India: Reinforcement and Thwarting of Gender Roles

"The World" article, documenting a young Indian girl Sarita, was very striking to me mainly because it exposed the two sides of Indian culture: a conservative one where she fuffills her duties in the household and a modern one where she is not only allowed but encouraged to study in school. The fact that she does chores like cooking, getting water, and cleaning the house reinforces her role as the female of the hosuehold. She even firmly agrees with the Indian tradition that a girl's home is not that of her parents. However, the fact that she is considered "the son" of the family and has the opportunity to focus on her studies thwarts these gender roles. The article continues to comment on gender roles by opening it up wider than just Sarita's situation. It concludes that Sarita's struggle between maintaining tradition and straying away from it is becoming more common in India recently. Even though lately gender roles are becoming more equal, the movement can cause much "stress and uncertainty" according to the article.

Gender Roles

Specific gender roles can be observed in any culture. The stereotypical culture is that the man has more dominance over the women. Naturally, they are considered as stronger and more capable of doing work. The women, then, is generally considered weaker, more delicate, and incapable of doing the things that men are set out to do. Recently in American culture though, a smaller divide between gender roles has been developing. Now, women are being accepted as equal to the male population and possibly even stronger than males depending on who you ask. However, the presence gender roles still exists primarily in the language that we use on a day to day basis. For example, men naturally tend to use a louder, more demanding intonation and word choice compared to a women's softer intonation and more thoughtful word choice. These language differences definitely reinforces the gender stereotypes because when using language very powerfully, a male naturally overshadows the women because even if she wants to flip this gender role she generally isn't comfortable with using equally powerful language to do so. 

Linguistic Password

I think the idea of a linguistic password is most definitely an exclusionary idea. Although it creates a bond between the members of the group who know the password, it ultimately does more to differentiate others than bring them togther. For example, lets say there is a group of 5 friends who have a certain password. They all know it and it gives them a sense of connection to eachother, but they never seek to find others outside of their group. Because no one else would know the password, they would never get into the group and never get the chance to assimilate. In addition to the fact that it excludes people outside the group, it also has negative effects towards the group itself. Yes they have developed a great connection amongst eachother, but by neglecting to acknowledge anyone els ehas its negative effects. Just because someone doesn't know one word doesn't mean they should exclude them. Who knows, maybe they are in fact very similar to the group, share the same interests, etc, but because they don't understand their linguistic password they are automatically being shut out. Because of this I would definitely conclude that the idea of a linguistic password emphasizes our differences far more than our similarities.