving women safety instructions that we barely question the underlying assumption behind them: that women have to organize their lives around avoiding harm.
Why?
Why do women have to make themselves smaller, quieter, more careful and more restricted because other people might choose to harm them?
Why are we so comfortable teaching girls how to avoid being harmed, but not equally determined to teach boys that they have an absolute responsibility not to harm them?
I don’t think patriarchy explains every problem in India, and I certainly don’t believe every Indian family or community thinks or behaves in the same way. India is enormous, complicated and incredibly diverse. There are countless families, men and women who are actively challenging these expectations and creating something different. But I do think we need to be honest about how deeply patriarchal structures have influenced so many parts of Indian life: family roles, marriage, masculinity, sexuality, honor, respectability and women’s freedom. And perhaps that is why I feel so strongly about this. Because I don’t hate India. Quite the opposite. You can love a country deeply and still be furious about the things it continues to get wrong. You can be proud of where you come from and still want it to change. You can love your culture, your family and your home while questioning the things that have historically restricted women.
I’m not saying I have all the answers. I’m not even saying that complaining makes me particularly useful. But I refuse to pretend these problems don’t exist. And I refuse to accept that women should simply become better at navigating a world that makes them feel unsafe. At some point, surely the world around us has to change too. And I don't think that change comes only from policy or punishment. I think it comes from men too, quietly, deliberately, one example at a time.
Be the man who questions the beliefs he was raised with instead of defending them because they're familiar.
Be the man who stands next to women instead of waiting to see which way the room leans.
Be the man who says no when a joke lands at a woman's expense, even when no one else in the room will.
Be the man who steps in, not just when it's easy, but when a woman isn't safe and it would be simpler to look away.
Be the man who teaches his children, sons and daughters both, that none of this is optional.
That's not a solution. It's a start. But starts matter.
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