WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

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6. Discussion and Conclusion
S. SUDHA –S. KHANNA –S. I. RAJAN –R. SRIVASTAVA
Our findings indicate that amongst the Nayars in Kerala, kinship
and family systems that prioritize the interests and needs of men over
those of women have emerged after the abolition of matriliny. Such
systems are similar to those described as “patrifocal” by
Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (1994). Descent now emphasizes the
male line and women move after marriage to reside with husbands.
This and the penetration of dowry shows that Nayar women’s relations
to family and property have radically transformed compared to the
past. Participants’ emphasized the value of education for all, yet also
supported curtailing women’s economic participation in line with views
on female chastity and household roles, in an overall climate of high
female unemployment. While gender role specialization previously
existed in Nayar society, it has interacted with the newer forms of
family and economy emerging during modernization to widen gender
inequity. Specifically, our findings indicate the rise of substantial verbal
son preference and limited indications of the use of NRTs for prenatal
sex selection to actualize son preference. This is a very notable shift in
a society where historically the birth of daughters was welcomed and
celebrated (Jeffrey, 1992).
The significance of our findings includes first, the documentation
of emerging son preference in a culture assumed to be immune to such
retrograde developments. Nayar society had previously been studied to
examine how changes in kinship systems lowered the status of adult
women (Saradamoni, 1994; Renjini, 2000), but did not examine son
preference. Our study makes this unique contribution to the literature
on son preference, particularly highlighting the role of male-focused
kinship systems and limited female economic participation. Prior
studies on son preference have analyzed the issues in groups where this
is an entrenched practice, and had not documented its rise, in the
context of social change, in a group where it was previously unknown.
Second, our study contributes to the discussion of the
multidimensional nature of women’s societal position, whose different
aspects do not necessarily go hand in hand (Kabeer, 1999). We
demonstrate how the education of women, a widely advocated policy
prescription to address a variety of social dilemmas, is necessary but
not sufficient to overcome the societal disadvantage faced by women in
a patriarchal setting where educated women pay higher dowries,
employment opportunities are limited, and “housewifization” is
common. To overcome these barriers, female employment is important
along with re-assessment of familial gender roles. Though employed