Competent men can handle difficult tasks quite adequately. But when situation becomes impossible, they are forced to seek the help of the superior gender. Along with Thapathali—the busiest intersection in Kathmandu valley—women in uniform now direct the traffic at Tripureshwar. There can be no better way to pay tribute to the ingenuity and strength of women workers than by penning an ode to the female traffic cops of the capital city on the 100th International Women’s Day.
It’s not easy being a traffic police in a city where most drivers are first-generation city dwellers. Ownership of a car is considered a licence to look down upon lowly public officials. Chauffeurs bear a grudge against the shabby uniform of the person who holds the power to stop them in their tracks. Motorcyclists seem to believe that now that they have been able to make a beginning on the road to power and prosperity, nobody should come in their way of getting ahead in life. Men with steering wheels of buses and trucks in their hands are resentful of ‘meddlesome’ cops standing in the middle of the road. When the traffic police is a woman, her difficulties multiply manifold.
On some days, belligerent cabbies ignore the female traffic cop. Sometimes a foul-mouthed gorilla from behind the wheels of a microbus makes an indecent pass. A motorcyclist refuses to show his driving license when caught flouting traffic rules. But despite the apparent disorder, these women of substance wave an ambulance somberly and actually smile at some familiar faces. They come to attention at the first sight of an escort vehicle of VVIP motorcades. Sometimes an onlooker may wonder whether these creatures possess superhuman endurance to face challenges of such a difficult occupation. Perhaps they do, and it probably comes from the dignity of holding a job that frees them from bondage.
Same difference
Leftists have a somewhat simplistic explanation for the exploitation of women in society. In Marxist worldview, all human actions, relationships, and institutions are economically determined. Hence, emancipation of women is impossible without dismantling the capitalist mode of production and withering away of the exploitative state. The prophets of leftwing politics—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—ordained that all history was history of class struggle; and that humanity was marching towards an egalitarian utopia where the only difference left at the end of violent conflicts between two-legged creatures of the world would be that of gender.
Leftists have a somewhat simplistic explanation for the exploitation of women in society. In Marxist worldview, all human actions, relationships, and institutions are economically determined. Hence, emancipation of women is impossible without dismantling the capitalist mode of production.
The science is the most powerful dogma of this age. And since Marxists claim that their ways of analysing and understanding society are scientific, few dare to question the validity of the assumption that women’s emancipation is impossible without the end of class struggle and establishment of a proletarian paradise on planet earth. Ground realities however suggest that Marxist interpretations of gender relations may be somewhat flawed if not totally unfounded.
No world leader of international repute has ever emerged from any of the communist countries. The Soviet Union, like its nemesis the United States of America, was a men’s world. Apart from Mao Zedong’s last wife Jiang Qing and her notorious Gang of Four, the Chinese have failed to produce any female leader of note. To the outside world, North Korea appears to be a bastion of male primogeniture and even progressive Cuba is hardly any different from its South American cousins in the matter of chauvinistic machismo.
Back on home turf, CPN (UML) sidelined Sahana Pradhan to promote Bidya Bhandari for reasons not difficult to guess: Party bosses probably thought that a featherweight female politician would be easier to manipulate than an established personality in her own right. Not that UCPN (Maoist) has done any better to encourage women leaders. Hisila Yami and Pampha Bhushal were familiar names on the national scene much before Pushpa Kamal Dahal adopted the nome de guerre of Prachanda and initiated the bloodiest armed conflict in country’s history. Despite the shrillness of their egalitarian rhetoric, Maoists continue to be as male-centric as UML, if not worse. Not unlike politburos elsewhere in the world, the Paris Danda headquarters of Maoists is a masculine stronghold where aspiring women leaders are heard but hardly listened by the alpha males of the party.
It’s not just in the arena of producing leaders. Leftwing regimes everywhere have been found wanting in protecting and promoting the dignity of women. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men would be unable to find a bride within a decade because baby girls have been stigmatized and eliminated as a matter of routine in many parts of the country. When a baby girl is not considered even a child, it’s pointless to talk about the status of women in a country that aspires to be the next Super Power of the world.
Rightwing regimes are hardly any different in treating women any better than communist regimes. Since God is a masculine concept and all His prophets have always been male, theocratic states invariably accord secondary status to the ‘superior sex’—said so because ‘he’ is inherent to ‘she’ even in English pronoun. By their very nature, militarists and capitalists find women and children to be liabilities of society who should be looked after; they are considered important but not equals. No matter whether a regime is of the left, the right, or the centre, it’s an unfair world for the fair sex.
Different approach
At least for the sake of propriety, powerful personalities at the helms of the state and the market find it impossible to disagree with the doctrine of advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. They tend to look condescendingly at organized movements for the attainment of such rights. That could be the reason feminism is the most flourishing sector of NGO-industry in most Third World countries including Nepal. However, patronization and charity are just that and nothing more.
Political empowerment too has its limits. Nepali women acquired voting rights along with their male counterparts. Representation of women in political institutions of the country is better than in many developed countries. But none of these have translated into securing a better deal for Nepali women. Perhaps that’s where lessons from the experiences of female traffic cops in Kathmandu valley can be useful. It’s only when women work for safety, security and welfare of men as well that they acquire the confidence of accepting their role in society with quiet dignity. That doesn’t sound like a revolutionary idea, but incremental way to gender justice perhaps would be no less effective in the long run.
Unlike activists who pursue confrontationist approaches, the silent majority innovates even as it endures. The very foundation of solidarity is an acceptance of the idea that the core issue is not that of differences between “us” and “them” but about ties that bind everyone into a common “us”. That’s a conclusion women traffic cops of Kathmandu seems to have arrived at without any Marxist, Weberian or Maoist analysis of gender relations.
cklal@hotmail.com
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