18-07-2025
Gender injustice: We need to break free of patriarchal clutches
Success can be fatal. Last Thursday, 25-year-old Radhika Yadav, a tennis player running a small coaching school, was shot dead in Gurugram. Her father, Deepak Yadav, confessed to the killing. The police said that he killed his daughter over her refusal to shut down her tennis training centre. Reports of the confession state that he was being taunted for 'living off her income" and facing questions over her 'character"; and since their family was financially well-off, he felt that she need not run her business.
This motive has drawn gasps of shock across India.
It reveals all too starkly a sinister reality that multitudes of women face—the insistence that an adult daughter must forever stay under the family patriarch's command, with no right to live on her own terms.
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In another part of the world, two days after Radhika's domestic murder, 24-year old Iga Świątek won the Ladies' Singles title at Wimbledon. But this time, the gleam of her trophy was a reminder of how hard-fought such success must be for so many of us back home.
This is not the first time a sport has lost an ambitious Indian woman. Two years ago, star wrestler Sakshi Malik retired from the mat after India's wrestling federation failed to address the rampant sexual harassment faced by women wrestlers.
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The story of women being held back—violently, if need be—from success, freedom and other worthy pursuits is largely the same in most other spheres, formal work included.
As attitude gaps between urban and rural homes are not always wide, village settings offer some clues. According to a J-PAL study in 197 gram panchayats in Madhya Pradesh, a majority of surveyed women stated that their husband had the most say in whether they took jobs. This rural study also found that most men estimated that a majority of their community members would consider them 'bad providers' if their wives worked outside the home for pay.
This illustrates the 'male breadwinner norm,' by which men are expected to be the main earners for their families. Women, on the other hand, are largely seen as 'emergency providers,' according to demographer and sociologist A.L. Sharada, who attempted to puzzle out India's trend of women doing paid work.
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Urban and rural sub-trends vary, but the country's broad picture has been dismal. The proportion of working-age women in India who surveys found were either employed or seeking work has both risen and fallen over the past three decades. Recent official data shows a recovery and then drop in the labour force participation rate of women, but what exactly has been going on remains a big puzzle.
Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin's U-shaped curve would suggest a decline in women working as incomes rise in agrarian and early industrial settings, followed by a rise led by modern jobs as an economy develops for socially empowered women to take on wider roles.
India is in various stages of development. Our rural trend seems to track classic old income sufficiency, while urban participation appears driven by a mix that includes liberal forces in favour of gender equity.
Yet, as Radhika's case has shown, rigid social attitudes are a factor we have not been able to cast off. In global comparison, we have far too few women in paid jobs. The question we must ask ourselves is: How long will we let patriarchal convictions hold the country back? A male dominated society is bad for the emergence of our economy. And evidence of gender inequity shows up much too often for comfort.
