Feminism And Feminism In Kerala

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Recommended: Summary of the social construction of gender

Chapter II
Patriarchy, Gender and Feminism:
A Study of the Changing Kerala Culture
This chapter serves as a theoretical framework for the thesis, with the focus on patriarchal constructs like masculinity and femininity. It also deals with the major ideas of feminist thinkers regarding women’s subordination and enslavement especially in their families. The patriarchal ideology that the private space of the family is the domain of women is questioned by them. The salient features of Western feminism and their influence on Malayalee women writers and activists are also dealt with in this chapter.
The role and status of women in Kerala from the early twentieth century to the present is traced in order to identify the various factors which restricted and still restrict women from becoming empowered. The change from the joint family to the nuclear family and the greater subordination of women in the new arrangement are also discussed. Modern Malayalee women’s attempts to challenge and subvert patriarchal power structures and systems of oppression are discussed. The various changes that took place in the cultural domain of Kerala are also analysed in this chapter.
Feminism as a philosophical, political, social, cultural and literary movement challenges the patriarchal power structures which …show more content…

Aristotle wrote, “The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities. We should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness” (qtd. in. The Second Sex 15-16). Roman law curtailed the rights of woman citing “the imbecility and instability of the sex” as the reason. Pythagoras said, “There is good principle which has created order, light and man; and a bad principle which has created chaos, darkness and woman”. Islam also believes that man is superior to woman because of his God given qualities and has the right to rule over and manage the lives and affairs of

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