From: [email-masked] (Subbarao Kambhampati)
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 91 15:34:39 PDT

Path: leland.Stanford.EDU!stanford.edu!agate!ucbvax!cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!rice!susanc
>From: [email-masked] (susan chacko)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Indian Women in U.S[on the hidden motives of the Pittsburgh Survey][Please Read]
Message-ID: <susanc.678219650@keckiris>
Date: 29 Jun 91 18:20:50 GMT
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[email-masked] (Subbarao Kambhampati) writes:
> [please read the original, if I summarised you'd miss the inimitable
> Subbarao Style]
>
>The last thing she, or a million others in her situation, need is a
>misogynist reporter out for a quick buck publishing a sensationalist
>story in a putative magazine for modern women, trying to prove (by
>hook or crook) that women with independence are somehow evil, and that
>women and careers just won't mix.

I agree with Rao about the farcical nature of the 'survey', though
I'm still not convinved that Eve's Weekly actually sponsored this
'research' by Nita/Viswamabara/Wible/Prashant. Even given the
many levels of transcription from 'Nita''s original thoughts,
does the style/grammar sound even faintly journalistic to you?
But let's give them the benefit of the doubt anyway. The 
question is, what effect will a 'survey' such as this, in a
'2nd-rate tabloid', have on Indian society? 

Well, IMHO, people put a lot more credence in their own
experience and that of the persons around them than in
newspaper reports purporting to describe trends. The last
time I was in India, I saw lots of movies on TV about
adultery (it was very Twilight Zone-ish, every time I switched
on the TV there was a movie on about adultery) where the
woman had an illegitimate child, and in 3 out of 4, the
woman bravely kept the child and faced society's wrath, sometimes
even with her husband's cooperation! Yet I don't see many people
with a less critical attitude to (female) adultery and illegitimate 
children.

Granted, I'm talking about the middle-class, and that too, the
infinitely small fraction of it that I personally know, but 
I think people tend to dissociate their own lives from the
paper and magazine and movie world. If the newsmagazines are
printing sensationalist stories about the disasters of 
independent womanhood, that's not so bad, but the dissociation
also translates into a reluctance to accept working women and
and men who do housework as a normal situation. 

Suppose EW was to publish an article showing that independent
'career' women were able to have homes with happy husbands
and children as well, or that in cases where they didn't, they
were perfectly happy to be single. Would that convince the
conservative people that it was healthy and
normal for women to want a life outside their home and family?
Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I think few people actually get their
opinions about social order from print. It takes a lot of women
like Rao's sister and some of my IIT friends, who are struggling
to work and have families, to perhaps suggest to someone else
around that working women may not lead to the downfall of 
civilization.

And no, I'm not endorsing the use of dubious statistical
techniques to obtain sensational newstories.

As for SCI, reading it for two weeks should convince one that
degrees != (education and an open mind). Maybe we should just be 
grateful that only 18 out of the 50K readership thought the
survey was legitimate. 

Susan.
(back after a long time. Restores one's faith in the eternal
immutability of human nature to see that nothing much has
changed on sci)
--
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