Page 221 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes • Conjugal relationship has not achieved any significant importance in husband-wife relationship.
• Women do not find their position in family frustrating; rather they find their life experience
satisfying.
• About two-thirds women are satisfied with their marriage and family life.
• Level of satisfaction with housework varies inversely with age, education and income. Poor,
illiterate and less educated women as also the middle-aged women are more satisfied with
house-work than rich, educated and young women.
• Women are least liberated from the traditional values and age strongly oriented to the existing
norms.
Consciousness of Economic Rights
• Though only a small number of women (about one-fourth) are aware of the right of a share in
father’s property, a large number (about four-fifths) are aware of the right of a share in husband’s
property.
• A small number of women (about one-third) inherit husband’s property and a negligible number
of them (0.5 per cent) get a share of the father’s property.
• Only about one-tenth women are working and earning in villages and are economically
independent.
• The working women evaluate the roles of housework and homemaker as positively as the non-
working women despite the burden which the role of wage-earning imposes on them.
• About nine out of every ten working women are dissatisfied with their wage-earning work.
This dissatisfaction, however, is caused by the nature of work they do and the wages they get
rather than by the idea of the work itself.
• Women who contribute to family economy are not free to spend their earnings according to
their own choice.
Consciousness of Political Rights
• A very small number of women (less than one-fifth) have political awareness.
• Of the women having franchise, about three-fourths exercise it. Interestingly enough, a sense of
an outing rather than a real interest in politics motivates women to vote.
• Voting behaviour of women is neither linked with political mobilization nor with political
socialization but with their husbands’ political beliefs and attitudes.
• The liberal theory of elections emphasizing the rational choice or preference of the candidate or
the party for which an individual voter votes is not valid in describing the voting behaviour of
women.
• Women generally are not the active members of any political party; only a few women support
some party.
From the above findings, the conclusion seems to be that the awareness of rights does not ipso facto
raises women’s status, nor unawareness lowers their feeling of satisfaction (with their status). The
main barriers in the awareness of rights are: illiteracy, excessive involvement in domestic chores,
household constraints (that is, attitudes of husband and in-laws), and economic dependence on males.
Plan of Action
If males deny due rights to women in the family either because it is culturally approved, or because
the women themselves tolerate it and do not revolt, or because no punishment is given to the violators
of the social laws, or because the advantages of denying rights outweigh the costs, how do we break
this cycle of injustice on the part of males? How do we protect the interests of women? What
programmes and policies will make males liberal and just? The remedies appear to be legal, social
and economic.

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