
Indian Women Seeking Jobs Confront Taboos and Threats - pavornyoh
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/world/asia/indian-women-labor-work-force.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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visualsearchsv
I wish that NYTimes would differentiate between Individual indian States.
Individual states have significant autonomy and depending upon the government
elected can range from moderate to leftist. Largest indian states have
populations similar to large nations such as Mexico ~ Maharashtra. And have
huge variation in metrics like literacy rates ranging from 93% (Kerala ~
Canada ) to 63% (Bihar ~ Philippines).

~ is used to show country with similar population.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_ranking_by_liter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_ranking_by_literacy_rate)

[http://www.economist.com/content/indian-
summary](http://www.economist.com/content/indian-summary)

~~~
hackuser
> the government elected can range from moderate to leftist

Isn't the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party that now runs the country, right-
wing? I know they are openly anti-Muslim in some times and places.

~~~
chimeracoder
> I know they are openly anti-Muslim in some times and places.

What makes 'anti-Muslim' inherently right-wing? Certainly in the US and
Western Europe, there's no shortage of Islamophobia to go around in the left-
wing parties.

~~~
hackuser
Hmmm ... could you give examples? In my experience nationalism, xenophobia,
and religious prejudice overwhelmingly are only on the agendas of right wing
parties.

~~~
Manishearth
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Us...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Usage_in_Western_Europe)

"right wing" in the US has a very different meaning than the rest of the
world. At its core, left/right is a statement about social (in)equality and
the government's involvement in the same. It often is tied with conservative
or nonsecular politics (inextricably so in the US, less so elsewhere), but
that does not define it.

India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social
inequality. Whilst people disagree about the intentions and/or impact; we have
plenty of policies trying to break down this inequality. We're also more on
the socialist side of the capitalist-socialist spectrum (the constitution, for
example, explicitly calls India socialist).

As far as cross-party agreement on government "interference" in equality is
concerned, India has it much more than the US AFAICT. Whether this makes the
main parties left-wing; I don't know, but it's not clearly right-wing. Then
again, Wikipedia seems to call the BJP right-wing.

.... terminology sucks.

(IMO this dichotomy isn't particularly useful in India.)

~~~
hackuser
> India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social
> inequality.

Is the current BJP administration trying to do that, or is that the long-term
trend? Also, is the BJP trying to help the Muslim minority or only Hindus?

~~~
Manishearth
It's a long term trend.

As far as the Muslim minority is concerned, there haven't been any changes in
law that I am aware of regarding them (besides, India has a bunch of laws that
make it hard to remove laws pertaining to minorities without involvement from
minority leaders. Or something like that).

There probably have been internal policy changes. I don't know. One would
expect them to focus on fixing "Hindu rights" issues over Muslim rights,
sadly. I'm not sure what they have done so far in that direction (and there's
a lot of debate over this right now; whether or not the atmosphere in the
country has changed due to them). I'd rather not get into that debate here.

------
Cherian_Abraham
I am an Indian. I don't care about the portrayal of India in a story such as
this - I care that these things still happen.

I am also tremendously proud that I am born in the same country as these
badass women.

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shortsightedsid
The problem with India is that no stereotype really exists. For every truth,
the opposite is also true. I wonder why the NY Times, the BBC etc.. focus so
much on the negative. Does the idea of India go synonymously with poverty for
them?

Yes. India has enormous challenges. But the fact remains that hundreds of
millions of people have come out of poverty in just 25 years.

It's time the narrative changes.

~~~
typon
It's true of any country. Positive news doesn't get too many people's
attention. If you listened to Democracy Now! every single day, you'd think the
USA was a fascist state. This is not to disparage either Democracy Now! or say
that the US doesn't have problems. The point is to look at a broad variety of
sources and try to eliminate selection bias from your own news consumption.

~~~
wavefunction
Democracy Now! has a mission of focusing on issues that should be fixed. There
are plenty of outlets to get feel-good journalism and I must say that I get a
powerful sense that many people are working hard to fix the issues that face
the United States, rather than just an enumeration of its faults and
deficiencies. It's nice to listen to educated and knowledgeable people make
forceful arguments about problems and solutions, and it lends a sense of
forward progress, even if that progress is minimized or difficult in the face
of the status quo.

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es09
The statistic that stood out for me was the drop in the fraction of labor that
are women. This is also true for China in the last couple of decades,
admittedly from a much higher level.

Anecdotally, I hear from business people in India that hiring is very tough at
all levels and there are simply not enough qualified people available. How
does that square with declining participation of women? Perhaps the increased
wealth is making all of the labor in the lower rung drop out of bad jobs? Is
this statistic reliable to begin with?

This wasn't really a focus of this article but I wish it was.

~~~
verroq
Is it supposed to be the percentage of women in the workforce or the
percentage of the workforce that are women?

~~~
es09
Good point. It's the fraction of women that are in the labor force -
[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS)

------
dankohn1
Please realize that this article is not fundamentally about India, nor just
about the plight of rural women there. It is about injustice, and the
aspiration to improve yourself, and the obstacles that prevent that. The kind
of taboos that were enforced against these women can be found in all
traditional cultures, from the rural South in the US today to many Catholic
developing world countries.

All of us should be grateful that we were not raised in an environment where
we were told not to do untraditional things, with the warning backed up by the
threat of violence.

------
flux988
This article is intellectually dishonest. It tries to subtly weave this
narrative as causal to the declining participation of women in the workforce.

This is data fudging of massive proportions. There is absolutely no reason to
believe that the participation of women is decreasing because of worsening
social conditions for women. The social conditions for women have definitely
become better over the last decades. The declining percentage of women in the
workforce could be a result of a hundred other factors even if we assume that
data is correct which I would be rather skeptical of.

~~~
anovikov
Maybe it's just that the life has been so terrible in India a while ago that
women were just forced to work regardless of the cultural norms, and now when
it got better, these norms kicked in?

~~~
flux988
Life is still terrible for a lot of people - it is terrible for all poor
people - it is terrible for all poor men and women - and it is terrible for
all kinds of poor people.

But that still doesn't take away the fact that India is changing dramatically
for the better for everyone including men and women and lower castes and what
not, and the pace of change is accelerating. But no matter how much it
changes, some of these stories will be there even decades from now.

The only reason reporting such a story makes sense is when it is indicative of
a larger trend and when the writer chose to link it to the dubious statistic,
she gave her intent away.

What the author needs to do is to dig deeper into the statistic, how is that
collected, what is the segmentation and then align that research with broader
economic and social trends to get a true picture. Only after all of this is
done that she can take pick an anecdotal case and use that to better
articulate her findings.

That research which changes everything wasn't done.

------
harigov
I am not sure what's going on at NY Times. They seem to write a lot of
articles focusing on negative things about India. In a country as large as
India, you can always find something exceptional. This article about Indian
women is as much a news to me as it is to anyone else. From the place where I
come from, I don't know of any woman who doesn't work because of some
family/societal pressure. That doesn't mean that there are no other issues,
but a balanced narrative would have been nice.

Examples:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/the-right-wing-
att...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/the-right-wing-attack-on-
indias-universities.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/suicide-on-an-
indi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/suicide-on-an-indian-
campus.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/insider/we-will-not-
apolog...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/insider/we-will-not-apologize-
encountering-the-defiant-women-of-india.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/opinion/indias-move-
agains...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/opinion/indias-move-against-the-
poor.html)

~~~
addicted
Actually, the real question should be what's going on in India. Your personal
anecdote about not knowing women who don't work due to family pressures is
ridiculously easily contradicted by the actual statistics.

But here's a personal anecdote as well. My father's company had a female
worker quit after she was promoted to basically being 2nd in charge from a
fairly low position in HR (she's really brilliant) because her family insisted
she had to have a child, and once she did they insisted she quit the job (she
was offered 6 months maternity leave, as well as the ability to work from
home. Her family was against it). He's also seen 2 other women have to quit
their jobs because of family pressures in the past 2 years. So he's seen more
women quit work in the past 2 years because of family pressures than the
entire 2 decades he was running the company prior to these 2 years. And this
is in Mumbai, not a distant rural village.

Everytime someone writes/says something negative about India the first (and
often, the only) response is to whine about the messenger instead of actually
doing something about the issue at hand. After we do nothing to actually fix
the issues, we wonder why people keep writing about all the issues India has.

~~~
rustynails
I had a look through New York Times on India (note: I have no connections with
India, it was in response to a poster's comment about prejudice toward India
and its subsequent brash dismissal that caught my attention).

Many of the articles on India are negative. However, bad news sells. So, I
wouldn't have expected anything different. There were some general non-
negative articles (Whales dying on shores, LGBT laws gaining momentum). There
was an absence of positive articles about India from a quick search.

By contrast, I looked at Australia in the New York Times. Most of the articles
were on sport and bushfires, so, there's definitely a different focus and
attitude. Australia seems to be social events, India social unrest and
injustices.

I consider the New York Times to be prejudiced at times though. However, the
article in question was well written, despite a lack of explanation of why
there are less women in the Indian workforce than there were in the past. One
example of NYT prejudice I remember was about Australia's first female PM,
Julia Gillard. The NYT described Australians (collectively) as misogynistic
because we dared to criticise a female Prime Minister about her looks. I
searched at the time and found ONE media reference to a criticism from
Germaine Greer - a prominent feminist - about Gillard's fat ass (I saw 'ditch
the witch' after this article). I contrasted this to other PMs: John Howard in
a bondage pose with his nose up George Bush's ass among many personal attacks
on him (conveniently ignored), tony Abbott in his budgie smugglers and
exaggerated lips, etc. The NYT must have had very big blinkers (or my
prejudice comment holds).

The reality is that India does bad things AND the media is very prejudiced. I
think the dismissal of prejudice in the media is dangerous.

Maybe, a letter to NYT suggesting some positive things in India may help raise
awareness.

~~~
addicted
I'm curious what positive articles do people think the NYTimes could carry
about India? Keep in mind that being a US based newspaper, human interest
stories about positive contributions by individuals outside the US are very
unlikely to make it into a US based paper. What usually works is a wide
systematic positive story, often through the lens of a few individuals.

When India was growing rapidly, and basically created a massive new middle
class in the 90s on opening its borders, the NYTimes had a lot of positive
stuff to say (Friedman, of The World is Flat fame, was one of the biggest
promoters of India). This was a massive positive systematic change, that was
covered widely.

But since then what positive systematic changes does India present that would
be useful for an audience halfway across the world to know? There are a ton of
individuals doing amazing work in India (and note, even this article focuses
on the strength and bravery of individuals who fought the system) Indian
institutions are famously terrible, and are getting worse. Frankly, the only
possible positive stories that you could do about India that come to mind are
the rapid rise of solar energy (however, all of that is in the planning stage
at the moment...we need to see how it materializes). That's pretty much all I
can think of.

Frankly, India doesn't help itself by screwing up situations we could have
used to build a better image. You bring up Australia and sports. China did the
Olympics, and it was an amazing spectacle. It truly changed people's
perspectives of what China was capable. India had an opportunity to do
something similar with the Commonwealth games (although that would
understandably be ignored by the US media anyways)and that was a massive
disaster which only served to emphasize how terrible and corrupt our
institutions are.

Edit: I think the NYTimes could do a really great positive (and relevant to
the US) article on the Indian Electoral Commission. They basically moderate
the elections, and have done a really great job in ensuring largely free and
fair elections in a chaotic country which is otherwise awash with corrupt
institutions. It's actually pretty amazing that India has maintained and
strengthened democracy in the past ~70 years, and the EC has a huge role to
play in that.

~~~
bruceb
India has 7-8 major languages (and many minor ones), a couple major religions,
culture variations, and lots of people.

Has a lot of problems no doubt, but it is amazing they can keep the country
together and make it work. Plenty of countries with only two languages that
have internal strife.

~~~
ninguem2
I have no intention of defending the NY Times or the person you are replying
to. I have a general question. Why is it necessarily good that the country is
kept together? Would India be better off if, e.g., partition had not happened?

~~~
bruceb
I guess it depends if you think the country is more powerful together and in
the end the avg Indian is better off.

Yes, some might argue that separate states would be better.Of course some
might argue "true India" is India+Pakistan & Bangladesh.

I would like to hear some Indians say what they think in response to your
question.

~~~
rubberstamp
India and world would've been better off without partition. It has only
created regional instability. The government could do a lot better, I mean
there are still many archaic laws, from before India got freedom, in the
constitution. Overall India seems to be on better track even though the
progress is slow. Amount of educated youth is also rising. Corruption is
declining as a result of media coverage. There is a lot of room to improve,
but the fundamentals look good.

Because of partition part of british india was turned into Pakistan. Pakistani
civilians do not hold any grudge against Indians is my general opinion. Its
their Army and ISI that does not like peace for very silly reasons. I do not
get what they are trying to achieve. I hope they'll clean up the mess they
have created and finally become a good, democratic and progressive country.

------
pj_mukh
This article is written to be a fantastic Bollywood movie. One that could
potentially have a huge impact. Indian pop culture wields tremendous power,
how about they use it more often?! Hollywood does this on a daily basis.

------
pavornyoh
This story is heartbreaking. Who is looking out for these downtrodden women?
Who is looking out for their rights? It is admirable how these women continue
to fight and have hope despite their problems.

------
known
A nation of 1.3 billion psychopaths
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-
map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/)

------
openforce
Title stereotypes Indian women. Title should have been more specific like the
story and mentioned Geeta or her village.

~~~
nacs
It's just a title.. and most titles on HN are taken verbatim from the source's
title. Its rare for it to be edited and I see no reason here for it to be
changed.

------
tn13
Usual NYT hitjob painting Indian pagan/heathens as horrible people. Somehow
NYT links this to BJP which is barely in power for last 2 years.

~~~
cholantesh
Usual Sanghi response of denial, deflection, and ad hom. The BJP isn't even
mentioned; In fact, the most senior governmental figure mentioned is a former
village chief and a Muslim.

