Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters- Social and Symbolic Roles of High-Caste Women in Nepal

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This comprehensive study explores the social construction of gender among high caste (Brahman-Chetri) Hindus in rural Nepal. The unit of study is the family as it operates within kinship networks. Through a detailed examination of the social, mythic and ritual structures which shape the interaction between men and women, the study reveals the symbolic roots of women's power - and the complex social institutions, norms and beliefs which seek to contain that power and direct it to the perpetuation of the patrilineal group. The study shows how individual women live and strategize within the ambiguities of their position in the gender system. While the most "visible" aspects of this system focus on women's ritual impurity, assign them subordinate status and make even their basic livelihood security contingent on their relationship to a male, other strong currents also acknowledge women's purity and their power.

Themes of cultural opposition are delineated throughout and provide the framework of analysis. Purity versus pollution, asceticism versus fertility-these are reconsidered as they are articulated through gendered concepts of the body and the reproductive process. Bennett demonstrates how the high value which Hinduism places on asceticism and celibacy creates low status for the married woman while the same woman's status as sister accentuates her ritual purity and creates high status. The life cycle events and daily activities of women are analyzed within this perspective and the centrality of motherhood is interpreted as the role which integrates and, on a certain level, transcends the contradictory valuation of the female in Hindu culture.

The richness of Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters lies in the range of methodologies used and the intimacy the author established during her ten year contact with the families and with the community in which she lived as participant observer. Genealogies, surveys of marriage patterns, rituals, and religious beliefs are also utilized to elucidate both the broader and finer details of the status and concerns of women. Especially valuable are the in-depth life history interviews conducted with a degree of privacy rare in the village context. Also important is the symbolic analysis of two religious texts (including the Nepali version of the Swasthani Purana which the author translated) to illuminate the differences between male and female views of the goddess Devi in the village.

The author's interpretation of the gender system in this patrifocal society, centers around the belief she found expressed in so many ways on so many levels by both men and women: the belief that woman's sexuality can either be used positively to produce offspring for the patriline or negatively to lure her husband from the agnatic group. These are the powers and choices a woman has. To what degree she will submit these powers to patrifocal control is a question which is at the root of the pervasive ambivalence toward women.

Lynn Bennett is a development anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York. She has worked for the past 30 years in the international development field with special focus on gender, microfinance and social development. Her interest in gender issues began in 1960 when she went to South India as Fulbright Lecturer, to Sri Padmavati College in Tirupati.

Dr. Bennett first came to Nepal in 1972 to begin the research for her dissertation on which this book is based - and remained in the country for 12 years. Following the award of her Ph.D., she led the team which carried out the major socio-economic study on Status of Women in Nepal at the Center for Economic Development and Administration at Tribhuvan University. The research combined qualitative and quantitative data collection in case studies of eight ethnic groups sin different parts of Nepal. Team members lived for 6 months as participant observers in the villages where they also collected observational time allocation data to document the central role of women in the rural subsistence economy. The study was published in 13 volumes by the sponsor, USAID, Nepal.

Dr. Bennett then joined UNICEF, Women & Development Division of Nepal where she worked with the the Ministry of Local Development to design and implement one of the first group-based microfinance projects in Nepal, the Production Credit for Rural Women (PCRW) which was subsequently expanded to become a nation-wide program and is still active today in 2002.

From 1984 to 1987 Dr. Bennett worked with the Ford Foundation in India. Subsequently, she joined the World Bank where she produced a major report on Gender and Poverty in India and worked as Gender Coordinator for South and East Asia. In that role she managed a major research project on "Sustainable Banking with the Poor" which resulted in the Microfinance Handbook Institutional and Financial Aspects which has been a "best seller" among the World Bank's publications. Between 1997 and 2001 Dr. Bennett served as Director for Social Development in the Bank's South Asia region and subsequently joined the central Social Development Department as Social Development Advisor.

Dr. Bennett has kept in close contact with Nepal and the important changes taking place in the country - especially the vibrant women's movement in the urban areas and the growing voice and self-awareness of rural Nepalese women.

This study explores the ways in which the social and symbolic roles of high caste Nepali women combine to de fine their position in patrilineal Hindu society. Two ranges of analysis are included within the scope of my study. The first is an interpretation of the Hindu perception of women in general, as this is articulated in the social, mythic, and ritual structures of a particular Hindu community. The second concentrates on how individual women in this community interpret these structures and manipulate them in specific situations to achieve their own goals. I try to show how women's social roles in Hindu kinship and family structure are related to their symbolic roles in the ritual and mythic structures of Hinduism-in Geertz's (1965) terminology, the relationships between social phenomena and ideological structures.'

Hindu women cannot be understood in isolation from Hindu culture that "system of meanings" which is so important in defining how women perceive the world and their proper place in it, and how they are perceived by others. In other words, the gender system which shapes the particular meanings which Hindus attach to male and female and to sexuality and reproduction is embedded deeply within the culture as a whole-its symbolic idiom, its value system, its social and economic structures (Ortner and Whitehead 1981). Thus, the first three chapters of this book and part of the fourth establish the social, ritual, and ideological framework of Hindu culture. These chapters introduce certain central and interrelated Hindu themes that recur throughout the book. In chapter 2, sets of mutually reinforcing oppositions between purity and pollution, rebirth and release, and between the religious status of the householder and the ascetic-are presented as part of the conceptual framework of village Hinduism. Chapter 3 explores these oppositions as they are expressed in the major life-cycle rituals.

The Hindu view of woman grows out of what I call the "ideology of the patriline." The agnatic kin group, whose members accept the authority of the senior male and owe each other loyalty as well as economic and ritual support, is central to Hindu society. And a set of cultural ideas that attests to the strength and importance of the patriline is evident on many levels of analysis-economic, legal, political, and religious. But regard less of the form through which it is expressed, Hindu patrilineal ideology entails a deep ambivalence toward women.

Initial consideration of the patriline as a social institution begins in chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 develop the religious sig nificance of patrilineal organization in the Hindu context. The reader particularly interested in learning about Hindu women may wish to pass over chapter 3, as the rituals it describes are predominantly focused on males and on articulating the key so cial relations and obligations entailed by the dominant patrilineal organization of society.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages