Akshat Meharia Week 3

The writer in her chapter "The axis of Gender Stratification", from the book "Gendering Caste through a feminist lens", talks about double inequality and partiality based on gender as well as class or caste of a person at one and the same time. She talks about the marriage norms prevalent in the society, how endogamy and exogamy exists for the continuation of the purity of the caste. It shows the inequality towards women with the help of these marriage practices, which gives rise to a servere hierarchical and unequal society. She has correctly pointed out that women are treated as goods, who are transfereed from one gotra to another gotra, in order to continue the male line of a particular family, by bringing a girl from a different line.
 A girl is treated as the greatest gift to a man from the girl's father for the maintenance of one's caste status. In an Indian society, it is never the women who are treated as the carriers of the line, they are mere mediators who are transferred from one line to another as commodities, which can be exchanged and gifted.It goes on to show that marriages are seen as a means to preserve land and rituals, and has nothing to do with the women.  The author observes how marriages revolves around the concept of endogamy, and how it is seen as the basic criteria to differentiate between purity and impurity. It provides a fair perspective of things from a feminist lens and how women are dominated and supressed  on various spheres based on caste as well as the patriarchal system.