If my dad was a woman: The gender divide growing up in rural India

My dad grew up in one of India’s poorest villages. I sat down with him to discuss how his life actually unfolded and how different it would have been if he had been a girl in rural India.

It began the winter of 1958

“I was born in a rural part of India, a village called Balliagam which lays near the Ganges River. People here live in mud houses with no electricity, no running water, and no sanitation. My parents and other villagers live off of subsistence farming, agriculture, and cattle raising.

“Life was full of obstacles – I grew up sick, and infectious diseases attacked me all the time (because of lack of education, sanitation, and nutrition). By the age of five, I had already had cholera and smallpox. That was the closest I had been to death. My mother, as a traditional Hindu, prayed to the gods that she would sacrifice a lamb for the improvement of me, if I got better. I eventually beat the disease and the lamb was killed in my name.

“I was able to go outside and play when I finished working in the fields. We grew up playing around in the mud and the river. I was able to go to the bathroom outdoors freely.”

What a girl’s childhood in Ballia was like

“I had a baby sister, but she had passed away at the age of three from disease. However, I saw what the girls around me went though. Girls grew up performing household chores, from a very early age. They fetched water from the well, swept the dirt-floors inside the home. They were not allowed to be outdoors to play, and played marbles inside instead. Girls sewed a lot, as their mothers taught them. They also got very sick along with boys – facing diseases, they were also treated on the floor and given water like any child. But there is no concept of animal sacrifice in face of disease for females. Additionally, they also have to wait until nighttime arrives to use the bathroom outdoors in the fields.”

For a boy: time for school

“I first began going to school when I was seven years old. My father was living in New Delhi, working as a police officer, and brought my three other brothers and me from the village to the city so we could learn. It was an all-boys school, and there was also an all-girls school. I walked to elementary school each morning for about 30 minutes, wearing bare feet and the only set of clothing I owned. Students would sit on the floor each day for lessons. No books were available, so we wrote on wood with pieces of chalk. In middle school, I got my first pair of shoes. I didn’t have a favorite subject – whatever I was learning was interesting, because it was a necessity for my future. I spoke Hindi as a child, but English as a second language was introduced to me here. I graduated the top of my class in middle school.

“By the time I got to high school, I used to get up at 7am everyday, rain or shine, to walk there in my single uniform. I would come home after school to a  two room apartment, living with my brothers, and finished my homework before sleeping each night. In high school, I also developed a passion for cricket – which actually distracted me from my studies, and I ended up getting D’s while graduating. But hey, I made it!”

For a girl: time for marriage

“Girls in Ballia were growing up in a remote part of a rural village. Being involved in household chores and cutting vegetables from the field, they weren’t taught that they had to go to school. Responsibilities increased in the house, as it wasn’t common for women to laugh aloud in the open, but they did sing in the house to themselves. They wore conservative saris or kurtas, covered from head to toe, didn’t play sports, and didn’t have many hobbies. At the age of 10, a girl would learn how to cook and did so often – these were skills that she needed for her future when she entered into a new family, with her in-laws.

“At age 14, her parents would begin looking for a man in the village for marriage. They searched for a groom of the same caste (social standing), which is very important in successful partnerships and families who have farmland/cattle (a sign of wealth, property, and ownership).

“By 15, a young woman would marry a man and her family would pay a dowry of a cow and $4,000 to his family. This was a sum paid to the in-laws to allow her into their home. The marriage process was very simple; during the ceremony, a large cloth separated the husband and wife. The very first time a girl saw her in-laws would be after the wedding.

“Typically, the bride’s younger brother accompanied her to their home in those early days, since everyone in the entire home was new to her. The bride was expected to quickly adapt and learn the ways of the new house, doing things her husband’s way, becoming accustomed to her in-law’s routine. She was also expected to produce sons in preference to daughters (sons brought in wives to take care of parents when they aged), in addition to cooking and cleaning. There are cases where a woman’s in-laws are very critical; the relationship between a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law in particular is always very tough. As a girl, it was rare to be right – almost always, she had to submit. If she raised her voice, she was not considered a good daughter-in-law.”

Future aspirations as a man

“I had graduated from a premier technological institute in India in Computer Science, so I was very optimistic about my future. CS at the time was a young, fast-paced, and high-demand field. Going to college was the only option I had in order to enter a workplace besides the traditional farming and labor-oriented jobs I had been familiar with. CS provided me a high income, a well-respected job, a place where I could be stable.

“In India, if you are a doctor, lawyer, army officer, or engineer, you are respected, and hold a very high status in society. As a CS major, I was looked upon as a highly intellectual person. By the time I had graduated college, I knew I was set for life – a good one. I had broken my own cycle of poverty. I moved to New Zealand as an IT consultant on my very first plane ride and life took me to America, where I built my own businesses from the ground up and grew to love the innovation and promotion of entrepreneurship in the capitalist world.”

For a woman, life of working in the household

“By a woman’s twenties, she had birthed two or three children, going on to deliver six to eight throughout her lifetime (I was one of nine siblings myself). Women were indoors all the time, doing chores, with no concept of career or progression for them, and no form of choice in what they wanted to do. There was no choice in the matter; they had to do what was expected of them.

“Women couldn’t read or write, and spoke only Hindi, as they didn’t need these skills for the rest of their lives. They would take care of my children, take care of their husbands, and grow old with them. This was to be their story, as it had been for every other woman in my family.”

‘What is Ballia like today, dad?’

“I have not visited my home village for 30 years. It is very likely that girls would experience the same life path. Girls may go to primary school just to learn how to read and write. In my village, more boys are going to school now – they have bigger outlooks, get to travel outside the village, and go travel for opportunity. There are now technical vocations for boys.

“But there is a small amount of change happening. Electricity, hand pumps, and small clinics have entered the countryside, and people today are more exposed through media, newspapers, and cell phone use. There are more schools for girls, but still a very small number for girls in comparison.

“The educational inclusion of women is absolutely necessary. In my opinion, it is of the HIGHEST importance – because as a human, it equalizes males and females. Education gave me self-esteem, confidence, and self-respect. It gave me the power of self-created thought, economic success, independence from others. And women around the world deserve this. As horrible as it sounds, I am forever grateful to be born a man to break my cycle of poverty. Without my gender, I could not be who I am today. And that is a very sad thing. Education has the capability to change that. With it, you are your own, you have your own identity, and you dictate the purpose of your life, something every human being deserves.”