In high school, there was an implicit understanding that the more mature girls, including me, knew a thing or two about choosing the right guy to date. For example, if he had a sister at home, especially one close enough in age, there was a statistically lower probability of him being a ‘bad’ guy.
After all, we reasoned, justifying our completely non-mathematical premise that having a sister would mean it was more likely that he a) would be forced to see girls as human beings with feelings and emotions b) had most likely been taught by said sister how to speak to girls- or at the very least not believe gross habits and a lack of personal hygiene was a form of machismo.
Of course, our enlightened thinking was premised on the fact that the ability for men (especially young boys) to exude empathy for the opposite gender was based on their ability to relate to women in a way that those traversing in only testosterone-fuelled male worlds rarely possessed. Moreover, the aspect of relationality (and presumably emotional investment in a sister) would also act as a deterrent towards bad behaviour- exemplified through numerous 90s Bollywood tropes reaffirming the value of a woman by reminding the audience that a damsel in distress was also ‘kisi ke ghar ki beti, kisi ki ma, kisi ki behen’.
The underlying sentiment of viewing women purely in relational terms, deriving their value through their connections with other men, has also, unsurprisingly, informed the nation’s popular, public and legal discourses for time immemorial. (Side note: the word ‘adultery’, which was until recently a criminal offence in India, is derived from adulteration, where under colonial law, only a man could be charged with the crime of adulterating another’s man’s property- i.e. his wife. It tells you a lot about women’s presumed agency.)
In the last few decades, our nation, battling with disproportionately skewed sex ratios, starved of its women through systematic gender-biased sex selection, has been making numerous attempts to bring attention to the missing girls, attempting to increase the value of the girl child through a mix of carrot and stick approaches- from criminalising sex selection to incentivising the birth of daughters through cash incentives. A gamut of such schemes first became prominent in the mid-2000s, following the Latin American models, colloquially referred to as Ladki-Lakshmi Yojanas. These schemes aimed to improve the perceived social position of daughters by offering cash incentives to below poverty line families that managed to keep their daughters alive, unmarried (and preferably somewhat educated) till age 18. Their eponymous name derives from the variations of the word ‘darling daughters’ that different state schemes employed. While the success of these schemes is yet to be conclusively proven, in so far as sex ratios in ‘gender-critical’ districts are concerned, they seemed to have led to some improvements. The flagship ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’programs started by the Modi government has led, at the very least, to a barrage of messaging around the need for educating and saving the girl child- most visibly on the back of trucks, where it has replaced the older ‘Horn OK Please’ signage quite universally.
While such schemes were built on an existing lineage of mother-centric schemes with the words Janani, Matru, Matri in their names, most recently, the political one-upmanship between contesting parties fighting state elections has devolved into attempts to capture the so-called ‘women-vote’, through promises of ‘universal’ basic income to every (poor?) woman, with each government proposing more increments than the previous one. Predictably, these schemes too focus on the beloved nature of women’s ties with men- this time in their capacity as Ladki behen, behena, or the like, loosely translating to a variation of darling, doting sisters.
The question this influx of proposed policy directives, messaging, and general thinking around the paternalism embedded in them forces one to ask is this- does a reformulation of women in their position as lovable relatives (whether as mothers, sisters or daughters), lead to any positive impact on the way they are viewed in society? And even if it does, should such relational value be a matter of celebration? Is a woman’s worth only to be viewed in terms of her relationship with a man? Would it not be enough for her to be viewed as a person deserving an innate worth from her mere existence?
We have come a long way from the thinking that family planning advertisements or even movies of the 80s and 90s would focus on advocating against sex selection by focusing on how a girl can be even better than a boy in how much she can love her parents. Today, it is pretty fashionable to jump on the gender-equality bandwagon, scream allegiance towards valuing women or pay lip service to them through pink-coded celebrations of Women’s Day, offering them chocolates and roses in corporate offices.
But has anything truly changed? India has been consistently falling in the gender equality index, the gender pay gap will take more than 200 years to close, and violence against women only takes newer forms- less dowry deaths and fantastical burnings, more everyday harassment for women who dare to step out into the public domain that was previously the monopoly of men. It’s not acceptable anymore to publicly deride women’s capabilities, so disdain for them is shrouded in private sneers and sniggers for the ‘ambitious’ woman who would have indeed ‘compromised’ to climb the corporate ladder or behind accusations of false rape cases and the horrors of men not being able to engage in ‘friendly’ banter or eve-teasing for the fear of being #MeToo-ed.
But rest assured, when it comes to the question of women they are related to, women can expect to feel safe. Or at least that is the hope. That may be the very point of the discursive re-iteration of women aslaadlis, laadkis or devis. If men are forced to think of women like they would think of their mothers, sisters and wives, it might compel them to behave better. And maybe it will?
At this point, though, I don’t know whether this is genuinely worth celebrating- is this all we can hope for? If I could go back in time and talk to my high school friends, I would probably advise them that if the only reason we believe a boy is treating us well is because he has a sister at home (or thinks of us as some other man’ssister), he’s probably not worth it.
[Taanya Kapoor is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, writing a thesis on the contradictions of modern daughterhood in middle-class India. She runs a monthly club called the Women & Gender Book Club, which features books by and on women and author interactions. Follow her on @taanya_k on X]
