Introductory notes on gender

First of all it is worth saying that this study limits the approach to gender to the issues most closely concerned with the concept of conduct books, mainly ideology and identity, and linked to the former, power. The reason for this is that books on right and appropriate conduct have historically and traditionally been mostly addressed to women in the sphere of gender polarization and in the light of a patriarchal ideology that has placed women in a lower position to men. Both turned women into individuals subject to the man’s power, either the father or the husband, and have established a power hierarchy maintained through time. In the case that concerns us here, British- Asian women in a multicultural society, the older generations’ attempt in the preservation of tradition and the Indian way as the appropriate way is not only leading to social, personal and cultural confrontation but a new breath of air that emphasises, as we will observe, a gradual but significant move towards generational negotiation as represented by the primary bibliography.

Over the last few years when we first hear the word gender it may make us think of the differences between men and women at a time in which so many works on the issue at hand have been published. Not only is gender often thought of in terms of bipolar categories popularly, sometimes even as mutually exclusive opposites- as in “the opposite sex” (Talbot 2003: 26) but people are also perceived through a `lens´ of gender polarisation (Bem 1993: 26) and assigned to apparently natural categories .

Chapter 1: Some basic introductory notes on gender

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The manipulation of the original word over the last years has produced a wide array of meanings. Thus, while in the beginning it was used to define grammatical concepts, now it refers mainly to the differences between the sexes in a time in which expressions like gender violence and gender identity have become commonplace in the media in Spain to refer to cases in which a man has raped, murdered or mistreated his wife. For Wallach Scott (1999: 66) “gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is primarily a way of signifying relationships of power”.

As Cameron puts it, “By gender I mean a social system which defines subjects as men and women and governs the relationships between them” (Cameron 2003: 202), and as such, it is “a form of social inequality, and many others can cut across it” (Graddol & Swan 1989: 132) as will be portrayed in family and social relationships in Chapter 4.

Because of the fact that the concept of gender involves the analysis of both groups, men and women, they cannot be separated; it would be pointless to talk about men without making any reference to women and the other way round in the view that “[g]ender differences are frequently represented as complementary” (Cameron 2003: 452). Such differences are the result of a social structure that emphasizes gender differences together with their social and cultural responsibilities. Other terms given to the sex/gender system have been mode of reproduction and patriarchy. (See Rubin 1975: 167)

As I will consider in Chapter 4 these gender differences are strengthened not only by the existence of castes and the roles assigned to the individual throughout their life span, marriage being the most significant social ceremony, but also the apparent impossibility of a sentimental relationship between individuals distant from each other not only in cultural but also in social class terms.

Some gender studies have been used to suggest that information about women is necessarily information about men, that the one implies the study of the other (Wallach Scott 1999: 59). Nevertheless gender cannot only be defined in terms of the men-

Chapter 1: Some basic introductory notes on gender

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women polarity but in terms of the new emerging identities that the new generations are constructing and affirming in response to the social demands and which can be exemplified by the conception of stereotypes as a cultural category (Pichler 2007).

As I will analyse in the development of this thesis, the female characters subject to this study need both to affirm and construct their identity as a result of the pressures stemming from their parents, in the first place, and by their community in the second place. Regardless of the relative impact of Indian culture, their condition is different from both as British born citizens with a birth and an upbringing which is shaped in a British context. However, it is the insistence on the maintenance of their ancestors’ original beliefs that make the female characters question not only their identity but also all the factors that form it mainly their personal choices and freedom which cannot be separated from the adoption of the proper behaviour and the correctness of actions in the name of family honour.

As I will try to show the rebellious behaviour of the characters responds to no more than a natural and inborn process of affirmation of the individual regardless of culture and race and the impossibility to renounce their British birth and upbringing on behalf of the old traditions imported from India (See sections 2.1.2, 2.3.5, 4.2.2.2). This emphasis on the relationship between gender and identity will take me to the next section, the link between gender and identity.