When it comes to India, people always seem to be unable to get away with the topic of "sexism", women usually have a low literacy rate, a high illiteracy rate, and a low level of education......
Is that impression still true today?
In the field of higher education, India has actually made considerable progress.
Over the past five years, the number of women enrolled in tertiary education has increased by 18 per cent, and enrolment has actually surpassed that of men.
In other words, if you walk into a university in India these days, you may find that there are more female students than male students.
Although this seems like a good thing, there is still an eerie reality hidden behind it, hidden under the façade of "progress" and "beauty".
A high level of education does not guarantee employment.
Many people pursue a higher level of education, and their motivation can be mainly boiled down to the "three seeks".
First of all, the pursuit of knowledge is simply a love for a certain field and a desire to further its education in school.
Secondly, due to the unsatisfactory employment situation, the mentality of seeking comfort makes them want to delay entering the society.
Secondly, the pursuit of wealth, with the expectation of a more lucrative income and a more superior career by obtaining a higher education.
Turn the page in 2023
In real life, everyone's motivation may include these three needs, but most people are probably most concerned about the third, which is income.
Many studies have pointed to a strong correlation between educational attainment and employment. To put it simply, people with higher education are more likely to get a job.
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor show that labor force participation increases significantly as education levels improve.
This data is available to statistical agencies not only in the United States, but also in many countries, and the trends are broadly similar.
However, this connection miraculously fails in Indian women.
Women's participation in the Indian labour force has actually been steadily declining since 2005 and has rebounded in recent years, but it still does not exceed 24 per cent.
The number of women in universities is increasing, while the number of women in companies is decreasing.
They go to school but don't work, so what exactly are their goals?
Sonalde Desai, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland in the United States, believes he has found the answer, an ironic one.
Indian male families are beginning to prefer educated daughters-in-law because they believe that such daughters-in-law will produce better grandchildren.
This view was also validated by Neelanjan Sircar, a political economist at Ashoka University in India.
Nowadays, educated women have become a status symbol in the family.
According to Desay research, 40 years ago, more than 90 percent of husbands were more educated than their wives, but today this has dropped to 60 percent.
Desai's cousin had fallen victim to this notion because Indian husbands generally did not want their wives to have more education than her, so she chose to voluntarily forgo university exams to avoid her own education surpassing her husband's.
Desai was so shocked that he thought he had miscalculated, so he recalculated and got the same number again, which is why when the study first came out.
She claims that nothing has changed except for education, and that women usually do not choose men with lower incomes, younger ages, and lower social status to marry.
Indian men are more inclined to choose highly educated women as wives, not to increase their family income, but to ensure that they are able to educate their children better.
Therefore, this increase is not aimed at highly educated independent women, but educated housewives, which is rare in other countries.
In 2019, several scholars from the University of Oxford traveled to Rajasthan, India, to conduct fieldwork, and their findings validated her view.
When parents find out that their daughter is in that age, they are more inclined to postpone her marriage until the age of 18, but not beyond that age.
They believe that the more education their daughters receive, the more likely they are to find a good marriage partner, but if their daughters study in school for a long time, they are likely to lose the opportunity to marry later.
Alison Andrew, one of the authors of one of the authors, expressed this opinion:
What impressed me the most about them was that they wanted to find a well-educated daughter-in-law, but they didn't want her to have any work ambitions.
In the final analysis, the increase in women's education level is ultimately driven by the needs of the marriage market – in order to find a good match......
Foreign ** also interviewed a family with two "highly educated daughters-in-law", including a mother-in-law, Usu Devi, who had never attended a day of school.
By the time of her next generation, her eldest daughter-in-law, Sudha Kumari, had successfully completed her college studies, and her second daughter-in-law, Nibha Devi, had also successfully completed high school.
The three women of this family illustrate all the facets of India's changing times.
Kumari's college degree was paid for by her in-laws, but when asked why Devi wanted her daughter-in-law to go to school, her thoughts are worth mentioning
What we crave is a well-educated daughter-in-law, which is a common phenomenon these days.
Devi smiled proudly because her two highly educated daughters-in-law had given her grandchildren a good education.
Kumari considers herself lucky because she has at least one job. In the local rural development department, she managed to find a position as a civil servant, while her husband was just an ordinary farmer with no university education.
She had considered looking elsewhere, and she had been interested in applying for a job that required a business trip.
The final result can be imagined, which was resolutely opposed by her in-laws and husband, and finally ended in failure.
Thinking about it now, Kumari feels that she made a wise choice. She smiled and said lightly
It was so hard that I had to make sure my family was able to make ends meet and at the same time oversee the education of my children.
Devi is convinced: "For children's learning, the first priority is crucial, and work can only be second. ”
Whether Kumari really thought so, or whether she was "forced" to think like this in front of her mother-in-law, is really difficult to know ......
Nebal was even more unfortunate than Kumari in that she was a pure housewife. When the reporter visited, she was still busy doing housework, spreading cow dung outdoors for a while, and going to the backyard to fill water for a while.
She said cynically
I work from home all day, but my education has given me a lot.
No matter how much education you have, it will be in vain in the end.
This phrase actually falls into the trap of cynicism, because once one has been educated, it can no longer be taken away.
At the very least, she should be educated to understand that she is being treated unfairly, and not naively think that society is the way it is.
Ironically, the goal of "good marriage" in Indian society has led to more and more women being educated, and the end result is that more and more women are awakening to their sense of entitlement, just like Nibal.
Maybe they don't have the power to make a change right now, but in a few generations, hopefully things will be different.