IMOW - The Culture Police

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The Culture Police
Heeral Trivedi

India

GALLERY

CONVERSATION

My generation of women, who live in the cities as I do, often find themselves under surveillance from the culture police. Although women in urban households are offered higher education, they are not always offered their choice of the future thereafter. It is still difficult to challenge the social norms in terms of religion, work, marriage and childbearing. My works talk about these choices and the need to recognize them as every woman’s right. The need to realize that education is not just the means to a better living standard but also for accepting the flaws in the social structure on the basis of gender. The nation-wide campaign of educating the “girl child” in India I believe has been one of the main reasons for the change in the social status of the women of my generation. Rural movements like “Amul”, a large co-operative dairy in the state of Gujarat, and other such organizations have brought a sense of financial independence among the young women in villages. Many women of my generation today recognize the choices they have in matters of marriage and childbearing and they dare to acknowledge these choices in spite of social and religious pressures. There were very few of my mothers and grandmothers generation who were offered these choices and very few who were educated. I believe that my generation is privileged to have the chance to pursue education, career and choose our own social status. This gives us the strength to challenge injustice or inequality on the basis of gender. However, modernization and global commercialization have brought many western influences into our society and the question that now confronts young Indian women is: how does one hold onto ones cultural and religious inheritance within these outside influences? Are we going to be able to hold onto our past and pass it onto the next generation as our mothers did?

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