One Is Not Born A Woman, But Becomes One: Gendered Patterns of Women Subordination in India

One is not born a woman, but becomes one was very correctly put into words by the famous existentialist feminist Simone de Beaviour to explain the gendered patterns of women subordination in society whereby women are assigned the position of subordinate others. Although gender is the secondary construction of patriarchal society, it is intruded over the natural biological sex due to which, men are assumed as the masculine male and women as the feminine female. In the process of gendered construction, men are socialized to dominate because their character is shaped by boldness, roughness and aggressiveness. In contrast, women are socialized to tolerate those dominations, because their character is shaped by softness, shyness and patience. Within the dominant discourses of a patriarchal society like India, gender is internalized by both the sexes through their masculine and feminine traits. This is the reason why women remain submissive throughout their life, sometimes being a traditional good wife who tolerates the tortures inflicted upon her by husband or in-laws in the form of domestic violence and sometimes being an ideal mother who silently accepts the decisions of her son and sometimes as a victim who remain silent even being raped or harassed sexually. These roles are sanctioned socially through various social institutions thereby, glorifying wifehood and motherhood. This paper is an attempt to bring forth the psychological, ideological and cultural bases of this process of naturalization of women subordination in a gendered and patriarchal society like India, where women silently accept their submissive position in state, society and culture.