A little while back, ASAP Coordinator Dr. Suchitra Dalvie wrote an interesting post with a series of quotes from different books on how patriarchy affects access to safe abortions. In this post, we’re taking a look at how patriarchy continues to perpetrate what only feels like an unending sense of gender inequality, culminating in the unfortunate recourse to unsafe abortions.

Think patriarchy, and the first thought in any mind would pivot around its impact on women. Society is divided according to gender, among other factors.[1] The patriarchy rhetoric has significant social, cultural and political dimensions”.[2] Our first lessons in patriarchy commence with our families. Specific roles and conduct are ascribed and are expected of both sexes – and with that, a subliminal understanding of the bifurcated statuses is inculcated. This is then systemically built upon with time, as children grow to become adults that encourage and perpetrate the same beliefs, and a continuous cycle is then created. In peacetime, patriarchy remains a part of the social fabric, propping up gender equality. The most commonly occurring manifestation of patriarchy in the ancient ages was in controlling and restricting women’s sexual behaviour: something that emanated from the need of men in establishing the paternity of their children. The control over a woman’s reproductive capacity has manifested itself in many forms: ranging from forcibly veiling and covering women too female genital mutilation, from foeticide and infanticide to arranged marriages and honour killings.

Patriarchy teaches you to believe in this disgusting notion that a woman out on the streets at night is valueless, this filthy understanding that even a five year old girl is a sex tool, this cheap rule that a woman cannot do something or should not do something because she is a woman. And it isn’t just the men that believe this, but some of the women too. Because Patriarchy makes women afraid for themselves, for their daughters, for their sisters, for their nieces, for their mothers and for their grandmothers. So they inadvertently reinforce Patriarchy – teaching their girls not to get raped, rather than teaching their sons not to rape. This Patriarchy is a sword that hangs on the woman’s head, because anything that assaults their virginity – which, mind you, is saddled with the honour of their whole family – assaults the honour of their family. This Patriarchy enforces a brutish mentality that if she is raped, if that honour is violated, she has nothing left to live for.

Abortions are frowned upon in patriarchal communities: not for anything else but to wield control over a woman’s reproductive capacity. If a man is to dictate a woman’s rights over reproduction, to him, the natural corollary is to dictate that she is not allowed to abort the foetus should she want to. Patriarchy operates from a standpoint that disregards what a woman wants, and the fact that a woman is the best judge of what she needs. This is the very reason why abortions are outlawed. Against such a backdrop, if a woman conceives an unwanted pregnancy, there is nothing amicable to her interests should she want to seek an abortion. The result? The backdoor is opened, and access to unsafe abortions remains the choice-less decision.

This is not to mean that we are, in anyway, defeatist in our approach to patriarchy. Everyday Sexism has its own ramifications in our lives: but fight it we will. The key is to decide how we want to show up in the present and in the future: and if we resolve to fight patriarchy, it isn’t long before the social construct ceases to exist!