Visibility

What a pleasant experience it was to go from India to Fiji and find women playing pool on the porches of shops and beautiful smiling women out everywhere in the streets. Then, to go from Fiji to Vietnam has been very refreshing indeed. Sage and I keep looking at each other and saying things like: “can you imagine a woman in India straddling the back of a motorcycle taxi like that?” Or: “women drinking in a bar!” Even: “look at all of these women exercising and dancing in the park at night!”



At the Fine Arts Museum in Ho Chi Minh City I noticed as many women portrayed in the art work as men: women in factories, as soldiers and guerillas, as mothers, as revolutionaries, as people in any kind of scene. The rooms were separated into before 1975 on one side and after 1975 on the other. In both eras there were countless images of war and battle and daily life, and women appeared in nearly every image. I need to read up on the history of women in Vietnam, and I certainly do not understand power relations and the status of women across difference here, but it simply makes me happy to see them wherever I look, doing all of the same things that men do- smoking cigarettes, playing cards, selling things in shops, riding motorbikes- and smiling lovely smiles back at me.

Woman Rowing

There is something very important to me about seeing women in society. I feel a bit this way about gay people too, it just feels good to be somewhere where they are visible. This has to do, in part, with finding a sense of security, to be sure, but it also helps me to understand a place- to see and interact with women.

Cement Factory (women arguing in background)

In India, I have always been able to find spaces to interact with women and children, but this has not happened organically. I have had to seek women out. The most wonderful moments of my dissertation research involved laughing and chatting with women and young people in their homes. The most memorable time during this last trip to India was helping my students to do their research: asking women about their lives. Many of my worst moments in India have been in places where very few (if any) women were present – in huge polluted city streets, on long bus trips, and in smoky government offices and police stations. In the places that I have spent the most time (namely, Ahmedabad in Gujarat) there have been very few women visible. This gets right to the heart of things. What I realize that I most want to know about a place is what women are doing- about work and rest, and about food.

Women and Men Playing Game in Park (men making noise)

I re-lived some of these experiences - coming to terms with gender inequality in India - through my undergraduate students this past quarter. At times they were frustrated, nervous, impressed, and in awe of what they saw of women’s lives and the attitudes and actions of men. They were confused by the roles of men and women, about the ways that they themselves were treated, and about how they should/wanted to act/be perceived. I remember all of these feelings from my first encounter with India in 2008. Watching my students helped me to realize how far I have come in my experience of India. I have a much better sense now of who I am while there: what I expect and what I will not accept. I am still frustrated and angered by some of what I witness and hear about, but I have developed ways of dealing with and responding to this. I hope that I was able to pass some of this on to my students. Some of it, though, I know now comes only with time and distance. You are likely to hear more from me on the topic as I continue to both take pleasure in learning about and seeing women, and as we continue to make our way ‘around the world’.