GENDER, CULTURE AND HONOUR: Gender Audit of Punjab and Haryana

Two of the most progressive states of India, Punjab and Haryana, have captured the attention of media, planners, scholars and development experts for a long time now. The most outstanding attributes which have drawn public attention are agricultural development and gender discrimination; and ironically both these have gone together, belying all presumptions including the one that economic development per se results in gender equality. This book is an outcome of a research project “Cultural Fixation on Honour: A Gender Audit of Punjab and Haryana”, conducted at the UGC Centre with Potential for Excellence in Particular Area (CPEPA) at the Panjab University, Chandigarh during 2011–2017. Drawing heavily on extensive fieldwork done in twelve select villages of Punjab and Haryana, using ethnographic approach, the study unveils the ground reality, using narratives of women and men, through the prism of caste, religion, age, culture and tradition. The book brings out the lived-in experiences of women through the life cycle, drenched in the idioms of caste, religion and patriarchy. Several dimensions of gender violence, as taken for granted reality, within home and outside, are presented in various chapters. Of particular importance are the culturally defined issues governing menstruation and personal hygiene, female foeticide, political participation, domestic violence, physical mobility, trafficking in the name of marriage, child marriage, denial of equal life opportunities and decision making, and marital rape, which continue to haunt these otherwise economically prosperous states. Rich first hand data in the form of personal accounts, expose the paradox of development and gender bias in the two most forward looking states of India.