The Hypocrisy of the West: Who is Exploiting Women in India?
BY HANNAH LACAVA
From the moment we enter this world, we are bombarded with rights and wrongs. “It is right to be speak out and be yourself,” says Dad when we stand up to the school bully. “It is wrong to conform,” says Mom when we start wearing the same clothes as the stylish girls in class. “It is right to earn your place,” says our teacher to encourage us to study for better grades. “It is wrong to mooch off others’ success,” says our friend who got stuck doing the group project all alone.
To us, these ideals seem self-evident; they seem only fair. But on the other side of the globe, these principles may not be so obvious. In many places, it is not right to speak out, but to conform. It is not right to strive only for individual success, but to share your accomplishments with others. There’s no such thing as mooching—work is collaborative.
The perspective of cultural relativism maintains that we, as a culture, have no right to say that our rights and wrongs are the right rights and wrongs. But unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to stop us. The U.S. and Europe continue to dominate international human rights organizations, determining their agendas and spreading western ideals.. Perhaps most tellingly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—a document said to set a worldwide standard of human rights—was itself overseen primarily by Eleanor Roosevelt (an American), John Humphrey (a Canadian) and René Cassin (a Frenchman). This “Universal Declaration” doesn’t seem very universal. Thus, culturally and institutionally, the West dominates the conversation concerning human rights. And the West seems to fully believe that we have every right to do so.
Take Western stances on arranged marriage, for example. In the U.S., the general public perceives arranged marriage as an outdated institution that strips women of their freedom to choose a husband. In India, however, marriage is understood not just as a union between two individuals, but as a union between families. And thus, it makes sense for more than just the two people getting married to make the decision, because it involves more than just those two people.
In contrast to American women who would likely scoff at the idea of their father choosing their husband, many women in India are happy to be a part of an arranged marriage. Indian women often believe that they are too young to make such an important decision on their own and are grateful for their family’s guidance. This clash is a direct consequence of our individualist society versus India’s collectivist society. While American women grow up in a culture where an individual’s personal opinion matters the most, India is a collectivist society in which family values are most important.
Granted, every rule has exceptions. Although many Indian women happily enter into arranged marriages, there are surely components of this tradition and other traditions of Indian society that do subvert the rights of women. That being said, western individualist cultures are just as capable of violating human rights as the collectivist cultures of places such as India.
In the U.S., we spend a lot of time talking about the flaws in other cultures’ moral codes. We criticize India for its arranged marriages, Islamic nations for “forcing” women to wear full-body veils, and China for stifling economic freedom. However, a lot of the time, we overlook our own society in this discussion. We fail to address the wrongs built into our own moral codes.
It is true that globalization has facilitated the spread of human rights ideals. Today, Indian women are more in touch with the Western world and, in turn, more prone to fight for the rights afforded to women in these countries. However, the spread of western values to the rest of the world has had consequences unintended by well-meaning human rights organizations.
For instance, it’s no secret that globalization has given multinational corporations increasing access to cheap labor overseas. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that women make up 90 percent of the sweatshop workforce. In these sweatshops, women are grossly underpaid, subjected to dangerous conditions, and sexually harassed. Who is responsible for this? Sexist Indian companies? Sure, if you consider the Gap an Indian company.
The West loves to portray itself as the good guy. We love to purport that we’re spreading our modern, morally upright values all over the world. And we certainly are. However, we rarely address the other, less noble consequences of globalization, such as the effect on women working in sweatshops on the other side of the world.
Of course companies are exploiting people for profit. It is right to earn your place. It is right to do what you can to get to the top of the ladder. How very Western. But have we forgotten that it’s also right to have autonomy as a human being? That it’s also right to be paid fairly for your work?
Not everything about Indian collectivist cultures is fair and just. And not everything about Western individualism is wrong. Every culture–Eastern and Western– has its own complex set of norms from which consequences arise. But often, it’s easy to forget that this universal consequence of culture is just that–universal. It’s time that the West stops pointing fingers and, instead, takes some time to evaluate its own value systems.