Head Scarves & Women

As requested, here’s a shot of the women wearing our head scarves. While we definitely do not blend in with the villagers, we absolutely feel an eerie sense of camaraderie with the women in the Mewat district villages. Being forced to cover your head, wear long sleeves and pants in warm, sunny weather—while your fellow male classmates are walking around in T-shirts, is unsettling to say the least.

One of the most fascinating things to see at these villages was that the women were the only ones working, and I’m seriously not exaggerating. When you drive through these primitive and poverty stricken areas you see many hard to comprehend sights—like bare bottomed children squatting to urinate in the streets that are lined with animal manure and many other forms of waste—but nothing as consistent as the continual sights of women carrying containers on their heads, kneeling beside water washing clothes, carrying babies and leading cattle, working in the fields, sorting vegetables, cutting sticks, or gathering cow patties for their cooking fires.** Yet every male you’ll see will be sitting in a group of other men, playing cards, talking, laughing, and probably smoking. Our instructor even asked one of our guides about this, saying something to the effect of: “why don’t all these men that are sitting around get hired to work for IRRAD, or the government to maintain these dams and wells [to help the water shortage issue plaguing these villages]?” He responded by explaining that most of them just don’t work, it’s not in their culture. The women do all of the household and “living” work, while about 70% of the men will never have a real job but instead will just “hang out” their whole lives.*

*Please note there is even a government sponsored program to ensure employment for at least one season per year for every person in the rural areas of India, yet the majority of these men just do not participate in the program.

**It's culturally taboo to take photos of women, unless they explicitly give you permission, so not only do I not have very many photos of women, many that I do have are taken from inside our vehicle as we're moving. My interaction with the woman shown below was one of he highlights of our second day in Mewat. We are fairly certain she was the wife of the principle of the school we were touring, because at one point she opened up the principle's office (where she, her husband, and kids also slept) and even showed us some of the school children's work books. She and I made fast friends after we kept exchanging smiles because I couldn't stop admiring her baby. Several other people in our group snapped pictures of me with her (I'll try to get one of those pictures to post) because she immediately allowed me to photograph her and her baby--I think in large part because she is one of the lucky women who has more access to education through her position as principle's wife therefore less afraid and more excited about our presence. She also showed Meagan and I the new bathroom facilities that were built at that school, explicitly so that more girls were allowed to attend school longer.